Not too long ago, sophomore Noah Houck, experienced what it is like to defeat a tumor. He started the process off fearless, and for many students this would be something unheard of.

“It was Wednesday January 22nd when my back started hurting so bad that it hurt to sit down,” Noah said. “I told my dad that I needed to go the doctor.”

Later, he would learn that this was not so uncommon.

“It’s actually really common for my age, for the type of tumor I had,” Noah said. “I wasn’t scared because it wasn’t cancerous; they just said that I needed to have surgery.”

Before he knew it, the whole process was over. It was only a matter of a week before he was healing from his surgery, awaiting to return to school.

“I had surgery on January 28th, and at first the pain was still the same because of the surgery, but after a couple of days it was gone completely,” Noah said. “Watching TV helped get my minds of things and I mainly laid on my side.”

Noah would find himself back at school the following Monday with an substantial amount of homework and questions to answer.

“I didn’t really tell a lot of people about this,” Noah said. “I don’t like drawing attention to myself; I don’t want unnecessary attention.”

Because of the number of absences, Noah’s teachers were very understanding.

“I missed a whole week, but my teachers have been very lenient on the amount of time they have given me to make up my work. Even today I’m still working on catching up with my classes,” Noah said.

Luckily for Noah, he and his family  took the appropriate steps to insure his safe and quick recovery.

“If you don’t do the surgery and just do the antibiotics, there’s a big chance that the tumor will come back. But because I got surgery, it most likely won’t come back, and I am thankful for that,” Noah said.