Boy’s recovery from brain tumor: “miracle after miracle”
Published: June 1, 2007
It took eight hours to remove the tumor from 7-year-old Jacob Petersen’s brain. Then came the hard part.
Jacob awoke from the operation at Children’s Memorial Hospital unable to speak or eat. He lay immobile in his hospital bed, paralyzed on his left side and breathing only with the help of a ventilator.
It was the very bad beginning to a remarkable story.
Two years later, Jacob, with his father’s help, raced to the top of the 83-story Aon Center in 29 minutes. The 1,136-foot climb was a fund-raiser for the hospital that had nursed him back to health. It was also a triumphant demonstration of just how far Jacob had come since those grim days confined to a hospital bed.
Today, Jacob’s surgeon, Dr. Tadanori Tomita, marvels at the Naperville boy’s “enormous recovery.”
Jacob’s mom describes it another way. “There was miracle after miracle after miracle,” says Debbie Petersen.
If it was, she and everyone else around Jacob did all they could to make it happen. Jacob had one of the nation’s top pediatric brain surgeons. And he got enormous support from his family and friends — a Web page that relatives put together for him received 10,632 hits.
‘One of the toughest kids I know’
But perhaps the biggest factor in Jacob’s recovery, his doctor says, is Jacob himself.
“He’s one of the toughest kids I know,” says Tomita. “He never whined.”
Every year, more than 40,000 Americans are diagnosed with brain tumors, some malignant and some benign. Those most likely to get brain tumors are old people and young children like Jacob.
He had experienced baffling vision problems and headaches for half a year before an MRI finally detected the cause — a one-inch tumor called an epidermoid cyst that began growing before the boy’s birth. When Jacob was a fetus, skin cells migrated to his brain and formed a cyst that resembled a small water balloon.
Fortunately, the tumor was benign, meaning it wouldn’t spread. But it was in an unusual — and very dangerous — place, right in front of the brain stem, where the brain connects to the spinal cord. Tomita has done about 1,500 brain surgeries. Just four have involved epidermoid cysts in this spot.
Operating would pose enormous risks. But without surgery, the pressure on his brain stem would keep increasing, and Jacob would die.
The operation was scheduled for Feb. 21, 2005.
What Tomita found was a cyst surrounded by sensitive nerve roots, each no thicker than a hair on your head. First, the surgeon tried to drain the cyst using a thin tube. But the tube became clogged. So he had to try something far riskier — removing the cyst. With the aid of a high-powered microscope, he painstakingly moved aside the nerves to get at the tumor, trying not to damage them.
“It made me very nervous,” Tomita says. “I was seriously concerned he would wake up with loss of function.”
Despite all of the surgeon’s efforts, that’s just what happened. Early on after surgery, Jacob “looked just like a stroke victim,” Debbie Petersen says.
‘We’re going to be positive’
Seeing Jacob looking that way made some visitors weep. The boy’s grandfather, Mike McLamore, told them: If you have to cry, go somewhere else.
“We’re not crying in this room,” he’d tell them. “We’re going to be positive for this little guy.”
Still, even then, there were reasons for hope. The brain — especially a young brain — is resilient. It has the ability to form new connections around damaged pathways, much like a driver might find another route when a wreck shuts down lanes on an expressway.
The turning point for Jacob came about three weeks after his surgery, when doctors attempted to take him off the ventilator. They’d tried to do that twice before and couldn’t, leaving Jacob terrified and gasping for breath. This time, when the breathing tube came out, Jacob again began struggling to breathe. But just when it looked like he would have to go back on the machine, he raised his right hand.
‘Do you want to pray?’
He couldn’t talk. But his dad, David Petersen, guessed what he wanted. “Do you want to pray?” the father asked.
Jacob nodded.
David Petersen asked everyone to leave. Then, he leaned over his son’s bed, held his hand and prayed aloud: “Heavenly Father, please be with Jacob right now and strengthen his lungs.”
And that, he says, is when Jacob was finally able to breathe on his own.
Learning to eat and drink again was another big hurdle. Doctors couldn’t get Jacob to swallow. But his grandfather had an idea. He knew his grandson likes to save money. So McLamore held up a $50 bill and made an offer: It’s yours if you swallow 10 times. It worked.
‘Emotional experience’
Jacob ended up spending a month at Children’s, then another four weeks at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
After going home to Naperville, he continued to do 20 hours a week of therapy to regain the ability to do even basic tasks. An occupational therapist taught him how to dress himself. A physical therapist helped him walk in a straight line. A speech therapist showed him how his good vocal cord could compensate for the vocal cord that remains paralyzed.
Jacob was given a removable cast to wear on his good arm, to force him to use his weak left arm and strengthen it. He received electrical stimulation of his muscles and Botox injections to prevent spastic muscle movements.
He still does 10 hours of therapy a week. Though he continues to improve, he might never fully recover. He has limited use of his left hand. He can’t move his left foot much, either — he wears a brace and walks with a limp. His voice is soft, like a loud whisper. And because his left lung is weak, he gets winded easily.
But otherwise, Jacob is a pretty normal third-grader. On his last report card, he got one B and the rest A’s. And he loves baseball. He can’t catch with his left hand. But he can throw the ball, and he can bat. He’s on a swim team and is a pretty good golfer. He still gets headaches, but not as bad as before.
And he has become quite the stair-climber. Jacob was among 2,400 people who climbed the Aon Center on Jan. 28 for the annual fund-raising race.
His dad held his left hand as they climbed the stairs of Chicago’s second-tallest building together. Jacob stumbled a few times. Twice, he stopped for 10 seconds or so to catch his breath.
But he kept going.
When he and his dad reached the top, Jacob was sweating and out of breath but ecstatic. He exchanged hugs and high-fives with his tearful parents and the rest of his family.
“It was a heck of an emotional experience,” McLamore says.
And for his grandson? “Jacob thought it was no big deal.”
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