Mom Was Told Her Tingly Arm Was Anxiety — Then She Collapsed and Received a Devastating Diagnosis 

A Wisconsin mom who kept feeling a strange tingling in her arm was initially told it was probably anxiety and given a beta blocker — but after she collapsed months later, doctors discovered a brain tumor.

Kelsey Stoksted, now 32, says her symptoms first appeared in May 2023. “It started at my fingertips and went all the way up to my shoulder,” she explained in a TikTok video, comparing the feeling to an arm that has “fallen asleep,” only this time she couldn’t move or control it at all.

Fearing she was having a stroke, she and her husband, Sean, called an ambulance. By the time she arrived at the hospital, however, the tingling had stopped. Her bloodwork looked normal, and because of the cost, she decided to skip a CT scan and instead follow up with her primary care doctor.

“We had already called the ambulance, and we knew that was going to be expensive,” she said.

At her appointment, Kelsey says she was told the episode might be related to anxiety showing up physically.

She was prescribed a beta blocker, a blood pressure medication that’s often used to ease physical symptoms of stress. But the medication didn’t change anything.

“Obviously, the beta blocker did not work,” she recalled.

In August, while working at her mother’s boutique, Kelsey began to feel the same sensations again — this time spreading down her left leg, which had never happened before. That escalation made her increasingly worried.

She called her husband, who told her to lie down on the floor and lock the door. Shortly afterward, she says she had a grand mal seizure while still on the phone with him and stopped responding for about five minutes.

When she regained consciousness, she was confused and disoriented. “He was screaming my name, and I FaceTimed him. I had foam at the mouth. I was so disoriented,” she said. Sean was already on his way and drove her to the hospital, where doctors finally discovered the cause: a 4-cm tumor in her brain triggering the seizures.

Kelsey underwent brain surgery to remove the tumor, which doctors were able to access easily because it was located near the top of her brain.

“Initially, they told me my prognosis was three to five years, which was really hard,” she shared. After surgery, she went through chemotherapy and radiation. Further testing revealed she had a genetic mutation that made her cancer behave less aggressively, and her outlook improved.

“Due to the mutation, my prognosis was 12 to 15 years, and when they told us that we were so happy,” she said.

Even with the better prognosis, Kelsey says the journey is still emotionally and physically tough. “This is all still really hard, but I am grateful to be here and hopeful in my journey,” she said. In a later TikTok, she also praised her care team: “Modern medicine is the reason I’m still here, giving myself and my family a chance at living life together.”