81-Year-Old Jo Anne Jones Returns to Barrel Racing After Surgery for a Sphenoid Mucocele
The first time it happened, Jo Ann Jones was competing in a barrel race in Glen Rose, Texas. “We ran down that alleyway and had a good first barrel, and I remember heading toward the second. Then I blacked out and don’t remember anything,” says Jones, who runs a ranch near Vidor, Texas, with her husband A.V. Jones. “Suddenly, I could hear the audience yelling. I was hanging onto my horse’s mane when we rounded the second barrel, and the turn helped flip me up in the saddle for the third barrel. I won money in that race.”
She told a concerned rodeo doctor she was fine, then went to their trailer to change clothes for the ride home. “I fell down again in the shower, and luckily, my husband was there,” she says. She was diagnosed and treated in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at McGovern Medical School for a sphenoid mucocele, which can cause visual disturbances, motility abnormalities, and headache due to cavernous sinus compression. Sphenoid sinus mucoceles develop when the normal drainage from the sphenoid sinus is blocked and the sinus builds up mucus that slowly expands the sinus volume and compresses adjacent structures.
In 2022, four years after the successful surgery, the mucocele recurred with episodes of dizziness, and she was seen in clinic by Amber Luong, MD, PhD, professor and vice chair for academic affairs in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology. “Dr. Luong was great. She came in and introduced herself, and I told her I was kind of tickled to have a lady doctor,” Jones recalls.
“Jo Ann had an entrapped mucocele that was walled off by thickened bone in the sphenoid sinus,” Dr. Luong says. “We took her to the OR for a challenging surgery with a high risk of complications, including local hemorrhage, internal carotid injury, and optic nerve injury. We were able to drill a large opening through the thickened bone that was blocking the trapped mucus and remove it. Since then, she’s been doing great.”
Her dizziness resolved, and Jones is back in the saddle, still running barrels. In April, she placed fifth in the open category and second among seniors age 50 and older on her 30-year-old horse, Watch Joe Smoke, in Marshall, Texas.
“Smoke and I have been breaking records everywhere we go. People say they can’t believe I’m running such an old horse, but he looks great. And they claim I’m the oldest one still racing,” she says. “The older I get, the more famous I become.
“Mine weren’t easy surgeries, but these things happen in life and you manage to get through them and go on. We try to live well, have fun, and stay away from crazy people,” she laughs. “We just keep moving forward, enjoying what God wanted us to enjoy.”