A mother’s intuition—and a fall down the stairs—save a little girl’s life

Photo: Kate Ackermann Photography Liz Beaulieu is likely the only person in the world who can say she saved her child by falling down the stairs. Her daughter, Arielle, was just 4 days old. Liz was carrying her downstairs when she slipped. Not sure whether Arielle had hit her head, she whisked her to her local ER. “She seemed fine, and they said that she looked fine,” Liz says. Still concerned, though, Liz kept a close eye on Arielle over the next couple of days. That’s when she noticed something. “I noticed the slightest flicker of her eyes,” Liz recalls, “and decided that I wanted to get it checked out.” She took Arielle back to the hospital, asking them to do a CT scan. The hospital demurred, but Liz insisted, telling them she needed the peace of mind. “So they did the scan,” Liz recalls, “and they found an enormous tumor.” Arielle had been born with a congenital intracranial teratoma (CIT)—a kind of germ cell tumor and one of the rarest of rare brain tumors. CIT grows rapidly, squeezing the brain and eventually taking over all of the space inside the skull. Very, very few children survive. First, more questions than answers… But Liz and her husband Phil didn’t know any of that yet. Their local ER had only been able to tell them that something was very wrong, that fluid was building up in Arielle’s brain—a condition called hydrocephalus—and that they needed to get her to their nearest ped...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Diseases & conditions Our patients’ stories Brain tumor congenital intracranial teratoma CT scan Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center Liliana Goumnerova Mark Kieran Source Type: news