When you look at Jon Templeman’s Instagram page quickly, it isn’t immediately apparent that he’s a brain tumor survivor. What you’ll notice immediately is that he’s strong. The marine veteran and Indiana native’s posts are largely dedicated to strength training, weight lifting recovery methods, protein-filled meals, and adorable pictures of his kids, Owen and Anna. The initial impression from the internet is that Jon can probably lift an operating table, not that he’d been on one five years ago having a craniotomy performed to remove a tumor.

Melinda Greathouse, a sunny 36-year-old resident of Charleston, West Virginia, was fourteen weeks into recovery from quintuple bypass surgery following a widow-maker heart attack when her balance issues and tinnitus started to worsen, and she was sent for a hearing test. An MRI was ordered shortly after by her ENT doctor, and the results were shocking: she had a benign brain tumor. It was an Acoustic Neuroma; a noncancerous tumor on the eighth cranial nerve.  

Lindsey Harder is a 29-year-old Bostonian who was diagnosed with stage three anaplastic astrocytoma in the left side of her brain in June 2019. Anaplastic astrocytoma is a rare malignant brain tumor that develops from brain cells called astrocytes. Anaplastic astrocytoma accounts for about 1-2% of all brain tumors.