For Gary Woodland, relief replaced fear following brain surgery | Golf Channel

Gary Woodland describes how he was “fear driven every day, mostly around death” before an MRI revealed a brain lesion, why he continued playing despite his symptoms, and details the path moving forward following surgery. #GolfChannel #GaryWoodland
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For Gary Woodland, relief replaced fear following brain surgery | Golf Channel
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Yeah I I started feeling some symptoms um in April a couple weeks after Augusta um symptoms I mean there’s a lot a lot uh I mean the big one is I just wasn’t feeling like myself but it was uh a lot of jolting um especially in the middle

Of the night shaking um hands were really trimmer a lot of fear um and that was the one that scared me the most was I’m a very optimistic person believe good things will happen and I was very fear-driven every day uh mostly around death and uh as it got worse um you know

Loss of appetite chills no energy um it’s it started getting pretty bad to where I was meeting I have a performance coach I’m working with her um it started getting so bad I called my doctor arsie who I’ve been with for 13 years and I

Was like man I need something to calm me down like almost anxiety um and he’s like job I can’t give you anything without an MRI and I’m like and I’m shaking so bad he wanted to roll out Parkinson’s um and I got an MRI that night and it came back with a lesion

Looked like a tumor on my brain um started going through more testing more MRIs they got me to a specialist in Kansas City who explained everything to a t that the jolting and everything I was experiencing at night was actually partial seizures um the fear the this lesion in

My brain sat on the part of the brain that controls fear and anxiety so he’s like you’re not going crazy um everything you’re experiencing is absolutely common and normal for where this thing’s sitting in your brain um they got me on anti-seizure medicine immediately the seizure still continued

So they increased the dose and once they increased the dose that started to go down I started losing memory I started doing a lot of things started happening the symptoms set getting worse but the only ones they were worried about was the fear and anxiety and as the medicine

Started to increase my brain started to slow down and every those seizures started to stop which was nice for me cuz I was able to function during the day but the meds I was on were working for the seizes but they were horrible for me as a person I I had horrible side

Effects and that’s the fear went away for a couple weeks and once it came back and I’m was calling the doctors they were tracking the brain with month MRIs um to make sure everything was stable and it wasn’t growing but when the fear started to come back the

Doctor’s like we have to go in um it it’s pushing on the brain the part that it’s pushing on they believe that it was growing and uh I played through Greensboro and the game the reason why I kept playing is my game from a physical stand Point felt really good and I was

In positions that I’ve been trying to get into a long time and it was a break from what I was dealing with with off the golf course um it was hard cuz we didn’t tell anybody but it was just we didn’t understand either we didn’t know

Exactly what was going on and my caddy pulled me aside after Greensboro we were staying together in the house my wife was flying out most weekends just cuz I didn’t want to be alone I was nervous sleeping was the worst part cuz I was just jolting jumping out of bed with

Fear um and mostly like I said around death and so my cad he pulled me aside he’s like J up you can’t play this way you got to go get man you got to get fixed um I mean I’d be standing over a club and forget

Which club I was hitting I’d be lining up putts and I’m like it’s taking too long I’m just going to hit it I just didn’t have the focus the energy and I went the next week to see a specialist that I was referred to in

Miami which was nice cuz it was close to home and he’s like we got to go in we got to get this out the only we can keep ramping up medicine but the medicine’s not slowing down the fear um biopsy it’s too risky from where it was in my brain

He didn’t want to go in any more than he had to um so surgery and removal was the next step they couldn’t get it all out from where it is located it was benign which is the big deal if it was cancerous they would have removed it all

But it’s up against my optic track um so they removed as much as they could and they believed they cut off the blood circulation to what’s left so they’re tracking it right now with every 3 months with MRIs still I had an MRI right before I came to Hawaii a week and

A half ago and everything was stable from surgery so that’s a huge relief for me um so showing up in Hawaii practicing the last 10 days I had a little bit of relief off my back that it’s stable in there right now and we’ll just pray and

Hope that it continues to not grow you start feeling better immediately the the fear went down immediately um and that was filled with thankfulness I mean I’ve been the support from the tour from people outside the golf world has just been tremendous for me and my family and I

When I woke up and was realized I was okay um I was filled with thankfulness and love and that replaced the fear it was emotional very emotional because I’d gone four and a half months of every day really thinking I was going to die um and I was the doctors kept

Telling me I was okay but this thing pushing on my brain on fear and anxiety every I mean it didn’t matter if I was driving a car on an airplane I think the Bend’s going to fall me I just everything I thought was going to kill

Me and so you can imagine leading up to surgery what I how I felt going into having my my head cut open and and operated on the fear going into that was was awful so I mean I felt it was hard on me it’s probably harder on my family

Um for what they had to you know they had to deal with me throughout this whole thing um and try to keep me positive and keep me looking forward and that was that was hard to do in the moment so after surgery I definitely felt relief one that I could see one

That I had the left side of my body cuz that was those were the two big risks going in losing eyesight and losing the left side of my body having those when I woke up um being able to go home I spent two days in the

ICU um and then walked out of the hospital