Hippo Campus frontman Jake Luppen has announced he has a brain tumour and will undergo a six-hour surgery to remove it. The 31-year-old singer and guitarist shared the news on Instagram on Wednesday, October 14, saying he will step back from music for a while to focus on recovery.
Discovery and diagnosis
Luppen explained that a migraine-prompted MRI about seven years ago revealed a 9 mm lesion on his brain near his basal ganglia. This past summer, a routine scan showed possible growth in the lesion, leading to an EEG test. He said the panic symptoms he had been experiencing were actually focal seizures.
His neurologist and neurosurgeon at Mayo determined that a craniotomy was the best route to recovery, as the lesion's critical location made a biopsy too dangerous. The open brain surgery lasts about six hours and requires him to be awake so surgeons can safely access what they believe is a stage two glioma, a slow-growing, low-grade brain tumour.
Surgery and break from music
Surgeons will remove as much of the lesion as possible and send it for testing. Luppen said his family and he could not ask for a better surgical team for the procedure, scheduled for November 6. He acknowledged that the medical procedure carries some scary risks.
His last show with Hippo Campus before the break will be on October 19 at Turf Club, which is now sold out. He wrote: "All that being said, it might be a second before I can play music for y'all again. So, on October 19th we're playing a show at Turf Club to rage for one last time before I'm on my a** for a few months."
He added: "Rest assured I will work as hard as I can to get back on stage asap. I'll keep y'all updated throughout this journey. Gonna be a wild ride. Much love, Jake."
Fans flooded him with support, and Luppen quipped: "No it is not in my hippocampus [heart emoji]."
