Kiana Cormack’s bizarre summer: ‘Suddenly I had a brain tumor’
A big smile, a long ponytail, a fresh look on her face: you wouldn’t know it, but less than two months ago, Namibian hockey international Kiana-Che Cormack underwent brain surgery.
She points to the back of her head and fiddles with her hair a little. “I was afraid for a moment that it would all have to come off. Luckily, that only applied to a small part: at the very bottom of the back of my head there is a sort of semicircle, a bit in the shape of a horseshoe, where the surgery was. But with my hair in a ponytail like this, you can’t tell anything else about me.”
Last August, Cormack came to the Netherlands to play hockey at Huizen. Through South African Jess Lardant, who was also a newcomer to the club at the time, she came into contact with coach Joep van der Coelen.
“It was a dream to be able to play in the Netherlands, but while I was busy arranging the trip and my visa, I had an epileptic seizure.” Something she hadn’t experienced for a year and a half at that point, but it wasn’t the first time.
Three years ago, Cormack had a seizure like that out of nowhere. “I was out with friends, at a club. That’s where it happened. They thought someone had put something in my drink, but I don’t drink alcohol and hadn’t had anything else either.
“I was studying in Pretoria at the time; the doctors pointed out that the stress and fatigue from my studies might be the cause and sent me home. But two months later, it happened again.
The first training in Huizen
After multiple scans at the hospital, a neurologist concluded that she had a parasitic cyst on her brain. She dropped out of her studies, moved back to Namibia, and started medication for tapeworm and the seizures.
“After that, everything seemed fine, until I had an “aura” in late 2024. That’s what they call it, a kind of visual warning before such an attack. On the left side of my vision, I suddenly saw a sort of jumping, blurry area. I would sit down, breathe calmly, and then it would go away. But it was happening more and more often.”
Still, she did go to the Indoor Hockey World Cup in early 2025. “You are under high pressure there, there are bright lights, and we trained intensively. So I was afraid of more attacks or that I would feel really bad. But the strange thing was: nothing happened.”
Until she was just ready to leave for Huizen. “I let Joep know. That I first had to figure out with the doctors what was going on. I couldn’t join the team until the end of August. I had only just met my teammates, but I still had to tell them what was happening. Also because I had to explain to them what they need to do if I have a seizure.”
‘You have a brain tumor’
Due to the medication, she didn’t have a great season. “It felt like chemo, there was so much in my body. But as a top athlete. That couldn’t go on any longer.
“I wanted to tackle it, but just before the summer my vision changed. It was like I had an aura, but all the time. Sometimes I couldn’t see the ball. Then I literally had to stop and turn my head before I could make the next pass.”
At the hospital, she had to go into an MRI scanner again. But this time, the diagnosis was not a parasite.
“The researcher still had to send the results to the doctor. He is the one who gets to tell you the truth. But this researcher saw it immediately: a brain tumor. I didn’t understand it at all; why had that never shown up in all the previous tests and scans?
“I cried my eyes out. It was so confusing. What was I supposed to believe? What if I had another seizure? What would happen to my hockey career?”
After going through a whole medical merry-go-round, a neurologist discovered that the pressure in her head was caused by a fluid sac surrounding the – benign – tumor, and an ophthalmologist found that she had a thickening in her optic nerve.
That made her condition more urgent, and she made such a leap up the waiting list that one morning in July, she walked out of the hospital being told she had to wait, only to receive a call that very afternoon telling her she could report to the operating room.
Under the knife
“It took two hours. When I came to, they said it was successful. But my vision… It was so weird; they had operated on the part of my brain where vision is controlled. So it was massively overstimulated. I was seeing all sorts of things. A few days later I was allowed to go home; my mother had arrived by then.”
She had to be careful, to recover slowly. But Cormack actually felt full of energy.
“Because of the anesthetic gas. That suddenly gives you a whole lot of euphoria after the operation. For two weeks I was on a high. Ready to take on the world, to run for president,” she laughs.
By now, nearly two months have passed.
“I still have a blurry spot in my vision. But no longer as a warning sign of things getting worse; it’s just there all the time. I’m allowed to run, cycle, and go to the gym gently again.”
Playing hockey isn’t an option for the time being. “Only without contact. So I can go to the field and do things with the ball and stick. Also to see how I react to the combination of movements. But contact is still too dangerous, because what if I fall on my head? So I can start doing that again at the earliest at the end of October, wearing a head protector.”
She hopes to be able to play with her national indoor team in December. But will that happen?
In Huizen, at any rate, they aren’t assuming anything this season. Yet Cormack still feels like a huge part of the team. “I was afraid it would become awkward. I’m not playing, so do I really belong? But the girls immediately said that was nonsense.”
They are raising money through a prediction pool to fund a trip to Namibia.
“My parents have a hockey development project there. We would like to go on that trip together early next year to provide clinics. It is so sweet that they are all so enthusiastic. That they make it clear that I have a role in this team no matter what, and that we are embarking on this adventure together.”
– www.hockey.nl
