Matthew Stafford #9 of the Detroit Lions warms up before a game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin on Dec. 30, 2018. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
Detroit Lions star quarterback Matthew Stafford said that his wife, Kelly Stafford, is progressing well following brain surgery.
“She’s doing good. I think she’s kind of right where the doctors want her to be at this point in her recovery,” Stafford said during an appearance on “The Mitch Albom Show,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
His wife underwent the surgery in April.
“We appreciate everybody’s well wishes, thoughts, prayers, all that. People have been really supportive and I know she and I both really appreciate it,” Stafford said, noting that the family has received an overwhelming amount of support from fans.
“I’m a little bit more used to people from all over kind of either being involved or knowing what’s going on in our life, but I think for her it was awesome and I know she leaned on it a lot, so it was great,” Stafford said.
Kelly Stafford, 29, who is a mother of three children, has kept supporters up to date through social media, frequently posting pictures and videos on her preferred platform, Instagram.
In late April she shared a picture showing her leaving the hospital in a wheelchair and a video showing her up and walking around the hospital with the help of her husband and her mother, though she was still attached to an IV.
“This Easter is the beginning of a new life for me. I wanna take a second to thank all of you for all the prayers. They have worked. I know they have,” she wrote.
Stafford revealed on April 3 that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and that she’d soon be undergoing surgery.
She said that in the previous 12 months she began to notice problems such as feeling dizzy after dancing with her children.
“Things that I had been doing my entire life were now, all of a sudden, difficult,” Stafford wrote. In January, she experienced a spell of vertigo. Then, the spells kept coming until one day she became dizzy while she was holding her son, prompting her husband to rush her to the emergency room.
Doctors couldn’t find any problems, but when Stafford kept experiencing spells of vertigo, the Lions team doctor recommended she get an MRI of her brain.
The MRI revealed a brain tumor described by Stafford as acoustic neuroma or vestibular schwannoma.
The tumor is “a noncancerous and usually slow-growing tumor that develops on the main (vestibular) nerve leading from your inner ear to your brain,” according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Branches of this nerve directly influence your balance and hearing, and pressure from an acoustic neuroma can cause hearing loss, ringing in your ear, and unsteadiness. Acoustic neuroma usually arises from the Schwann cells covering this nerve and grows slowly or not at all,” it added.
“Rarely, it may grow rapidly and become large enough to press against the brain and interfere with vital functions. Treatments for acoustic neuroma include regular monitoring, radiation, and surgical removal,” the clinic continued.
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