Allana Prosser started getting painful daily headaches when she was just 11 years old. Painkillers did nothing to help them. Sometimes, she would fall asleep right when she sat down.
“I would take two paracetamol without fail every four hours for it to even touch the pain,” she said.
When she went to the doctors, she was sent away with painkillers.
She started drinking more fluids, up to 7 liters per day.
Her vision was blurry, and her balance suffered. But instead of investigating, doctors said it was probably due to a cheese allergy.
When she turned 16, she still hadn’t started her period. All of her friends had at that point. When she expressed this worry to her primary care physician, she was told to come back when she was 18.
But soon, she became incontinent. “I could not go to work, to the shops, basically anywhere where there was public.”
But she was given oxybutin, which helps people with spasms in their bladder muscles.
Finally, this year, her eye began twitching, and eventually she couldn’t open it. So she went to an optician, who sent her to an eye clinic. The eye clinic immediately sent her for a CT and MRI scan.
Soon enough, in came the news. She had Craniopharynigioma—a large tumor with an attached cyst—on her pituitary gland, and it was pushing on her optic nerve in her right eye.
These tumors are most often found in children, teens, and young adults, and they can cause problems with hormones, eyesight, and growth as the tumors get bigger.
She was immediately rushed to drain the fluid from her brain, and was then put through more operations to remove the tumor.
After most of it was removed—some had to be left at risk to her life—she was told her eye would never open again. But she was determined, and a combination of masking tape and eyelid exercises helped her get it to work.
Now she’s having proton beam therapy, and despite all of her troubles, she feels thankful.
“The last six months have been the hardest for my family and friends and most of all, me. I have been truly blessed with love and support and would never have been able to do this without any of you,” she told supporters on her fundraiser page. “This is why I will fight this and come back fighting with every downfall to prove to you all and also myself I’m a fighter and will overcome this horrible illness.”
