At the Bedside: UTHealth Houston gives Waco man hope and recovery after life-changing brain tumor diagnosis

Karl “Rock” McNair, now 52, had been plagued by worsening headaches for over a decade by the time he underwent a CT scan in April 2024.

The scan, ordered by his doctor in Waco, Texas, revealed that Rock had a brain tumor. He was referred to a specialist for further evaluation. But not even a week later, on the night of his wife’s 50th birthday party, the tumor started causing more than headaches. 

“He was forgetful, he would bump into walls, he was having a hard time remembering things,” his wife, Heather McNair, said. “I could just tell that something was way off with him.” 

Soon after, Rock visited a Dallas-area neuro-oncologist who gave him a devastating diagnosis: Rock had a glioblastoma on the left side of his brain, a rare and aggressive cancerous tumor. After brain surgery and a few rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, Dallas doctors said they had done all they could, and estimated that he would live at most five more months. 

“I just didn’t want to accept it,” Rock recalls. 

Heather says her first thought was, “We better start making memories.” But she says she also remembers thinking, “There has to be something else we can do.” 

On the advice of their relatives, the couple made the trip to Houston to see Nitin Tandon, MD, a professor and neurosurgeon at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

By the time Rock saw Tandon in the summer of 2024, his tumor had already recurred. 

Glioblastomas typically don’t respond well to radiation or chemotherapy. The median survival rate after initial diagnosis is only about a year among people in the U.S. who don’t participate in clinical trials, according to Tandon. But Tandon was willing to reoperate on Rock’s tumor, which isn’t very common for glioblastoma patients. 

“We're sort of more optimistic and try to do whatever we can to help people with this problem,” said Tandon, who is also the co-director of the Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies. “I was willing to re-operate on him and give him the best possible odds for trying to beat this.”

Tandon also gave the McNairs another ray of hope: Rock was enrolled in a dendritic cell vaccine trial at UTHealth Houston to help fight his cancer. Dendritic cell vaccines are made by extracting proteins from a patient’s tumor and combining them with mRNA, which is then injected back into the patient’s lymph nodes. Rock is one of 20 patients at UTHealth Houston who participated in phase 1 of the trial, which was conducted in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine. 

Twenty months after his initial diagnosis, Rock continues to respond well, visiting UTHealth Houston every two months to monitor his tumor with Jay-Jiguang Zhu, MD, PhD, professor and neurologist at McGovern Medical School. 

Today, Heather says that the day of Rock’s surgery with Tandon in August 2024 “was the best day of our lives.”

“He's a year and a half out from his recurrence, which is really excellent,” said Tandon, who is the Nancy, Clive and Pierce Runnells Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience of the Vivian L. Smith Center for Neurologic Research and the BCMS Distinguished Professor in Neurological Disorders and Neurosurgery at McGovern Medical School.

But Rock’s adjustment to life after his surgery was still “a huge transition,” Heather says. 

Rock lost some peripheral vision in his right side, has issues with short-term memory, and can no longer drive or continue his real estate work at Baylor University. 

Heather works full time as an elementary school math teacher, and while Rock doesn’t require round-the-clock care, he has a village of supporters, from former coworkers to family and members of their church. Rock stays at home full time, taking care of chores around the house, washing their cars and even mowing the lawn. 

“I feel blessed that the second surgery has kept me strong and stable,” Rock said. "I want to help other people who are going through similar issues. The key is to be close with God, family, and have a great support system.” 

Rock and Heather celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in September and Rock’s 52nd birthday two months later, milestones they were once told were unlikely. 

Heather and Rock say that their story highlights the importance of getting a second opinion, and of living your life to the fullest. 

“Every day is a great day. That’s what his motto is now,” Heather said.