It's hard to imagine a better quality of life than Eric's. He's healthy and fit, lives in a comfortable new home in a nice neighborhood, and has a devloted wife and four adorable children. As Eric says, "You'd never know that 13 years ago I had two brain surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation.”

Only when Eric pushes back a lock of hair can you see the telltale scar above his forehead.

"It's been a long journey," Eric says. "But it's been great, and my quality of life has been there."

Eric admits that he still thinks about the brain tumor that temporarily interrupted his life when he was 26 years old. “But I feel I’m at a point now where I need to live my life and not live my life around it,” he says. “I’ve moved on.”

Eric was working in a stressful job in investment sales when the headaches began. Unlike typical headaches, they wouldn’t go away. Eric coped with the headaches for a few weeks, then made an appointment with his general practitioner, who thought the headaches probably were caused by anxiety and stress. That seemed reasonable, but the headaches persisted.

"Then one night, after a long weekend, I had a grand mal seizure," Eric recalls. "I went to the hospital. They took a CT scan, and it was obvious that there was a large mass in my brain, the size of an orange, in the right front.”

Eric subsequently became the patient of Dr. John M. Tew, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic and a specialist in the treatment of brain tumors. Dr. Tew operated and removed the mass, which was diagnosed as an oligodendroglioma, a type of cancer that originates from oligodendrocyte cells in the brain and is most commonly found in patients in their 40s. The tumor was low-grade, and Eric did not undergo radiation or chemotherapy at that time.

The following year, however, the tumor returned in a more virulent form. “I took a sauna and when I got out I was really hot, and I ended up having another seizure,” Eric recalls. “Obviously, something was wrong, so they took another scan and they noted regrowth.”

Dr. Tew operated aggressively this time and ordered radiation and chemotherapy.

Eric wasted no time in moving on with his life. He became engaged in August 1994, the same month of his radiation treatments, and he was married in 1995. Four children followed.

Meanwhile, Mayfield keeps tabs on his well-being, requiring one to two brain scans a year.  

“I feel very fortunate living here in town, having the Mayfield Clinic here in Cincinnati,” Eric says. “I am confident that I’m getting the best care possible. I feel very highly about every individual I’ve worked with over there, from the surgeon to the radiologist to the oncologist.”

>> more hope stories