My father experienced total blindness and severe headaches days before surgery. During the 1950's another inoperable brain tumor was found at the stem of his brain. Our understanding at the time was that the second tumor may have been caused by not fully removing the first. Now that we know more about VHL, it is more probable that this was a second tumor. VHL tumors of the brain do not spread from one location to another.
Doctors now believe that each one grows from a single defective gene.
Complications from the second tumor caused my father's death at the age of 52 in 1967. Rudy was the father of five children, four daughters and a son. My oldest sister and younger brother have yet to be tested.1 Tests on my younger sister have proved negative. Mary, the second child, died of a brain tumor at age 22 in 1962. Mary was pregnant with her fourth child in four years.