Doctors dismissed her headache as hormonal—until pet dog bumped her in the head, revealing shocking diagnosis
Women have an upsetting history of being dismissed by doctors despite having symptoms and pain. A young woman named Robyn Stonier had been struggling with headaches for months, The Mirror reported. Despite seeing doctors and trying to understand what caused the shooting pain, she was told that it was hormonal. Her dog, Ember, came to her rescue by bumping her on her head, uncovering something more worrisome and eventually giving the woman a shocking diagnosis. Stonier had been prepping for her wedding, which was a few months away. Despite her recurring headaches, she didn’t think much of it.
“I'd been suffering with daily headaches for years but just put it down to stress or hormones,” she noted. The doctors also told her that it was because of her pills that she’d been getting headaches. She added that she didn’t have other symptoms and so brushed off the pain. One day, when she was at her mum’s, her dog Ember ran across the garden and hit her head hard. She was hit on the left temple of her head and the shooting pain started once again. "She never usually jumped up at me. I didn't really think anything of it,” she explained. She took paracetamol for her pain back then and it went away. A few days later, she started feeling dizzy and experiencing other symptoms.
At one point, she was unable to walk in a straight line. That’s when the bride-to-be pondered that it could be a result of the accident with her dog and went to the hospital. To her surprise, her headache and symptoms were not because of hormones or pills or the dog; it was because she had a tumor known as meningioma. According to Mayo Clinic, this tumor often grows in the head at a slow rate without symptoms. This type of tumor is known to be more common in women. The symptoms are headaches, weakness and other subtle ones.
"I tried to just live with it for about three weeks, but I began deteriorating really quickly. I couldn't walk. I had to sit on my bum to go downstairs. I was literally bedbound,” the woman noted. She added that several other symptoms showed up, which prompted a hospital visit. "I lost all my coordination. I began violently throwing up again. I got this bad pressure headache again. It was so intense I thought I was going to die. I was screaming and crying, and it just wouldn't go,” she noted. The tumor had grown up to 3.5cm by the time she learned she had to get it removed. She went through a rigorous surgery and was later told that she also had to undergo radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Stonier was forced to cancel her wedding and undergo treatment. However, after the long endurance, she shared in a post that she was finally fine and recovering. She couldn’t help but credit her dog. “I definitely think it's all Ember's doing that I found out about it. I think she saved my life,” she remarked. She noted that dogs have a “sixth sense” and had it not been for her, “I could've just carried on with my normal life.” “If they hadn't found it when they did, I don't think it would've been curable,” she mentioned. Sharing a caveat with others, Stonier said, “If you're suffering with regular headaches, get it checked out, push for an MRI. Don't let doctors fob you off."