Caressa Makes Recovery After Tumor Removed From Spine at Joe DiMaggio Childrens Hospital
As an infant, Caressa seemed to be hitting all the typical milestones — except her first step. At age 2, when she wasn’t yet walking, her parents were worried.
During the next year, things seemed to get worse with constipation, back pain and scoliosis, which experts say doesn’t tend to occur in young children without an underlying cause. Searching for answers, Caressa’s parents took their 3-year-old daughter to see Michael Jofe, MD, pediatric orthopaedic surgeon and chief of staff at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, who ordered an MRI.
The MRI revealed a tumor snaking inside Caressa’s spinal cord from her neck down the length of her chest.
“As soon as they saw that, they sent Caressa over to me,” says Dean Hertzler, MD, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. “It was within the center of the spinal cord itself and expanding it outward. If left untreated, it would have caused her paralysis within a few months.”
Within a week, Caressa underwent a complicated, delicate, seven-hour surgery, which involved constant neuro-monitoring.
“We got more than 90 percent of the tumor,” says Dr. Hertzler. “We stopped when we began to see that it was invading into areas that, if we took more, it would have devastated her neurologically.” The tumor was benign, and repeat MRIs show Caressa is doing well, says Dr. Hertzler, adding that he and his team continue to monitor her progress.
After her surgery, just as soon as she was strong enough, Caressa began inpatient pediatric rehabilitation at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. When she returned home from the hospital, she continued with outpatient pediatric rehabilitation multiple times a week at Memorial Hospital Miramar.
