Teacher relearns how to walk after surgery to remove tumor in his spinal cord

St. LOUIS (KMOV/Gray News) - A Missouri teacher, husband and father is on the road to recovery after a life-changing diagnosis and risky surgery.

For about five weeks starting in September, Steve Loutzenhiser, a teacher at Fort Zumwalt East High School, was in pain trying to sleep, and it wasn’t getting better.

“I felt like I was getting stabbed in the back between my shoulder blades,” he told KMOV.

Since the pain was impacting his daily life, Steve Loutzenhiser went for an MRI and found out, at only 41 years old, he had a tumor in his spinal cord that could not be easily removed.

His wife, Jackie Loutzenhiser, says the diagnosis was devastating and something the family of five never expected.

“When one of the doctors said we didn’t know what we could do for him, it was like, ‘I can’t do this without him,‘” Jackie Loutzenhiser said. “Our family doesn’t work without him. It was a lot of what is our family going to look like 10 years down the road, if he’s paralyzed or not here.”

Multiple doctors told Steve Loutzenhiser they would not operate on him before Dr. Camilo Molina, a neurosurgeon at St. Louis’ Washington University, agreed to perform the extremely complicated surgery to remove his tumor.

“Literally growing within his spinal cord. It’s about 3 centimeters in length and about 2 centimeters in depth, so that’s essentially the entire diameter of his spinal cord,” Molina said.

The tumor could eventually cause paralysis, weakness, loss of balance and other symptoms, according to Molina.

“These tumors are extremely risky because they actually grow within the spinal cord,” Molina said. “The spinal cord, unlike the brain, is what we call completely eloquent, meaning every piece of tissue that is in there has a critical function. There is no redundancy. It’s an area we enter with extreme caution because anything resected that is not the tumor will result in a permanent deficit, small or big.”

By early January, Steve Loutzenhiser had the surgery to remove the tumor. Afterward, he spent more than a week in the hospital and nearly two weeks in rehab relearning how to walk.

“At first, I couldn’t get out of bed, and then, I could walk 10 feet. Then, I could walk 50 feet. I remember when I earned my blue band at the rehab facility, which meant I could walk around the room with my walker without needing to call the nurses, that was a victory,” Steve Loutzenhiser said.

There have been a lot of small victories for the father of three in the month since his surgery. He says his children have provided motivation for him to keep getting better.

“Four months turnaround of you have a tumor, we don’t know what we can do about it, second opinion, we’re gonna take it out, we took it out, you can’t walk, you walked in here,” Steve Loutzenhiser said.

While at rehab, Steve Loutzenhiser learned he was being named his high school’s Teacher of the Year.

“I saw a missed call from my boss... and I just thought they were checking in, so I called during a break. She said, ‘Do you want Steve or Steven on your Teacher of the Year award?’ It was emotional. It still is. It’s been a journey,” Steve Loutzenhiser said.

The teacher, who is also his school’s baseball coach, was able to walk across the auditorium in front of his students to get his award, a major goal achieved.

He says another goal is being able to be in the dugout with the baseball team this season.

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