Yaron Butterfield

Vancouver

The last thing Yaron Butterfield remembers of the moment that changed his life is not being able to speak.

At the age of 29, at what felt like the height of his career in genome research, he had an unexplainable headache and happened to be surrounded by his family — rare for a day that wasn’t a holiday — when he had the seizure nearly 13 years ago.

Butterfield, a cancer researcher, is a rare long-term survivor of glioblastoma multiforme.

His cancer was too deep for surgery, but chemotherapy and radiation kept it at bay and he took the following year to do “all sorts of crazy things.”

He met someone, fell in love, married and had a daughter, Hana, who is now 8.

He ran a marathon in Iceland and participated in an unsuccessful clinical trial. After three years, he went back to work at the B.C. Cancer Agency, where he sequences genes. He hasn’t yet studied his own cancer.

“I’ve been very lucky,” he says. But he questions it and even took it up with a rabbi once, who suggested everything he’s experienced has a purpose.

“I want to help others,” Butterfield says. He meets with other glioblastoma patients once a month and is writing a book about his experience. He hopes it will inspire others.

Many diseases are incurable, he says. He’s learned to live with that. Once he’d recovered from the news of his diagnosis, he had a moment of clarity. “I had this feeling that if I died tomorrow, I’m not scared. The flip side is there’s so much I wanted to do.”

But he says he takes a little more time now to greet the cashier at the grocery store, to help people, to stop when he’s tired.

He is a long-term survivor and meets with glioblastoma patients every month, with the aim of giving them hope they too can stave off the cancer longer than predicted.