Brave she was. When diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, after a year of symptoms when local doctors told her she was just "menopausal" or imagining that she was sick, surgery was scheduled at WVU by a Dr. Donaldson, who had returned from Austria where he was taught new surgical procedures for the surgery using a microscope ,at least that's how they explained it to us.
The night before her surgery, head shaven, Mom told me that the doctor told her that her chances of surviving the surgery were 50-50. I had not heard that before and she said that she was fully aware and that she had no reservations about going on the table with those odds. I was taken aback and scared that we could lose her but her sort of nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing showed me that she had weighed the risk and was bravely facing down what she had to endure.
Well the surgery removed the tumor and wreaked great havoc on the nerves in her face, ear and eye on the affected side, side effects that plagued her the rest of her life. She rarely complained about these daily side effects but it was easy to see how aggravating they were every single hour.
All the while she didn't want her family to suffer inconveniences because of her situation. In conveniences! We were scared to death.
She toughed out the recovery( I remember how she talked me through cleaning out the deep hole in her skull without the slighest bit of concern.).She taught me resilience ,something I think improved my life every time back then when I faced a challenge.
I know there are many people in the world who have faced similar or worse things but I didn't have a front row seat for those. Thankfully I had a brave Mom as a role model to learn from and carry that with me as I moved into young adulthood. She was 51 years old at the time.
P.S. Mom survived diphtheria as a child and also a very bad burn to her upper arm and shoulder when as the story was told she pulled a pot of scalding water from the stove ,also as a child. Ten years after her brain surgery she had a quadruple bypass operation. She was the quickest "recovery" person I ever heard of. When around age 78 her cardiololgist recommended against a second open heart surgery because of her age and condition I countered that opinion with reports of how strong she had been and how quickly she recovered. Mom sided with the cardiologist. From her experiences I took away her positive mental outlook in every medical challenge she faced.