About Us

My Name is Chad Vannucci, I am a stage 3 brain cancer survivor.  The image on the left was the baseball size tumor logged in my brain. In July 2005, I was competing in a triathlon, in LakeTahoe, with my cousins and my uncle.  

After the swim portion of the race, while putting on my biking shoes, getting  ready to head out on the bike, my hands were shaking uncontrollably and I was extremely dizzy, but I shook it off. 

We were to climb 1000ft and then turn around and come back down the hill, and into the transition area, shed the biking shoes for running shoes.  But, before we could continue into the transition, each biker had to stop and put one foot down before proceeding, due to the steep incline of the road.

When I came down and set my foot down, I fell off my bike to the ground, because of the dizziness I had been experiencing.  Long story short, I finished the race.  

 

 

 

Three weeks after the Tahoe triathlon, I was experiencing devastating headaches.  Now, I had been dealing with headaches for years, and would take four advil, and wash them down with a pepsi, which gave temporary relief.  However, I had not experienced the type of headaches I was now facing.  

After three weeks I couldn’t take it anymore and finally called the doctor, and later that day, after requesting a cat scan…after a little coercion on my part, about an hour later I received a phone call from that same doctor.  He said he thought I had a cyst on my brain and I needed to come in for an MRI immediately.  

Two days later I had my first brain surgery in hopes to remove the tumor, which you can see the image on the left. But because of the location of it, the surgeons were unable to remove all of it. Four months later, I had a second brain surgery, because of the speed of the growth of the tumor.

However, I didn’t find out it was cancerous until somewhere between the two surgeries, for some reason, there was a delay in receiving that information.

The tumor was a little bigger than the size of a baseball, and I was told I had a 25% chance of living 5 years. It was at the moment I decided to take matters into my own hands, screw statistics…I was mad, how dare they tell me I had a 25% chance to live 5 years.  

I was now on a mission to prove them wrong.  After a second brain surgery, radiation, and chemo, and the adoption of a plant based lifestyle, today, the baseball size tumor, along with the scar tissue is completely gone, which I have been told is rare.

Now, It is my hope to help others and inspire others to never give up…CANCER is not a death sentence! I hope you find the information on my site to be helpful, if so, please share it with anyone you feel may benefit.