Trainer Joe Sharp is in a Houston, Texas, hospital recovering from a lengthy surgical procedure to remove a benign tumor on his brain called acoustic neuroma, also known as acoustic schwannoma.
Sharp’s wife, retired jockey Rosie Napravnik, posted news of the surgery on her Facebook page, saying that Sharp, 35, will spend the night in an intensive care room at MD Anderson Hospital after 10 hours of surgery and, if all goes well, move to a regular floor on Friday.
“As soon as he is awake he will be able to talk and function normally and they will get him up and out of bed tomorrow,” Napravnik wrote. “He will spend 3-5 days in the hospital and we’ll fly home once he’s released. Recovery is about six weeks until he’ll feel his normal amount of energy and he has come out of surgery with expected hearing loss in his right ear but other than that he is as good as new.”
Napravnik said she has been unable to visit her husband because of COVID-19 restrictions but has been told visitation may be allowed in the coming days.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine website, acoustic neuroma is “a rare noncancerous tumor. It grows slowly from an overproduction of Schwann cells and is also called a vestibular schwannoma. The tumor then presses on the hearing and balance nerves in the inner ear. Schwann cells normally wrap around and support nerve fibers. A large tumor can press on the facial nerve or brain structures.”
Difficult to diagnose, acoustic neuroma’s symptoms include hearing loss on one side, ringing in the ear, dizziness or balance problems, facial numbness and headaches.
Joe is in recovery and doing well after a 10 hr surgery at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, TX, to remove a benign tumor…
Posted by Rosie Napravnik Sharp on Thursday, June 4, 2020
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