Blatnick Aids Others in Dealing With Fear : Hodgkin’s disease: Olympic champion can tell Lemieux what lies ahead.

Assuming that Jeff Blatnick has been besieged by telephone calls from reporters who wanted him to discuss his battles with Hodgkin’s disease again, apologies were made.

“That’s OK,” the receptionist in his Albany, N.Y., office said. “He loves talking about it.”

Fewer than 48 hours after the announcement from Pittsburgh last week that hockey star Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins has Hodgkin’s disease, Blatnick, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling, was on the phone, enthusiastically offering the same message of hope and encouragement he has delivered in speeches throughout the country for almost a decade.

“This is my way of alleviating people’s fears,” Blatnick said. “I’m sure Mario is going to beat this.”

Blatnick spoke with confidence, not only because he twice has beaten Hodgkin’s disease but also because of medical science’s exceptional success against the nodular lymphocytic cancer. When the disease is discovered in its initial stages, as it apparently was in Lemieux’s case, doctors say the cure rate is better than 90%.

“When people hear the word cancer , they automatically assume the worst,” Blatnick said. “But they should be aware that this is one of the most curable forms. As a cancer, it has to be respected. But it should not be feared.”

He did not know as much about Hodgkin’s disease when he first was diagnosed with it in 1982. And he was afraid.

His condition also was more advanced than Lemieux’s, requiring the removal of his spleen as well as a month of radiation treatments. Lemieux’s doctors said last week that he will undergo four to six weeks of radiation therapy, but they have not indicated that he will need surgery.

“For me, recovery started with getting over the fear,” Blatnick said. “Am I going to die? Why did this happen to me? None of these questions had an immediate answer. But once I got past that, past the fear and the stigma of cancer, I got back into my life--job, relationships, wrestling, planning for the future.”

Only a little more than a year after his cancer went into remission, Blatnick stood atop the victory stand in the Anaheim Convention Center as the gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling’s heavyweight division, announcing to a worldwide television audience, “I’m one happy dude.”

In the summer of 1985, the cancer returned. The treatment that time was more severe, requiring 28 chemotherapy sessions over the next six months. Again, he beat it, even resuming his wrestling career until his retirement in 1988.

Now 35, a “clean” Blatnick works as an occasional television commentator and wrestling coach and as a full-time motivational speaker.

It was in the last role that he met former New York Giant offensive lineman Karl Nelson, whose football career was interrupted in 1987 after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“Jeff was really a tremendous help to me when I went through my treatments,” Nelson said last week. “Talking to a world-class athlete who had come back from Hodgkin’s and won a gold medal was really an inspiration to me and made me believe that I could play football again.”

Blatnick said mutual acquaintances contacted him about speaking to Lemieux by telephone, and that they might meet at a charity banquet next month in Pittsburgh.

“I can tell him what to expect from the radiation,” Blatnick said. “His mid to upper chest will feel like it’s sunburned; he’ll lose his sense of taste to the extent that he won’t even be able to tell when he’s eating garlic; and his throat will be so sore that he will pray that his cereal will turn mushy when he pours milk over it.

“But he’ll probably be surprised by how well he feels, especially at first. He’ll be able to skate around and maybe even practice. Then, in the last week or so of his treatments and for a couple of weeks afterward, that’s when he’ll feel fatigue.”

Blatnick said it is not unrealistic that Lemieux could play within a couple of weeks after the treatments.

“I don’t know all the specifics of his individual case, but, judging from what I’ve heard and read, I’d say there might be a role for him between two and three months from now,” he said. “He might be more limited than he would like for a while, but he’ll definitely be able to play.

“I competed the weekend after I finished my treatments. Did I compete as well as I had before? No. Was I happy with my results? No. But the important thing to me was just to see if I could still do it.

“As athletes, we’re goal-oriented. It might be good for Mario to be thinking about playing again six to eights weeks from now because that creates a challenge for him. He can become pro-active instead of passive in his recovery.

“At the same time, he shouldn’t pressure himself. I don’t know him, but he’s the leader on a team that’s won two straight Stanley Cups, and I’d guess he’s the type person who doesn’t want to let his teammates and fans down. He’s got the whole world peering over his shoulder.

“But he has to keep in mind that there are going to be a lot of hockey games in the future. The only important thing right now is his health.”