Plea From A Loving Husband: Former NFL Linebacker David Pollack, Whose Wife Batted Brain Cancer, Says ‘Don’t Wait’ Get Checked

Sharing his story for Aflac’s Get Checked For Cancer Initiative, Pollack said, “The important thing for us … being able to catch it early. Don’t wait.

“Make time for the cancer screenings, for the checkups. Because my wife, she had a little bit of pain in her ear. We didn’t sit around. We didn’t wait until it got really, really bad. We went and got tested.”

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A post shared by Lindsey Hopkins Pollack (@lhpollack)

Pollack, whose wife was diagnosed before her symptoms became severe, underwent a craniotomy, and is still undergoing chemotherapy, continued, “We can’t not take care of our health. It’s so important. And the numbers are so good about finding things early.

“You get one body. Let’s make time for it. Let’s take care of ourselves.”

He then shared how Lindsey’s “word” throughout her cancer journey as been “perspective.”

“Like her word is perspective. She was sick for a couple months, throwing up every time she ate. And it was just perspective,” he explained.

“She’s like, ‘Some people go through this every day, their whole lives.’ So I think when we keep a perspective of joy… we can accomplish great things.”

Pollack, who says faith has remained a priority for him and his wife throughout her health journey, recently took to social media share footage of Lindsey’s first steps after surgery last year.

He captioned his  Instagram post, “We’re a year into a battle that wasn’t always pretty, and sometimes really scary. But we are thankful to be cancer-free. We are thankful for Heavenly grace.

“All glory to God for being with us every step of the way. Praising through the storm.”

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A post shared by David Pollack (@davidpollack47)

Pollack concluded, “God’s got us! Thank you to everyone who has supported us up close and from far away. It’s meant everything.

“Each time He said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. 2 Corinthians 12:9.”

Using Faith as a Tool for Healing

A study published in Cancer highlights the powerful role of faith in the lives of cancer patients, revealing that 69% of those diagnosed with cancer reported praying for their health, compared to 45% of the general U.S. population.

Cancer psychologist Dr. Andrew Kneier helped co-author “Coping with Cancer: Ten Steps toward Emotional Well-Being.” He also co-authored a column published by Stanford Medicine with Rabbi Jeffery M. Silberman, director of spiritual care at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.

Together, they emphasize the deep emotional and psychological support that faith provides to those battling illness.

According to Kneier and Silberman, spirituality offers a powerful coping mechanism, helping individuals navigate the uncertainty that comes with a cancer diagnosis.

“A person’s faith or spirituality provides a means for coping with illness and reaching a deeper kind of inner healing,” they explain.

Faith helps patients in multiple ways, including:

• Seeking answers to the difficult questions illness presents.
• Finding comfort in the midst of fear and pain.
• Gaining a sense of direction during an overwhelming and uncertain time.

Religious teachings, they argue, can serve as a guidepost, offering strength and resilience when navigating the emotional and physical challenges of cancer.

WATCH: Three-time cancer survivor shares how her faith helped her during cancer.

New York City Presbyterian Pastor Tom Evans tells SurvivorNet about the importance of finding ways to cope with the complex web of feelings you may be experiencing after a challenging health diagnosis, such as cancer.

“It’s important to reach out in a simple prayer to God, even if you’ve never prayed before, you don’t know what to say, a heartfelt plea, ‘God, help me, be with me,’” Pastor Evans told SurvivorNet.

“You can reach out to God, and you can reach out to people, your friends and family, and say, ‘I can’t do this on my own. I need you.’ “It’s in that willingness to be open and to receive that we can find something deeper that we never would’ve encountered without this hardship,” Evans continued

“I Had A Talk With God And I Knew I’d Be Okay”

Understanding Glioblastoma & Brain Cancer Treatment

It’s unclear what type of brain cancer Pollack’s wife battled, but we do know she underwent surgery to combat the disease, along with chemotherapy.

Diagnosing gliomas [ a type of tumor that originates in the central nervous system, specifically in the brain or spinal cord] involves a multi-step approach that includes clinical assessment, imaging studies, histopathological examination, and molecular testing.

As patients are diagnosed, they’re observed for typical glioma symptoms. These may include:

• Headaches
• Seizures
• Cognitive or Behavioral Changes
• Visual or Speech Changes and Impairments
• Loss of Body Weight and Deconditioning
• Changes in mental function, mood, or personality
• Changes in speech
• Sensory changes in hearing, smell, and sight
• Loss of balance
• Changes in your pulse and breathing rate

During the clinical assessment, the physician will take a detailed history, focusing on the onset and progression of symptoms. Since gliomas can present with non-specific symptoms that overlap with other neurological conditions, ruling out conditions like stroke, infections, or inflammatory disorders is essential during the initial clinical evaluation.

Patients then undergo a neurological exam that tests cranial nerve function, motor strength and coordination, sensory function, and cognitive abilities.

Next, patients undergo an MRI, which provides doctors with a visualization of the tumor.

“If you’re suspected of having a tumor on imaging and our neurosurgeons think that tumor can come out, they will take a piece of that tumor out first and confirm in the operating room and with our pathologists that, in fact, what they are looking at is a tumor,” Dr. Alexandra Miller, Director of the Neuro-Oncologist Division at NYU Langone Health, tells SurvivorNet. “And if it is, they resect it at that time. It’s not usually a two-step procedure.”

If surgery cannot be performed due to tumor location or patient-specific factors, a less invasive stereotactic biopsy can be obtained. Once the tissue sample is obtained, it’s examined under a microscope for molecular testing. At this stage, the tumor is given a grade, which determines how aggressive it is.

• Grade I-II gliomas – These are considered low-grade and tend to grow slowly. “The grade one is a very indolent, benign tumor that can be cured with surgery alone,” Dr. Henry Friedman, Deputy Director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, tells SurvivorNet.
• Grade III gliomas—These are considered high-grade and tend to grow more rapidly. They are typically classified as malignant and require more aggressive treatment, which can include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
• Grade IV gliomas – These are the most aggressive gliomas, which are locally aggressive and require treatment intensification. Glioblastomas are the most common grade IV glioma, “which is by far the most well-known and feared tumor in the lay population and, quite frankly, the medical population,” Dr. Friedman explains.

Inside Brain Tumor Surgery and Recovery: What Patients Can Expect

Surgery to remove a brain tumor is delicate by nature, and every movement inside the skull must balance precision with safety.

“We take off the bone overlaying the area we need to get to. We open the little envelope around the brain called the dura, and then we move through the brain tissue to get to where the tumor is to try to cut out as much as we can safely—without hurting the patient’s function or other important things like big blood vessels that can cause things like a stroke,” explains  Dr. Kimberly Hoang, a board-certified neurosurgeon at Emory University School of Medicine.

Following surgery, patients are closely monitored and often receive radiation to prevent tumor regrowth—particularly in cases where multiple tumors or metastatic disease are involved.

“Because many patients can have more than one brain tumor or metastasis from their cancer, it was not reasonable to think about surgery for them,” Dr. Hoang adds. “They also get radiation for those spots as well, to try to keep those tumors from growing or shrink them down.”

Treatment Advancements & the Challenge of the Blood-Brain Barrier

Chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapies have long been effective in treating cancer throughout the body. But the brain’s natural defense — the blood-brain barrier — makes these treatments less effective when it comes to brain tumors.

This barrier is “a network of blood vessels and tissue…made up of closely spaced cells and helps keep harmful substances from reaching the brain,” according to the National Cancer Institute.

Still, Dr. Hoang notes that recent advancements in drug design are beginning to improve treatment efficacy in the brain.

Understanding Side Effects of Brain Tumor Treatment

Side effects vary depending on the tumor’s size, location, and number of lesions present.

“Radiation treatment can cause swelling in the tumor as the tumor ‘dies,’ and the surrounding tissue can also become swollen as the treatment takes effect,” Dr. Krishanthan Vigneswaran, a neurosurgeon with UT Health Houston and Memorial Hermann, tells SurvivorNet.

“This swelling can cause symptoms of headache, nausea, vomiting, and neurological loss of function…Surgical resection can also induce swelling, but this is more transient.”

Tumor location often determines what symptoms emerge:

“If it’s near your movement area, movement on one side of the body can be affected. If it’s near your speech area, your speech and the way you form words and express them can be affected,” Dr. Hoang explains.

She also notes brain surgery tends to be less painful than other types — like spinal or abdominal — due to fewer nerves in the surgical area.

Recovery & Long-Term Monitoring

“An oncology team will have to monitor a patient indefinitely during remission,” Dr. Vigneswaran says, referring to a patient battling late-stage brain cancer.

Many experts recommend joining a support group — especially one with people who’ve undergone similar procedures. Their lived experience can offer comfort and practical advice.

“Support groups can be incredibly helpful to patients and are commonly offered at major cancer centers and hospitals,” says Dr. Jennifer Moliterno, Chief of Neurosurgical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center.

Mental health professionals are also often part of the care team, helping patients manage the emotional effects of surgery, treatment, and recovery.

Current Options to Treat Glioblastoma

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved some drug treatments, including temozolomide (Temodar), to help patients living with this aggressive disease.

Temozolomide is a chemotherapy drug patients can take after surgery and radiation therapy.

Dr. Daniel Wahl, professor of radiation and oncology at the University of Michigan, explains Temozolomide is an oral drug that ” slows down tumor growth.”

“Patients with GBM have effective treatment options; there are four of them: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and tumor targeting fields. These are electric fields that we can use to treat these cancers,” Dr. Wahl said.

Other FDA-approved drugs for treating glioblastoma include lomustine (Gleostine), intravenous carmustine (Bicnu), carmustine wafer implants, and Avastin (bevacizumab).

Avastin is a targeted drug therapy that blocks glioblastoma cells from requesting new blood vessels that feed and allow the tumor to grow.

“Outcomes for these patients are still suboptimal. What I tell my patients is that we have these effective treatments, but what they do is they delay the time to when this tumor comes back. Only in exceptional circumstances would we ever talk about getting rid of one of these cancers, a few,” Dr. Wahl said.

WATCH: Using electric sources to improve glioblastoma treatment.

Fortunately, research is ongoing to improve the prognosis for people battling glioblastoma. One area of promise is tumor-treating fields, which can help extend patients’ lives by two years on average, giving them hope.

Optune, the brand name for the tumor-treating field delivery device, was launched in 2011 and approved by the FDA in 2015. It is a wearable and portable device for glioblastoma treatment for adult patients aged 22 years or older.

“There’s been a very exciting development of tumor treating fields, which are electrical fields that have been applied to the brain,” Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a neurologist at Tufts Medical Center, previously told Survivor Net.

TTFields use low-intensity electric fields to disrupt the cell division process, making it harder for cancerous cells to multiply.

Despite Optune’s hope, not all cancer experts agree with its approach, including Dr. Friedman.

“Although the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recognizes Optune within its guidelines as a therapy for glioblastoma, many people don’t believe it adds value. At Duke, for example, we don’t consider it a mainstay of therapy,” Dr. Friedman said.

Questions for Your Doctor

If you have been diagnosed with glioblastoma, here are some questions you may consider asking your doctor:

• What stage is my brain cancer?
• What are the treatment options for my brain cancer?
• Am I a good candidate for temozolomide?
• Am I a good candidate for Optune?
• What are the risks and benefits of the recommended treatment?
• What are the side effects of the recommended treatment?
• How long will it take to recover from treatment, and will I be able to return to work and normal activities?
• What’s the likelihood that insurance will cover the recommended treatment

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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