Cristina Speirs, 22, was a self-proclaimed "health freak" during her
senior year of college, which is all the more reason she would have
never guessed that her body would betray her the way it did.
She exercised six times a week, taught hot yoga classes and drank a lot
of water throughout the day to stay hydrated. So, when she stopped
feeling tired and started getting up more frequently in the middle of
the night to go to the bathroom, she didn't think anything of it.
"I had a lot of energy," Speirs said. "I wasn't sleeping. ... I was always on the go. I was never tired."
She would eventually learn that she had a tumor the size of an orange on
her adrenal gland, and that it was making the hormones that kept her up
at night.
Doctors first noticed a problem at Speirs' annual checkup in the fall of
2012 when they found that her potassium levels were low, but her blood
pressure was "through the roof."
But they had no idea what was causing the strange symptoms.
"That really freaked me out because them not knowing what's wrong with me -- they're doctors, you know?" Speirs said.
A cardiologist quickly determined there was nothing wrong with her
heart, but Speirs' mother suggested a renal sonogram to check her
kidneys.
Speirs noticed that the sonogram technician spent a long time lingering
over her kidneys and looked confused. Alarmed, Speirs asked what was
wrong. The technician told Speirs she needed an MRI right away because
she suspected Speirs had one large combined kidney instead of two
normal-sized kidneys.
"She said, 'You don't feel anything?'" Speirs said. "I was like, 'No. I feel fine.'"
The MRI would reveal that Speirs had normal kidneys. It was a 10-centimeter tumor that the technician was seeing.
"I was in complete shock," she said, explaining that she phoned her
parents immediately to tell them that she'd need surgery. "Then, I got
so upset honestly. I had no idea where this came from."
Then she met Dr. William Inabnet, co-director of the Adrenal Center at
Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Upon learning that Speirs' tumor
was producing two hormones -- cortisol and aldosterone -- he feared that
the tumor was cancerous.
On Oct. 18, 2012, he scheduled surgery to remove it the following
Halloween. Surgery on the spooky holiday made Speirs feel superstitious,
but she didn't say anything.
And then Superstorm Sandy hit on Oct. 29, and the hospital was thrown
into chaos. Evacuated patients from NYU Langone Medical Center were sent
to Mount Sinai, and doctors from different hospitals were working side
by side to help the sickest patients.
The hospital was packed, and most regular surgeries were canceled.
"We had to really negotiate and find a team that could staff the case,"
Inabnet said, adding that he needed nurses, anesthesiologists and others
to operate.
Speirs' parents kept the reality of the storm mostly hidden from her,
but before she handed her glasses to her father to be wheeled off into
the operating room, she saw all the beds of patients displaced by Sandy.
"I was just kind of a little teary," she said, remembering the cold of
the operating room and the little warmth offered by the hospital gown.
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