Your Health: Surviving cancer and the treatment

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - If being told you have cancer wasn’t bad enough, what if the drugs being used to save you almost kill you?

That’s what happened to a young woman in the prime of her life, but she believes being in the right place at the right time saved her life.

Ali Bello was 23 and living her dream – new job, great friends and just having a good time, until a series of unfortunate events took place.

“I got home one night and realized I had this pounding headache,” Bello said.

She was diagnosed with leukemia. After a week of chemo, she developed a severe headache with vomiting. A CAT scan showed bleeding in her brain.

“I had just had my chemo treatment and I had thrown up in one of the bed pans and just was feeling super ill,” Bello recalled.

“This was because of her cancer and the chemotherapy drugs given to try to cure her cancer,” said Dr. Babak Jahromi.

Emergency medications didn’t reduce the pressure.

“Because the bleeding was so large, things spiraled out very, very quickly,” Jahromi said. “She was sliding deeper into a coma to a point where she was near death.”

She almost died twice that night. Jahromi said he performed a skull flap surgery faster than he had ever done before, removing a large portion of Bello’s skull, making room for her brain to swell and hopefully recover without any more damage.

Bello had to relearn how to use her left side of her body and after several weeks, she was able to get back on chemo. Now, two years out, she is cancer free.

“I think it would just be great to get back my life and be able to do things on my own and get back to my running, my boxing, and all those things that I love,” Bellos said.

Due to her brain bleed, she is still recovering. She’s in occupational therapy, physical therapy and works with a personal trainer three times a week - all with the end goal of getting back out there, living on her own.

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