>> Bridget: I like to play soccer
and they just kept saying that I was limping
when I was running.
(lively upbeat music)
>> Jason: You saw her develop the limp,
you saw her with the injuries.
It didn't seem like the legs were coordinated,
they weren't working well together.
>> Bridget: And so we went to a bunch of doctors,
and they thought it was like this thing
and that thing so I had physical therapy for a while,
and then that didn't help.
>> Karen: At the same time,
I was noticing she was tripping a lot.
It was just one of those things
that kind of gradually snuck up,
and one of her best friends out there was like,
"Yeah, she trips a whole lot, doesn't she?"
and I was like, "Yeah, she actually does."
>> We found out that I couldn't feel hot and cold
one time at a fire pit because my sister
put a Coke on my leg,
and it was really cold and she's trying to make me
get a reaction and there is none.
>> And I started liked poking her,
and was like, "How many fingers you feel?"
And I realized that she couldn't feel like anything.
>> Which was good because we were able to go to the doctor
and say, she also can't feel
and as soon as he realized that she couldn't feel
the one leg is when we got the MRI.
>> We had an MRI and they saw
that there is a tumor in my spine.
>> Got a call from the Chief of Neurosurgery
at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.
He was amazed that she could walk,
He was amazed that she had control of her bladder,
of her bowels, of everything,
because the way he estimated it
it was somewhere in the range of 95% compressed.
If you see the picture of the tumor,
it is filling the hole where the spinal column
is supposed to be.
>> Bridget: So it was like inside my spinal cord.
It was so big that it was like pressing
all the nerves to one side.
>> You're terrified because it's one of your children
and you have no answers.
He gave us the option of where we could go.
And when he gave us the list of names
I said Hopkins, I said Baltimore seems like the place to be.
>> So I got a very scared call from a family
with a new diagnosis for their 10-year-old daughter
who'd been progressively losing function
over the course of the prior year.
Finally, an MRI scan was done that showed
a very large mass within her spinal cord.
And the family was really reaching out to Johns Hopkins
to look for any hope because they weren't given many options
close to home.
>> Bridget was born with a birthmark,
which was back then called a strawberry hemangioma,
it's kind of a red spot.
Hemangioblastoma is the actual name of the tumor.
>> Capillary hemangiomas are incredibly rare lesions.
They've only been about 38 reported cases
in the literature of a case similar to Bridget's.
It was really important that we involved
our neuro-interventional team.
They helped identify the blood vessels that were supplying
this hemangioma and after they were able to intervene,
we then planned for surgical resection.
And through many hours of work and carefully dissecting,
we're able to tease away virtually the entire lesion
so that it's not something that is likely to grow
or cause problems in the future.
So Bridget does have a family history
of other family members with spinal cord lesions as well.
We wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything genetic,
especially given the fact that she has a large family
and a twin that might also be affected.
And so felt that she needed a referral
to genetics to further tease that out.
>> Probably very, very easy to see
it was kind of all one color and then--
>> Jason: She sat down with us
and traced the entire case history
of not only Bridget but of my side of the family,
Karen's side of the family going all the way back
and she didn't really believe there was a genetic linkage,
but it's a nice feeling to have somebody like Dr. Fong
sit there and say, "I think you're okay."
If anything changes, you've got my card, let me know.
>> Bridget's really doing excellent.
She came into my office with a pretty profound weakness
in her right leg and even the night after surgery,
she was starting to regain some of that function.
I think we're also incredibly lucky here at Hopkins
because we have the Kennedy Krieger Institute so close by.
And she was really able to move seamlessly
from our inpatient stay
to an inpatient hospitalization rehab,
and that rehab component, I think was really important
to getting her back on her feet as quickly as possible.
>> Jason: Immediately, you could see her improvement
was rapid.
>> Just seeing her play on the playground, you know,
run and actually catch up to children in that limp
and not being tripped over
and seeing her do what she loves to do and not be hindered
was, you know, heartwarming.
>> Jason: Hey Bridge, you gotta look at me.
>> You see families like Bridge's come in
incredibly scared with a really rare, unusual diagnosis,
and really no hope and it's my job and my pleasure
and my honor to be able to give them some hope
for the future and to be able to restore that
for their family and their child.