The mesh cap that Noah Feehan wore nearly all day, every
day, contained 18 terminals that delivered electrical pulses to his brain and
the deadly tumor growing inside it.
Diagnosed with a form of cancer called glioblastoma in
December 2020, Feehan, a 38-year-old Minnesota Air National Guard master
sergeant, had vowed to do whatever it took to battle his illness even if it
meant that, in addition to radiation and chemotherapy, he would wear the device
18 hours a day, sometimes enduring shocks so painful they forced him to his
knees.
But the treatment triggered more than momentary pain. He
stopped eating -- and smiling.
At a baseball game last summer, Noah’s wife of 13 years
leaned in and asked him whether he wanted to take off the cap permanently, even
if it meant abandoning an experimental weapon on which the family’s hopes
rested.
"He goes, 'Can I?'" Jenny Feehan said. “I said,
‘Of course, you can.' I never saw him happier. It was like a light switch went
on."
No one knows for certain why Feehan, who serves as an
avionics technician, developed a rare brain cancer with an average life
expectancy of 12 to 18 months that usually afflicts those in their 60s or
older.
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