
DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709080079

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Correspondent Jane Harper researched and wrote this report. 

                                            LENGTH:   65 lines

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...FORMER VIRGINIAN-PILOT REPORTER GREG RAVER-LAMPMAN?

In May 1992, Virginian-Pilot reporter Greg Raver-Lampman learned he had a brain tumor the size of an egg. When doctors removed it, they found the tumor to be malignant - and warned him his chances of long-term survival were small. Ever the journalist, Raver-Lampman wrote about the experience for Pilot readers.

It has been five years since doctors removed the tumor from Raver-Lampman's brain. And so far the cancer has not returned.

``It's really amazing,'' Raver-Lampman said during a recent phone conversation from his home in Norfolk. ``There's been no recurrence at all, and the chances of that happening at this point are really, really small.''

Although his doctors have told him the real milestone will be if he remains cancer-free for 10 years, the fact that he has made it this far is, he says, miraculous. In fact, Raver-Lampman has been told that only 1 or 2 percent of people with cases like his make it this far.

In May, Raver-Lampman, his wife, Sharon, and their daughter, Emmy, who just turned 9 on Friday, held a big party to celebrate his five-year anniversary of being cancer-free. About 80 of their friends attended.

``I called it my rebirth party.''

These days, his overall health is excellent. He has even regained most of his hair. ``Now it just looks like it's normally balding,'' he said.

``I feel so thankful because so many people who have gone through what I have tend to have residual effects. I don't have anything wrong with me.''

Raver-Lampman took a leave of absence from his job at The Pilot after his diagnosis in 1992 that became permanent. He began freelance writing to keep his mind off his illness and continues to do so.

He has written four books, two of which are scheduled to be released next year, and has begun writing a fifth. He also writes free-lance articles for publications such as Washingtonian magazine and Reader's Digest, as well as travel stories. His wife continues to teach special education at Old Dominion University.

Raver-Lampman expanded the three-part series he wrote for The Pilot about his cancer experience into a book titled ``Magic and Loss.'' It was excerpted in Reader's Digest in December 1994 and recently was printed in German.

Raver-Lampman and his family also have continued to travel extensively, as they did before his illness. They spent about nine months in the Czech Republic in the year after his diagnosis. His wife taught at a university there, while he worked on a book and Emmy attended school.

They've also traveled to Syria, driven across America, taken a cruise to Alaska and have visited Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Caribbean. About the only thing bothering Raver-Lampman these days is that he has to think about his career and his future in the long term.

``It's the first time I've been allowed to look ahead more than a year or two at a time. Now I can make plans for 10, 20, 30, maybe even 40 years from now. That's a little troubling sometimes.''

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Harper. ILLUSTRATION: Greg Raver-Lampman has been free of cancer since

doctors removed the malignant tumor from his brain five years ago.

Since he left The Virginian-Pilot, he has written four books, two of

which are due to be released next year. Raver-Lampman and his family

continue to travel extensively.