‘One in a million’ brain tumor brings Colorado man to Ohio State
Jeff Chabot made a cross-country trek to Ohio for an innovative surgery and proton radiation therapy that gave him a second chance after a cancerous brain tumor.
On a Friday afternoon, during a brief lull before the last bell, an assistant principal sat at his desk reading an email that would change so much.
Earlier in the week, Jeff Chabot had a brain scan. The results had just arrived. After a few sentences, about all that was normal was a mention of “an enhancing mass.” Almost 4 centimeters. Believed to be “chordoma.”
Chordoma? Chabot had never heard the word. And why would he? Only about one in every million people in the United States is diagnosed with the tumor every year.
“I was mortified, not knowing exactly what I had,” Chabot says.
He texted a screenshot of the report to his wife, Betsy Buerk. She sent it to relatives who are doctors and to a neurologist friend. From them, Chabot would learn he had a rare type of bone cancer. The tumor grew on the lower part of his brain where it connects with his spinal cord at the back of his neck. One in a million.
“It’s a freak sort of thing,” says Chabot, an Ohio native who played football in college and taught physical education for many years before becoming an assistant principal in Frisco, Colorado, west of Denver.
“I never thought I’d be in this situation.”
Finding brain tumor specialists in Ohio
For several months before he learned he had cancer, Chabot had trouble seeing out of his left eye. The first time it happened, he was driving home from a doctor’s appointment in Vail. He sensed a fuzziness in his peripheral vision and didn’t know what it was. Then he started seeing double out of his left eye. Headaches became relentless and frequent, most often at night. He had to wear a patch over his left eye to keep from feeling dizzy.
“I was frustrated. I wondered: What the hell is going on? Why is this happening?” Chabot says.
An ophthalmologist tested his eyes and ordered an MRI. With the results signaling cancer in such a crucial organ as his brain, Chabot thought about his wife having to parent three children alone and about not being there for their high school and college graduations, for their weddings. He and Buerk took out another life insurance policy. They updated their wills. They talked through retirement pensions.
“We had to think about all those things that come to mind when you start thinking about death and what it would be like,” Chabot says.
Their neurologist friend recommended he see one of three physicians. Each was at a different hospital, but the neurologist’s first choice was Daniel Prevedello, MD, a neurosurgeon and the director of Skull Base Surgery at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James).
“Go see Danny,” the neurologist told Chabot.
Bringing Ohio State's medical expertise around the world
Through Ohio State’s Destination Medicine Global Health Care, Chabot was able to meet with Dr. Prevedello. Dhanya Menon, a coordinator for the program, arranged the first online meeting, then all the other in-person appointments that followed, along with travel and hotel stays.
Destination Medicine connects people living out-of-state or overseas to Ohio State’s specialized treatments and experts.
“We have physicians who are so incredibly well-known and respected in their fields and have a following of patients.”Milly Valverde, MA, CMI, director of Destination Medicine Global Health Care
Program staff removed what would have been another layer of stress coordinating everything from Colorado, Buerk says.
“They planned our hotel rooms. They planned all our appointments,” she says. “We would arrive at Ohio State, and they’d be there to open the door when we’d be walking in.”
From the first meeting with Dr. Prevedello, Chabot felt confident in the plans for surgery, and afterward, for proton radiation therapy to precisely target any remaining cancer. Unlike standard radiation, proton radiation could reach a specific region of Chabot’s brain where the tumor grew, without spreading further and possibly harming critical blood vessels or nerves near his brain.
In Chabot’s home state of Colorado, proton radiation isn’t offered, so that, too, nudged him toward treatment at Ohio State.
“I knew proton therapy would be better for me in the long-term,” Chabot says.
Memories, worries and hope before brain surgery
As the surgery got closer, Buerk worried. She had been through something like this before. Her father had a stroke the day before his 50th birthday. Buerk was 14 at the time. A surgery saved his life, but after it, he struggled to talk and could only walk short distances. No longer could he see patients at his ophthalmology practice.
“I was scared Jeff wouldn’t be the same after surgery, that he would forever be different,” Buerk says.
She also knew they couldn’t just leave the tumor alone. Chabot had asked Dr. Prevedello: “What if we do nothing?”
The answer made it obvious – no matter how scary brain surgery sounded, it was the only way for Chabot to survive.
Whatever the outcome of surgery, Buerk told herself and their three children – one in college at the time, the other two in high school – that they would be OK. Resilience, she told them, ran through their family.
Warm send-off
At the end of his last day of school before flying to Columbus for surgery, school buses passed the front of the building, filled with students holding out cardboard hearts or letters spelling out: You’ve got this. Get well soon. Many wore shirts that read “Chabot Strong.”
After the last bus drove past, Chabot, wearing a patch covering his left eye, walked through a line of staff members standing on either side of him, arms raised for high fives.
He felt their love. He also wondered: If he survived the surgery, would his mind be the same?
“I was asking myself, ‘Will I ever be out here doing this again?’” he says.
Days later, on April 8, 2024, he and Buerk walked into the OSUCCC – James. For the first time, it struck him, as he passed people in the hallways, the elevator, the waiting area, that he was one of them now.
“Before then, not for one second did I even consider I have cancer,” he says. “I thought of it as: ‘I’m just going to Ohio to have this surgery, to remove a growth.’ I was telling myself a lie.”
‘Another punch to the gut’
On that same trip to Ohio, Chabot met up with a group from his college football team at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio – where he and Buerk grew up.
Chabot’s friend Nick Frantz, a former fellow offensive lineman, organized the day, knowing Chabot would be in town. They watched the Miami University football team practice, had lunch and dinner together, and talked about the games and plays they remembered.
All the reminiscing about their football days stopped abruptly during breakfast the next morning when Chabot and his friends got a text. Frantz had a massive heart attack and had died the night before.
It didn’t seem possible to Chabot. He had just seen him, spent the day with him, talked and laughed with him.
“It was just another punch to the gut,” Chabot says.
And it left him thinking: How much longer do I have?
A unique approach to brain tumor removal
Just a few days after his friend passed away, Chabot was wheeled into the operating room for a 12-hour surgery.
Dr. Prevedello and Ricardo Carrau, MD, a head and neck surgeon, worked together to remove Chabot’s brain tumor. They used a highly specialized surgical technique Dr. Carrau developed in the 1990s, to avoid the risk of cutting through Chabot’s skull. Instead, Dr. Carrau made incisions through Chabot’s nasal passages and sinuses to clear a path for Dr. Prevedello to reach and remove the tumor near Chabot’s brain stem. This way was safer, but there were still risks. The tumor was so close to important nerves, and a major blood vessel, the carotid artery, that carries blood to the brain.
“It’s a high-risk surgery. If you cut the carotid artery, it could be fatal,” Dr. Prevedello says.
For Chabot, the operation went smoothly. Dr. Prevedello was able to remove all the cancer.
“I’m very optimistic. We always have to be cautious with chordoma. But we have a sizeable group of patients who, after more than 10 years, are doing fine,” Dr. Prevedello says.
A couple months after surgery, Chabot returned to Columbus to begin proton radiation therapy to kill any remaining tumor cells. Once a day, he lay still on a table, wearing a heavy mask to keep him from moving his head or neck.
The day of his last session, he rang the celebratory bell signaling the end of his treatments, then got into the car with his wife for a 20-hour drive back home to Colorado. His sons flew to Indianapolis and drove part of the way. It was early August of 2024. A new school year would begin in a few days.
A return visit
On a rainy fall day in 2025, Chabot, Buerk, and his mother, Susan Chabot, sat in a patient exam room.
Through a series of scans, a blood test and meetings with doctors, Chabot fretted. So much hinged on what he was about to find out: Did cancer return?
Dr. Carrau pulled up the MRI results on the computer screen and turned it so everyone could see. In the various black and white images of Chabot’s brain, one mark was absent, the white patch that had grown right up to his brain stem.
“I think we’re good,” he says. “Your MRI looks great.”
Jeff’s face, tense earlier, suddenly softened. Buerk’s shoulders relaxed. She exhaled.
For weeks, Chabot had thought about the possibility of another tumor, another surgery, more radiation.
“And if it comes back?” Chabot asked.
“If it comes back, we do another surgery,” Dr. Carrau says. For people with chordoma, cancer returns, on average, every 10 years, he told him.
Chabot had known he’d have to be scanned regularly for the rest of his life. Still, at that moment, he wasn’t thinking about the future.
“I feel amazing,” Chabot says. “There’s not something there right now.”
In the hallway, Buerk pulled out a chocolate bar from her purse and broke off half for Chabot. It was well past noon. In a few hours, they would board a flight to Denver. Before then, they needed to make appointments for their next visit to the OSUCCC – James. This time it would be nine months out – instead of six – a sign his doctors trusted his progress, exactly what they’d been hoping for.
He could plan trips for summer vacation and spring break. He could start weight lifting again to build up energy.
“I’m moving in the direction I want to be. I keep feeling better and better.”
Early the next morning, Chabot was at school, jet-lagged but glad to be back, meeting with students and parents, troubleshooting problems in classrooms and in the cafeteria, back to the routine he loves.
