Mom-of-3 Undergoes ‘World-First’ Brain Surgery to Care for Her Kids

A mom of three in England has revealed how she experienced life-changing health results after undergoing a “miracle” brain surgery for the sake of her family.

Lydia Griffin, 33, from the Suffolk town of Halesworth, around 115 miles northeast of London, is now “virtually symptom-free” after suffering “from excruciating headaches, nausea, fatigue, and other symptoms that began as a child,” per a Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust release.

Griffin first began waking up at night at age 6 with “splitting headaches” and after multiple trips to her local doctor (GP), it was confirmed that she had a large, but benign, pineal cyst, the release added.

“Years of monitoring and medication passed with the symptoms just about manageable until 2019 when Lydia — who by this time was married with two young children and a dog — suddenly had a headache which was ‘on a different scale,’ ” the hospital added.

She ended up being diagnosed with non-hydrocephalic symptomatic pineal cyst (nhSPC) syndrome, which is characterized by headaches, nausea and vomiting, visual disturbances, gait instability, fatigue and cognitive impairment, per the CHU release.

“Pineal cysts (PCs) are non-cancerous and surgical intervention is rarely needed unless there is obvious enlargement of brain fluid spaces — called hydrocephalus — which is typically managed with a surgically implanted valve — called a shunt — to drain it away and reduce pressure,” added the release.

In the years after Griffin’s diagnosis, her headaches got worse, and she started experiencing nausea and tinnitus. When her vision became affected too, by August 2023, she decided to have the cyst removed.

“It had grown to 30mm (1.1 inches) across and — although it was a marathon day-long procedure to remove it — the change was almost immediate,” the hospital wrote of Griffin, who was among 40 CUH Neurosurgical Department patients to undergo the treatment as part of a world-first study, which ran between January 2019 and May 2024 under Professor Thomas Santarius.

Griffin insisted of the surgery, “It was like a miracle,” per the release.

“It’s been so incredible I can hardly put it into words. Just five or six days after the operation, I started feeling better. Agreeing to a surgery like that was a huge undertaking — but the change was like day and night,” she added.

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A week after the surgery, Griffin was back at home “enjoying life” with her civil engineer husband Carl and three daughters Charlotte, now 11, Alice, 6, and Elizabeth, 4, per the CUH.

“Putting the children to bed the night before was the hardest part — I needed my life back to be able to look after my family, but equally I knew the risks were ‘up there,’ ” Griffin said, per the hospital’s release.

“Immediately after surgery, I was in a great deal of pain, but a week later I was getting my life back, and two weeks after that I was able to return to work,” she added.