Doctors discovered Jeff's brain tumor, and that due to its location, deemed it inoperable.
/ Courtesy: Jeff Peplinski
LEELANAU CO. -- It's not often that someone finds life changing hope in a poison, but's its not often you find someone as desperate as Jeff Peplinski.
The 33 year old Leelanau County father was diagnosed with a brain tumor last October. Jeff says, "there is nothing you can do. Its inoperable, chemo won't do anything, they told me to take steroids and make a video for my daughter."
Jeff was given months to live. Doctors warned him that the growing tumor would eventually pinch off the nerves that feed his body. They have, leaving him with numbness in his arms and legs. Jeff says "I have a peg leg and a club arm, my face doesn't move right, my mouth is all screwed up. Its not like I can sit there and feel a big tumor. I kind of feel something in there."
But despite the grim outlook given him by doctors, Jeff isn't giving up. An unorthodox gene therapy may help prolong his life, but if you talk to him long enough, you learn what's really keeping him alive. Jeff explains, "it's my daughter. I just want to see her grow up."
Everyday, for the past 4 months, Jeff Peplinski has woken up to stare down death. For too many days he's felt his body betraying him, he's heard doctors without a solution, he wished he was teeing off, or fishing, feeling the sand between his toes and hoping for more time to be here for those closest to him.
