Vermont teen beat rare lung cancer, returned to school sports after surgery

Cameron Rider’s case is a warning for families and clinicians alike: when a teenager keeps coming back with “pneumonia,” the diagnosis may be missing the real problem. What started as shortness of breath during football preseason in the fall of 2022, when Rider was 16, turned into repeated hospital visits before specialists found a mass in his bronchial tubes and biopsy results showed mucoepidermoid carcinoma, a rare cancer more often seen in older patients.

Rider was in and out of the hospital several times over the fall and winter as fatigue, body aches and fever were treated as pneumonia. The pattern fit a dangerous blind spot in adolescent care, where respiratory symptoms can be brushed off as conditioning, infection or a lingering cold. In Rider’s case, the cancer was in the airway itself, and pediatric tracheobronchial mucoepidermoid carcinoma can look like cough, pneumonia, fever, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest pain, weight loss or fatigue.

On May 19, 2023, Rider had 60% of his left lung removed. The surgery took him out of school sports for about two and a half months and forced him to rebuild his capacity from the ground up. He said he needed a “crazy amount of cardio” to recover his lung function, a grueling process that came on top of healing ribs, rehab and the challenge of finishing his senior year with only one lung working at full strength. Riders’s treatment also underscores a harder truth in cancer care: major surgery and specialized decision-making are not always available close to home, and his family had to look beyond Vermont for that level of care.

Rider is from Mendon, Vermont, and played soccer, basketball and hockey for Rutland High School. He later returned to the ice, and by March 30, 2026, he was back with the Valley Jr. Warriors, a high-level program that feeds college recruitment. He has said he wants to become a surgical oncologist if hockey does not become his career.

His recovery also points to a broader public health gap. The Mass General Brigham AYA Cancer Program was built for patients ages 15 to 39 because cancer in that age group can interrupt school, work and social development at a critical stage of life. Nationally, the National Cancer Institute estimates 85,480 adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 39 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2025, and SEER says that age group accounts for about 4.2% of new U.S. cancer cases. For Rider, the shock was personal. For clinicians, it is a reminder that persistent symptoms in teens deserve a wider diagnostic lens.