When Greg Bender woke up one January morning, he knew something was wrong. The 72-year-old retired engineer found himself unable to form sentences. Instead, every question from his wife or the emergency team was met with the same puzzling phrase: “It’s a fountain day.”

“It was the only thing I could say,” Greg recalled. “I knew something wasn’t right, but the words just wouldn’t come.”

After scans and follow-up imaging, doctors discovered the cause: a tumor near the speech center of his brain. That discovery set Greg on a path toward a groundbreaking procedure — the first awake mini-craniotomy performed at HonorHealth.

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