PORT ANGELES — Karen Sproed is shocked when she sees pictures of herself from one year ago.
While flipping through a photo album in her Port Angeles home, the 39-year-old single mother of three children reflects on the series of five surgeries she went through last fall to remove a tennis-ball sized tumor from underneath her brain stem, and rebuild a portion of her spine.
“Wow, I really went through all that,” she said when asked what goes through her mind as she reviews the photographs of her lying in a Seattle hospital bed.
“It brings back the emotions of what I went through,” she adds, a rarely solemn tone in her voice, which remains slightly affected by the tumor that pressed on her spine.
Last year, doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving the surgeries.
While Sproed said that she hardly recognizes herself in the photos, in which she is wearing a halo brace and a shaved head, the smile she holds in the pictures is unmistakable.
It was her positive attitude, despite her own fear of going into surgery, and her religious faith, that her friends say is the reason that she is here today.
“She had the will just to fight,” said Joe Smith of Port Angeles, a friend.
“She is a survivor, for sure.”
Her positive outlook was not lost on her surgeon, Dr. Louis Kim, who called her one of his most memorable patients.
“She certainly channeled in amazing strength from somewhere,” Kim said.
“Her recovery is a testament to, not just the quality of medical care, but to her own optimism and spirit.”
Through several complicated surgeries, Kim was able to rebuild the portion of her spine underneath her brain stem that the chordoma tumor had dissolved with pieces of her own hip bone.
The tumor, he said, was one of the biggest he had seen in his five years as a surgeon.
A small piece of the tumor remains underneath her skull.
Seattle surgeons were unable to remove it, and it remains after radiation treatment in Loma Linda, Calif.
Subsequent checkups have shown no sign that it is growing.
Sproed doesn’t let it slow her down, or keep from spending time with her children, Khya, 5, Bubba, 16, and 18-year-old Anthony.
First day of school
She said her prayers were answered earlier this month when she was able to take Khya to her first day of kindergarten.
“It was my dream to live through that,” she said as her rambunctious daughter ran about the house.
“She’s just happy to have her mom home,” Sproed added.
When asked just how happy, Kyha immediately stretched her arms out as far as she could to demonstrate.
Sproed now has a partially paralyzed tongue and right hand, caused by the tumor pressing on her nerves.
Other than that, she shows no signs of her illness.
“I still get frustrated with my speech impediment,” she admitted.
But she also keeps a sense of humor about it.
“One person asked if I’m from France,” she said. “He told me, ‘I like your accent.’ I said, oui, oui, yes, I’m from France.”
Bedridden for several months after the surgeries, dependent upon friends to help her care for herself and her children, Sproed now stays as active as she can, and walks practically everywhere.
She wants to return to work. She worked as a hotel hostess before her illness caused her to leave her job.
Doctors told her that she can’t, at least not yet, because she must avoid doing any sort of lifting because of her surgeries.
In the meantime, she is living off $500 a month in federal Supplemental Security Income and assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay rent on her modest house.
Donations helped
During her surgeries, donations were given to her through a bank account in her name. Although Medicaid insurance covered the cost of her medical treatment, her family had other bills to pay as well.
The money helped pay for transportation for Sproed’s friend, Barbara Montes, to and from Seattle, and took care of some bills, Sproed said.
“It was a big help. It really helped out a lot,” she said. “Every little penny helped with the children, helped take care of them while I was at the hospital.”
The account is no longer open.
“I don’t want people donating. I just want people’s prayers,” Sproed said.
The only thing she could use, she said, would be “some kind of computer so I can start writing my book.”
Sproed wants to write a book about her fight with the tumor.
Inspiring story
She called her story a gift that could help inspire people facing their own mortality.
“I was just almost dead,” she said. “I was on my death bed.
“I look at everything differently now. I don’t take life for granted.”
Montes, who has been by her friend’s side since she was diagnosed in August 2008, said Sproed’s story is indeed inspiring.
“I was very humbled by everything that she went through,” Montes said.
“We need to be so very thankful of everything that we have in life.
“We don’t know when it’s going to be taken away from us.”
While Sproed has come a long way since her surgeries, Kim said she will have medical checkups every four months to ensure that the tumor isn’t growing back.
“I think the story is not finished,” he said, “but the first few chapters have been written and she has done incredibly well.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.