Kelly Stafford is ready to embrace the fight that lies ahead of her.
Stafford, the wife of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, announced Wednesday on Instagram that she’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Kelly Stafford revealed in a lengthy post that she started feeling vertigo symptoms in January. After initially being cleared, the vertigo spells returned and the Lions’ team doctor recommended an MRI which is where doctors found a tumor on Kelly’s cranial nerves.
The next step is surgery for the 30-year-old.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely terrified of brain surgery. I am,” she wrote. “I am terrified of them opening my head, I’m terrified of losing my hearing, I’m terrified of losing facial function, I’m terrified of far worse things that could happen, and I won’t take the time I need to recover because the guilt I might feel of being absent from my kids for too long.”
Stafford asked for prayers, but she also seems to be taking a positive approach to the situation. Accompanying the Instagram caption was a photo of her and her husband on the day they learned the news, with Kelly writing “I wanted this picture of so that the day this was all over, we could look back at this photo (and) remember.”
The Staffords met at the University of Georgia where Kelly was a cheerleader and Matthew was leading the Bulldogs’ football team. They married in 2015 and have three children together.
