Peter Eigner back to being a youngster after beating cancer

Peter Eigner is back to being a typical youngster.
The 8-year-old Bowling Green resident is full of energy, happy and active in a variety of sports, his
favorites being hockey and baseball.
He received all As on his recent report card from St. Aloysius School where he’s in the third grade.
But just over four years ago, the son of Ty and Erika Eigner was fighting for his life after he was
diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a cancer that affects nerve tissue of the adrenal glands. The glands are
located just above the kidney and in the upper abdomen.
Peter Eigner is healthy again after seven rounds of chemotherapy, 15 rounds of radiation, three surgeries
and a full bone marrow transplant in the year after he was diagnosed Aug. 17, 2006.
“I’m good now,” said Peter, who is 4-foot-7, 70 pounds.
“We’re incredibly thankful for how he is doing now,” said Ty Eigner, who is in first season as an
assistant coach for the Falcon hockey team. “Everything they told us they hoped would happen, happened.
Getting the positive results along the way really, really helped. He’s beaten it. If you didn’t know he
had been through it, you’d never be able to tell he went through it.”
Last fall during his most recent checkup, the Eigners learned Peter remained NED — No Evidence of
Disease. When he reaches five years NED, which is two years from now, he will switch to the long-term
effects team for care. That will involve neurology, endocrinology and pulmonary.
“We didn’t have to go through this alone,” Erika Eigner said. She and Ty are from Apple Valley, Minn.,
located just south of the Twin Cities.
“We had great support from both families, the community of Brainerd (Minn. where they lived at the time)
and the hockey community. We didn’t have to go through this alone. Keeping a positive attitude was huge.
Our faith was huge. The amount of support we had, there’s no way you could go through it yourself. This
just shows you that every day is a gift.”
The Eigners also have two daughters, Ellie, age 6; and Kate, age 5.
“It just keeps such a grip on you,” Ty Eigner said. “When I think back, it was a year of really intensive
treatments. We were at the hospital more than we were at home. It feels like it’s been years, even
though it’s been a relatively short period of time.”
Ty and Erika Eigner suspected something was wrong with their son in August 2006 when he became lethargic
and started to suffer frequent headaches and stomachaches. Even his school teachers noticed Peter
“wasn’t his normal self,” Erika Eigner said.
So the Eigners took Peter to his pediatrician in Brainerd, Minn., located 21?2 hours north of
Minneapolis. Ty Eigner was the head hockey coach at Brainerd High School at the time.
The pediatrician immediately knew something was seriously wrong and ordered X-rays. The X-rays showed a
grapefruit sized tumor and that night, the Eigners drove to the University of Minnesota Hospital for
more tests. After a week of tests, they learned Peter had stage 4, Neuroblastoma.
“You try to prepare yourself for cancer, but it’s hard because you want the best for your kids and you
want them to be healthy,” Ty Eigner said. “Every test came back with the wrong answer.”
“I just wanted the headaches and stomachaches to stop,” Peter said.
Neuroblastoma usually affects boys age 3-5, and has a long-term survival rate of one in three. The cancer
eventually spread to his bone morrow and lymph nodes.
The cancer isn’t common. Only 650 cases are diagnosed in the United States each year.
“They didn’t give us a number in terms of his chances for survival,” Ty Eigner said. “They said the odds
were not in our favor, but I just wanted to know if there was a chance and the doctor said there was.”

Peter had his first round of chemo before he left the hospital. The chemo was done every 21 days. With
the exception of the usual loss of hair and getting sick, he responded well to all of his treatments,
although his lungs once filled up with fluid which caused him not to be able to breath. As a result, he
was in a medically-induced coma for 18 days.
Doctors also found a spot on his liver at one point, but that was found not to be cancerous.
In addition to the treatments at the University of Minnesota Hospital, he went to the Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City for treatments every three months.
Those New York treatments ended in October. And with the Eigner’s move to Bowling Green, Peter’s checkups
are at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. His checkups are now every six months, instead of
every three months.
“To see him go through that was really hard,” Erika Eigner said. “He was so brave. We’re really proud of
him.”
Because of Peter’s cancer, the Eigners founded the Check Foundation which stands for Coaches Helping
Eliminate Cancer in Kids.
The Minnesota-based organization provides financial aid to families with children fighting pediatric
cancer and to fund Neuroblastoma research.