But something was wrong, and no doctor could say why.Īs his symptoms worsened, this was his creeping fear: Could the head injuries he'd had over the years - from skiing and skateboarding, a bad car crash and countless helmet-to-helmet collisions while playing Division I football at Purdue University - be the source of his problems?
Outwardly, life was good: Athletic and physically fit, Brush is a husband, father, homeowner and trained engineer, gainfully employed. "I call it 'electric Southern crickets.' Like, if you were to sit on the patio at night and hear all the crickets going, but imagine those electric. "Things that started to scare me were the ringing in the ears," said Brush, 47, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. At first, he blamed job stress and family pressures, but over time he began to wonder if his problems were more serious than that. He kept losing his keys, his phone, his train of thought - absent-minded "brain farts," he joked, while privately worrying that his memory lapses were a harbinger of something worse. Instead, Brush struggled with unexplained headaches, light sensitivity, trouble focusing. Cancer, Lee Brush concluded, would be preferable to this.Īt least a brain tumor would be a definitive diagnosis with a potential cure, and his family and friends would understand what he was up against, he thought.