A 30-year-old man missed his own wedding reception due to a “terrible migraine” that turned out to be a large brain tumor.
Nathan Vaughan, 30, and Katie Glass (now Vaughan), 26, married on May 4 at St Thomas Church in Holywell, Cambridgeshire.
The groom suffered from “the worst headache of his life” early on the morning of the big day, but the couple assumed he was “just feeling the pressure.”
Immediately after the wedding vows, Mr. Vaughan fell unconscious in his hotel, where he spent the rest of the day.
Both he and his new wife were devastated to miss their first dance and the cutting of the cake.
Nathan Vaughan, 30, was grateful he was able to enjoy his wedding ceremony before the excruciating pain hit.
Mr Vaughan had to undergo emergency surgery a few days after his wedding day to remove the tumour and excess blood from his brain.
Three days after the event, the couple decided to rush to the hospital because the migraines were getting worse.
Three days after the wedding, the couple drove to the emergency room to seek help for Mrs. Vaughn’s migraines, which showed no signs of subsiding.
To their horror, doctors discovered a “huge” brain tumor and told the newlyweds that he urgently needed brain surgery.
Despite the frightening discovery, the two are grateful that the tumor was quickly identified and removed.
Nathan, a financial crime investigator, said: ‘Everything before (the wedding day) had gone well, there were no problems.
‘On the morning of the wedding I woke up at 2am with a splitting headache and couldn’t get back to sleep.
‘I was taking painkillers, migraine tablets and thought it was just wedding nerves, I could feel the pressure a bit. But it wouldn’t go away and got worse and worse as the day went on.
Mr Vaughan’s new wife was forced to have her first dance with her father as he ‘passed out’ in pain
Mr Vaughan said he felt guilty as he “lay down upstairs at the hotel” while his wife cut the wedding cake and continued the evening without him.
‘The ceremony was coming up and I put all my effort into being there for the ceremony. We got through the ceremony and we took some pictures.
‘I went to the front desk and said I think I need to go to bed. I felt absolutely awful. It was the worst headache of my life, just constant pain in the top of my head.
‘I ended up just going to the hotel room and basically just passed out for the night. I thought I was never going to get over this.
“My first thought was that my wife would be alone on our wedding day. I lay upstairs, wrapped in guilt for leaving her alone.”
But the pain didn’t subside. So two days after the wedding, the couple decided to go to their local emergency room for answers.
Doctors discovered a hemorrhage in a benign brain tumor the size of two thumbnails, which had to be removed immediately by surgery.
“At first they thought it was meningitis,” Mr Vaughan said.
‘They did a CT scan and said I had a swelling on my pituitary gland, which is on the brain. I thought it was just a swelling and that they would give me something to make it go down and then I would go away.
‘But I was rushed to the hospital and at 2 or 3 in the morning I was told I had a huge pituitary tumor.
Doctors said the life-threatening bleeding in the brain began on the day of Mr Vaughan’s wedding, but the tumour may have been growing for several years.
‘It bled the morning (of my wedding) so I bled into my brain. I was supposed to have surgery in a couple of hours.
‘They had to operate because the nerve was pressing against my optic nerve and that made me look bad.
“The next day I had a four-hour surgery to remove this tumor. They told me I’d probably had it my whole life. I didn’t know anything about it. On the day of the wedding, of all days, it decided to burst.”
Fortunately, doctors discovered that the tumor was benign, meaning it was not cancerous and would not spread to other parts of his body.
“It could have been a lot worse. As soon as you hear the word ‘tumor’ from the doctor, you assume the worst.
“I don’t think Katie realized how soon after saying ‘in sickness and in health’ she would be taking care of me. It’s a long recovery process.”
The couple, who have been together for ten years, plan to host their wedding reception again on their one-year anniversary and have booked a honeymoon to Kos, Greece.
The couple plans to remarry next year and are inviting family and friends to celebrate the festivities with them.
The new bride admitted she felt “bummed” that she couldn’t attend her wedding reception with her husband, but she is “grateful” that his tumor was removed so quickly.
Mrs Vaughan, a police officer, said: ‘I initially thought he had stressed himself out so much that he had become ill.
‘I sent the photographer away and he said he would do another Photoshop for free. A month later we got all dressed up and did some more location shots.
“I said to the kitchen ‘you might as well cut the cake’ and I was just going to carry on. My dad did a little dance with me at the end of the night, bless him.
“We felt so guilty when we found out what it was. I thought it was just a waiting game. We thought it was a migraine.
“It was a strange time. I love looking at the pictures, but at the same time it was a very strange day. Not what I had imagined for my wedding day.
“I’m so thankful he was seen so early. If we had left it, it would have really affected his vision. We were really lucky.”
