Their dream wedding was quickly turning in to a nightmare.
“I was going to crawl down that aisle before I had to use the walker,” Christina Anderson tells Today. “It was not an option for me.”
This May, the 24-year-old nurse from Watertown, South Dakota, was busy sorting the final details of her wedding to Branden Jensen, set for this past Aug. 10, when the room began to spin — so dizzy that she couldn’t stop vomiting or walk straight.
At a local hospital, where she underwent a CT scan, the doctors took “a really, really long time” to give her the results — “so I knew something was up,” she says. Then the doctor sat by her side and delivered the shocking news: “I found a brain tumor.”
“At that point, I knew what it meant, but I was kind of in denial because I didn’t really understand the severity of it,” Andersen says.
The hemangioblastoma, a non-cancerous tumor, was about 2 inches in diameter, located behind her right ear. It was pressing on her brain stem, which impacts balance, swallowing and breathing functions, as well as consciousness, according to Dr. Manish Sharma, Andersen’s neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato, Minnesota. When she and her father arrived at Mayo, Sharma informed them she’d be prepped for surgery right away. If left there, the tumor would greatly impact motor function and eventually kill her.
Despite her terrifying diagnosis, Jensen couldn’t help but worry about her upcoming wedding, less than three months away. Recovery from the eight-hour surgery would almost certainly put a hamper on the celebration, but she was determined to have the event go down as she planned, on the original date. And Sharma was willing to do everything he could to make sure it was perfect — even skirt surgical protocol.
“I asked Dr. Sharma if they’d have to chop any hair off and he said yes,” says Andersen. “That was the part that I was stuck on the most because I was like, I’m getting married in August, I can’t have my hair missing.”
Sharma, who told Andersen he’d usually shave the entire head for “infection control,” did his best to remove as little of her long, brunette locks as possible — a relief for the bride-to-be, who said her hair was her first thought when the anesthesia wore off.
On May 7, the tumor and surrounding diseased brain tissue was successfully removed. That’s when the real work began. Andersen needed intense physical therapy just to learn to walk again, and Sharma wasn’t sure she’d be able to walk down the aisle come August. But Andersen was resolute.
“That is a testament to her determination and will,” Sharma tells “Today.” “People who want to get better, they get better — regardless of the odds.”
For weeks she got around with a walker but says she “kept hiding it” to avoid using it, motivating her to do it on her own.
On Aug. 10, she walked down the aisle to meet her hubby-to-be — in bedazzled Crocs, no less, with flat soles to help steady her feet. Hair extensions and a clever up-do help cover her scar.
Since then, the newlyweds have returned from their honeymoon cruise to the Bahamas, where they swam, snorkeled and weren’t slowed down a bit by her recent surgery.
“We were so taken aback by the beauty of the Bahamas,” Andersen tells The Post, adding that she had more pictures of animals and Caribbean wildlife than she and her new spouse. “We did have some good adventures!”
She also tells us she has a follow-up MRI at the end of September, followed by regular MRIs for the rest of her life. Otherwise, life has “been good,” she says.
Sharma says her remarkable recovery is an example of how much a strong will and supportive family can do: “People can will themselves into getting better.”
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