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I was born and raised in Colorado. I always lived my life to the fullest through skateboarding, mountain biking, and generally being outdoors. I accidentally graduated from Colorado University with a Bachelor’s in Geography, where I also got lucky in finding a career. I am a professional trail builder by trade and consider myself a professional dirtbag. I met my wife as high school sweethearts, and she shares my love and interests. We will celebrate 10 years this year.
Discovering a Brain Tumor
My wife and I (girlfriend at the time) noticed I started to get really bad neck pains and headaches about seven years ago. We assumed it was from all of the gnarly things I have been through with concussions from all of the activities I loved. Fast forward five years, and we are engaged. My symptoms keep getting worse, and now I have floaters in my eyes as well as numbness in my right hand. I could still function at work and in life, but I stayed quiet and didn’t want to address anything.
I would get episodes that would start to hinder me, crippled in pain. I was stubborn and dumb, but I started to go to a doctor to address these issues since we are getting married. This was the summer of 2024. My wife and I got married, and we went on our honeymoon to Italy. During our honeymoon, I got what I can only explain as a stroke while driving. We were OK, and I was able to recover for the rest of our honeymoon, but my wife laid down the law, making me promise to take my health seriously and work with the new primary I am seeing.
That primary claimed that I only needed PT for all of the pain in my neck, the “stroke” was nothing but a headache caused by drinking too much wine in Italy, and would not recommend me for a neurologist. My episodes kept getting worse and worse and more common.
Finally, my boss told me I didn’t need a recommendation from her and went to a neurologist at UCHealth. They got me set up for an MRI in May 2025. It was a Friday morning, and they said they would call me with the results the following week. They ended up calling me that night, telling me I had a large mass in my fourth ventricle. They had me come back in the following Monday to do more scans.
We then met with the lead neurosurgeon in Colorado Springs. He explained the severity and then also told us he cannot do the surgery. He was able to get us in contact with Dr. Youssef at Anschutz Medical Center. What my wife and I know now is that I had about 4-6 weeks left to live before my brain “popped” because of the location and size of my brain tumor.
A lot of details in between, but on June 3, 2025, my hemangioblastoma was removed by Dr. Youssef and his team. The surgery went perfectly. I get emotional thinking of how caring all of the staff were to my wife and me.
The people closest to the person with the brain tumor go through a different type of trauma. It might be different, but it is as devastating emotionally and physically as the survivor in their own way. It affects everyone differently, but most importantly, the extent to which it has affected my wife has been significant. This all happened in our first year of marriage. We couldn’t celebrate our first anniversary or my 30th birthday by doing the things we loved to because recovery is so gnarly. All we want to do is do the things we fell in love with each other, but it takes time.
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