Arduous road back from brain surgery

So different, yet so much the same.

Sally Towey, an 81-year-old Las Vegan, was talking about the ordeals of Gabrielle Dee “Gabby” Giffords and her late daughter, Kim Sullivan.

Giffords is the former Arizona congresswoman who was critically injured in January 2011 by a gunshot wound to the head. Sullivan underwent multiple surgeries over a 20-year span for seven different brain tumors.

“I doubt that people, unless they’ve had someone go through it, can understand how difficult it is to come back from problems with the brain,” Towey said. “It controls everything. Walking, talking, concentrating, handling yourself in the bathroom … “

Towey shows a picture of her daughter without part of her skull after one of her surgeries.

“We looked so forward to her skull being replaced,” Towey said. “It was so embarrassing for Kim.”

In May of last year, Giffords underwent cranioplasty surgery to replace part of her skull that had been removed to permit her brain to swell after the gunshot to her head. Surgeons replaced the bone, using tiny screws, with a piece of molded hard plastic, allowing her to forgo the helmet she had been wearing to protect her brain from injury.

Dr. Mark Glyman, a local maxillofacial surgeon, did much the same thing for Sullivan about four years ago.

Multiple surgeries, infection and the tumors themselves had caused her to lose part of her skull.

“Kim was just remarkable,” Glyman said. “Somehow she managed to go back to work after all her surgeries. Believe me, anybody who has difficult brain problems, whether from a gunshot or trauma from cancer or a tumor, that isn’t easy to do. She’d have problems with mobility and talking but she’d fight to get back to normal.”

For the better of 30 years, Sullivan ran the Doggie Den, a dog grooming business. Her sister, Kathy Telford, now runs it a the corner of Stewart Avenue and Lamb Boulevard on the east side of Las Vegas.

As she stood near a pooch being trimmed, Telford remembered how her sister, who died a little more than a year ago at the age of 50 from tumor complications, first realized 20 years before that she had a major medical problem.

“She had a seizure and passed out on the floor,” Telford said. “When she woke up, her two dogs were lying there with their heads on her chest.”

Tests revealed that she had a meningioma, a tumor that arises from a layer of tissue that covers the brain and spine. Though generally not cancerous, the tumors can, depending on their location, cause seizures, extremity weakness and balance issues, difficulty speaking, decreased vision, memory difficulty, voice and swallowing difficulties, loss of hearing and smell.

Surgery and radiation are frequent modes of treatment. Kim had both at hospitals in Las Vegas and Arizona. Doctors aren’t sure why some people are afflicted with several tumors during their lifetimes.

“Surgeons always had to be sure when they were digging them out not to hurt her brain more,” Towey said.

Weeks, often months, of rehab followed each surgery.

“We’d get her into a balance rehab with a harness connected to the ceiling to get her to learn how to walk again,” Towey recalled. “She’d fall a lot. And she’d work with a therapist to learn to talk again and to use her hands again, just like I read about Congresswoman Giffords. Each word was a struggle.”

Just as Giffords did, Sullivan learned to write with her opposite hand.

Therapy frequently included learning how to eat again. “Kim would try to bring the food to mouth and miss it and make a mess,” Towey recalled. “She was so embarrassed by that. And as far as going to the bathroom, we’d have to be there with her to help her clean up.”

Sometimes, Sullivan, who had frequent seizures over two decades that knocked her down, would break down in tears or scream, frustrated by the slow pace of rehab.

Yet she kept coming back from six surgeries to run her business again.

Her movement was slower, so was her speech.

Near the end of her surgeries, she had problems keeping the books for her business because she had concentration problems, her mother said.

“Things just didn’t add up easy for her anymore,” she said.

That Giffords retired last week didn’t surprise Towey.

“It wore me out just watching my daughter try to get back to normal,” she said. “Maybe the congresswoman can get better faster without a whole lot of work hanging over her head.”

Paul Harasim is the medical reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His column appears Mondays. Harasim can be reached at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.