On this day one year ago, I was having the best day ever. We had a new baby and a new home, and there was overall excitement about the adventures God had in store for our family. With so much change happening quickly, I recall telling my wife that today was the beginning of a new chapter that would include a slower pace and more restful family time together. As we enjoyed a meal at the local diner and a visit to the farmer’s market, it appeared my predictions were already coming true.

When we returned home, my daughter’s golf clubs were still sitting out from the morning when I let her tee off into the pasture behind our house. Unbeknownst to me, the little kids decided to take some practice swings, and what happened next became one of the defining moments of my life. Benny (then 3 years old) walked behind Ambrose (4 years old) during a backswing at just the right time to catch the force of the club on the back of his head. Benny fell to the ground but remained conscious as the kids tried to figure out how to hide the accident from Mom and Dad since they were not permitted to use the clubs at that point.

After some time, my daughter realized that Benny needed medical help, and she brought me inside to find him screaming on the couch and refusing to move from the position where he lay. I waited another 45 minutes to see if he would calm down, but it eventually became clear that he needed to be seen for a possible concussion.

I have seven kids. They are rowdy and fun-loving and often hit their head or run into each other. It takes a pretty severe blow to the head for me to load one of them up and head to the emergency room. This was one of those rare times.

The hospital performed a CT scan, and then I met with a neurologist to review the findings. He confirmed that Benny did have a concussion but that there was no skull fracture. Thank God. I felt we would be headed home soon, but then he asked some strange questions. “How often does he throw up? Have you experienced many seizures? What about dizziness? Sensing a shift in the conversation, I called my wife Amanda to let her hear the rest of the conversation with me.

That’s when the doctor explained more about his line of questions. “In addition to the concussion, we found a hemorrhaging mass on Benny’s left temporal lobe, and we need to perform a sedated MRI as soon as we can.”

The next morning, Amanda took my spot at the hospital, and Benny was sedated for the first time in his life during a multi-hour MRI. The results came back immediately. When Amanda called, she ensured that no kids were around me as I listened to the news. “Benny has a brain tumor and needs to have brain surgery tomorrow morning. St. Ambrose and our guardian angels have done it again. The concussion caused the doctors to find the tumor, and we are experiencing another miracle,” she said.

The brain surgery happened on February 26th. The doctor didn't see anything during the surgery to make him think this was a malignant tumor. We returned home that Wednesday with a relatively easy recovery and a crazy story.

We knew the pathology would take about two weeks, so we patiently waited and didn't think too much about it. At the start of week three, we were told that the lab had to send the sample to another testing site because they had never seen anything like this before. Unfortunately, that trend continued as each subsequent lab determined that this tumor was unlike anything they had ever studied and didn't match anything in their databases. The sample then moved on to a series of molecular studies, and some of the tumor's characteristics became better known.

On April 10th, we were informed that Benny has a rare and aggressive cancer that will be with him for the rest of his life. More tests were ordered, and more treatment plans were created. As part of the preparation and testing needed to create Benny’s plan, he was put under sedation again several times, including once for a lumbar puncture. The doctors said this was another chance to check the box on possible issues, but they were not expecting any more bad news from the spinal fluid tests.

We were enjoying an incredible celebration day with Benny when we got another call that rocked our world. Multiple doctors confirmed that Benny's lumbar puncture revealed “clusters of cancer cells in his spinal fluid.” Our treatment plans were shifted immediately, and they decided to postpone his proton radiation to start aggressive chemo instead. We were given three days to get everything in order before Amanda and Benny would be checking into the children’s hospital for two months of nonstop chemo. We had a logistics nightmare on our hands with six other kids, one of whom was only a few months old and four of which needed to get back and forth to school and other activities while all of us (and all our support team) were faced with the heavy grief of the reality we had entered.

We prayed. We invited the prayers of others. We stopped accepting God’s will and learned how to love God’s will instead. We asked Fr. Ken Geraci from the Fathers of Mercy to join us for healing prayer with Benny. We were given a relic of St. Peregrine, patron saint of cancer, and asked him to join us in praying for Benny’s healing and for our own strength to support the needs of our family. I prayed to be present to my kids and wife while soaking in every moment I could of Benny’s perfection.

The doctors ordered one last lumbar puncture and said they wanted to be “triple sure about the diagnosis since this treatment would, at best, take a huge toll on his little body.” Another sedation, another test. I was at home trying to secure more help for my family when Amanda received a call from the doctor. His words (not mine) … “I just told your pediatrician that if you were praying for a miracle, you got one.” The second set of lumbar fluid tests showed no cancer cells whatsoever. I fell to the ground and wailed to the Lord before the doctor could say another word. My wife yelled out, “We did the healing prayer with Fr. Ken,” and rejoiced with family, friends, medical staff and more.

The aggressive chemo was cancelled, and we went back to the plan for 33 days of proton radiation. Over the next two months, Benny was sedated every morning, Monday through Friday, to receive his treatments. They ran more tests in August and told us that post the surgery and proton radiation, Benny had “no evidence of disease.” We received similar results after his tests in November, and we are praying for the same when his next scans occur in March.

IN 2024, Benny was sedated 40 times for tests, treatments, surgery, and more. Benny still has brain cancer today, and he always will. That is why we ask people to keep Benny, now four years old, on their perpetual prayer list and why we will share and celebrate anytime he is pronounced to still have “no evidence of disease.”

The past year has been the most exhausting period of my life, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Navigating Benny’s brain cancer has made me acutely aware of the times when I am worried about details of life that don’t really matter or when I am out of balance and need to press pause to center my focus on God, Amanda, and our kids.

Here are a few of the takeaways that echo in my thoughts from this past year:

• Sadness and joy are not opposites. I have never been more sad in my life, yet I felt a joy that came from God and not from anything in this world
• Being open to life means we need to be open to suffering
• We ask others to pray for us (alive and deceased) because it can be difficult to pray for ourselves in times of sadness and exhaustion
• My role as a father and a husband is a true gift and a vocation