Retired Marine's eyesight is saved with proton treatment in Oklahoma City
Debra Fortune took the news of the brain tumor like a Marine.
She'd earlier developed an odd, super-sense of smell. Her more alarming symptoms were a headache on the right side and gradual vision loss in her right eye. A rare type of tumor was stealing her eyesight as it wrapped around an optic nerve, doctors found. The tumor's pressure against the smell-registering olfactory nerve had given her a super nose.
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The tumor had been growing very slowly but dangerously in her brain, her doctor, Kiran Prabhu, explained.
Likely it wasn't there when Fortune's mother signed to allow Fortune to join the Marines at age 17. But was it there as Fortune supported fellow Marines in the line of combat in Iraq? Was it there as she processed enemy prisoners of war and worked convoy security? Was it there that day in 2003 when she survived an ambush on the road to Baghdad?
When she was transferred to Kansas City, she continued getting regular eye exams at the Veteran's Administration hospital. In 2005, doctors performed an MRI scan on the bothersome eye but it appeared normal.
Once she retired from the military, Tulsa doctors found something suspicious about her eye during a routine exam last spring. After scans in the Muskogee VA hospital and comparisons of scans, an Oklahoma City specialist diagnosed Fortune's problem.
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