Newswise — Joshua Harrison had just gotten back from a trip to Europe when he noticed a growth near his eye. He assumed it was swelling due to a sinus infection so he went to urgent care and was prescribed antibiotics. But when the pain got worse instead of better, he went back to urgent care where the doctor told him, “I’ve never seen anything like this.
You need to go to the emergency room now.” The growth on his face had gotten so large, Harrison could barely see. A friend drove him to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute for a CT scan.
Within 30 minutes he was told he had a massive benign bony tumor and was transferred to the hospital. He didn’t just have a tumor, however. He also had an active infection.
He spent eight days in the hospital to treat the infection before he was allowed to go home. A Challenging Surgery Doctors had to determine how to remove his tumor. Doing so would not be simple, explained Corinna Levine, M.
D., M.P.
H. , a UHealth—University of Miami Health System sinus and skull base surgeon. “It was a really large tumor that was growing into the eye and eye space,” said Dr.
Levine, also an assistant professor of clinical otolaryngology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “His eye was being pushed out and the tumor extended between two of the eye muscles, so it was getting close to the vision nerve. The tumor also extended into the sinuses and the bone that separates the brain from the nasal cavity.
” Dr. Levine brought Harriso.