On the road to recovery.
For an all-new episode of The Bellas Podcast, Brie Bella and Nikki Bella gave an update following their mom Kathy Colace's brain surgery. Last week, the Bella Twins took to social media and revealed that the Total Bellas matriarch underwent a major medical procedure for a "mass on her brain stem."
"Four months ago, our mother was diagnosed with Bell's palsy or, at least, they thought it was Bell's palsy," Brie explained on today's episode. "Majority of her face was paralyzed…It was her left side. You saw it a lot in her eye and her mouth and her forehead."
As Brie continued, she noted that Kathy began to display "other little signs," but was assured it was just Bell's palsy and that it would eventually go away.
"And then, a couple weeks ago, my mom woke up, her face was more paralyzed," Daniel Bryan's wife shared. "Her whole face went numb, she was extremely dizzy, she couldn't taste."
At this point, Kathy's husband John Laurinaitis decided it was time to go to the hospital. In fact, as Nikki detailed later in the episode, Kathy's "whole left side" was being affected.
Brie added, "They did an MRI and they saw a mass on our mother's brain stem as big as a blueberry."
According to Nikki, the mass was "sticking out of" Kathy's brain stem and was "starting to hit nerves." To make matters worse, Nikki said the doctors could tell that the mass was growing rapidly.
Although it was clear that Kathy needed surgery, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic had her doctors debating whether she should wait to have the procedure. Ultimately, since the mass was in "a very dangerous spot," Kathy went through with the surgery.
"You know what's crazy? The spot it was in is a fatal spot," Brie noted. "So, my mom's actually so lucky that she saw the symptoms on her face because, if she didn't have any symptoms and walking around with this, down the road it could've been fatal."
Since the procedure was supposed to be four to six hours long, the Total Bellas family was understandably nervous. Yet, when the surgery took longer than planned, they became even more concerned.
"On the seventh hour, we hadn't heard from any of the doctors," Artem Chigvintsev's fiancée recalled. "So, you can imagine, we were super nervous. They just really took their time in there and they really cleaned everything out and wanted to double check."
After thanking everyone who reached out and sent prayers, Brie assured listeners that Kathy had a "very successful surgery."
She stated, "She is now on the road to recovery, which will be about six months to a year."
Thankfully, the Bella twins were able to see their mother following the intense surgery.
"We had a great conversation with her, and it's been so nice just to like see our mom be our mom again," the soon-to-be mother of two said. "She's very beat up, she has a long road, but we're just so happy that she has light at the end of the tunnel."
Per the twins, on Kathy's request, this whole health crisis was captured by the Total Bellas cameras.
Nikki relayed, "My mom really wanted the cameras to roll because, obviously, we all were like, 'No!' But my mom's like, ‘Think of how many people out there think they have Bell's palsy, or they have certain symptoms and the doctors don't give them MRIs on their brain? And then, they find out they have these growths or tumors or cancer and it's so late in the game.'"
You can catch the all-new episode of The Bellas Podcast here.