The phone rang, stinging the silence, and Lindsey Robinson's mom reluctantly moved toward the phone.

"How big is it?" she said.

"The size of a peach," answered the seemingly bleak and increasingly distant voice on the other end of the line.

Lindsey Robinson, 20, a junior from Pleasant Grove, is a survivor of three brain surgeries that removed multiple tumors in the frontal lobe of her brain.

"I know that God loves me enough to give me these trials and he loves me enough not to take them away even though they're hard," Robinson said. "So many days, I was like, 'I can't deal with this, I don't know why I need this, I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing,' and I didn't understand why God would give me these trials."

This particular demon in Robinson's life began chasing her when she was a 14-year-old freshman in high school.

One morning, she woke with an aching head and severe vomiting. Within a few hours, she felt better and quickly dismissed the illness, never imagining a tumor. However, after a couple of months, the symptoms occurred on a more regular basis with increased intensity and she began to have double vision.

Robinson soon scheduled a visit to an optometrist, which resulted in a referral to an ophthalmologist and an immediate MRI was planned.

"MRIs take three or four weeks before they can schedule you in," Robinson said. "So for him to say 'okay, you need to go tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.' was a big deal."

By this point Robinson said she wasn't really aware of exactly what was going on because her senses were dimmed by the startling size of the tumor.

"I felt like my head was in a fog," she said. "I could still communicate and respond, but the edge of my awareness was taken off. I was unaware of a lot of different things going on around me. I remember thinking in the MRI scan 'Well, this is different. I'm not sure why I'm here.'"

When Robinson's parents received the news later that afternoon, they were shocked and stunned when the doctor said she had a tumor surrounded by a cyst that was the size of a peach.

"You kind of go into shock because it's an unbelievable thing," said Todd Robinson, Lindsey Robinson's father. "You're kind of numb to what's going on. If it would have happened to me I would have handled it a lot better than if it happened to one of my kids."

Robinson said she first learned of her condition when her parents sat her on the couch and informed her they needed to check her into the hospital immediately.

"The first thought that went through my head was 'Am I going to die?'" Robinson said.

However, because of her religious beliefs, she said her fear was calmed and replaced with peace after receiving a blessing.

"I think that was God telling me, yeah, everything is going to be okay," Robinson said. "You will live through this, you will survive and this won't seriously reflect your future."

Robinson's best friend Kathleen Caringella distinctly remembers the phone call she received from Robinson only two days after the visit to the optometrist.

"She called me from the hospital and was like 'oh yeah, by the way, I'm having surgery tomorrow because I have brain tumors," Caringella said. "I thought she was going to die. My reaction was probably what her reactions should have been."

art of Robinson's head was shaved in preparation for the surgery, which lasted four to six hours. The surgery went well, and she said the doctors told her the tumor was a fluke and was not a type normally known to come back after surgery.

However, the tumor was misdiagnosed. It was a brain tumor called ependymoma that continues to return unless every cancer cell is removed.

The tumor came back a second time when Robinson was 16 and a third time when she 18 years old in her freshman year at BYU.

By this time, she had endured surgery, loss of hair, pain, fatigue, a withering social life and mental distress - along with the regular feelings of inadequacy associated with being a teenager.

"I was so mad," Robinson said. "I was mad at God and still in denial. I was like 'that's just white matter in my head, it's not a tumor.'"

Even more frustrating, Robinson said, was that each time she started to grow her hair back, she was forced to shave her head again.

Regardless, she faced each surgery with courage.

"She's a very stubborn person," said Todd Robinson. "Stubborn in the fact that she's not willing to give up or let anybody or anything beat her."

Although the stress was immense, Robinson recognizes how lucky and blessed she is.

"There were so many miracles that took place in those four and five years that are really undeniable," Robinson said. "The fact that I still have vision, sight, sound and touch and I am able to come out fully functioning is a miracle."

Even the doctor said he had never known anyone in his career who had undergone three brain surgeries that was left without some type of physical hindrances.

"I've had to learn is trust in God a lot," Robinson said. "I'm so grateful that I had the chance to learn at a very early age what really matters the most in life. For me what matters is my family and friends. Relationships are very, very important to me."

Copyright Brigham Young University 6 Nov 2006