Couple Was Newly Married and Expecting a Baby — Then Husband Found Out He Had a Brain Tumor the Size of an Orange (Exclusive)

Maggie and Eddie Hanratty were in what seemed like the prime of their lives. Newly married and living in central Florida, the two were expecting their first child and on their honeymoon in Mallorca when Eddie began experiencing vision changes and occasional headaches.

Upon their return, he'd go get an MRI, he decided — something he had set out to do a year prior after a strange fainting spell. But, when the doctor never followed up, it fell down the priority list.

"I decided to just do a once-over, to make sure everything's good. My first thought was, 'I'll get out of the MRI and go get some lunch,' " Eddie, 31, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

But immediately after the scan, the radiologist met Eddie, then 30, in the doorway of the MRI room.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Related: Influencer Noticed Daughter's Eye 'Moving Strangely.' Days Later, She's Diagnosed with Brain Tumor (Exclusive)

"He was like, 'How'd you get here today?' and I said, 'Well, I drove.' And he's like, 'Wow, okay. Because you have a massive tumor in your head.' "

Doctors told Eddie that the tumor measured 7.3 centimeters — roughly the size of an orange — and would require intensive surgery.

Eddie called Maggie to tell her he was being sent to the hospital — news she initially thought was a "joke," considering how sudden it was.

"We had just had our baby shower and I was 34 weeks pregnant," she says. "I honestly thought he was kidding at first."

One week after that MRI, Eddie underwent a craniotomy, a surgical procedure that requires the removal of a section of the skull to access the brain. Removing portions of the tumor also required the removal of some of Eddie's frontal lobe. According to a June 2024 TikTok from Maggie, doctors were able to get about 98% of the tumor.

"He was there for about a week," Maggie says of his hospital stay. "And during that time he had to undergo physical therapy. He had to practice how to be able to carry our daughter."

Related: Isabella Strahan Reflects on Life Before Brain Tumor Diagnosis: 'Was a Great Year Til It Wasn't'

"I couldn't bend down, I could only sleep sitting up. It was a wild recovery process," Eddie echoes.

Just two weeks after he underwent surgery, the couple's baby — Mila — was born at the 38-week mark.

Family and friends rallied to help the couple prepare meals and to finish the nursery Eddie and Maggie never got a chance to.

"The village was incredible," Maggie says, noting that her sister also launched a GoFundMe to help assist with the couple's growing medical costs — bills made all the more challenging considering that the two weren't able to work as much.

"We own a marketing firm and social media management company and Eddie is a cinematographer who often travels," Maggie adds. "Of course, he couldn't work so I didn't even take maternity leave, I just worked through the pregnancy."

Just week's after Mila's birth, Eddie, whose tumor was determined to be astrocytoma grade 3, began chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

"I do tell Maggie — and it’s almost bittersweet for me to say — but I do feel kind of grateful that this happened to me because it forces a different perspective and almost resets everybody’s perspective that’s in my life," Eddie muses.

He continues, "I’ve always been pretty positive growing up, Something bad happens, you laugh at it. I’m still that way, but half of my frontal lobe is gone. It’s hard for me to control sadness, hard for me to rationalize anger."

Adds Maggie: "They basically removed the left side of his frontal lobe. So he’s more emotional, he does cry now. He did start therapy to talk through all that."

Their new life is altogether different from it was just a year ago, when the couple went viral after Maggie shared a video from their wedding in which Eddie surprised guests with the news that the couple was expecting — and that their cake would double as a sex reveal.

Still, both Maggie and Eddie maintain a positive outlook and say the situation has only brought them closer.

"Obviously I married Maggie because of who she is and how she is — I knew I was going to be in selfless hands with her through this process," Eddie says. "Anything I needed, she would help me with. I’m the type of guy who just needs to talk sometimes. And she's there and just drops everything to take me places, remind me of things. She's patient with me with my short-term memory problems now. She's dragged me out of this hole that I've at times almost put myself in."

Maggie adds that the news was a shock, especially considering her husband's young age and lack of any sort of family history. Still, she says if anyone can handle it, it's Eddie.

"His surgeon said he wasn't going to be the same person when he woke up from the craniotomy, but he was," she says. "He is the most selfless, positive person and the best dad in the whole entire world. He could easily have an excuse to not take care of our child but he still wakes up in the middle of the night, he wants to help and feed her. You would never think this man had a massive tumor in his brain."

As Eddie continues treatment, Maggie has shared videos of their day-to-day on TikTok, for better or worse. And for cute. As she captioned one of her most recent Mila clips, "Being her mom is my favorite."

Read the original article on People