Miracles Close to Home

Jill Ramacciotti with Winston

Dogged in recovery: Jill Ramacciotti with Winston

Every day since the Monday before last Thanksgiving, I say a prayer of gratitude for my miracle. A few days prior I had felt tingling in my left arm but dismissed it. That night I went upstairs to check on my daughter and go to bed.

“Mom,” she said, “what’s the matter with you?” I repeated my words about her GRE exam to the bathroom mirror. My lips did not sync, and the world moved in slow motion. Within seconds I suffered a grand mal seizure.

Physicians at the emergency department determined I had a brain tumor and had neurosurgeon Dr. Yaron Moshel see me, and my daughter and husband detailed my symptoms to him. He thought the symptoms odd, unless I was the rare individual with two speech centers in the brain, not one. On that 1 percent chance, he ordered a functional MRI at Overlook.

Dr. Moshel was spot on. A few days later he probed my brain during awake surgery to locate that second speech center while his partner asked me questions. When I could not answer, Dr. Moshel had pinpointed it. He carefully cut around the area to remove the tumor.

Dr. Moshel’s office arranged all my care so I could focus on getting better, not on being sick. He sent me to a team led by Dr. Kurt Jaeckle, who stepped in with 42 days of chemotherapy simultaneous with 30 days of radiation therapy conducted by Drs. Louis Schwartz and Joana Emmolo.

Last April I resumed teaching language arts to my sixth graders at Canfield Elementary School in Mine Hill. Miraculously, I’ve not had an issue with my speech since the seizure.

Healing is equal parts faith, attitude, family, and great doctors, I tell people. My miracle was finding the great doctors at the Gerald J. Glasser Brain Tumor Center.