MIAMI -- Mike Hugo, a 37-year-old Wellington, Florida, resident, has two young daughters, a wife, and a rare form of brain cancer.

Hugo spends his days in South Florida writing milestone birthday cards to his daughters, recording a song for their weddings, and benefiting from advancements in medical technology that give him a better quality of life and potentially longer to live.

Although Hugo’s cancer is aggressive, he wants to defeat the odds.

A medical device sales manager, Hugo had just left a work meeting in April 2022 when he had a seizure while driving home and crashed his car. At the hospital, scans revealed a brain tumor.

Within days, the young father had surgery to remove the tumor by University of Miami doctors who he knew through his job and trusted to keep the side effects to a minimum. “I wanted to be myself to the best of my ability when I woke up,” Hugo said.

Although the surgeons removed Hugo’s tumor successfully, he was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma, a fast growing, aggressive form of brain cancer. While the disease can affect people any age, glioblastoma is more common in older adults. The average age of diagnosis is 64.

“It’s very rare to get it so young,” Hugo said.

The average glioblastoma survival time is 12 to 18 months — only 25% of patients survive more than one year, and only 5% of patients survive more than five years. About 12,000 people a year in the United States are diagnosed with the disease.

Hugo wants to increase his odds.

Three weeks after Hugo’s surgery, the tumor grew back, although much smaller and in the area where he was having radiation. Currently, the young father is undergoing chemotherapy.

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