Meadows lives fully despite cancer
Published 9:00 am Friday, June 20, 2025
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WEST POINT – At Thursday’s West Point Rotary Club meeting, Daniel Meadows talked about his battle against brain cancer. He’s currently serving as the club’s vice president and has kept up an active lifestyle despite setbacks he had in 2018 and again this year.
On the downside, Meadows has gone through brain surgery twice and all the complications and lifestyle changes due to having brain cancer, but on the plus side he’s had some of the best experiences of his life including having a career with Batson-Cook Construction, getting married, taking some trips of a lifetime and having a fulfilling spiritual life.
Daniel has been dealing with a type of cancer known as Glioblastoma IDH-mutant (HCC). It’s a type of tumor where the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) genes are mutated.
Meadows has dealt with aggressive brain tumors two different times. The first one he had in 2018 was the size of a lemon, and the second, which he had earlier this year, grew to the size of a golf ball. Fortunately, both were removed allowing him to maintain an active lifestyle, but cancer is something he will have to guard against and live with for the rest of his life.
It’s fortunate that it happened in his youth and was detected early. It’s also good that cancer tends to spread upward in the body but not downward. Cancer in the lower portion of a body can move upward, but one in the brain is not likely to move down.
Meadows graduated from Auburn University in 2017 and was working at Batson-Cook. The following year, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Meadows had been having spells of being nauseous and having headaches so he started seeing doctors to find out what was wrong. It got to the point he was having memory loss before an MRI revealed a tumor the size of a lemon. It was not known early on to be cancerous. He first went to the John B. Amos Cancer Center in Columbus and was referred to Emory University in Atlanta, where the first surgery took place.
Leading up to the surgery he was given steroids, which greatly increased his appetite. He ate more than usual and his weight went from 170 to 195.
Meadows is back down to normal size now but still shakes his head at how big he got when he watches videos of himself that appeared on PBS while he was undergoing treatments at Emory.
Surgery is quite an experience. “They try to keep your brain active by asking you to tell them what silhouettes they show you look like,” Meadows said.
“Right after the first surgery, I looked like I had been beaten up,” Meadows said jokingly. “My head was swollen some and a little purple. They sent me home and gave me lots of pain medicine, the kind of stuff that makes you want to do backflips. I hung around the house for several weeks and then went back to the John B. Amos Center.”
The Amos Center is near Piedmont Hospital on the north side of Columbus. Meadows said it’s a fantastic facility in a gorgeous location.
“They put me on chemo,” he said. “I took some pills that would really put you down and wear you out.” He took those pills five times a day for an extended period, but it was something that helped him.
Then came radiation treatments. That went on for several weeks at the end of which the patient is asked to ring a bell. It’s a ceremonial thing marking the end of a long treatment process and something to celebrate. A lot of Meadows’ friends, co-workers and family members were there in support.
“I was optimistic through everything I’d gone through,” he said. “The sad part is looking at the charts of your long-term survival.”
In Meadows’ favor is that he was only 25 when he went through this. He had a much better chance of full recovery than someone older who deals with the same setback.
Meadows was cancer-free for seven years until January of 2025 when he started to have similar symptoms to the ones he experienced in 2018. He returned to the John N. Amos Center and an MRI revealed a mass that was no bigger than a fingernail but it troubled the doctors who saw it. A follow-up MRI a few weeks later showed that the mass had grown to the size of a golf ball. This meant another surgery. Ninety percent of that golf ball-size mass was removed. The remaining ten percent will also need to be removed in another surgery.
One thing Meadows is grateful for is that he hasn’t experienced much intense pain in what he’s dealt with. The worst part may have been when they took some fluid from his spine.
Meadows is well-liked by fellow members of the West Point Rotary. He’s a past president of the club and the current vice president. He frequently leads the opening prayer and has lots of good ideas for upcoming programs.