Sam Taylor was just 11 years old when he went to the emergency room for an MRI and received a devastating diagnosis: a low grade optic glioma, a brain tumor in the optic pathway that accounts for only five percent of all childhood brain tumors. The surgeon initially planned to remove the tumor, but once they went in they realized it sat right behind his optic nerve, meaning removal could cause permanent blindness and the tumor was declared inoperable. Taylor spent his entire high school experience unable to play contact sports like football and lacrosse because of the tube in his head, a constant reminder that he wasn’t like every other teenager despite trying to live a fairly normal life. When his treatment caused two severe allergic reactions that could have been fatal, doctors stopped his treatment plan abruptly and decided to monitor the tumor instead, hoping it would stop growing when he reached his twenties.
Unfortunately, the tumor has not stopped growing like doctors predicted, and now at 22 years old Taylor faces the mental battle of living with an inoperable brain tumor while also making incredible changes in his community. As a family, the Taylors decided right after diagnosis that they wanted to do something to help other families traumatized by a cancer diagnosis, founding the nonprofit Strong4Sam that has now raised nearly 1.2 million dollars for childhood cancer research. The remarkable part is that the money doesn’t go toward research for Taylor’s own diagnosis but instead supports people with more severe tumors and cancers that are less researched and harder to cure, focusing on finding new, less toxic types of treatment. Taylor recently started sharing his health journey on TikTok to help even more people, admitting that the mental battle at 22 has been astronomical compared to being 11, but his mission to change cancer research continues to inspire and save lives.
