David-Brian Whisler, now a sophomore wrestler at the University of Maryland, was a state champion for Howland in 2015. Like most, his title didn’t come easy.

He practiced with the Tigers, then drove nearly three hours to go to a practice in Pennsylvania and grapple with some of the East Coast’s best wrestlers. He did this for a good portion of his high school career and spent his summers traveling with his dad to the nation’s best offseason tournaments.

While Alysa (pronounced ah-lease-uh) understood David-Brian badly wanted to be a state champ, his unwavering persistence was still hard to fathom for her and Dave Sr.

“Me and Dave laugh all the time because we were so damn bad in high school,” she joked. “We’re like, ‘Where did this kid come from?’ And our daughter is following in the same footsteps. We don’t know where they came from.”

Tribune Chronicle file / Dave Dermer David-Brian Whisler won a state championship in 2014 wrestling for Howland. He currently wrestles for the University of Maryland.

Now that she and her family are in the midst of one of their biggest battles of all, the bubbly 48-year-old and mother of two is starting to realize why her children are the way they are.

Five years ago, Dave Sr., a 1982 Howland graduate, was stricken with melanoma. He endured months of treatment — with multiple skin grafts — and eventually was determined to be cancer-free.

This past August, Dave Sr. started to experience migraine headaches, which wasn’t anything new. He had dealt with them before, but this one in particular wouldn’t go away. After doing his best to avoid a trip to the emergency room (he even went and sold a rental property in the meantime), Dave eventually went to the hospital. He, Alysa and the doctors thought it was viral meningitis because he had been dealing with an infection, but with his history, the doctors decided to do a CAT scan. What it revealed was mortifying.

“They ran the CAT scan, came in and told us he had a stroke,” said Alysa, still puzzled by that initial prognosis. “I said, ‘What do you mean he had a stroke?’ He was perfectly fine except he was in pain. She said he had a brain bleed.”

That was just the beginning.

Maryland Athletics Howland graduate David-Brian Whisler, right, wrestles now at the University of Maryland.

Further tests revealed numerous melanoma tumors on Dave’s brain. One had ruptured, causing the stroke. While melanoma is often thought to be strictly skin cancer, Alysa said, it can spread internally. In Dave’s case, that’s what happened. As of last week, Dave had 25 tumors on his brain and others on his lungs, hip and calf. It was a grim prognosis, especially after what they were told when he was first diagnosed five years ago.

“They told us if it does spread internally, there’s nothing we can do for him,” said Alysa, before her voice perked up. “Things have changed in five years.”

They certainly have, and not just from a medical-advancement standpoint.

Dave and Alysa’s daughter, Alivia, a 16-year-old sophomore at Niles, is no longer a middle school kid, and David-Brian is no longer a stay-at-home high school student. The redshirt freshman is five hours away at Maryland, recently earning his way into the Terrapins’ starting lineup at 197 pounds. They’ll actually be on the Big Ten Network at noon today in a dual with 12th-ranked Rutgers.

Dave Sr., who politely declined an interview, was in College Park, Maryland, when David-Brian won his wrestle-off (a match between teammates to determine the starter). Dave Sr., who is again in Maryland for this weekend’s matches, has done his best to visit his only son, but treatments and fatigue make that difficult. David-Brian actually considered dropping out to be with his family when he first found out about the diagnosis, but that thought didn’t last long.

“It definitely sucks not being at home, being five hours away and not being there with my mom and my sister and him, but he would kick my ass if I ever even thought about coming home,” David-Brian said with a laugh. “This is where he wants me to be right now.

“My mom is awesome. It’s amazing the stuff she’s doing for our family right now. And my dad, he’s still hanging in there, he’s still cracking jokes, waking up with a smile every morning.”

Making sure David-Brian stayed put was one of Dave Sr.’s first remarks after he and his wife found out about the tumors spreading. Alysa admitted the initial shock was jolting, especially after they thought he had beaten cancer for good.

“When they gave us the diagnosis, I physically fell to my knees, and I just lost my mind,” she said. “I left the room, and when I came back, the very first words Dave said to me were, ‘We always knew this could happen. I’ve been prepared for it.’ And then he says to me, ‘And David-Brian is not to come home. We’ve put too much work and time into this. He is to stay where he’s at.’ ”

That was one of the few serious moments for Dave Sr. The wise-cracking 52-year-old isn’t letting the situation affect his personality, which is quite miraculous according to the doctors. They’re surprised he’s even able to walk and talk, let alone go about his daily life like nothing is wrong. Sure, he has good days and bad days, but even in the worst moments, he finds a way to be humorous.

“All he talks about is retirement,” Alysa said. “He had like five more years left, and he just makes jokes. He goes, ‘God has a really funny way of giving me what I wanted.’ He’s still full of piss and vinegar. I still call him a (butthole) 15 times a day.

“We were up (at the Cleveland Clinic) the other day, and the nurse practitioner, she’s hilarious. Dave walks out of the room and she says to me, ‘Has your husband always been goofy like this or is it because the tumors are affecting his personality?’ I laughed so hard. I go, ‘Oh no. You guys tell me he’s had these tumors for 12 to 18 months. This is why we never knew he had tumors because he’s always goofy!’

The times he’s not joking around are usually spent talking wrestling with David-Brian. The two are like wrestling encyclopedias after spending most of the last decade studying the sport. They spent endless hours driving to tournaments in North Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma and pretty much the entire East Coast. Dave Sr. bought a new car in 2010, and it already has nearly 200,000 miles.

“He’s always the life of the wrestling practice and the wrestling tournaments,” David-Brian said. “There are pictures of us at every tournament we’d go to. Win or lose, he’s proud of me.”

David-Brian is the proud one these days. His father’s drive — and a recent breakthrough — are what keeps him and his family so positive.

Despite the potentially dire consequences of melanoma, hope was not lost, and wrestling played a role. The doctors’ initial thought was to use radiation on Dave’s brain to remove the tumors, but that would have severely disabled his everyday cognitive function — “You’re basically frying a person’s brain,” Alysa said. The only other avenue involved a world-renowned doctor who would be almost impossible to have review the case.

A friend of the Whisler’s, whom they met through wrestling, was a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic, and she was able to get a colleague of Gene Barnett, the aforementioned doctor who recently helped former President Jimmy Carter beat brain cancer, to meet with the Whislers. Midway through the meeting, Barnett walked in — marveled by Dave’s functioning, considering his prognosis — and agreed to take on the case.

Barnett explained to the Whislers how he could using cutting-edge treatments to help fight the cancer. The first is known as Gamma Knife radiology, which pinpoints each tumor instead of radiating the entire brain. The second procedure, called immunotherapy, is what helped Carter. The process involves David Sr. sitting with an IV connected to him for four hours as medicine is injected into his body. The medicine is designed to power up the immune system and force it to attack the cancer, something the body normally can’t do because of the tumors. The problem is that Dave Sr. is on steroids to help alleviate the swelling in his brain caused by the tumors.

“When he’s not on the steroids, that’s when you notice he’s sick,” Alysa said. “Steroids kill your immune system, where immunotherapy boosts your immune system, so it’s been awful. Every time we wean him off the steroids, he starts to go backwards, so then we have to go back on the steroids, but then we can’t do the immunotherapy.”

The process is at a bit of standstill at the moment. The Gamma Knife has shrunk several of the tumors on Dave’s brain. The one session of immunotherapy helped kill some of the tumors on his lungs, leg and pelvis, and it also could help prevent the growth of any new tumors. Further procedures are scheduled over the next few weeks, if the progress continues.

In the meantime, Dave Sr. and Alysa are in Maryland watching David-Brian wrestle. He’s having a solid freshman season, winning back-to-back matches Friday against North Dakota State and George Mason to lead up to today’s Big Ten bout with Rutgers. Mom and dad will be in the stands for all of them.

Not that David-Brian needed any extra motivation (he apparently has good genes), but the ambition to succeed is at an all-time high for the kid they call D.B.

“He was probably more dedicated to me being the best wrestler I can than I was,” David-Brian said. “He’s been my best friend my whole life. He’s been the guy I look up to.

“Anything I’ve ever accomplished in life would not have been done if it wasn’t for him.”

His father is doing his best to add one more accomplishment to the list.