Woman battles brain tumor to deliver healthy baby boy

Mathis Winkler

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

Daniela Vezzoza wasn't supposed to have a baby.

The 28-year-old had leukemia as a child and last year doctors removed a tumor from her brain. Her doctors told her that chemotherapy had made it virtually impossible for her to become pregnant.

"But then it happened," Vezzoza said, adding that she became pregnant only months after her treatment ended.

Doctors cautioned her that hormonal changes in her body during pregnancy could cause new tumors to grow.

Despite the risks, Vezzoza thought at the time, "I'm going to have to go through with it if God gave me the baby."

Doctors fears were soon confirmed as they found a worrisome new brain tumor that quickly grew to the size of a grapefruit.

"I have never seen a tumor grow this quickly," said Dr. William Smith, a neurosurgeon at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

An operation or any cancer treatment proved impossible because of the pregnancy, and she grew sicker as the pregnancy progressed. At one point, she became paralyzed on her right side because of the tumor.

Doctors decided to perform a Caesarean section on Feb. 6, determining Vezzoza's baby was healthy enough to be born five weeks early.

Meanwhile, Smith was already waiting outside the operating room and got to work as soon as the baby was born. Vezzoza was put under general anesthesia and Smith cut a hole into her skull the size of a piece of toast and removed the tumor.

Smith said he worried about Vezzoza's condition during the operation, which lasted for three or four hours.

Caesarean sections tend to involve a fair amount of blood loss, he said. Removing the tumor immediately after could have resulted in blood levels that were life-threateningly low, he said.

But holding off on the operation would have endangered Vezzoza's survival as well.

"If we had waited any longer, she would have died," Smith said. He added that the tumor almost tripled in size within two weeks.

Now Vezzoza still sits in a wheelchair, and her black, curly hair is slowly growing back over a bald spot in the middle of her head. Baby Daniel, who weighed less than four pounds when doctors delivered him, is still in the hospital connected to wires that track his vital functions.

But the two are doing well, and Vezzoza said her son's birth was a miracle.

"I feel blessed because God gave me him," the native Brazilian said. She added that she felt scared only once during her pregnancy, when her right side became paralyzed. Normal feeling has since come back.

"I'm very happy," she said. "But this will be my last child. The doctor told me not to get pregnant anymore."

A hotel management student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Vezzoza plans to return to Brazil with her husband, Mauricio Farhat, who is finishing a graduate degree in construction management at the university.

Before that happens, the family wants to remain in Las Vegas to make sure everyone is healthy.

"The United States is now our second home," Farhat said. "My heart is going to stay here forever."

Smith said Vezzoza will have to be watched carefully in the future.

"It's a concern that she may have a condition that just allows these tumors to pop up," he said.

Vezzoza said that she has accepted her illness as part of her life.

"I don't feel mad," she said, a self-described "big fighter." "I think it's part of what I have to go through."