by Stuart Scott
But it didn’t stop me from hating this. I was crying and gritting my teeth and telling myself I’d had enough. But this is also the thing about cancer: You never know when a funny moment will suddenly break the tension. After numbing me, Dr. Kennedy said, “You’re going to feel some pressure.”
For some reason, I flashed back to some comedian I once heard talking about a visit to the proctologist. “You’re going to feel some pressure,” his doctor said. “Yeah, I feel it—in the roof of my mouth!” the patient said. Through my tears, I started to laugh. Especially when I thought of something else from the same monologue:
Doctor: “Look, I’m going to be checking for blood in your stool.”
Patient: “Doc, you stick that thing up my butt and I can tell you right now, you’re going to find blood in my stool.”
So I was laughing and crying—the literal definition of having cancer, right?—at the same time that the microscope was in for about forty-five seconds. They’ve seen the blockage, Dr. Kennedy reported. It may be scar tissue—they don’t know. But we’ll have to do another TURP surgery—that procedure I had once before, where they go in through the urethra to remove whatever’s blocking the urine flow. That would be the following Monday. For now, though, it was straight off to Rhode Island.
So here’s the interesting, surreal thing about cancer. You go from that—from having a microscope squeezed down your manhood, from crying, from laughing—to playing in a touch football game on the beach a few hours later in Rhode Island, with Sydni and her teammates and about five of their dads. You go from being in the hospital, where that antiseptic smell fills the air, making you gag in the back of your throat, and you’re peeing blood after they’ve done what they do … you go from all that to standing in the sunshine, holding a football, throwing a tight spiral to your daughter, and you wonder, even after seven years of this happening: Is this really happening?
So what could I do? I could play. Hell, yeah, I played. I quarterbacked our team. Her coach knew his girls needed time away from soccer to bond with their teammates. We had also done this the previous year during the state tournament, and in that game I threw Sydni two touchdown passes, and she ran a kickoff around the right side, turning on them jets, for a touchdown. Now, this year, we were down 2–0, and she came to me.
“Dad, what should I do?”
“Go out there, split right,” I said. “When I say ‘hike,’ run as fast as you can. I’ll get you the ball.”
She ran a classic go route, I launched the ball, and she timed her leap perfectly, catching it in the corner of the end zone. Later, on fourth and one at our opponents’ seven-yard line, I sidearmed her the game-winner. Before I had kids, I didn’t think I’d ever love anything more than playing football. But throwing a touchdown pass to my daughter in my sport … man, it’s emotional. I started the day crying, and now I choked up for an entirely different reason. ’Cause if you’re an athlete and your kid is doing something athletic with you, I don’t have the words to adequately express how amazing that is. Whenever I see Sydni turn on those afterburners, I always think back to the same thing, back to when she was born, back to when she was a baby, this little thing. This tiny little person had grown into this amazing athlete. My little girl … was doing that. I fill up, man.
Later, after dinner back at the hotel, Sydni invited her friends to watch a movie up in our room. Ordinarily, the idea of a bunch of people coming to my room at nine p.m. to watch a movie? Absolutely not. But her feeling good enough and comfortable enough to invite five girls to our room? I loved it. Kristin and I went to the fitness room. When we got back, six girls were in one twin bed watching some stupid movie where bugs were coming out of Bradley Cooper’s eyes.
It had been a long day, but now I wasn’t tired. I was giddy. My baby girl told her friends, “Come to my dad’s room.” There was no way I was going to say you can’t do that. My day started with a god-awful medical procedure, with me saying I can’t do this anymore … but apparently I could. I’d been down. Sydni brought me back up.
• • •
BEFORE DAWN the following Monday, I was in the passenger seat as Kristin was driving me to the hospital for the TURP procedure. I had a hoodie on, looking all gangsta, rocking out to Slick Rick’s old-school “Children’s Story,” when I shot a quick video to send to the girls.
“Hey, what’s up, Monday morning, five-fifteen,” I said. “On my way to the hospital to have a little surgery. Not big surgery but a little surgery. But I wanted you to hear the music I was listening to. Yeah. Mmmm-hmmm. Yeah, are you up? All right. I love you. Bye.”
Sydni responded later with a text: “That’s an ungodly hour to be awake, but a good song.”
Taelor called later. “Because of you I had a nightmare,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I woke up at eight with a nightmare that someone was attacking my eyes,” she said, teasing me. “I think ’cause you sent me that, I had that nightmare.”
I’d always tried to shield the girls from my fear, always talking to them about being strong, always seeming confident. They did the same with me, an interesting dance. But I knew what Taelor’s dream was really about. She didn’t have to tell me she was afraid; we were too busy putting up strong fronts for each other.
Two days later, I was back in Baltimore for round two of the clinical trial. And that’s when all hell broke loose. Toward the end of the infusion, my heart started racing and I was getting shooting pains in my groin and lower back. But then it settled down. The next day, I went into Manhattan to get my suit for the ESPYs—I’d be receiving the Jimmy V Perseverance Award in a week.
But that night I started feeling weird. I was peeing blood, though that wasn’t surprising, having just had the TURP procedure. But I also was up every forty-five minutes to pee during the night. Then I started to get severe stomach cramps. I thought it was simply because I’d eaten a bagel while lying down—something that had bothered me before. But it kept getting worse. By Saturday morning, I was doubled over in pain and could barely walk to the bathroom. I thought this must be a tumor pushing through some wall that had been keeping it at bay. You know where I went with this, mentally: “I’m going to die soon,” I said to Kristin. It’s not a big step to get to that place, because it felt like my suitcase had been packed for that ride for some time now. My doctors told me to get to the hospital.
There, the pain went from my stomach to my back. Tests and more tests followed. They told me there were no signs of cancer in my kidneys or liver, but that … my kidneys were failing. And something was messed up with the liver. The combination of the TURP with the clinical study had triggered some kind of blockage in my urethra.
I was on some powerful drugs, so it’s all a blur to me. But it was a crash, man. Four surgeries over the next seven days. Wires and tubes coming out of every part of my body—and I mean every part of my body. They put stents in through my back to clear out the kidneys.
Once the kidneys were drained, I started to feel a little better. Still, we didn’t know what caused this. My stomach pain may have been “referred pain,” I was told. Maybe the TURP–clinical trial combination triggered the kidney failure and that sent a signal to my stomach. I’d never heard of “referred pain,” but okay … now how do I turn down the referral?
A week later, I wanted to go home. I was supposed to fly to LA on Sunday and I needed a few days to get ready. All week, my doctors were telling me they’d get me to Los Angeles. But now I sensed they weren’t so sure. They wanted me to spend at least another day in the hospital. Barb called me, and I could hear the concern in her voice.
“Do you think you should be going to LA?” she asked.
“No, not really,” I said. “I don’t think I should be going.”
Then I paused. “But, it’s bigger than me, Barb,” I said. I didn’t know how it was bigger than me, but I knew that this was something I needed to do. “I’ll go, but I’ll be smart about it.”
I
knew I’d be tired, but when I got home from the hospital on Friday night, I was alarmed by how wiped out I felt. I’d had more energy the three times I’d come home after having my stomach sliced open and parts of my insides removed.
But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. “In the span of eight days,” my surgeon explained, “your body has been assaulted about six times. The TURP, the clinical study, the surgeries in the hospital.”
Maura and the honchos at ESPN did what they do. They called and said, “We’re flying you, your girlfriend, and daughter out”—on the Gulfstream G450, one of Disney’s state-of-the-art corporate jets.
I’d have a bed and a big bathroom. Five-hour flight equals at least five visits to the toilet. But even with the Gulfstream, I wasn’t sure I’d make it. Sunday morning, taking a shower, I didn’t have the strength to bring my towel over my shoulder. I just sat on the toilet, feeling defeated, and said, “Kristin, I can’t.”
She dried me off and dressed me.
Taelor had decided not to come. I wanted her there, but her summer semester at Barnard had just started. Sydni was missing the second week of her a cappella camp. On Friday, when I got out of the hospital, her mom brought her to the condo, and Sydni was upset. “I know I’ve known about this, but is there any way I can come out to LA on Tuesday?” Sydni asked. “Is there any way, please? There’s this song; I have a solo.” She wasn’t being crappy about it, which I appreciated, but I told her there wasn’t.
“Can we come back early?” she asked.
No. We were going to fly from LA to Raleigh to see my folks, whom we hadn’t seen in five months. On the plane, I slept a lot. In between naps, I watched the World Cup on a flat-screen TV with Kristin and Sydni. Like I said, the plane was off the charts.
• • •
I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN most of my speech and committed it to memory. Remember, I’ve presented on that stage before, so I knew that I’d have to memorize: The teleprompters are too far away for me to read.
I had a feeling that something magical was about to happen. The more I thought about the speech, the more I thought it was okay to feel ambivalent about being honored. That maybe the best thing I could do was to use that ambivalence—to see this as an opportunity to stand for something bigger than me. To represent for everyone in that army of fighters that had linked arms with me for years now.
Another reason I felt like this week was going to be about something bigger was that so many of my friends and loved ones were coming out. And I wanted the people I love to share this. It was too much for my mom and dad to travel across the country, nor could my favorite auntie and my cousins Anthony and David make it. Fred, my best friend since high school, would also be absent. But everyone else in my life would be there. I didn’t even know exactly what they’d be sharing, but I wanted them to share it.
Barb was flying in, as was Laura. Somehow, after all these years, the two female friends I’d known the longest had never met each other. How could that be? My buddies Scott and Brian were coming out. Amy and Deedee would be there. Susan, Stephen, and Synthia. Jackie Barry, who used to run the Jimmy V golf tournament when it was in Raleigh—a dear, dear friend. My agent and close friend Jackie Harris.
Oh, and Jack Bauer would be in the house. When Maura first asked me whom I wanted to introduce me, I joked, “Denzel.”
“What about Michael Jordan?” she asked.
“That’d be cool,” I said.
She asked and Michael wanted to do it, but he had a scheduling conflict. “Anyone else?” she asked.
“How about Kiefer?” I asked. 24 was my favorite TV show of all time. When the series first ended in 2010 (before its return last year), I had downloaded the final episode and watched it on an airplane. I remember getting all choked up when Jack escaped from the Russians and thanked Chloe for always being there for him. I don’t think I was emotional because it was such a great episode; I was moved because this character had been a part of my life for nine years.
Later, my boy Scottie and I got pretty deep one night, talking about why I related so to Jack Bauer. “My favorite TV shows are 24, NYPD Blue, and Homeland,” I said. “So some of it is my dad and law enforcement. Another part of it is that I’ve always enjoyed shows where the lead male character is a flawed but good person. But my inner twelve-year-old likes Jack Bauer ’cause he’s a badass who kicks ass and doesn’t follow authority. He just wants to do the right thing even if it means stepping outside the lines.”
Scottie thought for a moment. We had first met fifteen years ago on the golf course and struck an instant bond. He saw that I had my kids’ initials on my golf balls—T & S. And I saw that he had “ASC” marked on his balls: his kids are Alexis, Spencer, and Cooper. I’m going to like this dude, we both thought of the other. Then, when I found out he was into martial arts, too … it was all over. Blood bros.
Now he was thinking through my Jack Bauer hero worship. “See, I think for me, and I might have thought for you, it was in those first episodes years ago, when his daughter gets abducted,” he said. “That’s when I was, like, I’m down with this guy. ’Cause then it’s like we say in martial arts, ‘Today is a glorious day to die.’ He’s going to win or die for his daughter. We can feel that, right?”
Man, that’s deep—I hadn’t thought of that. But, yes … I’ve spent my whole adult life protecting my daughters—even protecting them from this damned disease tearing me up inside. Of course a badass character that does the same on TV would strike a nerve.
When Maura texted “Kiefer said he’d be honored,” I was silly with excitement. While I was in the hospital the week before coming to LA, Maura texted Kristin just to check in and see how we were doing.
“We’re fine; we’re at the hospital, watching 24,” she texted back.
“Text me a photo,” Maura replied.
So Kristin got behind me and took a photo of me watching 24 and texted it to Maura, who forwarded it to Kiefer: “Look what he’s doing!” She forwarded me his text back: “What’s he doing? Is he crazy?”
Jack Bauer watching me watch Jack Bauer. Cool.
• • •
WITHIN MINUTES AFTER ARRIVING at our hotel and checking in, Hurricane Maura was on the case. “What do you need?” she asked, on her way over. She burst through the door, staffers in tow, barking orders. “Stock the fridge with Gatorade,” she told them.
I’m telling you, Maura runs stuff. A natural leader.
She asked if I was up for a short walk. Just across the way sat the ESPN production trailer. She wanted to show us the five-minute video, narrated by Kiefer, which would be part of my introduction. We took our time and made it over there. A film crew had hung out with us during my first clinical trial session, shot footage of me doing MMA, and interviewed Kristin and Sydni. But I hadn’t seen what they’d put together yet.
The piece blew me away. It showed me at the clinical trial, joking around with the nurse, in the gym, watching from the sidelines as Sydni scored a goal. They interviewed my friend Laura Okmin. “All the things he does, as his close friend, I want to say stop,” she said. “Stop working out so hard; stop traveling so much; why are you doing so many SportsCenters? But it’s what keeps him going.”
“I hear from people every day: ‘He’s on TV and he’s doing what he loves,’” said my boy Doug Ulman, echoing something he’s always tried to get me to wrap my head around—the effect I could have. “They take strength from the fact that he has not been paralyzed by his illness and that he’s decided to live life on his own terms.”
Then came Sydni. “When people ask me, ‘Are you worried or are you scared?,’ I’ve never really been worried,” she said, choking up. “Because he’s always had the most confidence: He’s always told me he’s going to get through it and that we’re going to get through it together.”
Here’s the interesting thing about Sydni in the piece. She was saying these words that she only felt partly—because she was crying as she said them. So she was mirroring m
e. Because I’ve always been telling her, “Don’t be scared.” I’ve been showing confidence for her sake—all this stuff I don’t feel all the time. I feel some of it, yes. But I’ve got to show her that toughness all the time.
So, huddled in that trailer, I started to cry, feeling like I was watching a mini me. She was talking brave, but the fact that she was crying let me know it was more complicated than that—just as it is for me. Just like me, she was scared.
As Sydni spoke, the first notes of Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me” played under her words. Soon, the music rose to a climax.
Oh, won’t you stay with me?
’Cause you’re all I need.
Later, Sydni would tell me that that was the song she was supposed to sing solo in week two of a cappella camp. Man, this was some kind of sign. Note to self: Find a way for Sydni to get back home in time to sing that song.
But first, as the video ended, I stood up, tears streaming down my cheeks. Maura and her staff had the foresight to quietly leave the trailer. And I grabbed Kristin and I grabbed Sydni and I pulled them tight. All you could hear was Sam Smith’s haunting notes and all our sniffles.
“This is why I needed you guys here,” I said, clutching them. “This is why I needed you here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
YOU BEAT CANCER BY HOW YOU LIVE
I don’t know, Laura,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m up to it.”
While I was in the hospital, drugged and with tubes coming out of every opening in my body, Laura had called with an idea she and Kristin had: a group dinner on Monday night of ESPYs week. At that point, the way I was feeling, I would have said no to anything.
“Trust me,” she said. “This will be your favorite night.”