Out NBA star fights deadly brain cancer
Images: ESPN, Jason Collins/Flickr (inset)
Former US basketballer Jason Collins, the first out NBA player, has vowed to “put up a hell of a fight” after revealing he has “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer”.
Collins, who in 2013 became the first out gay man to play in a major US pro sports league, announced in September he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumour.
Now in a devastating essay for ESPN, the 47-year-old says “it’s time for people to hear from me directly” and revealed he has stage 4 glioblastoma.
“It came on incredibly fast,” he said, describing unusual symptoms of memory loss and inability to focus.
“I had been having weird symptoms like this for a week or two, but unless something is really wrong, I’m going to push through. I’m an athlete.
“Something was really wrong, though.”
Devastating diagnosis
Jason Collins recalled a subsequent CT scan revealed the extent and seriousness of his illness: an aggressive “multiforme” glioblastoma.
“Imagine a monster with tentacles spreading across the underside of my brain the width of a baseball,” he said.
The tumour was growing so quickly that he could die within weeks, Collins was told.
“My mental clarity, short-term memory and comprehension disappeared – turning into an NBA player’s version of Dory from Finding Nemo,” he recalled.
With the support of his husband Brunson Green and loved ones, Collins started treatment with medication followed by radiation and chemotherapy to slow the tumour’s growth.
“Within days, I started coming out of my fog,” he recalled.
‘If it doesn’t save me, it might help someone else’
Now, Jason Collins said he and his husband have been travelling to Singapore for innovative “chemotherapy and immunotherapy that’s still being studied.”
“The goal is to keep fighting the progress of the tumors long enough for a personalised immunotherapy to be made for me, and to keep me healthy enough to receive that immunotherapy once it’s ready,” he said.
“If what I’m doing doesn’t save me, I feel good thinking that it might help someone else who gets a diagnosis like this one day.
“After I came out, someone I really respect told me that my choice to live openly could help someone who I might never meet.
“I’ve held onto that for years. And if I can do that again now, then that matters.”
But Collins stressed, “We aren’t going to sit back and let this cancer kill me without giving it a hell of a fight.”
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