by Craig Sager
I began five days of chemo, followed by a few days off, then two last days of chemo. On July 19, fifteen days after the initial scheduled transplant, I received my son’s bone marrow—again—and started the clock ticking on the next hundred days. MD Anderson did not allow patients to leave the hospital in the hundred days after a transplant, as Northside had allowed, so I wasn’t going anywhere. In my head, I figured if I did well enough after thirty days, I would be released on good behavior, against hospital protocol.
Every day in July, Stacy was at my side, holding my hand, peppering the nurses with questions or laughing at my silly jokes, and every night she would sleep on an air mattress in my room. I spent my days watching television, mostly sports—tennis, golf, baseball, you name it. But I also became a loyal watcher of The Andy Griffith Show, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza reruns. I had watched those shows in the 1960s and also when Turner aired The Andy Griffith Show during Atlanta Braves’ rain delays. (When the game resumed and Turner switched back to baseball, legendary announcer Skip Caray would let the audience know what happened in the remaining minutes of the episode.) Now I could tell you about every episode, every character, and what the writers should have done differently.
During my daily walks around the seventeenth floor in my weakened state, I would pass the exercise room, and I always smirked and chuckled when I saw patients in their gowns or robes, sitting in chairs and doing arm exercises like it was Thursday morning at a South Florida retirement home. Canes and walkers sat nearby.
“You should join the class,” said Dr. Pemmaraju one morning as he saw me watching them.
He said it would help build back my strength and agility.
Uh, no thanks, Doc, I thought to myself, but then I caught myself in the window separating me from the room. Maybe he had a point.
The class was surprisingly fun, proved to be great for my balance, and got the circulation going. And not only did I love our instructor, a physical therapist named Kim Presson, but I got to know a few of my classmates. Right off the bat, I became particularly close with Daniel and Brandon. Daniel was a gentleman from Brazil in his late forties who, when he wasn’t living at MDA, resided in Miami. He had already been through one transplant and was looking forward to getting out to go back and live with his daughter in Miami. As for Brandon, he was a fun, lively guy in his thirties, and we instantly connected over a mutual love of sports. He had already had a transplant and was in remission, awaiting the doctor’s permission to go home. His new bride awaited him, as they had moved up their wedding date to before his transplant.
“When I get home,” he would say, “I’m going on my honeymoon!”
Seeing these two guys was a key component in getting me to class. As we went through our exercises, we’d chat about sports or about getting out of the hospital. We shared laughs about the humbling experience of our exercise regimen—no one watching would mistake us for Mr. Olympias in training—but the seriousness of our situation made deeper connection inevitable.
As Daniel’s leukemia worsened, he had no choice but to sell the Miami house to help pay his medical bills, just as he had sold his house in Brazil to come to MD Anderson. We talked about the limits of insurance coverage and the nonmedical costs, like hotels, flights, and food, which piled up quickly. He also confided in me that the physical and emotional struggle of his battle was taking a toll, and he was worried about the financial burden he’d be leaving behind for his family in case he didn’t make it.
I’d hear none of it. I channeled Willie the Wildcat and hammed it up, getting him to laugh and hoping beyond all hope I might make him a believer in himself again.
One day, Daniel came to my room, something he rarely did, with a dour look on his face.
“I’m done,” he shared with me.
“What do you mean you are done?”
“They been telling me for weeks that I was getting out. Now they want to do another treatment and keep me here. More tests. I am not going to do it,” he said in his broken English.
“Where are you going to go?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just want out of here. I don’t have any place to go. I will live under a bridge in Houston.”
I could see the determination in his eyes and hear the conviction in his voice.
“But, Daniel, stay a little longer. They know what they are doing. They can help you here. Don’t walk out now.”
“I’m done. This never ends. I am not doing it anymore.”
“Don’t you think the doctors know what they are doing?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Daniel had fought the battle for so long; why give up now? It was like being at mile 25 in a marathon and deciding to stop running. But the nurses, doctors, and I could not convince him to stay. He packed his belongings and walked right out of the hospital. I never saw him again.
The power of positive thinking is a crucial element of my survival. I have witnessed firsthand the healing power of optimism. Over the course of my many lengthy stays at Northside Hospital and MD Anderson, I have seen fellow patients, many of whom I’d grown quite close to, give up, stop fighting, and succumb within a matter of days. I will never pass judgment on others’ decisions, but the moment they stopped believing in tomorrow, the end came. For some, the emotions were too much, or it was the financial burden left on their families, or simply that the will to live had slowly been beaten down by an incurable disease.
It reaffirmed my determination to raise awareness for leukemia and to help raise funds to find a cure. Patients like Daniel should not be faced with life-and-death decisions because of the costs of those decisions. I would fight for others who couldn’t.
As for Brandon and me, we plowed through, losing ourselves in our exercise routine and regular small talk. “When I get outta here…” was his mantra, and his humor, positivity, and courage reinforced my own.
One day in class, Brandon began bleeding profusely from his nose. An infection had taken hold. The event itself—with orderlies and nurses rushing him out of the exercise room—was scary, but soon we were visiting each other’s rooms, continuing our banter, reviewing the day in sports like a couple of coanchors. “When I get outta here…”
As the weeks went by, our interactions became less frequent. Brandon wasn’t in exercise class, and I got caught up in my own day-to-day of trying to stay alive. After exercise class one day, I went to visit him in his room. I really wanted to see him, if only selfishly, to pep me up.
The room was empty.
“Excuse me,” I asked a nurse, “where is Brandon in room 1744?”
Her look said it all.
*
Though MD Anderson does not allow transplant patients to leave in the first hundred days, doctors can make exceptions for patients who have recovered and are strong enough to move to outpatient treatment after thirty days, and that was just what Dr. Pemmaraju allowed me to do. Stacy was with me until early August, when the kids returned to school and she began a weekly Houston-to-Atlanta commute. Dr. Pemmaraju even let us go to our second home in Orlando for a few days and allowed me to return to Atlanta so I could see the kids.
A hematoma—an abnormal collection of blood outside of a blood vessel—developed in my brain, but after careful analysis, doctors did not think it was dangerous. In late August, I was still in remission, and Dr. Pemmaraju started me on a steady but low dosage of Vidaza as a precaution. There were five-day cycles of Vidaza, which included two shots a day. The Vidaza was not simply flushed into my body via an IV—it could be more effective if inserted directly into my abdomen. So each of the five days, a nurse would come in with a cool pack of the medicine, which had to be warmed immediately before it was inserted into two needles, which were then thrust into my abdomen. The nurses alternated the shot locations each day—one day two shots on the left, the next day two shots on the right.
In addition to the precautionary chemo, the transplant was working, and I looked ahead to the start of the NBA season in October, althou
gh, armed with the knowledge of what had happened in 2014, I was prepared for anything.
23
SLEW
I have been an automobile aficionado since I received my Illinois driver’s license in 1967. I was fascinated and captivated by the sleek styles, the bright colors, the speed of cars. Over the years I have owned a 1935 Rolls-Royce Bentley, a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 190SL, a 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible, a 1964 MGB, a 1966 Jaguar XKE, a 1968 Pontiac GTO, a 1973 Mercury Cougar convertible, a 1984 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, a 1986 Chevy Malibu convertible, and a 1990 Corvette convertible, which I still drive to this day.
I collect everything. There are my baseball cards from childhood, which sit, pristine, in my house; my nickel collection, which I recently passed on to Ryan; every press pass I’ve ever been issued; and the Kissing Bandit’s bra, supported by two large Pop-a-Shot basketballs. As they say, it’s a long story, but the short of it is that Morganna, the Kissing Bandit, who earned her nickname for running onto various fields and courts during games to kiss sports stars, and I became friends way back in the mid-1970s, when she would attend spring training—she was a baseball fanatic. A few times over the years, I have had to get her out of various jails for her antics, and she gave me a bra as a gesture of thanks.
Near the Morganna bra in the case in the basement, in a small glass container, also sits one of my more unique items—thirty-nine-year-old horse poop.
*
I fell in love with horse racing as a young man working in Fort Myers. As it happened, a veterinarian named Jim Hill and his wife, Sally, had lived in the area before and were well-known in horse racing circles, not only for Jim’s work in the field but also as the co-owners of thirteen horses, in partnership with their friends Karen and Mickey Taylor, from Seattle. Jim was a kind man with a competitive streak, and he would teach me the finer points of the sport—from jockey weights to the thickness of the turf, from the importance of bloodlines to the importance of betting lines.
One of the horses the Hills and Taylors owned was a dark-brown youngster with great potential whom they named Seattle Slew, after the name of the Washington city and the sloughs of South Florida. The colt won his first three races of 1977 and was the favorite heading into the storied Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville. My employer, WINK-TV, had no interest in spending money to send me to Louisville to cover a horse race, so instead I tracked down Jim Hill’s mother, who still lived in Fort Myers, and watched the race with her, capturing her reaction on tape. I did the same during Slew’s Preakness victory in Baltimore a few weeks later. But there was no way I was going to miss his shot at the Triple Crown at Belmont Park in New York.
I flew to New York on Friday morning, the day before the race, and quickly caught up with Dr. Hill, trainer Billy Turner, and the Slew crew. I snuck away a few times in the afternoon to place bets at the windows on the Friday races, aided by inside tips from Slew’s jockey, Jean Cruguet. At night, as the park and the field emptied, Billy, the crew, and I walked across from the stables to Esposito’s Tavern for some late-night drinks and tall tales. After shots of vodka and a few too many beers, Billy suggested that instead of spending money on a hotel room, I should sleep in the stables with Slew, as stable crews would be watching him all night. I left Esposito’s after midnight and walked to Barn 54, where Cecil Murphy was on duty.
“There,” Cecil said, pointing with his outstretched arm to a small wooden bench a few feet from the horse, indicating that this was my bed for the night. I grabbed a horse blanket for covers and used a pinch of hay for a pillow. And there I slept for a few hours, next to one of the greatest racehorses that ever lived.
I woke at 4:00 a.m. with the trainers to feed Slew breakfast and to take him for a walk. Before we left the stable, I noticed a pile of Slew’s excrement resting comfortably on the hay. Knowing just how incredible the moment was, I grabbed one of Dr. Hill’s plastic surgical gloves and put some Slew poop in it to take back to Florida with me. Along with the $1,760 I won on an $800 bet when Slew finished first at the Belmont.
The Seattle Slew story has made its rounds over the years and, along with my Hank Aaron story, constitutes the majority of interest in my work, which at first blush is surprising, given that I’m most visible on the NBA sidelines. But on further thought, it’s not all that surprising. They’re really classic examples of not just bearing witness to history but participating in it, and I guess, on reflection, my drive to be part of the sports culture about which I’ve always been so passionate has compelled me to create my own luck.
I really try to impress this idea on my kids. Life is wonderful and fun and full of adventure, and with a little ingenuity, you can put yourself in the right place and good things will happen.
“But there are boundaries,” I can hear the Dilberts say. “Rules.”
Rules are for people without brains. Simply use common sense, and when you need to find a way, find a way. Whether it’s breaking into a water slide at night in the Bahamas (which I do often with my youngest kids) or bringing home a rattlesnake to share with the oldest kids when they were young, I have always found ways to have fun. (And lived to tell the tale—that’s important, too.)
24
MAYBE THIS TIME I AM BACK
In October 2015, past the one-hundred-day post-transplant mark and with my leukemia still in remission, Dr. Pemmaraju cleared me to return to work. The second transplant seemed to be working: all of the blood indicators were in my favor, and there were no signs of leukemia blasts. It had been a long eighteen-month battle, but this time I was sure that I had defeated the enemy.
My first game back was New Orleans at Golden State on opening night, on which the Warriors received their championship rings for winning the title in June. It was a big night for them—and for me. I had been looking forward to it since my transplant in July and had spent extra time picking out just the right outfit. I decided on an orange ensemble, to signify the fight against leukemia. I stuck to my usual game routine in San Francisco, which meant day-before interviews with coaches and players, a crab salad sandwich, and a walk (instead of a run) along the water. It felt so good to be back on the road and back on the air working, and the words of encouragement I received from the NBA family were uplifting.
Craig … congrats on finishing your treatments early! Been thinking about you and praying for you and your family. Can’t wait to see you back on the sidelines soon!!!
—Erik Spoelstra, head coach, Miami Heat
My schedule was full of upcoming games, and I did nothing to slow it down. According to blood tests in mid-November, my blasts levels had risen from 0 to 2 percent, which was still considered to be in remission. Not great news, but nothing to be too concerned about. Dr. Pemmaraju put me on a mild dosage of chemo a few days a month. I continued to travel and work, and the outpouring of encouragement from gracious friends and strangers alike often moved me to the edge of tears. Men and women of all ages and colors would share their own families’ battles with cancer or simply offer up prayers for me. I started to understand the impact my fight was having on others.
In December, with more than a dozen NBA games under my belt, I underwent yet another bone marrow biopsy at MD Anderson, and the blasts had risen to 3 percent. At that point, Stacy, Dr. Pemmaraju, and I had the “talk” about next steps; with the blasts increasing for another month in a row, the leukemia could be on its way back. We discussed a potential third stem cell transplant, though Dr. Pemmaraju said it would be quite rare. He decided he wanted to give the chemo one more month and then reassess in January.
At this point in my long battle, Stacy and I met good news and bad news with the same reaction: hope for the best, but whatever comes our way, we will fight it.
On several occasions I had been given weeks to live, yet here I was, back on the road and enjoying life. Was I a medical miracle? I will leave that to others to decide. Did my determined and positive approach help? I’ll never stop believing it did.
I was keeping b
usy traveling from city to city for games. From Los Angeles to San Antonio, Cleveland to Miami, the miles piled up.
The January biopsy revealed that the blast count had increased from 3 percent to 22 percent, an alarming jump in just four weeks. We knew that we needed to try a different approach to hold off the aggressive disease, and Dr. Pemmaraju researched ongoing clinical trials that might work. It had been eight months after my first transplant that I had relapsed, and seven months after the second one. There is a much greater survival rate if a patient can remain in remission for a minimum of twelve months after a transplant, and I was headed in the wrong direction.
During my testing and visit in early February, the biopsy revealed that the blasts had gone up from 22 percent to 28 percent. Dr. Pemmaraju had a new plan. After I returned from the NBA All-Star Game in Toronto in mid-February, I would start eight straight days of a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. I would continue with the Vidaza for my chemo, but we would add in Lirilumab, a proven cancer immunotherapy killer but one that had never before been tried on a leukemia patient in my stage, and a drug not yet approved by the FDA to treat leukemia.
“Let’s do it,” I told Dr. Pemmaraju without hesitation. Honestly, we had few choices.
(Fortunately, when we started the Vidaza-Lirilumab cycle, the doctors decided to increase the strength of the Vidaza, and therefore I could receive it via IV instead of abdomen shots.)
As Stacy, the kids, and I headed to Toronto for All-Star Weekend, I was no longer in remission, and Stacy and I decided not to share the relapse news with anybody. That meant spending the weekend with my family and seeing old NBA friends but not being able to share what was really going on. I have always been an honest person—sometimes to my immediate detriment (oh, the interviews I could’ve gotten if I’d just kept my mouth closed!)—and I worried about not being completely truthful with friends and strangers in Toronto when they would inevitably ask me how I was doing. I understood by now that people were rooting for me and that there were people very tied to the battle I was waging, but I decided that my responsibility was to just keep fighting for my life.