OC HIGH: STUDENT NEWS AND VIEWS...

Has there ever been a moment in your life when one of the things that you held most dear was taken away from you?

Do you know what it feels like to have your life turned upside-down and inside-out all in the space of one heartbeat? Have you ever tried to glue together the pieces of your life after it has been torn apart?

I have, and, believe me, it is not something that I would wish on my worst enemy.

The first three years of my life at Westminster High School were not my own; they were devoted to Coach Gary Dixon and his basketball team.

Before I went to high school, basketball was a game. Once I was in high school, basketball became my life--I ate, drank, slept and dreamed basketball. All my friends were basketball players; my girlfriend was even a basketball player. It was a rare day when I didn’t spend at least three hours practicing basketball. To say that basketball was important to me would be like saying food was important to me. I lived on it.

But that was before.

*

I remember my parents telling me that outside it was a nice, bright Wednesday morning. But I had no way of knowing for sure. My world was limited to my bed, the television and the various medical paraphernalia found in a hospital room.

I remember thinking that it was only Sunday that it had happened.

I had been playing in a varsity basketball game at a summer weekend tournament when I was involved in a collision on the court.

On Monday, the doctors performed emergency surgery to repair my kidney, which had been ruptured in the collision. The doctors assured me that the surgery had gone quite well; in two or three months I would be back to myself.

I woke up Wednesday just as I had the day before, in the hospital, its unmistakable antiseptic smell threatening to smother me like an invisible, tightly wrapped blanket. I tried to think back on the events of the past few days, but I couldn’t; the days were like years to me. Time is slowed almost to a halt in the confines of a hospital. The only thing I knew besides the awful smell was that there were tubes coming out of every conceivable part of my body. And someday, hopefully, the terrible pain would go away.

The doctor arrived at my room a little later than usual that morning. When he came in, I knew something was not right. He asked to speak to my parents for a moment, out in the hall.

They were gone only 10 minutes, but it felt like hours to me. The doctor finally came back into the room, but my parents did not. The doctor looked straight into my eyes and started speaking.

The parts of the conversation that I caught were: “ . . . a routine pathological report sent . . . we had no way of knowing . . . something very unexpected.”

I was about to ask him what he was getting at when the hammer fell: “Marc, you have cancer. Tomorrow you will have to go back into surgery so that we can remove your kidney.” My kidney had ruptured during the collision because it had been weakened by the cancer.

No, this couldn’t he happening to me. Cancer was old people slowly wasting away; cancer was someone who smoked or didn’t take care of himself; cancer wasn’t healthy 17-year-olds. But I knew it was true; cancer was in me. Like the tolling of a hideous-sounding bell, that word kept echoing through my brain: “cancer . . . cancer . . . cancer.”

A flood of emotions poured forth. What was this going to do to my future? My doctor told me that varsity basketball was not going to be a part of it. He assured me that there were other things in life. He said it would be easier for me if I concentrated on other things that were important.

But nothing else was important. At least, I didn’t think so at first.

Each time my teammates came to visit me, all I could think of was how I would never be out on the court with them again. Then I realized something. My teammates didn’t keep coming to see me because I was some guy that had run around on the court with them for three years. Coach Dixon didn’t sit and watch sports with me because I had scored a lot of points for him. I hadn’t. I had people in my life that cared for me. I had never really thought about it before, but when I did, the pain went away.

The frequency of my therapy, a 72-hour intravenous treatment to jack up my immune system, has been reduced to once a month. I’m on the mend, and a recent CAT scan showed no new tumors.

My doctor has just given me the OK to suit up for basketball again. I went to practice for the first time two weeks ago. It’s hard because I don’t have the strength or stamina. I don’t know if I’ll ever play in a game again, but I’m giving it a try for now.

Finding out that I had cancer was the worst and the best thing in my life.

It was the worst because it ended my short-lived basketball career, and it made me realize that everyone dies, even healthy 17-year-olds. It was the best moment because I had never realized how many people I had in my life who love and care for me. And no matter what I wanted to do, they would never let me give up.