CALEDONIA — For years, Amanda George knew her migraines had changed, but getting someone to listen became its own fight.
The Caledonia woman began getting migraines when she was 16. At the time, they did not seem unusual. Migraines ran in her family, including her mother.
As George got older, however, the migraines became worse. During pregnancy, when she was 31, they occurred three or four days a week.
That frequency, she said, did not feel normal.
After multiple visits to doctors, George was prescribed migraine medication and offered a preventative medication – but she wanted to know what was causing the change.
“I know what my normal migraines feel like. This is not. This does not feel normal,” George recalled telling doctors, particularly as she began experiencing new symptoms like vertigo.
“This specific doctor that I had seen multiple times, she was in neurology,” George said. “She would just continuously say, ‘You don’t have enough symptoms, but if it persists, come back and I’ll get you a (brain) scan.’”
George said each return visit led to the same result.
“Every time I would go back, it would be the same thing: not enough symptoms. I’ll get you a scan if you come back, and I’d go back again. And it would just be the same thing, over and over again,” she said.
A scan finally revealed the problem – but it was offered for an entirely different reason.
George was on her way to work when she began experiencing severe chest pain and numbness in her arm. Her partner, Josh, told her to go to emergency.
At Hamilton General Hospital, George said doctors initially planned a head and chest scan to rule out blood clots, stroke, or heart attack. After further discussion, she said they suspected a rotator cuff injury and were prepared to let her leave without the scans.
That was when George pushed to stay.
“This is my only chance to get my head scanned,” she thought. “This is my opportunity.”
George said she did not tell the doctor about her history of headaches and migraines. She simply asked if she could stay and have the scan done.
A short time later, the doctor returned and asked to speak with her in a private room.
“As soon as she said to go into a different room to talk, because I was still just in the waiting area with other people around, and then she did tell me, she said, ‘We found there’s a spot,’” George recalled.
The news left her overwhelmed.
“It was just like I blocked out, just, you know, like your world kind of just crashes because you’re thinking, like, oh my God. Okay, now I have all these questions,” she said.
George was referred to a neurologist, who told her the tumour did not appear cancerous and gave her three options: monitor it, treat it with radiation, or have surgery to remove it.
For George, the choice was clear.
“It was the easy answer of just having surgery to remove it,” she said. “Why go through living, knowing that I have a tumour and it’s still there?”
—Submitted photo.
George had surgery in January 2025. She said surgeons removed a piece of skull about the size of a tennis ball, removed the tumour, and fused the skull back together. She had 23 staples in her head.
Recovery was expected to take six to eight weeks, but George said it stretched longer. About a week and a half after surgery, she was taken to the Dunnville hospital after an episode doctors told her may have been an absence seizure. In the following weeks, she returned to hospital several times with symptoms including seeing stars and shapes.
George said she started to feel better around the end of April 2025, about three to four months after surgery.
Around the same time, her family was facing another devastating diagnosis. George’s mother was diagnosed with lymphoma in February 2025, just one month after George’s brain surgery.
“She had lymphoma. It was double hit, so she had a completely different type of cancer,” George said. “On top of me trying to recover, I’m also trying to be there for my mom and help her get through this.”
George said her mother did well through the first half of treatment, but the second half was harder. Their treatment timelines eventually overlapped in a painful way.
In August 2025, George was diagnosed with a different form of cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation, while her mother’s condition continued to decline.
“She was supposed to be ending treatment and I was to be starting treatment,” George said. “When I started my treatment, she started her … second treatment. And I was doing well and she wasn’t, and I felt really guilty about that.”
Losing her mother to cancer changed the way George looks at life.
“You think it’s never going to happen to you. And it happened to me,” she said. “And I still don’t know if I’m cancer-free or not.”
Reflecting on everything that happened in the past year, George described it simply: “It was rough.”
Now, during Brain Tumour Awareness Month in May, George hopes her story encourages others to keep pushing when they know something is wrong.
“I just want people to continue to advocate for themselves,” she said. “I was fighting with doctors, it felt like, for years before I finally got my answers.”
George said her experience showed her that patients may have to be persistent, even when they are discouraged.
“Nobody knows your body like you do,” she said. “And when you feel like something is wrong, trust that instinct.”
Her message to others is direct.
“Fight for yourself. Advocate for yourself. And don’t stop,” George said. “Don’t stop fighting for yourself.”
