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Seth Simmer
Photo by: Gil Talbot
Seth Simmer's Road Back
10/2/2018 10:40:00 AM | Football
A small hearing problem led to a big discovery for the defensive lineman.
The start of his first year of college football wasn't any easier for Dartmouth defensive lineman Seth Simmer than it was for most of his classmates.
The end of it was worse. Much worse.
"You come in thinking you're a big shot but you end up doing a lot of scout team and getting pushed around by bigger, stronger guys," explained Simmer, a 6-foot-4, 285-pound junior from Powder Springs, Georgia "It's definitely a big hit, and you can get down a little bit.
"The winter workouts are horribly hard but that's what teaches you mental toughness. Getting up every morning and grinding it out when it's freezing cold and your eyelashes are frozen together."
Having survived his first fall and that grueling winter of conditioning, Simmer was excited for the start of spring practice his freshman year. The only hiccup was a little trouble hearing out of one ear, but he wasn't overly concerned about it.
"I'd had a head cold over winter break when I was home and sometimes that kind of pressure can affect your hearing," he said. "They gave me antibiotics and it started getting a little better."
The improvement didn't last once he was back on campus.
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"I remember I was in class doing group work and I couldn't hear the person on my left," Simmer said. "That concerned me, obviously."
The hearing issue was a problem on the football field as well, but he was determined not to let it sideline him.
"I couldn't hear the linebackers behind me," he admitted. "But I knew my sophomore year was coming up and it would be my chance to make an impression, so I didn't want to step away."
At his parents' insistence he called Dick's House, the college infirmary, on the Monday after the Green-White game that concluded spring ball. That led to an appointment in the audiology clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
The docs at DHMC prescribed steroids to reduce the swelling if the problem was nothing more than a deep ear infection, but because a sudden loss of hearing is concerning they also scheduled an MRI for the next day.
 The news from the scan was not good. Rather than a deep ear infection, it showed the 19-year-old Simmer had a brain tumor.
"That got me rattled," he said. "I was up here by myself more than 1,000 miles from home."
But with more than 100 teammates, he wasn't alone. When he headed back to the hospital for his next appointment one of those teammates was with him.
"I went with Seth because it's the right thing to do," offered fellow junior D-lineman Jordan McGriff. "His parents were back in Georgia and he had no one to go with him. So I just tagged along for support and to tried and keep things positive for him." That support proved to be important.
"When the doctor pulled (the MRI) up on the screen it looked like a little golf ball, and it scared me," said Simmer.
As it did McGriff.
"Honestly, I was shocked and terrified for Seth," he said. "The tumor was fairly large, especially for it being so close to his brain. But in that situation, I knew I couldn't really show my fear because I did not want Seth to be overwhelmed."
The only good news was that, based on where it had grown, the tumor was almost assuredly benign. While his parents back in Georgia researched the next step, Simmer somehow finished off his spring term in Hanover.
"I tried to put it out of my mind," he said. "At that point I knew I was in good hands at DHMC because they have a whole department specializing in the kind of tumor it was, and because I knew my parents were pulling out every stop. I had a lot of support from guys on the D-line and the guys in my class, my friends and my coaches at a pretty stressful time in my life."
Simmer also credits former head football trainer Mike Derosier and then football trainer Bethanie Brann for their help.
Less supportive was one of the first doctors the Simmers consulted about surgery.
"He said I would probably never play football again," Simmer recalled. "I looked at him and I said, 'You are not doing the surgery if you don't believe that I can go through this and play again.
"We ended up at the Mayo Clinic where they were like, 'Absolutely, if you do the surgery and recover well you will be able to play.'"
And so on July 2, 2017, Simmer had an acoustic neuroma tumor removed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Surgeons were able to remove about 90 percent of the benign growth, which had been pressing against his hearing and balancing nerves.
"When I first got out of surgery I had paralysis on the left side of my face, so I couldn't hold anything in my mouth," Simmer said. "Water would just fall out. My speech was funny and my left eye wouldn't shut. I had to put this ointment right on my eyeball. It was a goopy, nasty stuff that kind of held it shut.
"I had to kind of learn how to walk again because they took the balance nerve completely out. The nurses put a belt around my waist and would hold me up as we walked down the hallway. It was funny because I'm pretty big and the nurses were not."
Simmer would miss not only the sophomore football season he'd been so looking forward to but also the fall term because of complications from the surgery.
"For a while when I was standing if I got thumped I would just go over," he said. "I couldn't stop myself. Eventually I started feeling better and walking better."
After being cleared to drive he landed an internship with a law firm near Atlanta for his sophomore fall. "It was very beneficial," he said. "It was behind a desk, which I hate, but it helped me get my mind off of everything else I was thinking about."
When he finally returned to campus, Simmer didn't look much like the conditioned athlete he had been in the spring.
"I had put on about 35 pounds because I sat on my butt too much,"Â he admitted. "I weighed 280 at the surgery and came back to campus at 309 or something like that. So then I had to drop weight.
"I had lost all my muscle mass because I couldn't lift a gallon of milk for like six months."
Understandably, there was a time he found himself wondering if his college career might have ended before it really began.
"Yeah, I did," he said. "But because football has done a lot of things for me, if I was done, I would've been OK with it. But I wasn't ready to be done."
And his fellow linemate and friend was pretty sure he wasn't done.
"There was no doubt in my mind that he'd be playing football again," McGriff said. "Seth is a strong, resilient kid. He kept a positive attitude throughout the entire process and always had a smile on his face."
With a lot of hard work and support, Simmer has indeed made it all the way back despite a total lack of hearing in one ear.
"It was really annoying for the first 6 to 8 months just getting used to it," he said. "If someone is to the hard left of me I can't hear them at all. I do have a set of hearing aids but I don't love wearing them.
"I just have to watch Coach (Don) Dobes and the signals. Someone commented that I was staring at Coach Dobes all the time during the game. I was like, 'I've got to see the signal because I can't hear him at all.'"
Buddy Teevens is thrilled to have the big defensive lineman back, and not just because he's a talented player.
"I didn't know if I would ever see him play," the coach said. "But the big concern was for his health. It's a scary thing when you hear the words tumor and brain. You just never know what the outcome is going to be but he worked hard and got himself back. He is a Division I football player after going through a major, major surgery."
Simmer's teammates are thrilled to have the environmental studies major on the field as well.
"He's a great football player, and to go through what he went through and bounce back is unbelievable," said fellow defensive lineman Jackson Perry. "In the D-line room, it's at the point now where we can joke with him about it, but one minor mistake in surgery and it could've been really bad."
Simmer couldn't be happier with the way things turned out.
What's left of the tumor is shrinking, he's able to deal with the hearing loss, he's got his health and he's back playing on arguably the best defensive line in the Ivy League.
"It could have been worse," he said a few days ago on Blackman Field. "I'm just thankful that I got it taken care of before it got worse. I'm standing here on the practice field, so I couldn't be much happier."
The end of it was worse. Much worse.
"You come in thinking you're a big shot but you end up doing a lot of scout team and getting pushed around by bigger, stronger guys," explained Simmer, a 6-foot-4, 285-pound junior from Powder Springs, Georgia "It's definitely a big hit, and you can get down a little bit.
"The winter workouts are horribly hard but that's what teaches you mental toughness. Getting up every morning and grinding it out when it's freezing cold and your eyelashes are frozen together."
Having survived his first fall and that grueling winter of conditioning, Simmer was excited for the start of spring practice his freshman year. The only hiccup was a little trouble hearing out of one ear, but he wasn't overly concerned about it.
"I'd had a head cold over winter break when I was home and sometimes that kind of pressure can affect your hearing," he said. "They gave me antibiotics and it started getting a little better."
The improvement didn't last once he was back on campus.
Â
| Seth Simmer knows he's one of the lucky ones and he has wise advice for others facing similar health scares: |
| "Don't be stubborn when it comes to something medical. There's no point. There are medical professionals for a reason and they are important. Don't shy away from seeing somebody because you are too busy or think it's not important. You never know. Something that seems minuscule and didn't seem like a big deal to me turned out to be pretty serious." |
The hearing issue was a problem on the football field as well, but he was determined not to let it sideline him.
"I couldn't hear the linebackers behind me," he admitted. "But I knew my sophomore year was coming up and it would be my chance to make an impression, so I didn't want to step away."
At his parents' insistence he called Dick's House, the college infirmary, on the Monday after the Green-White game that concluded spring ball. That led to an appointment in the audiology clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
The docs at DHMC prescribed steroids to reduce the swelling if the problem was nothing more than a deep ear infection, but because a sudden loss of hearing is concerning they also scheduled an MRI for the next day.
 The news from the scan was not good. Rather than a deep ear infection, it showed the 19-year-old Simmer had a brain tumor.
"That got me rattled," he said. "I was up here by myself more than 1,000 miles from home."
But with more than 100 teammates, he wasn't alone. When he headed back to the hospital for his next appointment one of those teammates was with him.
"I went with Seth because it's the right thing to do," offered fellow junior D-lineman Jordan McGriff. "His parents were back in Georgia and he had no one to go with him. So I just tagged along for support and to tried and keep things positive for him." That support proved to be important.
"When the doctor pulled (the MRI) up on the screen it looked like a little golf ball, and it scared me," said Simmer.
As it did McGriff.
"Honestly, I was shocked and terrified for Seth," he said. "The tumor was fairly large, especially for it being so close to his brain. But in that situation, I knew I couldn't really show my fear because I did not want Seth to be overwhelmed."
The only good news was that, based on where it had grown, the tumor was almost assuredly benign. While his parents back in Georgia researched the next step, Simmer somehow finished off his spring term in Hanover.
"I tried to put it out of my mind," he said. "At that point I knew I was in good hands at DHMC because they have a whole department specializing in the kind of tumor it was, and because I knew my parents were pulling out every stop. I had a lot of support from guys on the D-line and the guys in my class, my friends and my coaches at a pretty stressful time in my life."
Simmer also credits former head football trainer Mike Derosier and then football trainer Bethanie Brann for their help.
Less supportive was one of the first doctors the Simmers consulted about surgery.
"He said I would probably never play football again," Simmer recalled. "I looked at him and I said, 'You are not doing the surgery if you don't believe that I can go through this and play again.
"We ended up at the Mayo Clinic where they were like, 'Absolutely, if you do the surgery and recover well you will be able to play.'"
And so on July 2, 2017, Simmer had an acoustic neuroma tumor removed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Surgeons were able to remove about 90 percent of the benign growth, which had been pressing against his hearing and balancing nerves.
"When I first got out of surgery I had paralysis on the left side of my face, so I couldn't hold anything in my mouth," Simmer said. "Water would just fall out. My speech was funny and my left eye wouldn't shut. I had to put this ointment right on my eyeball. It was a goopy, nasty stuff that kind of held it shut.
"I had to kind of learn how to walk again because they took the balance nerve completely out. The nurses put a belt around my waist and would hold me up as we walked down the hallway. It was funny because I'm pretty big and the nurses were not."
Simmer would miss not only the sophomore football season he'd been so looking forward to but also the fall term because of complications from the surgery.
"For a while when I was standing if I got thumped I would just go over," he said. "I couldn't stop myself. Eventually I started feeling better and walking better."
After being cleared to drive he landed an internship with a law firm near Atlanta for his sophomore fall. "It was very beneficial," he said. "It was behind a desk, which I hate, but it helped me get my mind off of everything else I was thinking about."
When he finally returned to campus, Simmer didn't look much like the conditioned athlete he had been in the spring.
"I had put on about 35 pounds because I sat on my butt too much,"Â he admitted. "I weighed 280 at the surgery and came back to campus at 309 or something like that. So then I had to drop weight.
"I had lost all my muscle mass because I couldn't lift a gallon of milk for like six months."
Understandably, there was a time he found himself wondering if his college career might have ended before it really began.
"Yeah, I did," he said. "But because football has done a lot of things for me, if I was done, I would've been OK with it. But I wasn't ready to be done."
And his fellow linemate and friend was pretty sure he wasn't done.
"There was no doubt in my mind that he'd be playing football again," McGriff said. "Seth is a strong, resilient kid. He kept a positive attitude throughout the entire process and always had a smile on his face."
With a lot of hard work and support, Simmer has indeed made it all the way back despite a total lack of hearing in one ear.
"It was really annoying for the first 6 to 8 months just getting used to it," he said. "If someone is to the hard left of me I can't hear them at all. I do have a set of hearing aids but I don't love wearing them.
"I just have to watch Coach (Don) Dobes and the signals. Someone commented that I was staring at Coach Dobes all the time during the game. I was like, 'I've got to see the signal because I can't hear him at all.'"
Buddy Teevens is thrilled to have the big defensive lineman back, and not just because he's a talented player.
"I didn't know if I would ever see him play," the coach said. "But the big concern was for his health. It's a scary thing when you hear the words tumor and brain. You just never know what the outcome is going to be but he worked hard and got himself back. He is a Division I football player after going through a major, major surgery."
Simmer's teammates are thrilled to have the environmental studies major on the field as well.
"He's a great football player, and to go through what he went through and bounce back is unbelievable," said fellow defensive lineman Jackson Perry. "In the D-line room, it's at the point now where we can joke with him about it, but one minor mistake in surgery and it could've been really bad."
Simmer couldn't be happier with the way things turned out.
What's left of the tumor is shrinking, he's able to deal with the hearing loss, he's got his health and he's back playing on arguably the best defensive line in the Ivy League.
"It could have been worse," he said a few days ago on Blackman Field. "I'm just thankful that I got it taken care of before it got worse. I'm standing here on the practice field, so I couldn't be much happier."
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