After losing a first child in pre-term labor at six months, Kris and Michael wanted their second pregnancy to continue to full term. When Kris began losing hearing in her left ear she was told that hearing loss on one side is never normal. Since she couldn’t have an MRI with high contrast due to her pregnancy, she postponed resolving her hearing problem until after delivery.

A client got her attention when he looked at her and said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your left eye opens wider and it doesn’t blink with your right eye. This isn’t something that you should put off until after your pregnancy.” She called her doctor and had an MRI that afternoon. The picture on his screen showed a large tumor. She went home with a piece of paper that read “acoustic neuroma.”

“Here I was, almost in my third trimester, with a huge brain tumor!” She began asking questions online, posting on forums and on the Acoustic Neuroma Association’s Website. Within days a former acoustic neuroma patient called and said “I saw your post on the Internet and felt it was my duty to call you. You need to talk with Dr. Rick Friedman at the House Clinic in Los Angeles. I’ll put you in touch with him.”

The next morning Dr. Rick Friedman called Kris. “If I could just have a plan,” she told him. He promised they would have a plan by the end of the week. They were in touch daily, by phone and E-mail. He talked with her other doctors, and by that Friday they had a plan. “Kris, there is no timeline on when you deliver your baby,” he said. “We will get you as far along as we can.”

“He was so confident. I knew that he was the doctor for us,” Kris stated.

But before long Kris began having other symptoms. Soon she couldn’t walk without assistance, feel her face, look up or down, make eye contact during a conversation or even read a menu. A follow-up MRI indicated that they needed to move up the date of the surgery.

Michael and Kris went to Los Angeles. Their son, Parker, was born on May 18th. He was early but is doing fine. Dr. Friedman and neurosurgeon Marc Schwartz visited her often in the hospital to see if she was stable enough for surgery. “I knew then that we were in the place we needed to be,” she said.

Less than three weeks later Kris was in surgery. Afterwards, the doctors told Michael that everything went really well. It was only when Michael heard Dr. Schwartz comment that given a bit more time, that tumor would have killed her did he realize they also saved her life.