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ASHEVILLE, N.C. — After surviving 11 brain tumors and living with cancer for more than 40 years, George Plym wants to help bring hope to others who have been diagnosed with cancerous brain tumors.
Plym, who grew up in Spring Valley and graduated from Hall High School in 1972, founded a support group in 2001 for people with brain tumors in western North Carolina, where he now lives.
Plym and his parents, George Sr. and Stephanie Plym of Spring Valley, first noticed that something was wrong in 1967. George, 11 years old at the time, was playing in an all-star Little League baseball game in Oglesby when a pop-up hit came toward him. But instead of seeing a normal baseball flying through the air, he saw something strange.
“It was a pop-up fly, and when I looked up to catch it, there were two balls coming down at me,” he said. “I didn’t know exactly which one to try to go for, and I missed the ball. It was because I was having double vision. That was really one of the clues that I had a problem.”
When George’s parents took him to a neurologist, they found that he had a grade-three oligodendroglioma — a late-stage, recurrent brain tumor. At age 12, George had his first of the 11 surgeries he’s endured during his life — seven open surgeries and four gamma knife surgeries — to remove his tumors.
Ever since 1967, George has battled recurring brain tumors and undergone many series of radiation and chemotherapy. He deals daily with hearing problems, vision loss, loss of feeling in his right leg, right arm, and right hand, and short-term memory problems. George uses a voice-recognition program on his computer when he writes to the members of his support group.
But despite the pain and troubles he has endured, George chooses to have hope and optimism with each new day he survives.
“I have hope all the time — every day. A bad day is a good day for me — rain, cold, wet. I wake up and say, ‘Ah, another day!” George said. “That’s my big plan, just enjoy every day and appreciate every day.”
Another reason that George wants to keep fighting his tumors and enduring the disease is for the members of the support group he founded and serves as president of, the Western North Carolina Brain Tumor Support group. He started the group in 2001 to bring together brain tumor survivors and patients to tell their stories, talk about their feelings and experiences, and to create a support network. The group holds a regular meeting once each month to talk or to participate in social events together.
“With all the experiences I’ve had, I know that there are new treatments all the time,” he said. “I want to give people hope that even though they have been diagnosed with a brain tumor or cancer, it’s not a done deal; it’s not a death sentence. There’s a lot of hope yet. I try to give people hope that they can go on, and I’m a good example of that.”
George’s mother, Stephanie, said that her son’s life-long battle with brain tumors hasn’t been easy.
“He’s gone through an awful lot, and so have his father and I both,” she said.
“But I’m still here,” George said.
“Thank God,” Stephanie said.
Following his first surgery at age 12, George spent about two months at St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. He began having radiation treatments two days after the surgery, and Stephanie stayed with him in the room during these treatments.
In 2000, George experienced another brain tumor, along with chemical meningitis. The combination of these two problems brought him very close to dying. He survived this, only to be diagnosed with another brain tumor in 2002. Discouraged and near the point of despair, George thought of giving up on his fight with cancer.
“I put my hands up and said, ‘OK, it wins. I quit. I can’t do this anymore,’” George said. “That was when one of my support group members called me. I told her I can’t do this anymore. I’m just going to let it take care of itself, and I’m going to die. She said, ‘You will not!’ And she got right in my face and she said, ‘We look up to you and listen to you. What’s it going to be like if you just lay down, and say, I’m just not going to live anymore? What kind of a message is that going to send to the rest of the group? You’re going to fight this thing just like the way you taught us to fight.’ It was a wake up call for me and I said, ‘You’re right.’”
George, a retired sports-car technician, enjoys playing the guitar, repairing guitars, making dulcimers, and rooting for the Chicago Cubs. He says he’s a life-long Cub fan.
“I have always been a Cubs fan, and I always will,” he said, laughing. “This is our year. How many times have I said that? We’re serious this time, though.”
George, who has had no signs of recurrence of his tumor for the past three years, says he is determined to fight the cancer for as long as he possibly can.
“The way I look at it is, this is what’s been dealt to me,” George said. “And I’m going to deal with it. If I would have laid down and given up, I would have been gone a long time ago. I would have missed a whole lot of good stuff.”
And he has a lot of good things left to experience, especially with his family, including his wife, Diane, stepdaughter Laura, and his two grandchildren, Elizabeth, 6, and Anna, 4.
“When I was probably about 16 or 17 years old, I thought that it would be a real challenge to live past 21. And I did it,” George said. “So I had to change my goals again. I said, now I’m going to make it to 30, and I did that too. So I need to set the bar a little bit higher. When I became a grandfather, I said, I want to see Elizabeth in her prom dress. I try to always make more goals and then try to achieve them.”
George Plym is a member of the Community Advisory Board at the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. He can be contacted at wncbts@bellsouth.net or visit the support group website at www.wncbraintumor.org.
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