During the summer of 2024, 7-year-old Conor Baublitz of Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, began having severe headaches. On the same day he and his family were to go to an amusement park, Conor got another extremely painful headache.

“We asked if he wanted medicine and to keep going or head to the hospital — he chose the hospital,” his mother, Lindsay Baublitz recalls. “That moment, we knew something was seriously wrong.”

After a series of tests over a few weeks, including an MRI, Conor’s neurologist called to share the upsetting news that Conor had a brain tumor and needed to go to Johns Hopkins Children’s Center that night for further treatment.

“My heart dropped,” Lindsay says.

At the Children’s Center, Conor and his family met Alan Cohen, M.D., director of pediatric neurosurgery. Further imaging confirmed that Conor had a life-threatening tumor the size of a lemon growing on his brain, and he needed emergency surgery. During the eight-hour procedure, Cohen successfully removed the tumor, and Conor was able to leave the hospital that week. He told his family he finally felt “normal” — there had always been a feeling of pressure in the back of his head, and it was now gone.

Follow-up testing showed that Conor had a benign pilocytic astrocytoma, a slow-growing type of brain tumor, which could have caused devastating complications due to its size. Several months later, his family says Conor is thriving and enjoying playing the drums, baseball and basketball.

“Johns Hopkins saved our son’s life, and throughout it all, we knew we had the strongest team supporting us every step of the way,” Lindsay says.