Top News

by Darcy Pohland
(WCCO) She was thrust into the spotlight when her father became the Vice President of the United States and Eleanor Mondale's star has shone brightly ever since.

On Monday, she joined the WCCO family as a host on WCCO Radio, but last year, a dark cloud shadowed her life when doctors diagnosed her with a cancerous brain tumor.

She endured months of treatment and she is ready to talk about her ordeal and recovery.

Minnesota viewers have watched Mondale since her television reporting debut on WCCO-TV back in the 1980s. The followed her as she moved on to CBS and other national networks.

That is now worlds away from the life she lives now, on her Prior Lake, Minn. farm.

She once interviewed Jay Leno, but the only celebrities she rubs elbows with now are her chickens.

"She was in Country Living Magazine so she's used to having her picture taken," Mondale said, holding up a chicken.

On her quiet farm is where Mondale found peace after her diagnosis.

"They bring me so much joy," she said of her miniature horses. "After going through what I went through last year, I just I cherish them so much."

It was when Mondale was camping with a larger horse last year that she had seizures.

"I had friends out there, they met us," Mondale said. "They got me to the hospital, and then the ambulance got me to a hospital in Minneapolis and they did the MRI and they decided I had MS."

After that, she went to a horse show.

"This is like four days after I had the seizures," Mondale said, of a picture from the horse show. "I can't remember that week at all."

Then Mondale had more tests at the Mayo Clinic.

"They did a biopsy and they found this really bad, deadly grade-three tumor in my head and so at that point, they pretty much told my family I had six months to a year to live," Mondale said. "I kept thinking, 'How do I go from feeling fine to dead?' That's the part I don't get."

The first thing she and her fiancé, musician Chan Poling, did was reschedule their wedding.

"Chan and I decided to move our wedding up because I didn't think I'd be alive in September, so we got married in June," Mondale said.

Instead of surgery, she chose treatment and cut off her hair. She did it to try to slow down hair loss.

"You might have a chance of holding on to your hair if you cut it really short, because there is less weight on the hair shaft," Mondale explained.

After the haircut, came six long months of treatment. She had radiation treatments five days a week.

"I felt fine," Mondale said. "I never felt nauseous."

She combined radiation with chemotherapy pills seven days a week and a positive mental attitude.

"My treatment for cancer was complete denial," Mondale said. "It worked very well for me. 'There's no way I have a brain tumor. I know see the pictures but there's no way I'm going to die. There's no way I'm sick.' It worked."

The baseball-sized tumor once growing in the right front side of Mondale's brain is now virtually gone.

"It's truly a miracle," Mondale said. "It just shrunk up and now it's just a little black hole in here."

Mondale credits her physicians, faith, friends, family and farm with her remarkable recovery.

"I was surrounded by love and family, living in my personal fantasy land," Mondale said. "That's the best medicine there is."

Facing death and beating the odds made Mondale realize more than ever home is where she truly belongs. That is true both on the farm, and in her new job as a radio host on WCCO-AM.

"It just confirmed I was on the right road for myself, and that was when I moved back to Minnesota," she said. "That was the right thing for me to do."

(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)