11
You May Have Cancer, but It Doesn’t Have You
“YOU LOOK WAY TOO GOOD to be hangin’ out in here.”
That’s what the lab technician told me prior to one of the early scans I had to determine the extent of the cancer that had invaded my body. Cheryl and I felt the same way. The whole thing was surreal from the moment we walked into Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute. My wife and I just stared at each other as we sat in the office of the financial consultant who was talking to us about insurance coverage and the like. We couldn’t believe we were sitting there and having this conversation. We couldn’t believe I was now part of the population we were seeing in the waiting room. There were people wearing surgical masks. Some were bald. Some looked too weak to stand, while others were pacing. And over this entire scene hung a distinct feeling of anxiety.
One of these days would I also be wearing “that look” of those for whom the cancer battle had taken a visible toll? At this point, I looked a lot more like the friends and family of patients who were getting checkups or preparing for another round of chemotherapy. The difference was that I was wearing the Emory patient bracelet and was about to undergo a series of tests to determine the extent of my non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Remember, you may have cancer, but it doesn’t have you.”
Again, words of that lab tech reminding me that my attitude in the course of this unscripted journey was going to be vital. Years later it is advice I’ve shared with countless cancer patients who face the same uncertainty and apprehension I felt. For me, it meant I was going to fight with every ounce of strength I had. I was going to “trust God . . . period,” and I was going to remain positive. That’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Not when a nurse is sticking an enormous needle into your hip bone as she extracts a bone marrow sample. That was just one of the tests I underwent on that first day. There were others, such as the CT scan that helped doctors determine the stage at which the cancer had been diagnosed, but that particular bone marrow biopsy stood out above the rest.
Lying facedown on a table, I could hear the sounds of the nurse preparing the needle and syringe. I could feel the area near my lower back being prepped. I heard her explanation of what was about to happen, that I would feel “tremendous pressure.” She wasn’t kidding. The pain and the pressure on my lower back were intense. And then there was the sound. I don’t know how best to describe it, but it sounded to me like one of those bicycle tire pumps being pushed down and then pulled back up again—the needle going in and the bone marrow sample being withdrawn time and again. I was gripping the sides of the table for all I was worth, and while I felt like yelling, all I can recall is grunting, not unlike the sound you might make while lifting weights. I tried to block out the pain by silently reciting the lyrics of a song written by Bebo Norman called “I Am” (an Old Testament reference to God’s name Yahweh, meaning “I am”). The song’s message is that no matter what you might be going through, in your household, in your job, in your marriage, or in my case, in your doctor’s office going through a procedure you think will never end, you’re not alone. “I am in the marrow and the blood” is the line that resonated with me, because that’s right where I was that afternoon on that table with that God.
It was over in a matter of ten to fifteen minutes, and then the waiting game began. The results of that day of testing would be analyzed, and a few days later we would have an assessment. My oncologist, Dr. Leonard Heffner, notified me that I had stage 2 (out of 4) follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was, he pointed out, not an aggressive form of cancer, that it was present in my lymph nodes but not in my bone marrow, and that while it was not curable, it was very treatable, and our goal would be to get it into remission. He pointed out that many patients with this type of cancer live long lives. And we talked about treatment. There would be none at this point because aside from the swelling near my left ear and a few other spots, I was basically asymptomatic—meaning I wasn’t feeling sick. In his opinion, we should take the approach of “watchful waiting.” I would go to Winship three times a year, and at each visit, my blood would be tested and Dr. Heffner would feel up and down my neck, under my armpits, and around my groin, all areas where there are lymph nodes, to see if anything had changed in size from the previous visit. We followed this regimen for nearly three years.
In 2006, things changed. The swelling near my left ear and on the right side of my neck had grown more pronounced, and I had grown more self-conscious about how I looked on the air. I would stand in front of the mirror before I went on and look at my face from different angles. I would wonder what the makeup artist was thinking but not saying. I would wonder if the camera operators shooting me during the show were noticing that something was different. The tipping point came at the NBA All-Star Game in February 2006 in Houston.
I was honored that the league asked me to welcome the crowd to the game from center court and then introduce the starting lineups. In a phone call with Cheryl, I asked her to record it so I could watch it the next night when I was home. We watched the recording together and both saw the same thing. It was time for me to go public with the news I had cancer. Dr. Heffner and I met and considered my options. If I wanted to begin chemotherapy at this point, I could, but it was not imperative. I still felt great and told him I preferred to wait until we were finished with our NBA coverage in May. The message I wanted to send to viewers was that while I had received a cancer diagnosis, it didn’t mean I needed to go into hiding. I wanted to keep working and then start treatment.
By this time, two and a half years since I had been diagnosed, only a few people knew what I was going through—my family, a couple close friends, and a few executives at work. But now everyone was going to know. An hour before we hit the air for our first show after the All-Star break, I called Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith into my office separately to let them know what I was dealing with. My news was met with stunned silence and shaking heads. Both said, “If you need anything, or if your family needs anything, just ask.”
My only request of both was that we not let my news affect the show’s dynamic. We had made a living the past six years doing a lighthearted basketball show—no place to be if you’re thin-skinned, since we were constantly jabbing each other, tossing insults at each other, and generally having a full-court free-for-all. To each I said, “Look, this can’t change the way we do our show. I don’t want you to lay off me because I have cancer. Things have to continue the way they always have. It’s one of the reasons people love the show.”
That night on our pregame show, we spent the first segment talking about the doubleheader people would be seeing that night. We took a commercial break, and in the second segment, I flew solo.
“Welcome back. I need to take just a moment here to explain something that some of you may have wondered about in recent weeks. I’m dealing with something that millions of people have dealt with. Cancer. Specifically, follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The only reason I’m bringing my condition to your attention now is because the swelling of a lymph node here on the left side of my face has become noticeable. I was diagnosed two and a half years ago and have been having regular checkups since then.
“Through all of this time, I have had no symptoms. I’ve felt great and still do to this day. The plan my oncologist and I have settled on is to work the rest of the NBA season and play-offs, go to the beach with my wife, Cheryl, and our four kids, and then start a treatment regimen in June, which will likely include chemotherapy. Then next season I’ll come back to work, whether you like it or not. I draw much inspiration for what lies ahead from my mother, Lois, and my sister Dawn—both cancer survivors. As for my family, we will continue to do what we always do. We will trust God . . . period.”
The outpouring of support and encouragement I received was staggering. NBA commissioner David Stern called the following day. The in-box of my computer’s email was filled nonstop with well wishes and prayers from my Turner Sports family, friends I hadn’t heard from in ages, and total strangers who had managed to get my email address. My bosses at the time, Turner Sports president David Levy and vice president Jeff Behnke, could not have been more compassionate, assuring me that they would be there for any needs my family might have and that there was no hurry for me to get back to work once my treatments began. “We just want you to get better, EJ. When you get back on the air, you get back on the air. We know you want to be back in the chair for opening night of the next NBA season, but there is no pressure on our end. We just want you better, no matter how long that takes.”
And then there was the family at the Mexican restaurant in Dallas. Blackberry moment. I was there for the 2006 Western Conference Finals between the Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns and was now three weeks from the start of chemo. I had grabbed an early dinner on one of the nights there wasn’t a game in Dallas and was waiting for the check. That’s when a man walked away from the table where his family was sitting and over to mine. He said he watched the show regularly and knew what my upcoming summer included. Then he said, “We asked your waiter to bring us your check. It would be our pleasure to buy your dinner. Go get ’em.”
Chemotherapy sessions, or infusions, can take a while. At least mine did. It really depends on what kind of chemo you’re getting and how many drugs or antibodies are being used. I would be getting R-CHOP, each letter representing the various drugs used. I would list them here, but only a finalist in the national spelling bee would have a shot at correctly identifying them. For instance: “cyclophosphamide.” Could I have the language of origin? Are there alternate spellings? Could you repeat the word? Is there an alternate pronunciation? Could you use it in a sentence? “Ernie’s chemotherapy treatment included the drug cyclophosphamide.” You get the idea.
My first infusion came in late June of 2006, and I was scheduled to have no fewer than six “cycles” (one infusion every three weeks) and possibly eight or nine depending on how well everything went. On a typical infusion day, I’d be sitting in a recliner by 9:00 a.m., headphones on, plugged into my iPod or the bedside television, and I’d be just one of the twenty or so patients watching bags of cancer-fighting drugs slowly drip . . . drip . . . drip into the tubing that ran from the infusion machines into ports that had been surgically implanted into our chests. Four bags of fluid were on the menu at each session, along with prednisone tablets, and I wouldn’t walk out until 3:00 in the afternoon.
Most of the patients had a spouse, or another family member, or a friend sitting with them during the process. They’d be having conversations, or watching TV, or reading, or knitting, or working on their computers while the treatment was going on. I just wanted to be alone. Cheryl would drop me off in the morning and pick me up in the afternoon, sitting with me for the last half hour as the last of the drugs entered my system. She always said she would sit with me for the duration, but I always told her it wasn’t necessary. She could take care of the kids or go to work. She didn’t have to sit there for five or six hours and watch me sleep, or watch TV, or throw up. I’d heard all the stories about chemo and had read quite a bit about it. It was like the lab technician had said (yes, the one who had told me, “You may have cancer, but it doesn’t have you”): “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the entertainment value of chemotherapy is really, really overrated.” I appreciated him trying to lighten the mood whenever possible, because even though I had done my research, I had no idea exactly which of the nasty side effects I might experience.
If there’s one thing I hate, as I would guess most of you do, it’s throwing up. It had rarely happened to me; in fact, I could remember the five times it had happened—the locations are exact; the dates are in the ballpark.
1. Brattleboro, Vermont, while visiting my grandparents (1960)
2. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in my pajamas (1962)
3. Atlanta, Georgia, when I had the flu (1968)
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after covering the Braves’ season opener (1985)
5. Vancouver, British Columbia, the last time I would ever eat sea bass (1997)
No way I wanted Cheryl or anybody else to be on hand for number six if chemo was going to have that effect. And you know what? It never did. Not once in the course of all my treatments. That’s not to say there weren’t some difficult stretches.
I woke up that Saturday morning after my first chemo session the day before and felt . . . normal. I made sure I took my pills with breakfast, spent some time reading on the back patio, took a walk, and relaxed, and it was like any other day. And so was Sunday. Chemo novice that I was, I felt pretty good about how things were going, so good that I wanted to check with Dr. Heffner to make sure something had actually been in all those bags that was doing what it was supposed to be doing, because if I was supposed to be having any side effects, they weren’t happening.
A few days later I could hardly get out of bed.
I had chills so bad in the middle of the night that I went to my closet and put on sweats and socks and a hoodie. This was July in Atlanta. Normally, those things had been stashed away for the summer. At 5:30 in the morning, I was shivering. Cheryl stuck a thermometer in my mouth. It read 103. She called Emory Hospital, and soon, with the sun just beginning to come up, my son Eric was driving me there. This was one of those times when you realize that even though just one person in the family has cancer, it attacks everybody. I knew this had to be hard for Eric—his dad in the front seat beside him, looking as sick as he had ever seen him.
When we got to the hospital, I was taken to a room where my vitals were taken, blood was drawn, and medication was given, and I actually began feeling coherent enough to ask when my son and I could go back home. The nurse looked at me with sort of a half smile and said, “Well, it won’t be today. We’ll have a room for you upstairs in just a minute.” My white cell count was low. Really low. White cells fight off infections, and I didn’t have much defense. I would be in the hospital until my count was high enough. It would turn out to be five days, and the first few were spent virtually in isolation. When I was allowed to get out of bed and walk around, I was limited to a few laps around the hospital floor and was thrilled on day four to be let outside for a few minutes wearing a surgical mask.
Four days after being sent home, I was back at Emory for my second cycle of chemotherapy. To avoid a repeat of what had happened the first time, my doctor added another step to my regimen. Two days after every treatment, I would drive to the infusion center for a shot of a drug called Neulasta, which helps the body make white blood cells. That stuff is the bomb. And the great thing about it was that I would be in and out of the infusion center in ten minutes. While I was in there getting the shot, I witnessed the familiar scene—every recliner occupied by a cancer patient getting their treatment. By this time, I had become familiar with the nonverbal communication common to members of the cancer club. I would make eye contact with a man or a woman hooked up to the chemotherapy machinery and simply give a clenched fist. Some would return that sign, or just nod, or slowly blink to show the message had been received.
While from that second treatment on I tolerated chemo pretty well, there were days I didn’t feel like doing much of anything but staking out a spot on the couch. I was able to work out on a fairly regular basis. When my hair started falling out, I took the initiative of shaving my head rather than going through a period of time looking like a stray dog with mange. I wore that hairless look like a badge of honor. I was in a fight, and in my mind, I was winning. There were certainly times when fear and doubt and anxiety came knocking at my door. I would simply say, “You can come in, but you’re gonna have to hang out with faith, trust, and hope—and they’re not gonna let you stay here long.”
A couple things were troublesome, and I hesitate to even bring them up, because so many of the patients going through what I was had far worse stories to relate. Mealtimes were tricky, if not maddening. Cheryl would ask me what I felt like eating and would offer a few suggestions. She makes tremendous turkey, cheese, and tomato panini, and in the moment she would bring that up, I’d be all in. Then she’d bring it to the table, and the aroma, which under normal conditions would have my mouth watering, would make me gag. One Thursday morning, as I joined my buddies at Bible study, I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, and grits—my staple. I couldn’t even look at the plate when it was delivered and just apologized to the waitress and the group and drove home.
Then there were my eyebrows. I didn’t have a problem with the bald look, and in time there wasn’t a hair on my body, but not having eyebrows gave me kind of a mannequin quality I wasn’t thrilled with. I could only chalk that up to vanity. But the good thing about looking in the mirror was this: the swelling in my face was quickly disappearing and I felt strong. I felt alive! The weeks went by with a third and fourth cycle in the books.
In mid-July, when I should have been sitting in the eighteenth tower calling the British Open at Royal Liverpool, I was in my Emory recliner watching the coverage on TNT, hearing Mike Tirico and the announcing crew send me their best. It meant the world. Just as it did in August when I had to miss the PGA Championship in Chicago and Billy Andrade finished his second round with a share of the lead and concluded his post-round interview with some kind words about me and my cancer battle and how he looked forward to having me back in the tower at the PGA the following year.
At the same time, I was being encouraged by daily emails of support. If there’s one thing I learned from that summer of 2006, it was the value of having friends hit the send button. You have no idea what it meant when I was having “one of those days,” when nausea was trying to get the upper hand or I was simply exhausted, and then I’d see a list of emails to be read telling me to “hang in there,” or “keep up the fight,” or “our church prayed for you last Sunday.” It was an inspirational shot of adrenaline.
So here’s the deal. If you know somebody who’s going through something—it doesn’t have to be cancer; it can be any number of trials we all face from time to time—take a minute, write a note, and hit the send button. With that simple gesture, you can instantly provide a blackberry moment in the life of someone who’s struggling.
Nobody understood the power of encouragement better than my sister Chris. She had been a longtime special education teacher who had retired and now had time to focus on endeavors that were much more than hobbies—animal rescue, gardening, and quilt making. She was not a runner, but in honor of my fight, she trained for one of the country’s largest annual 10K (6.2 miles) runs, the Peachtree Road Race. She was one of more than forty thousand who took part on the Fourth of July, and she ran it with a shirt proclaiming that she was running for her brother. When my fiftieth birthday rolled around in August, she presented me with a beautiful quilt that I could take to treatment with me because I always asked for a blanket or two while I sat in the recliner. Sewn into that five-foot-by-five-foot masterpiece was the message “For every season there is a miracle.”
My sixth, and potentially final, chemo cycle came on October 13, with the 2006–2007 NBA season set to start seventeen nights later. After more than three months, I had gotten to know the infusion staff at the Winship Cancer Institute very well. Often during those hours of treatment, when I wasn’t reading, or listening to music, or watching those full bags of fluid gradually empty, I would just watch the nurses tend to other patients. What must that be like, I wondered, to wake up in the morning and head to a job where you deal on a daily basis with life and death, watching some patients improve and others decline? It takes a special person to do that, and I had nothing but the utmost respect for the jobs they did and the compassion they showed. They were angels in hospital scrubs and rubber gloves and surgical masks. All of that being said, I never wanted to see them again.
Tuesday, October 31—Halloween—was opening night of the NBA season with a doubleheader on TNT, and I was back in the host chair, sitting with my buddies Kenny and Charles, and now all of us were bald. I had no idea it was coming, but our remote crews who would televise the games from Miami and Los Angeles that night had done interviews with several players welcoming me back, and our studio production team had taken those clips and pieced them together. The video ended with Kobe Bryant saying that now with my bald head, “You’re officially a brother.” It was a special way to start the night.
The following morning, Wednesday, November 1, I was back at Winship for my latest scan, which would determine if the six cycles had done the trick or if I would be back in the infusion room two days later for another round of chemo. I would know in about twenty-four hours. So on Thursday, I was in my office by noon preparing for another TNT doubleheader, going through my usual game day routine of reading articles from various newspaper outlets around the league, updating my notes on the games played the previous night, and preparing some discussion points on the two games we would televise that night. And I waited for the phone to ring. And I waited. And I waited some more. At 4:00, I went down the hall for a production meeting led by our producer Tim Kiely. That took about a half hour, and when I got back to my office, I was hoping to see the blinking red light on my phone, indicating a message, hopefully from Dr. Heffner. No such luck. And then shortly after 6:00 the phone rang, and I recognized the number. This was it. I took a deep breath and picked up after the second ring.
“Ernie, this is Dr. Heffner. I know you’re at work. Do you have a minute?”
“I’ve got whatever time you need.”
“Well, I’ve got the results of your scan yesterday, and I have some good news. I know we talked about possibly having as many as eight or nine cycles of chemotherapy, but your scan came back clean. Your cancer is in remission. So don’t worry about coming in tomorrow. You’re done with chemo.”
“Well, that is good news.”
It was news I couldn’t wait to share with my wife, so as soon as I’d hung up with Dr. Heffner, I called Cheryl at home. A journey that had begun with tears back in August of 2003 was now ending that way over a telephone line.
After our call, still an hour or so from having to go on the air, I sat at my desk and reflected on what the last three unscripted years had been like. The fears, the anxiety, the constant wondering if I would be around for graduations and weddings and grandchildren. All those looks of concern on the faces of Eric and Maggie and Carmen and Michael. All those hours in the infusion recliner. All those messages from friends who had hit the send button. All those prayers I had said in times of stress when it was just me talking to the God who had created me, asking for strength and the peace that passes all understanding and for another badly needed dose of trust. And now it was over. I let an overwhelming sense of gratitude wash over me. God had gifted me with faith and family and friends, and I truly was the richest man in town.