I had brain surgery 2 months ago and now I’m running the NYC Half Marathon — anything is possible

This New Yorker’s recovery should have been a marathon — but her resilience made it a sprint.

Leanna Scaglione was once wheelchair-bound and is recovering from a brain surgery she underwent two-and-a-half months ago, but this Sunday, she’s taking to the streets to run the 2024 United Airlines NYC Half Marathon.

“I just couldn’t see myself being in this wheelchair for the rest of my life,” the 32-year-old told The Post. “It was pure stubbornness that kind of drove me.”

It’s been a long haul for Scaglione, who was training to be a ballerina but suffered a dance-related hip injury at age 16. An MRI found something much worse — she developed a tumor “the size of a grapefruit” in her lower spine.

“I was not able to stand upright on my leg with full pressure for more than, like, five seconds,” she said. “Unfortunately, it left me in a wheelchair, unable to walk and stand.”

Scaglione said it took her about a year and a half to stand up and she “slowly but surely just continued to live out my life” as she learned to walk again.

But her troubles didn’t stop there. She discovered that she has neurofibromatosis type 2, a genetic disorder that causes tumors to form on nerve tissue. She has since developed two tumors inside each of her ears — the right one had been doubling in size every six months — that disrupt hearing and balance.

In January, she had the right one fully removed through an “extensive” surgery that left her with temporary facial paralysis on her right side and fully deaf in her right ear.

“I have to work through it and hopefully it’ll come back the same way that my leg was able to come back,” she said. “I did eventually learn how to walk again.”

‘I have to do this’

And just like how her competitive nature got her out of a wheelchair, she realized she could compete with herself to accomplish a marathon.

“It just became this amazing thing and this amazing feat where I was like, ‘I have to do this. I have to do this,'” Scaglione said.

During surgery, she had an auditory brainstem implant installed — an implant that bypasses the cochlea and auditory nerve to provide the sensation of sound to those with profound hearing loss who aren’t candidates for cochlear implants. They had to opt for the ABI rather than a cochlear implant since she no longer has a cochlear nerve to attach an implant to.

Scaglione now has a wire that starts from behind her ear, traveling down into the brainstem directly with electrodes. She shared that while she doesn’t actually hear or understand language through the ABI — all she hears through it right now is buzzing — it gives her different signals.

“It’s just incredible that I’m even able to hear anything because it is fully deaf over there. Deaf as a doornail,” she said.

Thankfully, her loss of hearing doesn’t affect her running abilities too much.

“I’m definitely more aware that I’m deaf in that ear when people pass me on that side. It’s more of like, ‘Whoa, where’d you come from?'” Scaglione explained. “But then I also remind myself a lot of the times when I would be running with my headphones in, listening to music, I wasn’t always hearing every single sound that was around me.”

And while she said she still has “some little ‘whoopsy daisy’ moments” while running, she has a support system in place: Aside from this weekend’s half-marathon, this past fall, she ran the New York City Marathon with the Children’s Tumor Foundation as part of the NF Endurance team and will be running with them in the Chicago Marathon in October, as well as the NYC Marathon this upcoming fall.

“I just knew from that moment forward that I needed to continue doing all of my races and with them for as many as they had teams for, and it would just an incredible family,” Scaglione said. “I am not sure what I would be able to do without them right now.”

Racing forward

New York and Chicago aren’t the only stops on Scaglione’s marathon bucket list. She’s hoping to run in all six major marathons — Boston, Tokyo, NYC, London, Chicago and Berlin — and earn the Six Star Medal.

“I have my heart set on that now too,” she said.

Having just recovered from surgery, Scaglione knows she’s not fully prepared for this weekend’s half-marathon, but she’s not letting that stop her.

“It’s just going to be for the enjoyment and reaffirming to myself that I can have my life despite all of this that’s going on with me medically and going to continue to happen with me medically,” she said. “It’s one of those things where my stubbornness and self-competitiveness comes through.

“For me now, if I can run this New York City half-marathon, anything is possible again.”