Courtesy photo Steve Adams gets a hug from the mascot of his team that particpates in the Boston area version of the National Brain Tumor Society run and walk fundraiser.

HUDSON – As the occasional periods of light-headedness, often accompanied by a “weird smell,” gradually turned to episodes of dizziness and worsening headaches, Steve Adams Jr. decided it was time he found space in his busy schedule for a visit to the doctor.

Could the symptoms be related to his newly-prescribed psoriasis medication? he wondered. But the first doctor Adams saw had a different theory: the then-31-year-old husband and father had diabetes.

The doctor set him up with the supplies he needed to monitor his blood sugar and prescribed meds. But the dizziness and weird smells continued.

Doctor number two suggested Adams “is a very anxious person,” and told him that his symptoms are “what happens when you’re an anxious person all the time,” Adams said.

Soon, things went from bad to worse. Hurting, freaked out over the unknown and growing desperate, Adams began wondering why, given the nature of his symptoms, none of the doctors he saw suggested he undergo a brain scan.

Courtesy photo Steve and Gillian Adams, with daughter Rachel and son Chase, at their Hudson home.

“I ended up advocating for an MRI,” Adams said. He got his wish, and about a week later he climbed onto the scanner’s transport table for the procedure.

What happened next set into motion an almost surreal whirlwind of events for Adams, his wife Gillian and their then-preteen daughter Rachel. Still yet to join the family was Chase, who is now an active 1-year-old.

The Adamses recalled in a phone interview last week the harrowing journey that followed the diagnosis they had at once sought and dreaded for so long: A giant brain tumor was at the root of Steve’s symptoms.

Specifically, he has a type of Stage 4 brain cancer known as glioblastoma, or GBM, a particularly insidious, highly-aggressive form of brain cancer that typically claims the vast majority of patients’ lives within just 18-24 months of diagnosis.

But Steve Adams isn’t a typical patient by any stretch, as evidenced in his willingness to take up arms and engage in battle for as long as it takes to conquer the enemy.

Courtesy photo Steve and Gillian Adams are in the front center of this group photo of his ever-growing team of walkers, who participate each year in the Boston version of the National Brain Tumor Society's fundraiser walk.

“I am a fighter, and nothing will take me down,” is how Adams introduces himself in sharing his story on www.braintumor.org, the Website for the National Brain Tumor Society.

Steve and Gillian Adams talked about their journey last Wednesday, which was July 22 – the date the society chose for its annual observance of Glioblastoma Awareness Day.

The Adamses are affiliated with the society’s Boston area chapter, which is based in Newton, Massachusetts. The COVID-19 pandemic limited this year’s second annual observance to virtual events, in which patients and their families – or in some cases, their survivors – participated online.

It was a particularly “bad migrane” that prompted Adams to make that call to the doctor, which now seems like forever ago, he and his wife said.

“He was really busy when those first symptoms started, we both were,” she said, referring to the demands of their respective careers, and raising Rachel, while also actively house-hunting. That would eventually lead to them purchasing their Hudson condo; then along came Chase.

Courtesy photo Steve and Gillian Adams, with daughter Rachel and son Chase, in the yard of their Hudson home.

Steve Adams recalls almost matter-of-factly, given the gravity of the situation, the series of events that began

just two minutes into that MRI at Lowell General Hospital.

“They stopped (the scan) and pulled me out,” he said. Someone promptly told him to take a seat, and a few minutes later someone else asked him for his wife’s cellphone number.

When the person dialed her number, then disappeared into another room to talk, Adams was no longer concerned; he was downright panicky.

What he heard next only intensified that panic. “They gave me the phone, I said ‘hello,’ and all I heard was her bawling her eyes out.”

It’s no wonder Gillian was sobbing; she was told the scan, just two minutes in, showed “some type of mass” that they were “pretty sure was solid, rather than liquid,” her husband said.

“I asked what was going on, but she would not tell me. All she said was she would meet me in Boston,” Adams said.

He said he still “had no clue what was going on” when he was wheeled from an ambulance into the emergency department at Tufts Medical Center.

One thing Adams was sure of, however, was that he was getting plenty of attention from ED personnel.

“They were all waiting for me,” he said, recalling their rather odd, but perhaps somewhat comforting, comments along the lines of “how shocked they were at how good I looked,” he said. Some even “thought they may have had the wrong person,” he added with a laugh.

Adams was next wheeled into another room, where “my whole family was present … everyone was crying,” he said, recalling being incredulous that he had yet to be clued in as to what was wrong, and especially, what doctors had in store for him.

Adams would learn the details once he and his family were all in the same room. The news wasn’t good, and it explained why everyone was crying.

“They told me I would be having a massive surgery,” he said, adding that he “was so scared” he wouldn’t see his family and friends again, he grabbed Gillian’s hand “and would not let go.”

The operation lasted 14 hours. When he woke up, “I was still a little loopy,” he said. When “it all finally hit me” hours later, he was first “stunned,” then “mad because doctors had no clue that those things happening to me was brain cancer,” Adams said, referring to his initial doctors’ visits and their diagnoses.

While surgeons weren’t able to get at some pieces of the tumor to remove them, the upside is that the type of cancer is “very responsive to treatment,” and the chemotherapy and radiation treatments he has been undergoing not only stopped it from spreading, they are causing the tumor to shrink as well.

“All things considered, he’s doing very well,” Gillian said, adding that doctors have said her husband’s case doesn’t fit the usual statistics.

What Adams calls his “cancer team” – friends, family members and associates who take part in fundraisers such as the Tumor Society’s walkathons – began assembling last year and “just keeps growing and growing,” he said.

The team name? “SexySteveStrong,” he says with a laugh. In his story on the society’s Website, Adams explains where it came from.

“When I woke up from surgery and the nurse asked me my name, I said, ‘sexy Steve,’ and now I am strong, because of what I am going through.”

The team colors are black and gold “because I’m the biggest Bruins fan you will meet,” Adams wrote, adding that his “whole team keeps me strong and motivated to win the big one, (by) fighting this terrible disease I have.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.