{"id":179402,"date":"2021-11-22T07:15:12","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=179402"},"modified":"2021-11-18T10:39:53","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T15:39:53","slug":"racing-against-time-womans-life-vision-and-baby-saved-by-uconn-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/11\/racing-against-time-womans-life-vision-and-baby-saved-by-uconn-health\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Racing against Time\u2019: Woman\u2019s Life, Vision, and Baby Saved by UConn Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paramita Dhar ’11 Ph.D., of South Windsor, has a true bundle of joy to celebrate this Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Thanks to UConn Health\u2019s Neurosurgery, Neuro-Ophthalmology, OB\/GYN, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Endocrinology teams all working together, on Nov. 25 the associate professor of economics at Central Connecticut State University is celebrating one year of being brain-tumor-free, her vision restored from the brink of blindness, and her daughter\u2019s first birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year I was pregnant in the middle of COVID, and just noticed some blurriness in my left eye suddenly around the second week of October,\u201d says Dhar, 41, who thought it was just a pregnancy symptom that would go away. But as her pregnancy progressed, she started to lose her vision significantly in that eye, and her ophthalmologist suggested seeing a neuro-ophthalmologist soon.<\/p>\n

At 33 weeks pregnant, with 75% vision lost in one eye, two days before Thanksgiving, 2020 she went for a neuro-ophthalmologist assessment at UConn Health with Dr. Lakshmi Leishangthem, who put her on steroid treatment and immediately ordered an MRI.<\/p>\n

On Thanksgiving morning, Dhar received the diagnosis while sitting in the UConn John Dempsey Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a brain tumor and it was rapidly compromising my vision. It was located on my optic chiasma, affecting my left eye\u2019s vision initially and spreading quickly to my right eye. I needed brain surgery as soon as possible, but my baby was due in 7 to 8 weeks,\u201d says Dhar, who was faced with the prospect that she may never see her newborn child.<\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cI was getting very close to being blind and the doctors were really racing against time. Together they came up with a solution that was best for me and my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

First the baby needed to be delivered early and safely. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, her baby was born via emergency C-Section at UConn John Dempsey Hospital\u2019s Labor and Delivery unit, weighing just four-and-half pounds. Dhar and her husband named the girl Adwitiyaa, which means “unique.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NICU staff, the OB\/GYN and Labor & Delivery doctors and everybody were amazing,” Dhar says. “Then the whole crew of doctors and nurses started prepping me for my brain surgery. I was given blood transfusion to make my body recuperate from the C-section and get it ready for the upcoming brain surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Dec. 2 her neurosurgical team, led by UConn Health\u2019s Chief of Neurosurgery Dr. Ketan R. Bulsara, performed a successful brain surgery to remove the fast-growing tumor and help restore her vision.<\/p>\n

\"Paramita
Paramita Dhar and her daughter, Adwitiyaa (courtesy of Paramita Dhar).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey opened my skull and took the tumor out in a seven-hour long surgery, all while my baby was right there in the NICU, my husband waiting in the Labor and Delivery unit and my 6-year-old son at home with my sister.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dhar says, \u201cThank God the tumor was benign. Once it was gone I could see again \u2013 and did not permanently lose any of my vision. Today my vision is back to 20-20.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to neuro-ophthalmologist Leishangthem, this very rare tumor, called a diaphragm sellae meningioma, can sometimes occur in pregnant women due to high progesterone and estrogen hormone levels that cause the tumor to grow rapidly. And in Dhar’s case, it happened to compress the most vital area where both the nerves from each eye crossed together, thus affecting the left eye and showing early signs of involving the right eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very happy for her,\u201d says Leishangthem. \u201cIt was a big team effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dhar\u2019s neurosurgeon couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is truly a reflection of the great collaborative team work at our institution. Paramita underwent a complex skull base operation involving a cranial orbital osteotomy for tumor resection.\u00a0 I could not be happier that her vision came back, she is cured of her tumor, and has a very healthy baby.\u00a0 She is even back to working as a college professor,\u201d says Bulsara.<\/p>\n

Bulsara added: \u201cI am grateful to Paramita and her family for their absolute faith in our multidisciplinary teams, and I truly celebrate the world-class expertise present in all the UConn Health teams I got to work with during her care and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very, very thankful,\u201d says Dhar, adding that the team collaboration at UConn Health is what she is most thankful for. \u201cI must say it was very, very good teamwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like her mother, Adwitiyaa turned out to be a fighter, and is doing well one year after her early arrival, Dhar says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in good hands. The care we got from UConn Health was priceless. We thank them from the bottom of our heart.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn Health doctors worked to save a pregnant woman from a fast-growing brain tumor while safely delivering her baby, who turns 1\u00a0this Thanksgiving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":179403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2193,2289,2294,2235,179,2306,70,2295],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-179402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-hartford-county","category-neurosurgery","category-all-surgery","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health","category-uconn-voices","category-video","category-womens-health","post_format-post-format-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 19:25:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179402"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179412,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179402\/revisions\/179412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/179403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179402"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=179402"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=179402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}