Part 1: Living Beyond the Statistics

I truly believed I was done with cancer after 2013. Every doctor I worked with at Johns Hopkins told me there was less than a 10% chance it would ever come back. Statistically, the odds dropped even further after being in remission for more than ten years.

But statistics don’t mean much to me anymore.

In the summer of 2024, a major curveball was thrown my way—one I never saw coming.

Before all of this, I was incredibly active. I went to the gym four days a week before work, cycled often, mountain biked most weekends, rock climbed several days a week, skied in the winter, backpacked and camped throughout the summer, and trail ran with my partner whenever we could. My body felt strong. Capable. Reliable.

So when symptoms started appearing out of nowhere, I was completely blindsided.

In early June of 2024, I began noticing minor vision changes after intense activity. The edges of my vision would start to swim, but only for about 45 minutes before clearing up. I didn’t think much of it at first—maybe dehydration, maybe blood pressure. Something manageable.

A couple of weeks later, everything escalated. I developed immensely painful headaches, centralized in my right temporal lobe, and my vision in my right eye became noticeably blurred.

I checked myself into urgent care immediately. I knew something wasn’t right—something felt wrong in my brain. Despite that, the clinic refused to do any imaging and defaulted to treating it as a migraine. I went home.

Two days later, I checked myself into the ER.

This time, they performed a CT scan right away. The results were devastating. I had multiple tumors in my brain, and one in my occipital lobe had grown so large it was pressing my brain forward—causing the vision loss and severe pain in my right temple.

I was admitted to the hospital overnight. A few days later, I underwent a biopsy of a tumor found in my lung. When the pathology report came back, it confirmed my worst nightmare.

Synovial sarcoma had returned.

This time, it was in my brain and my lung.

On July 11, 2024, I underwent a craniotomy to remove the brain mass. The surgery was necessary to make chemotherapy and radiation possible. In August, I was admitted to the hospital for my first of several rounds of ifosfamide chemotherapy at the highest dose available to me—14 grams.

Each cycle required a five-day hospital stay, repeated roughly every 30 days.

I hated every single one.

That marked the beginning of a long, exhausting war against cancer—one that had once again taken up residence in my brain and lung.

This is the end of Part 1 of my recurrence story.