Jade-Marie Clark put her eye flickers down to ‘assessment stress’ and believed her headaches were hormone-induced as she was pregnant, but the truth was much worse
A mum who dismissed her twitching eye as ‘college stress’ has been left unable to smile after a rare brain tumour was discovered.
Jade-Marie Clark first began experiencing what she thought was an ear infection while pregnant with her first baby Theo in March 2020. But after giving birth to him she claims her ear pain began to subside and became more manageable. It was only when she fell pregnant for the second time in 2023, that she began experiencing headaches and a ‘twitchy eye’.
At the time, the 32-year-old was studying to become a nursery school teacher so put her eye flickers down to ‘assessment stress’ and believed her headaches were hormone-induced. But when the corner of her lips went numb at nearly three months pregnant, she booked an appointment with her GP in May 2023.
Jade-Marie was immediately sent to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland for an MRI where she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She then decided to wait until after giving birth to her son Rory in November 2023 to have the growth removed. The mum-of-two has been left with facial palsy, meaning she is unable to smile or produce tears out of her right eye. She is now sharing her story to inform others about her symptoms and the mental implications her facial palsy has had on her.
Jade-Marie, from Glasgow in Scotland, said: “It all started when I was pregnant with my first son. I started getting excruciating pains down my face and ear and I thought I had an ear infection. I was in tears with the pain. This started three months into my pregnancy and it didn’t stop. At first it was just my ear and then it went over my face and neck. I had the baby and the pain didn’t stop but it was nowhere near as bad as if it was while pregnant. Fast forward to 2023, I fell pregnant with my second baby and then I started getting headaches. I put it down to hormones.
“I was at college as well to study childcare. Before I fell pregnant, several months before assessments were due my eye started twitching for long periods of time and I thought this was down to the stress of college. I just put it down to hormones and me being busy and the eye twitching was down to the stress of college and having a two-year-old. [At the hospital], I got the scan on my head. I was told they had found something and he told me they had found a growth. At this point I burst into tears. Instantly when they said tumour, I just thought it was in my brain and I was going to die. They said it was really rare and it was the second one he had diagnosed in 20 years. He said I was one in 100,000 people.
“I just felt like this couldn’t be happening. You always feel like this is something you hear far away but it’s not going to happen to you. My cheeks then went numb and over the next six months this spread to my scalp. It just felt like I had had a jab at the dentist. This is sick but I remember thinking I hope the tumour does grow so I can get it removed and go back to my life.”
Jade-Marie aded: “I was told that this [the brain tumour] wasn’t new and it had been there for five to 10 years because of the size of it and because it was still growing. [In the operation], they have left a small amount of the tumour in my brain as it was attached to a nerve and this was to try and prevent facial palsy. For two days after surgery, I didn’t have facial palsy but then it just developed.
“My right eye does not close and I can’t smile. And because my eye doesn’t produce tears it’s in pain a lot because it’s so dry. I thought my face would start to move on its own but there was nothing and that’s when the self doubt started to kick in. As well as being anxious, I became really depressed with how I looked. I feel like I underestimated the mental impact of facial palsy. Of course you would never laugh at someone with it, but in my head I thought people would laugh at me. I didn’t want to leave the house and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I was just so sad.”
It has now been nine months since her tumour removal operation and Jade-Marie says there has been no change in her face. This month the qualified nursery school teacher is getting an eyelid weight to help temporarily close her right eye and in March will have a nerve transfer and two cross nerve graphs to hopefully bring back her smile. She has now started sharing her journey on TikTok to help make people aware of her symptoms and connect with other people going through similar journeys with facial palsy.
