We all know people whose medical condition was ignored as a symptom of their mental illness...
He ordered a brain MRI and quickly discovered the probable reason for her dementia: the meningioma, roughly the size of a peanut when it was discovered four years earlier, had grown to the size of a lime. The tumor was pressing on her left frontal lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for speech, movement, emotional regulation and reasoning.
Most alarming was the evidence of “mass effect”: The tumor appeared to be exacerbating her previously manageable depression, causing personality and mood changes. Doctors were most worried about herniation, an often fatal condition that occurs when the brain is squeezed and shifts out of position.
“She was deteriorating,” Gawronski recalled, “and if the downward pressure from the tumor increased, she could have lapsed into a coma.” Gawronski estimated that Bahnsen was “possibly days away from that.”