A college student nearly died after a huge cyst in her brain filled with fluid and then burst when surgeons drilled into her skull to operate, the Daily Mail reported.
Jade Lucas, 20, has lived with an arachnoid cyst and excess fluid in her brain since she was born. She has undergone brain surgery 15 times already – though doctors expect she will not need major surgery for many years after this latest procedure.
Doctors first spotted a dark mass in Lucas’s brain before she was even born. When she was a few months old, her mother noticed one side of her head was growing faster than the other, and doctors identified the cyst with a brain scan.
The cyst was already too big to move, so surgeons inserted a shunt into Lucas’s brain to drain the fluid.
When Lucas went in for a routine check-up the day before starting college, the doctors noticed some pressure behind her eye and discovered that the shunt had somehow broken.
Fluid was quickly building up in her brain and causing the cyst to grow. Lucas had to undergo emergency surgery because doctors said if the cyst grew any larger, it could cause brain damage.
“I've since found out there was so much fluid under pressure in my head it had literally exploded when surgeons opened up my skull,” Lucas told the newspaper.
After the surgery, Lucas fell into a coma and had to undergo four more operations, but she managed to pull through and has since been refitted with another shunt, which drains the fluid from her brain into her heart.
Lucas has finally been able to start college, but she said she still suffers from painful headaches.
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