A selfie saved my life: Woman’s photo taken near Times Square leads to brain tumor diagnosis – after noticing her drooping eye

A woman’s selfie on vacation in New York City may have saved her life.

While looking through her vacation photos, Megan Troutwine, now 33, noticed that one of her eyes was drooping in a photo taken at a fountain not far from Times Square.

She suddenly became concerned that the physical change might be related to her recent bout of cognitive problems and difficulty exercising.

She expressed her concerns to her doctor and was referred to a neurologist for an MRI, which confirmed that something was indeed wrong: she had a large tumor in her brain.

While undergoing 30 rounds of radiation and two surgeries to remove the non-cancerous mass, doctors found another, more dangerous tumor, called a glioma, which can be difficult to treat and lead to brain damage.

Her treatment journey began in 2016 and although she still goes to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for regular checkups, she is healthy.

She also transitioned from patient to employee at Moffitt, comforting patients in the same position as her.

During her trip to New York, Ms. Troutwine did what any tourist would do: take selfies in front of famous landmarks like Times Square and the Freedom Tower. But she looked at one of the photos in surprise.

She said: ‘I’m like, “Oh, that’s weird. That photo looks weird.” I did not know.’

In 2016, doctors identified a meningioma in Ms Troutwine’s brain just 15 minutes after she underwent an MRI. Doctors knew it was benign, although they considered it aggressive, meaning it may have grown or invaded nearby brain tissue.

Meningioma is one of the most common types of brain tumors, accounting for 30 percent of all brain tumors. They originate in the meninges, the outer three layers of tissue that protect the brain beneath the skull.

Mrs. Troutwine has long been an avid runny nose, but her many radiation treatments and the necessary recovery forced her to slow down.

Symptoms of meningioma creep in slowly and may include vision changes such as double vision or blurred vision, headaches that are worse in the morning, hearing loss or ringing in the ears, memory loss, loss of smell, seizures, weakness in the arms or legs, and problems with speaking.

The experience left her with cognitive problems, which she considered most distressing. Since she has been running for a long time, she has had to slow down her pace a bit.

Trout wine said: ‘Dealing with the cognitive issues and dealing with memory loss and things like that, that was probably the hardest part, because I know I’m smarter than that.

‘I’m more capable than that. I can do more. But it is also learning how to give myself the grace in the middle.”

During her treatment, her doctor, neuro-oncologist Dr. Sepideh Mokhtari of Moffitt Cancer Center, discovered another primary brain tumor.

That time it was a glioma, with a survival rate of about seven years if diagnosed early in young people.

Dr. Mokhtari said: ‘It was very small. And as we track it over the years, we see a small increase in size over time.”

But Ms. Troutwine considers herself lucky because she knows full well how dangerous gliomas can be and because she has lost friends to the brain condition.

She said: ‘A low-grade glioma is like a blessed combination, you could say, because it’s like standing on a cliff and you know what’s going to happen.

‘You know things are moving forward. You will have to undergo treatment for it. You know that this may very well endanger your mortality in the future. But you know, at the same time you’re waiting for it to do something.”