INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) -- Kaitlyn O'Connor has been battling recurring cysts, called cholesteatoma, in her right ear and brain since the early 2000s.
O'Connor says she's had five surgeries from middle school to adulthood to correct her recurrent cholesteatoma. Through most of her terrifying health battle, Taylor Swift and her music served as a constant source of peace.
The cysts affected her hearing and eventually stole her ability to hear out of her right ear. "When I was in law school in 2014, I went back to an ENT (an ear, nose, and throat doctor), and, at that point, in the office, they could see this growth was back, and it was much larger and the size of a ping-pong ball (and) had wrapped around my jugular nerve, penetrated the outer layer of the brain, and so, right away, I had to get that removed."
Dr. Rick Nelson, a neurotology and lateral skull base surgeon at IU Health, did her latest surgery in 2021. That cyst was even worse than the previous times. He says this is a problem he sees frequently but rarely to this extent It was "in the back of the ear, behind the ear, down in the base of the skull and it was eroding the plate that separates the ear from the plate, and so, basically, it was on the lining of the brain and down into the neck."
O'Connor says it was a scary ordeal.
She says every MRI was long and could reveal further problems requiring more operations. In her later years of her health journey, she's used Swift's music to cope.
"Listening to Taylor really truly just helped me calm down and really just focus on music and not all the noise going on around me, and not even the test itself, but just the fact that the test was going to show that I needed another surgery. Every time I went into one, I was very nervous and just having that brief moment -- 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever -- to just listen to Taylor and forget about why I was there always just made it a little less traumatizing."
After two decades of operations and tests, O'Connor's cholesteatoma health journey is over. Nelson finally gave her the all-clear since the cysts have not returned since her last surgery.
The doctor said, "It's a relief for everyone because she's had multiple revisions because it keeps coming back, and so, I think that at this point now, that it's two years out, we can be pretty sure that it's gone."
O'Connor went to the Eras Tour in Chicago in 2023 and see the musician in Indianapolis, all with celebrating her health win at the top of her mind.
O'Connor encourages people to take all aspects of their health seriously. She says she was not as vigilant as possible about her ailment and that likely helped it to recur as much as it did.