Margit's story
Spinal tumor
Surgery to remove spinal tumor helped Margit get back on her feet
Only a few months after surgery to remove a tumor from the lining of her spinal cord, Margit went for a walk with a few of her 12 grandchildren.
"They said, 'Meme, now we get to walk with you again?'," she recalls. "It was the most wonderful thing. I'm just so glad I came through the surgery so well."
That result came after several years of pain that left Margit unable to walk much and susceptible to falls. She felt numbness down her right leg and pain in her buttocks and pelvic area, spreading around to her stomach. Margit cleans houses for a living, so the symptoms restricted her ability to do her job. She was losing sleep.
"It got really bad," she remembers. "It got to where I was starting to fall. After the third fall, I knew that I had to get this fixed."
MRI shows Margit's tumor was occupying almost 90% of the spinal canal and pushing her spinal cord to the side.
Margit's primary care physician ordered a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan and then referred her to Mayfield's West Chester office, where she met neurosurgeon Dr. Zach Plummer. He diagnosed a spinal tumor called a meningioma, growing from the lining of her spinal cord but outside the actual spinal cord tissue. He explained to Margit that compression of the spinal cord and nerves in her spine was causing her pelvic pain and weakness, as well as the numbness down her legs.
"I just didn't want to go through that anymore," she recalls. "I remember Dr. Plummer coming in and saying, 'It's under control, and we're going to take care of it.'"
Dr. Plummer says the tumor – technically, an intradural extramedullary lesion – was restricting the nerves in the middle of Margit's back, at the bottom of the thoracic spine and the top of the lumbar spine. He recognized the need to perform a procedure called a laminectomy to create space, then remove the tumor to relieve the pressure on Margit's spinal cord and nerves.
Margit's symptoms were severe enough that she went into surgery without trying physical therapy or pain injections first. Dr. Plummer says the goal of any spine surgery is always to relieve pressure on the nerves at the level of the spine that is causing the symptoms. In Margit's case, the pressure was at the T11-L1 levels of her spine.
Margit with Dr. Plummer
"A laminectomy is a common procedure to remove some of the bony structures that were restricting the nerves, as well as some of the ligaments overlying both the nerves and spinal cord," he says. "Once that procedure was complete, we had the space to separate the tumor from the lining around the spinal cord and remove it."
The day after the surgery at The Jewish Hospital – Mercy Health, Margit was walking in the hallway. A month later, she was back working again. Today, she is building up to full activity, including hiking and swimming.
"They were really impressed with my recovery," she says. "I've had no pain and no numbness. It just worked out really well."
~ Cliff Peale
Hope Story Disclaimer -"Margit's Story" is about one patient's health-care experience. Please bear in mind that because every patient is unique, individual patients may respond to treatment in different ways. Results are influenced by many factors and may vary from patient to patient.
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