Bride Refuses To Let A Brain Tumor Ruin Her Special Day

When many young girls picture their future wedding, they imagine a perfect day that goes exactly according to plan. They likely imagine themselves in a long, white dress making their way down the aisle to their future husband while being admired by all of their friends and family. They probably don’t imagine making that journey down the aisle with the help of a walker.

Shortly before she was to be married, a young Minnesota woman named Christina Anderson was told that she had a golf ball-sized tumor in her head, according to Today. Anderson knew there was something wrong when she began experiencing severe symptoms of vertigo. She was constantly dizzy and in pain, unable to drive or even function as normal. She was also vomiting constantly. When her symptoms didn’t seem to be improving, she went to a local hospital where she underwent a CT scan.

When the doctors took a long time to provide her with the results, Anderson knew something must be wrong and began preparing herself for the worst.

Anderson recalled the shock she felt at that moment.

“It took the doctors a really, really long time to come in so I knew something was up. The doctor came up and sat by my side and said, ‘I found a brain tumor.’ At that point, I knew what it meant but I was kind of in denial because I didn’t really understand the severity of it.”

The tumor was pressing against her brain stem but was luckily determined to be benign. Doctors informed Anderson that she was suffering from a hemangioblastoma and that they needed to treat it quickly before it was too late.

At the time, Anderson was preparing for her upcoming wedding and begged her doctor, a neurosurgeon named Dr. Manish Sharma, not to chop off all her hair in preparation for the surgery to remove the tumor, which he agreed to.

Christina Anderson, 24, had surgery to remove a huge #BrainTumor just three months before her wedding. “I was going to crawl down that aisle before I had to use the walker.” https://t.co/BbIknC8gBL via @TODAYshow @MayoClinicHS

— Mayo Clinic (@MayoClinic) August 22, 2019

The bride-to-be insisted that she would let nothing ruin her perfect wedding day and vowed to recover in time to enjoy this once in a lifetime occasion. Three months after her operation, Anderson made her way down the aisle to marry the love of her life, just as she said she would. She did so without the help of a walker while a creative hairstyle helped cover up the scars on her scalp from the surgery.

How did she manage to recover so quickly? Her own determination certainly helped, Dr. Sharma said.

“People can will themselves into getting better,” he claimed.