Every Day I Fight

by Stuart Scott

  I’d lie there, letting my batteries recharge. One thing I’ve learned is that, when so much of your energy is devoted to the fight of your life, you’ve got to conserve energy elsewhere. On a day that I have nothing to do, I’ll just lie around. That’s medicine to me. There’s peace of mind in being able to do that.

  You even get adamant about following whatever feels right for your soul at any given moment—plans be damned. Once, I had an appointment to pee in a cup at my urologist’s office. Just another in a long series of tests. Only my bladder wasn’t full and it was a 78-degree, sunny day. I was faced with a choice: Do I go, and sit around for ninety minutes just so I can pee? Uh, no. It was gorgeous out. I called the doctor’s office, rescheduled, and hit the golf course.

  I hit balls in the blinding sunshine—and I felt so alive. My spirit felt free and warm and at peace. I felt so far away from cancer. I knew my soul needed this feeling more than another visit to another doctor’s office. Calling that audible was the most empowering thing I could have done.

  Cancer forces you to be selfish with your time—and you have to learn how to do that guilt-free. A lot of times, when I need to go from Bristol to New York City, I’ll call a limo service. The girls get on me and tell me I’m rude because, when the driver starts to chitchat with me, I’ll just say: “Hey, man, I don’t want to talk.”

  That’s not rude, I’ll tell them. It’s direct. “You’ll hurt his feelings,” they say. I can’t be responsible for his feelings. This cancer stuff is heavy, man. When Taelor talks to me about going to grad school, I don’t say it aloud, but what I’m thinking is Will I be here for that? That’s a lot to deal with. I can’t add the limo driver’s feelings to my list of concerns. Or the friend who invited me over whom I’ve called at the last minute to say I can’t make it. I might not have a good reason; I just don’t feel up to it. I know to avoid being somewhere where my spirit isn’t going to feel good. If that ticks off my friend, how good a friend is he or she? I can’t think about how someone else feels about it. That’s their problem to handle. I got this problem over here, and it’s a mutha.

  I think our society is too concerned with how other people feel. When a guy accidentally bumps into you, what’s your natural reaction? You say, “Oh, I’m sorry, excuse me.” Why are you apologizing? He just bumped into you! You don’t want him to feel bad. But you’re not responsible for his feelings.

  I want to be clear. I’m not saying you’re in this fight alone. I’m just saying you have a responsibility to the fight. If I’m too exhausted to call somebody back and they call again and say, “Hey, you didn’t call me back,” I say, simply: “Yeah.” I couldn’t, man. And I’m not going to feel bad about that.

  Here’s the way I look at it. Remember during the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, those images of people on their roofs while makeshift boats full of people sailed by? Well, this is my boat-people analogy. We’ve been flooded and I’m in a boat that’s gliding by everyone I know on top of those roofs. But my boat only holds fifteen people. I got my girls, my family, my closest friends. When your boat is full, it’s not like you’re saying to everyone else on those roofs, “I don’t care about you.” It’s just that these are my boat people and I’ve gotta save them.

  Because they’re in the fight with me. This is crucial: When you take on cancer, you’re not alone. Of course, that’s not how it feels when you first hear those words: “You have cancer.” At that moment, you feel more alone than you’ve ever been. You’re standing in place, numb, and the world is rushing by.

  But then you start to realize that others stand with you.

  There’s the cancer-fighting community, which is strong and tight. When I meet someone with cancer, we have an instant bond. We hug tight and we talk in clipped shorthand.

  “I’m five years in,” he or she will say.

  “Two months,” I’d reply. Sometimes I’d say, “Newbie,” like: Show me the ropes.

  The bond isn’t for show. You’re finally around someone who gets it. They get what it’s like to sit for hours getting chemo pumped into your body. They get what it’s like to have people look at you with that pained expression on their face and whisper, “So how are you?” They get what it’s like to constantly have to go to the bathroom. They get what it’s like to have taking a crap become such a big part of your life. They get what it’s like to never have a run-of-the-mill stomachache again, because every little cramp, pain, and twinge triggers the thought: Is that cancer? You don’t even have to discuss these things. It’s just a relief knowing there’s someone who has been where you’ve been.

  Robin Roberts was one of those people for me. We had both spent the previous six months undergoing chemo when together we presented the 2008 Jimmy V Perseverance Award to Bills tight end Kevin Everett at the ESPYs—the first time it was held at LA’s Nokia Theatre. Everett had miraculously overcome paralysis suffered during a kickoff collision. When Robin and I walked out, I in a dark suit with an open collar, she stylin’ in a striking blue dress, we were greeted with loud applause.

  “This year,” I said, “the 2008 ESPY Celebrity Golf Classic raised over $1 million for the Jimmy V Foundation, with all proceeds—every single penny—going directly to cancer research. And this past year, both Robin and I—” I nodded toward her, and she to me—“discovered personally that fighting cancer is something we can never give up on.”

  “In fact,” Robin said, “it was exactly a year ago that I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I was comforted by the memory of being there that night at the ESPYs when Jimmy V said those powerful words: ‘Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.’ He inspired a whole generation of coaches and athletes and taught them what it takes to truly be a winner.”

  Robin is just all class. Funny, most times when we’ve bonded over our cancer battles, they haven’t been real long conversations. You don’t need to have a long talk. It’s just: “How is it for you?” followed by a hug or a fist bump. Maybe a “hang in there.”

  But it means the world. Because she’s been there. She gets it. Same with Lance Armstrong, who sent me an e-mail from Africa, where he was on a goodwill tour, shortly after I was diagnosed. “I’m here, man,” he wrote. “If you ever want to talk, ever want some advice about anything.”

  I didn’t ask for any advice, just thanked him, told him how much I appreciated his reaching out. Every few months after that exchange, I’d get an e-mail from him, just checking in. “How’s it going? Hang in there,” he’d write. That mattered, man. It might seem like a cliché, but it mattered—because of who he is. This guy had brain cancer and cancer in his testicles. He was supposed to die, and he came off the table and won seven Tour de France titles. I know, I know, he cheated on the bike. Okay, but every one of his opponents was probably also juiced up. And I don’t really care about a bike race. I draw inspiration from the kind of cancer fighter he was. He did it, and now he was telling me I could do it, too.

  One day, I got a call from Ernie Johnson of TNT. I had met him maybe once. But he had battled cancer in his past, and he must have checked in with me three or four times after that. The first time we talked, we were on the phone for an hour. Man, dudes don’t talk on the phone for an hour about anything, but there we were, swapping cancer tales. I’ll never forget that. He made me feel like I was part of a team.

  Then there was my cancer-fighting community closer to home. My friend Barb had had loved ones in the fight and knew before I did that I was going to have to learn to be strategic with my supply of energy. So without telling me, she hired an assistant for me, so that I’d have someone who could pick up my dry cleaning, go grocery shopping, and pay my bills.

  And there were friends like Laura Okmin, the Fox Sports reporter, whose mom had cancer. I’d never met her mother, but from what Laura told me, her mother was one of those people with a personality that lit up a room—even going through cancer and chemo. Laura shared with me how close her mom’s oncologist had grown to her mom—and how rare that was. When
her mom passed away, the doctor was at the funeral. That’s when Laura explained to me that oncologists usually had to protect themselves from getting so close. It helped me realize that I need my doctors for their expertise and that I had people like Laura, my family, and other close friends for love and support.

  Also in my dugout is Deedee Mills. I first met Deedee fifteen years ago when she worked in the Carolina Panthers’ front office. She left the Panthers, adopted an adorable six-year-old Ethiopian boy, Cannon (to him, I’m “Uncle Stuart”), which prompted her to start the Behailu Academy, an after-school arts program for underprivileged kids. She’s also a cancer survivor. Whenever I’m struggling with a decision—settling on a course of treatment, let’s say—she’ll ask a series of questions until it becomes apparent to me what I should do. She has a skill for taking me down this road where the answer is obvious at the end. “You know what to do,” she’ll say.

  Then there’s Amy Bartlett. She works for Nike, managing its relationship with Tiger Woods. I’d known her casually, chatting with her at some Tiger Woods Foundation events. But when I was first diagnosed, a mutual friend told me she was a cancer survivor and that I should talk to her. I gave her a call and opened the conversation with: “I hear you know a little something about what I’m going through.” From then on, we just clicked.

  Amy has a talent for reaching out right when I need it the most. I’ll get a text from her that reads: “Hey. No need to respond. Played golf today and was just thinking about you.” I’ll text back: “Hope you broke 90.” It was her way of checking in to see how I was doing—without talking about cancer. We’d use golf as therapy.

  A couple of years ago, on the five-year anniversary of her remission, she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with other cancer survivors as part of a Livestrong cancer research fund-raiser. At the top, she planted an honor flag with my name on it. After that, another one of my boys—former Livestrong CEO Doug Ulman—also climbed Kilimanjaro, and he planted an honor flag in my name. “You’ve got to be the only guy to have had two flags up there!” Amy told me.

  Doug and I have some deep conversations; he’s always telling me I don’t understand the impact I have on others. I hear that, but I’m not comfortable with it, for the same reason I’m not comfortable when I hear myself described as “courageous.” ’Cause I know what I really feel. And I feel afraid, not brave.

  I have a small group of close guy friends, and we don’t talk like other guys talk. With Doug and my boys Brian Gallagher and Dr. Scott Organ—Scottie—we get into it, man. Sure, there’s a lot of golf and a lot of working out. But there are also a lot of late-night, soul-searching phone conversations—the kind of deep What does it all mean? bull sessions too many of us last had back in our college dorm-room days.

  Yeah, when people ask me how I get up and attack cancer every day, there are two answers: What choice do I have? And: These people, man. These are my boat people.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOW WHAT?

  The last time the Lakers and Celtics met in the NBA Finals, I was debating whether to take a $200-per-week job in Florence, South Carolina. I remember watching Magic Johnson’s baby hook shot silence Larry Bird’s Celtics while I was agonizing over whether to go to work at WPDE. I called around, seeking advice, thinking that this would be the most important decision of my life.

  What’s that line? Don’t sweat the small stuff—and it’s all small stuff. Now it was twenty-one years later, and as I was getting ready to cover a series between Kobe Bryant’s Lakers and Kevin Garnett’s Celtics, I was learning that, while it’s not all small stuff, most things aren’t as big as you thought when you look at them through the rearview mirror. That’s something cancer does for you: It smacks you in the face with instant perspective.

  In another month, Robin and I would present the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the ESPYs. But first, in June 2008, came those NBA Finals and a personal milestone: my last scheduled chemotherapy sessions.

  When the Finals began, I underwent what was to be my next-to-last session—followed, of course, by a trip to the gym. A couple of days later, I went to the hospital for a scan. By now I had learned more about the art of detecting cancer than I’d ever wanted to know. It is, at least partly, an art, because cancer doesn’t want you to find it. There are many ways to discover cancer: X-ray, MRI, CT scan, and PET-CT scan, which tends to give you more 3-D angles and images. But here’s the tricky part: Some tumors might show up better on, say, a CT scan than on a PET-CT scan. Some tumors hide behind organs or look like blockages or scar tissue.

  The kind of cancer I’d been diagnosed with was especially hard to detect. To do so, doctors need a baseline set of scans for comparison purposes. They had my scans from when I was first diagnosed six months before, and now they’d compare those to this one and other scans that awaited in the future.

  When they slide you into the PET machine, your arms stretched out above your head, it’s like sliding into a close, tight tunnel. I get claustrophobic, so I shut my eyes before they pushed me back into the big, humming machine. Once in, I heard the engine gear up and start to whir, followed by a disembodied voice instructing me to hold my breath and then exhale, over and over again. Thirty minutes later, I was taking off that flimsy robe and getting dressed, my sights set on the upcoming Game One of the Lakers–Celtics throw-down.

  At that game, I ran into Mike Breen. I’d known him for years, but never all that well. The TV play-by-play man for the Finals, Breen is around my age and a New York guy through and through. He was the voice of the New York Knicks, lived out on Long Island, had gone to Fordham. He’s a quiet, reserved guy who I’d always thought of as a pro’s pro. And, like me, he loved nothing better than to hit the links on a sunny day when he had a few hours. In the media room before Game One of the Finals, we compared notes on our golf games and agreed to find a Beantown course together the next day.

  The details of our day on the links are fuzzy to me now. I have no idea what I shot or what Breen shot. I don’t remember what hole we were on when my cell phone rang. I just remember what the voice on the other end of the line had to say.

  “Stuart, this is Dr. Jeffrey Baker,” he said. My oncologist at Hartford Hospital. I walked over to a nearby veranda for privacy.

  “I’ve been over your scan and wanted to give you a call,” he said. “I don’t see any signs of cancer.”

  There was silence.

  “Well,” I said, finally. “What does this mean?”

  “Cancerous cells aren’t showing up on your scan anymore,” he said. In case I wasn’t getting it, he added: “This is a good thing.”

  I was quiet. He filled the silence. “There are no masses, no chunks of anything,” he said. “This is a good thing.”

  Had he used the word “remission” I would have been skeptical. I’d learned to hate the language typically used in CancerWorld. For example, the phrase “cancer survivor” normally applied to someone who has “beaten” cancer with five years of clean scans. That’s crazy stupid. If you’re living with a diagnosis of cancer and you wake up the next morning, you should then and there be considered a cancer survivor—period. Every day you’ve survived cancer. Every day is a win.

  My whole professional life revolved around reporting wins and losses, so you’d think I’d be comfortable with the idea that cancer is something that you either “beat” or “lose to.” But the more time I spent in CancerWorld, the more I was struck by these simplistic ways we talk about it. As I listened to the stories of my fellow cancer fighters at the infusion center, to their tales about how cancer hides and jukes and feints you, how it can lull you into a false sense of security, I realized that how we think and talk about cancer is part of the problem.

  I vowed never to use words like “remission” or phrases like “beat cancer.” Maybe it had to do with never wanting to let my guard down. In boxing, they say the punches most likely to knock you out are those you don’t see coming. I never wanted to not see cancer coming again—I�
��d rather brace myself for the blow.

  “Does this mean I don’t have cancer anymore?” I asked the doc.

  Dr. Baker paused, choosing his words carefully. When I first started seeing him, I was put off by how distant Dr. Baker could be. But that’s when my friend, Laura Okmin—one of my boat people—explained to me that oncologists often have to be cold and clinical out of self-protection. So many of their patients don’t make it—they can’t allow themselves to get emotionally invested. Once I heard that, I was able to focus on Dr. Baker’s expertise and not his demeanor, which was always professional, if not overly warm. And that combination of personality traits wasn’t unique to him. As Laura had predicted, my other oncologist, Dr. Manish Shah at New York–Presbyterian, was also one cool customer.

  Here’s where I truly appreciated Dr. Baker’s “just the facts” demeanor. I needed to make sense of what he was telling me, and he was giving it to me straight. “It means there’s no cancer we can detect,” he said. “I want to consult with the rest of your team, but I think we should skip your last chemotherapy, and then we’ll get you on a schedule of a scan every six months. If, after five years, those are all clean, we can go to a scan once a year. Sound good?”

  What the hell. I should have been ecstatic, I know. But I wasn’t feeling anything. I felt like I’d entered another world. I wasn’t grounded. I was floating—that’s all I remember. The sensation of floating. I dialed my dad’s number, but I got his voice mail. Hung up.

  I just sat there and took some deep breaths. The sun beat down on my face; the air filled my lungs. It was quiet. I looked around at the expanse of green before me—trees and fairway, as far as I could see. How blessed I am to be out here, I thought, basking in the silence, the sun, the view. Just then, Breen walked up.