Tania Paravano

In the fall of 2008, 20-year-old Tania Paravano seemed to be a young woman without a care in the world. She was working as a medical/surgery technician at Carondelet St. Joseph’s Hospital, dating a midshipman at the Naval Academy, experiencing all the things “twenty-somethings” enjoy about life.

But she began suffering from a persistent earache that refused to go away. With the pain, came severe headaches and vomiting. She was certain she had a nasty ear infection, but the antibiotics she initially received during a quick trip to a pharmacy clinic did not help. Tania was referred to Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, Dr. Robert Dean, who ordered various tests, including an MRI. Doctors were calling Tania later the same day she took that test.

This was no ear infection. It was a brain tumor – the size of an egg.

The tumor was located behind Tania’s ear, at the back of her brain. She was sent to see neurosurgeons and specialists at Carondelet Neurological Institute (CNI) on the campus of St. Joseph’s Hospital. They explained that this tumor – a jugular foramen neurinoma – was growing in her skull base compartment where the nerves that serve one’s ability to speak, swallow, hear and move their shoulders are located. The tumor was severely obstructing blood flow to one side of Tania’s skull. It had to be removed quickly. While benign, its location and size could be fatal.

Dr. Hillel Baldwin, a specialist in skull base neurosurgery at CNI, removed the majority of the tumor from Tania’s brain on April 3, 2009. It was an incredibly complex and sophisticated procedure, which took place in one of CNI’s two state-of-the-art iCT BrainLAB suites. Sixty percent of the tumor could be surgically removed. It was enough to change Tania’s prognosis and chances of survival drastically.

“I felt so comfortable,” notes Tania on her experience at CNI. “I knew that Dr. Baldwin and his team were using the very latest technology in that operating room. I trusted everyone involved from the time of diagnosis through recovery. I always knew I would be fine because I had such phenomenal doctors.”

Tania spent five days in the Institute’s Neurological Critical Care Unit and another six days on the in-patient unit - and finally, she was transferred to inpatient rehab before heading home.

Several months later, the second portion of Tania’s treatment began. In July 2009, Dr. David Frye, a radiation oncology specialist from Carondelet Neurological Institute’s Brain and Spine Tumor Center and Dr. Eric Sipos, Medical Director of the Institute, began treating the remaining 40 percent of Tania’s tumor with a procedure called Stereotactic Radiosurgery.

Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) is a way of delivering highly targeted, high-energy radiation to supplement surgical treatment or, in certain conditions, may be the primary treatment of choice. Because the radiation can be delivered with great precision, the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor is not damaged. Radiation oncologists use this approach to treat both cancerous and benign tumors both in the brain and spinal cord. SRS can also be used on metastatic or secondary tumors caused when cancer cells break away from a primary tumor that developed in some other system or organ. At CNI’s Tumor Center, SRS is performed using the Novalis Tx, one of the most advanced systems available in the field of radiation oncology and the first of its kind in Arizona. One of the best parts for any SRS patient, this type of treatment is delivered on an outpatient basis.

Tania’s initial SRS treatments took place every day for five days in July. “The equipment was so interesting,” says Tania. “Every one of my doctors made me feel so comfortable and safe. I love them all.”

In August, an MRI showed Tania’s tumor was no longer growing. The SRS treatments were successful in controlling that tumor’s growth while sparing other nerves in her brain from injury. While the tumor cost Tania the hearing in one ear, she has full mobility and no other residual effects from her experience. She’ll continue to have an MRI periodically to check the tumor’s status and outpatient SRS can be used as a future treatment option, if and when needed.

“This chapter of my life is over and a new one can begin,” reflects Tania. “I am extremely grateful for what this experience has taught me. It made me a better person and a better health care provider. When you work in a hospital, you see so many patients that to you, it can feel merely like a professional environment in which you are an employee. But when you become a patient yourself, you realize the stress, the uncertainty and the fear each person is going through… and the dynamic changes. I see myself in each one of them now.”

Tania is back in college, studying for her Bachelors in Health Sciences. She hopes to someday become a Child Life Specialist for seriously ill children.