Phoenix nurse on front lines of virus pandemic now fighting brain cancer

PHOENIX — After traveling to New York in April to help on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, a former firefighter turned emergency room nurse living in Phoenix is now in a life-threatening battle of his own.

Ian Youngblood spent three months in New York helping treat COVID-19 patients in what at the time was the nation’s epicenter of the pandemic. But during his last week there, he started getting headaches, nausea and vomiting.

“I was taken to the ER,” he said. “That’s where they found a mass in my head and ended up diagnosing me with brain cancer.”

Doctors at White Plains Hospital told him he had Grade IV Glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive brain cancer. It was a shocking diagnosis for someone his age.

“It just kind of hits you,” he said. “You don’t really expect at age 29 to be diagnosed with something that could potentially take your life.”

He found out on Father’s Day and the next day had surgery to remove 80 to 90 percent of the tumor.

“There’s a nice zipper – I’m calling it a zipper – that goes from pretty much ear to ear,” he said, describing what’s left from his surgery.

Youngblood is now back home in Phoenix. He’s about to start chemotherapy and radiation at Barrow Neurological Institute at the end of this week. The prognosis according to doctors is looking good given his age and health.

“They’re very optimistic that I will be able to fight this and that I have a very good chance of living a good long life,” he said, adding that “they’re confident that the treatment plan is going to work really well.”

Even as he’s getting ready to start his treatment, he’s looking into getting clearance letters so he can go back to treating COVID-19 patients — this time in Arizona where coronavirus cases and deaths began to spike several weeks ago.

“I feel bad that I left for New York for so long,” he said. “I kind of feel like I neglected a lot of the organizations that I had worked for before leaving, and so I just want to be back out there helping as much as I can.”

Youngblood did not have health insurance when his brain cancer was discovered, so his friends and family have started raising money to help him with hospital bills through GoFundMe.

They’ve already raised about $230,000 as of Monday afternoon. Their goal is to raise $550,0000.

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