IRONMAN® Triathlete Returns to Competition After Brain Tumor

In 2018, Michael Atkinson completed an IRONMAN® triathlon competition in Brazil with a personal record time of 11 hours and 10 minutes. He was ecstatic about his time and finished feeling healthy after spending nearly half a day swimming, cycling and running. 

But when Atkinson returned home to South Florida, something felt off. Atkinson described it as an out-of-body experience.

“I’m sitting at my desk and my arm feels like it’s twice as long,” he says. “It was like nothing I’d felt before.”

He thought it was dehydration. He went to a hospital and was told it might’ve been a mini-stroke. But his wife wasn’t convinced and arranged an appointment with a neurologist who found the problem. Atkinson had a brain tumor the size of a grape.

IRONMAN training and brain tumor progression

That diagnosis started an almost five-year-long process of doctor appointments and MRI scans that ultimately led him to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of UHealth—the University of Miami Health System. There, a neurosurgeon removed his tumor during an intricate, complex surgery, a neuro-oncologist put him on an experimental medication to keep the tumor from coming back, and Atkinson walked away ready to resume his training.

“I still have a goal of racing an IRONMAN on every continent where they have them in the world and there’s only one more continent I need to do to achieve that goal, Asia,” says Atkinson, 51, the vice president of operations at CompHealth in Fort Lauderdale. 

Reaching that point wasn’t easy. When Atkinson first learned of his tumor, the neurologist advised he would eventually need surgery, but not yet. Atkinson needed to continue monitoring it and getting an MRI every three months to track its growth. He did, all the while continuing to compete in IRONMAN races and chasing another of his goals, the IRONMAN World Championship in Hawaii.

By 2023, the tumor had grown to the size of a golf ball and doctors said it was time to remove it. Atkinson and his wife, Nicki, had searched for surgeons and second opinions from Texas to Tennessee. That search led them to a woman who had a similar surgery and referred them to one surgeon in particular. 

“She said, ‘There’s God and there’s Dr. Morcos,’” Michael Atkinson says, referring to Jacques Morcos, M.D., FAANS, who was the co-chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine at the time. “We immediately knew this was the right place.”

Atkinson met with Dr. Morcos and they agreed on a plan. Dr. Morcos allowed Atkinson to compete in one more IRONMAN in Texas as long as he promised to come back for the surgery. He did, and on May 22, 2023, Dr. Morcos successfully removed 98% of the tumor.

As Atkinson slowly recovered, he needed to transition to some form of therapy to keep the tumor from growing back. He feared the standard chemotherapy and radiation, but then he was introduced to another specialist at Sylvester, Macarena de la Fuente, M.D., chief of Sylvester’s Neuro-oncology Division and associate professor of neuro-oncology at the Miller School.

IDH inhibitors to slow tumor growth

When she arrived at Sylvester 11 years ago, Dr. de la Fuente and her team participated in the first human trial of an experimental drug (known as an IDH inhibitor) that slows the growth of certain kinds of brain tumors without chemotherapy or radiation.

“After over 10 years of research and multiple clinical trials, one of these drugs is available for patients with IDH mutant gliomas. This is a practice changer,” Dr. de la Fuente says, whose research helped get the drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

She put Atkinson on the drug and it worked.

“It’s a level of joy that is difficult to describe,” she says. “You want them to be able to attend the graduation of their kids, to be there for the wedding or make the IRONMAN. It’s those things that are important in life.” 

Atkinson is back. In 2024, he finished an IRONMAN competition in Puerto Rico and the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship.

“I was smiling while I was swimming,” he says. “As close to Heaven as you can get in this world.”

Next up is the San Francisco marathon with his wife this year and, then, IRONMAN Asia.  

And now, during Brain Cancer Awareness Month, he wants others to know that medical breakthroughs are making cancer recovery easier to bear. Had doctors operated on him in 2018 when they first discovered his tumor, he likely would have undergone chemotherapy or radiation and suffered from their grueling side effects. But thanks to the research of Dr. de la Fuente and others at UM and around the world, he was able to keep his cancer from returning with a simple medication that only dehydrates him.

“That was a blessing,” he says.

Written by Alan Gomez, a contributor for UHealth’s news service.

Tags: brain tumor, cancer, Dr. Macarena De La Fuente, neurological surgery, Sylvester Brain Tumor Institute, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center