It's a day Damien Feucht will never forget.
"She's a senior in high school, so it's supposed to be a ride into the sunset kind of thing. Oct. 12 came around and changed our lives significantly in that one day," says Damien Feucht, assistant softball coach at Campbellsport High School.
Oct. 12 was the day an MRI told Damien that his daughter Alexis had a brain tumor.
"We saw the mass on my right frontal lobe. They referred us to Children's Hospital, and we went down there that same night, we got admitted," said Alexis, a teenage athlete fighting brain cancer.
Before Alexis knew it, she was undergoing surgery.
"They got 100 percent of the tumor. There was nothing left," says Alexis.
Before the doctors could finish giving a full diagnosis, Alexis had already begun to fight.
"Those are just numbers, they don't mean anything. I'm a completely different person, everyone's diagnosis is different. And some people have beat this, so I'm confident that I am going to be just fine," says Alexis.
With a mentality strong enough to conquer whatever comes her way, Alexis has surpassed all and any expectations her friends, family, or doctors may have set.
"She understood what her diagnosis meant, she understood what was going on but she didn't let it slow her down, because what was the point of that," says Damien.
"November and December I did 32 treatments of radiation, and then January I started chemo," says Alexis.
Alexis played volleyball, graduated in May, and is currently playing softball - all while kicking cancer to the curb.
"The way she responded to surgery, how quickly she was released from the hospital, how she's handled radiation - those things are small wins for us. That's what we have talked about as a family, that we will take every small win because that's what's going to get us the big win in the end," says Damien.
With monthly scans showing the deadly cells disappearing, Alexis does have one grievance with it all.
"That's the only complaint I have, that it's taking a long time and those treatments are not fun," says Alexis.
You can't blame her. No one likes to have their time wasted, and that's exactly what cancer is doing. Because Alexis has already won.
"This whole thing has changed my entire perspective and I've had to grow up a lot, I feel like. So that's one of the things I would tell anyone, don't sweat the small stuff. It's not going to matter, just be you, live your life, and nothing else matters," says Alexis.
Click hereto go to a GoFundMe fundraiser for Alexis.
