It was like any other day in November 2025, when Alex McMahon got home and started dinner for his family. His wife, Stefani, was hanging out in their newly finished basement with their two-year-old son, Eric, while their eight-year-old daughter, Lainey, played around the kitchen.  

Lainey picked up a paper towel roll from the counter and held it to her eye like a telescope. But when she closed her left eye and tried to look through it with her right, she realized she couldn’t see anything.  

“She went downstairs and told my wife, ‘I can’t see out of my right eye,’” Alex recalls. “My wife looked at me and we both had that same feeling—‘That’s not good.’”  

Alex had Lainey close her left eye again as he held up his fingers, asking her how many she could see. Her vision through her right eye was completely black.   

 He took her to the hospital and explained to the triage nurse what was happening.  

 

“She had the same look on her face that my wife and I had 30 minutes before,” Alex says. “‘That’s not good.’” 

 Learning Lainey’s diagnosis

 Doctors did several tests before sending Lainey for a late-night CT scan. As Alex and Lainey waited for the results, the triage nurse who had been caring for them walked around the corner in tears.  

“I knew immediately—that’s for us,” Alex says.  

Minutes later, a doctor approached and told Alex that the scan had revealed a two-centimetre mass in Lainey’s brain, near her optic nerves.  

The news shattered him. Lainey asked whether she was going to die, and Alex as

sured her that she wouldn’t. Still, he struggled to hold himself together. 

“I remember her hugging me and telling me that I would be okay,” he says. 

When they returned home in the early hours of the morning, Alex and Stefani put Lainey to bed and sat together on the couch, crying. Based on everything they had heard about brain cancer, their minds immediately went to the worst possible outcome. 

The following day, Lainey and Alex travelled to London, Ont., for more testing. Doctors discovered that the cancer had spread beyond the original tumour, with two lesions in Lainey’s brain and another on her spine. 

“It just kept hammering you,” Alex says. 

Then, after days of uncertainty, Lainey’s medical team offered reassuring news. Lainey had a germinoma, a highly treatable type of brain tumour that responds well to chemotherapy. 

Alex asked the doctor whether Lainey would survive. 

“Absolutely,” she told him. “There’s no doubt about it.” 

“It was a weight off our shoulders,” Alex says. “We knew it wasn’t a good thing, but it was better than what we had thought.” 

Living her new reality

The tumour had pressed against Lainey’s pituitary gland, permanently affecting its ability to produce the hormones her body needs. She would require several medications, with additional hormone treatments to come as she got older. 

Her vision had also been more seriously affected than the family initially realized. She was completely blind in her right eye and had lost about half the vision in her left. 

Lainey spent approximately three weeks in hospital as her care team worked to balance her medications and begin treatment. She went on to complete four rounds of chemotherapy in London, returning home to Windsor between rounds. 

Alex had been bracing himself for how an eight-year-old might respond to everything being asked of her. Instead, Lainey seemed to take each development as it came. 

The first difficult moment was when she learned she had cancer. The next was when Alex told her that chemotherapy would make her hair fall out. 

“But those two moments maybe lasted 10 seconds each,” he says. “She was ready to go. It was just, ‘Okay, what’s the next thing?’” 

When her hair did begin to fall out, she carried on. She painted, coloured and drew picture after picture during treatment, amassing stacks of artwork and continually looking for a new craft to try. 

It was often Alex who had a harder time concealing his emotions from her. 

“Anytime I turned away from her, she knew when I was crying,” he says. “And she always made fun of me about it.” 

“Crybaby,” Lainey calls from the background, as he tells the story. 

“You don’t know what you don’t know”

After chemotherapy, Lainey and Alex travelled to Florida so she could receive proton therapy, a targeted form of radiation that is not currently available in Canada. They would be away for seven weeks, five of which were devoted to treatment. 

There were 10 days between Lainey’s initial consultation and her first session, so Stefani and Eric flew down to meet them. The family spent some of that time at Disney World before treatment began. 

Alex worried that radiation would leave Lainey sick or exhausted. But she felt fine after the first session, and then the next. She eventually completed all 24 treatments without the side effects he had feared. 

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” he says. “You hear all the bad things, so you’re always thinking the worst.” 

Seeing Lainey continue to play, draw and enjoy herself helped the family understand that treatment would not take over every moment of their lives. 

“There are still things you can enjoy,” Alex says. “There’s still hope.” 

Lainey finished treatment in April 2026. Her first post-treatment MRI in June showed no evidence of cancer. A second MRI has since confirmed that she remains clear and stable. 

Her tumour and lesions are gone, and no cancer has been found in her spinal fluid. Some of her vision has returned in both eyes, although she will continue to live with the effects of the tumour and the damage to her pituitary gland. 

For now, her care team will continue monitoring her through MRIs and follow-up appointments. Additional hormone treatments will be introduced over time, including medication to support her growth and development. 

“Now the appointments are starting to dry up,” Alex says. “We only have to go somewhere every three months, which is great.” 

Connecting with Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada 

During Lainey’s treatment, the McMahons connected with Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada through London Children’s Hospital.  

They attended a Disney on Ice event through the Foundation’s BrainWAVE program in January 2026. Alex and Stefani weren’t sure how Eric—who Alex describes as a “tornado of a child”—would manage sitting through the performance.  

“As soon as the show came on, his eyes were glued,” Alex says. “The kids had a blast.” 

In May, Lainey and her family also participated in the Foundation’s What You Don’t See… campaign, sharing some of the less visible realities of a childhood brain tumour diagnosis. 

Their connection with the Foundation, and those they’ve met along Lainey’s journey, have become an important part of life for the McMahons. They remain in contact with several families they met during treatment, including families who were in Florida with them.   

Stefani speaks to some of the parents every day, and the family is planning to visit one of them in New Brunswick next year. 

“Everyone feels sympathy for you, but empathy is different,” Alex says. “They know what you’re feeling.” 

Getting back to the ordinary

Lainey is now nine years old and entering Grade 4. She still loves art and building things, has recently become interested in reading and enjoys playing Roblox. 

And, in many ways, the McMahons sound like any other family. 

Before Alex can begin the interview, he apologizes because his son is yelling at him about yogurt. Later, Lainey listens nearby and waits for the perfect opportunity to call her dad a crybaby. 

After everything the family’s life has revolved around since that November evening—scans, medications, hospital stays and treatment—these ordinary interruptions are welcome ones, and hopefully a return to the normal they once knew.