February 1, 2005 - On Monday, Jan. 24, 11-year-old Zachery Brouhard was pronounced dead in his Anchorage home. What followed was confusion and a series of questions: how can a little boy with no previous medical conditions die so suddenly? and what, if any, warning signs are out there?

Two weekends ago, 11-year-old Zachery Brouhard was playing out in the snow. A sixth grader at Willow Crest Elementary School , Zach was just one of those kids who loved everybody.

“Full of life, full of energy, he loved people,” said Brent Brouhard, Zachery’s father.

Brent and Esther Brouhard say Zachery was a normal boy who liked to fish, play basketball and play video games. But on Sunday, Jan. 23, after playing video games with a neighbor, Zachery came home with a headache.

“He took his Tylenol, he ate and he was just relaxing. He went down, took a shower, lay down in his room for a couple hours,” Brent Brouhard said.

Brent Brouhard said it was not the first time his son has had a headache. In fact, Zachery got them once in awhile and a Tylenol always made it better.

But at 4:30 in the morning, it wasn't better. Brent woke up when his son let out a scream.

“He woke up,” Brent Brouhard said. “Well, I don't know if he was having a nightmare or what, he let out a yell and was ta lk ing.”

Brent watched his son until 5:15 a.m. , and then went back to sleep. Roughly two hours later, Zachery wasn't breathing.

His father and mother were distraught.

“It was a very bad thing to find your son,” Brent Brouhard said. “When I lifted his head up to put him on the pillow, you could tell he was gone. There was no color left in him.”

The paramedics arrived, along with the fire and police departments. No one knew what had happened.

Medical examiner Dr. Franc Fallico performed an autopsy and found that it was more than just a headache.

“A colloid cyst is a benign tumor of the brain,” Fallico said. “The tumor, a little cystic structure, a little sack filled with fluid, lies inside a cavity, inside the brain and what it does is it plugs up a hole that is necessary for the fluid in our brains to flow in and out. And when that hole gets plugged up by this tumor, the brain can swell very quickly, expand inside the skull and cause rapid death.”

Fallico says the condition is so rare that there have been only a handful of cases in the state he can recall, and those were about a decade old. Fallico says a CAT scan can find some of these tumors, but he doesn't recommend those with headaches to go out and get scanned. He says there are few warning signs, if any -- and the Brouhards say there wasn't one.

“The only symptom I can tell you we had was a simple headache,” Brent Brouhard said.

Today the Brouhards try to cope with what happened. Flowers, pictures and prayers from friends and loved ones are all over the house -- all in tribute to a little boy who loved everybody and whom everybody loved back.

Contribute to the Zach S. Brouhard Memorial Fund by visiting any Wells Fargo bank. The account number is 6528330597. Or learn more about colloid cysts.

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