Pittsburgh-area teacher returns to classroom after battle with brain cancer

A Pittsburgh-area fifth-grade teacher is back in her classroom three years after a health emergency threatened to end both her career and her life.

The young teacher is now turning her shocking brain cancer diagnosis into a purpose. Emily Di Cocco said she wakes up every day with a new appreciation for what that day can hold.

She's a fifth-grade teacher at Canon-McMillan, back in front of the same classroom cancer forced her out of three years ago on a seemingly normal night.

"I went downstairs, was sitting on my couch, looking up, watching the news, actually, reading the headline," she said. "And I look, and all of a sudden, all of the letters were mixed up and jumbled."

She sat there, seven months postpartum on maternity leave, with her little boy Eamon asleep upstairs. 

But before she could even tell her husband something was wrong, "Next thing I wake up, I was on the floor, and I was surrounded by EMT. I was surrounded by police officers. The red and blue lights were shining into my house, and I had no idea what had happened. Here I had had a grand mal seizure."

It was her first and only warning sign. Within days, doctors at Allegheny Health Network's Neuroscience Institute found a cancerous tumor in her brain.

"Before I knew it, I was shown an iPad. I saw a scan of my brain, picture of my brain, never saw my brain before, was like, 'Oh, that's my brain,' and there was a speck," she said.

She said it was "an absolute shock" when she was diagnosed with a grade 3 astrocytoma cancerous tumor. She'd need surgery and then chemotherapy and radiation. 

"I don't think it's very common to meet someone like Emily who is obviously very inspirational and the whole time was just thinking, 'how am I going to get back to being a mom, how am I going to get back to work?'" said neurosurgeon Alex Whiting with Allegheny Health Network. 

Whiting and neuro-oncologist Dr. John Herbst worked to make that happen.  

"This was a tumor very near some very important parts of her brain," Whiting said. "We were able to do what we consider very minimally invasive surgery and kind of sneak in, in a way, get past some of the important parts of her brain, leave all those alone, and just take out the tumor."

And because her type of tumor is hormonally sensitive, doctors say it's possible her little boy made this hidden tumor reveal itself. 

"We can see they grow more rapidly during pregnancy," Herbst said. "It's hard to say for sure, but it's possible that she could have symptoms because of the pregnancy that she would have otherwise had later."

Di Cocco turned the grueling year of treatments into family outings, but ringing the bell didn't bring back everything lost.

"I knew at that point I couldn't return to the classroom, which was devastating to me," she said. 

But in December of last year, a text from her former principal, Mr. Bob Kleinhans, changed everything. 

"Hey, what are the chances that you would want to come back to teaching?" Di Cocco recalled. 

Di Cocco said yes, and now this busy mom is teaching again, and inspiring others with social media videos, helping people navigate a cancer diagnosis. 

"I was sharing my entire journey, the highs and the lows and the frustrations and connected with people and ended up growing my account to 24,000 people," Di Cocco said. 

And some of her biggest supporters came right from her classroom. 

"This is what gives me goosebumps," Di Cocco said. "The students that I was once cheering on and supporting found me on social media now and were commenting on my videos now in high school or in college, cheering me on, just encouraging me, and so when I got this text from Mr. Kleinhans, I was like 'this is a sign, I'm being called back here' and now I'm here today."

Di Cocco is now a brain cancer advocate and a cancer patient ambassador at Allegheny Health Network, working with recently diagnosed patients.

Doctors removed all evidence of Di Cocco's tumor, but she will forever undergo regular scans. Doctors tell her the cancer will return, but she's living her life to the fullest until then. She credits her son Eamon with saving her life.