She still aspirates and chokes but now has power in her lungs to clear them.
Eventually both would come out, but to this day Jeannie's food must be blended or softened to go down safely. Jeannie rallied from pneumonia and returned home after two weeks with the tracheal tube-which Jim dubbed her "blowhole"-and PEG tube still in place. She also underwent a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG), a procedure to insert a feeding tube in her stomach, which became her only source of nourishment for the next four months. She had to undergo a tracheotomy, a surgery that creates an opening through the neck into the trachea (or windpipe) so a tube can be inserted to act as an airway and remove secretions from the lungs. Jeannie's swallowing after surgery was so compromised she aspirated her food while in intensive care and developed life-threatening double-lung strep pneumonia days later. Jeannie's tumor had been very slowly compressing cranial nerves over many years, explains Dr. "She was already coughing and having trouble swallowing and speaking before surgery." "The tumor had wrapped around all the fine nerves and blood vessels, creating massive brainstem compression," he says. The location and size of Jeannie's tumor meant recovery would be a long, slow process, says her surgeon Joshua Bederson, MD, professor and chair in the department of neurology at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. She naively thought life would return to normal, but as she soon learned, recovering from a brain tumor is no joke. Within days, Jeannie had the mass-known as a choroid plexus papilloma, a rare but noncancerous tumor-surgically removed. When she finally had it checked out (at the urging of her children's pediatrician), an MRI revealed a pear-size mass on her brainstem, affecting her ability to speak, swallow, hear, walk, balance, and breathe. It became a curse, though, when Jeannie dismissed months of nagging symptoms-exhaustion, near-total hearing loss in her left ear, dizziness, speech difficulties, and a persistent cough-as by-products of being a busy mom or "maybe the flu."
Jeannie and Jim Gaffigan say Jeannie's health crisis brought them closer together. A blessing because it's allowed Jeannie to produce a sitcom starring Jim and co-produce his comedy specials-and to help craft killer punchlines-while raising five children, ages 5 to 13. How Jeannie and Jim Gaffigan Find Humor in a Brain Tumor The comedy duo say love and laughter have helped them survive the bumps in Jeannie's recovery from a mass near her brainstem.īeing a "supermom," the affectionate term Jeannie Gaffigan's comedian husband Jim has long had for her, is both a blessing and a curse. Celebrity Profiles, Caregiving December 2018/January 2019
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