Beth Celley was determined to keep the Christmas spirit flowing by placing gifts under the tree in December 2008, despite the tenuous situation looming behind the scenes.

"I wanted them (my children) to know that there would still be Christmas," Celley recalled. "Everything would still be the same as it was before."

But everything was not the same.

On Dec. 17, 2008, Celley had brain surgery to remove one of two meningiomas — tumors in the protective lining of her brain.

The 48-year-old appeared to be an average, healthy wife and mother of two. To Celley, her back pain, need for glasses and occasional headaches just seemed to be part of the aging process.

"I did need glasses for long-distance driving, but not up-close," Celley said. She attributed the headaches to her stressful job working as an income maintenance caseworker at Lancaster's Public Welfare Office.

"At that time, I was carrying a caseload, and I was processing up to 130 applications a month, so it's just a lot of thinking," Celley said.

It never crossed her mind that two brain tumors could be the cause of such symptoms.

The Mayo Clinic website lists the signs of meningiomas as blurred vision, headaches, seizures, hearing and memory loss and weakness or numbness in the arms and legs. People with meningiomas may go long periods of time without detecting symptoms.

Thinking she pulled a back muscle while lifting a $20 air-conditioning unit she bought at a yard sale, Celley, along with her husband, Scot, and children, Grant, 16, and Grace, 13, went to visit her family doctor at Mountville Family Practice. Dr. Louise Butler made an interesting discovery while performing a basic checkup, Celley said.

"She put the light into my right eye and it hurt," Celley said.

According to Celley, Butler's face filled with concern as Celley's right eye dilated in the light. When Butler told Celley she would need to go for a CT scan, she was confused.

"For a backache?" Celley questioned.

Celley and her family sat in the waiting room chatting and laughing with one another unaffected by the reality of the situation, she remembered.

"I wasn't even alarmed," Celley admitted — until the doctor informed Celley that she would need to see a neurologist.

A CT scan and an MRI of Celley's brain confirmed the existence of two meningiomas. One tumor was pushing down on the top of her brain and had been causing her headaches and back pain. The other, a more severe meningioma, squeezed Celley's optic nerve and carotid artery, causing them to bulge.    

"That tumor could have eventually popped that artery, and then I would have had an aneurysm," Celley said. "My worst fear was my kids would be left without a mother."

At that time though, Celley had a naive perspective of her situation, making it easy for her to stay upbeat throughout the experience.

Childhood memories of old TV shows came back to her as she named her tumors.

"Rocky and Bullwinkle," she called them. She named the tumor around her optic nerve Rocky because it started to calcify and was hard like a rock. Bullwinkle, which was the size of a quarter, was the one on top of her brain.

Just before Christmas, Dr. John Gastaldo of Lancaster NeuroScience & Spine, performed a nearly 6-hour craniotomy to remove Rocky.

Although he was unable to save Celley's vision in her right eye, she was alive, and the tumor was gone.

One month later, on Jan. 13, 2009, Celley had gamma knife radiation to shrink Bullwinkle.

More than two years after surgery, Celley is healthy and happy, living in West Hempfield Township.

Besides not trusting herself to drive, and having loss of depth perception, Celley's loss of vision in her right eye has not greatly affected her. Her outlook on life is inspiring.

"In the end it didn't save my eyesight, but it did save my life," she said.

Celley wants others to know about these common tumors.

"There's not a lot of information out there," Celley said.

Gastaldo agreed. "We don't know why these tumors occur," he added, but "they are not uncommon."
Bkeeley@Lnpnews.com