George vs. The Dragon

Source: ESPN.com Author: Rick Reilly DAY 17: Tuesday, March 9, 7:30 a.m. -- Denver Nuggets coach George Karl pops in his mouthpiece and puts on his helmet and braces himself for a brutal 15 minutes, but this isn't football. This is cancer radiation. We're at Denver's Swedish Medical Center. The helmet is actually a white, hard-mesh mask that fits to every contour of Karl's big bucket head. It has red crosses all over it, like a hockey goalie's. He lays his 283 pounds on the table and the technicians clamp the mask on hard. How Karl breathes I'll never know. They secure his limbs and ask him to hold a blue plastic donut so no part of him moves. He looks like Hannibal Lecter about to get fried. "It makes you a little claustrophobic," the 58-year-old coach tries to say through the mask. "But what are you gonna do? Leave?" Coaching the wildly talented but wildly uneven Nuggets is hard enough, let alone doing it with throat and neck cancer, but that's what Karl is trying to do. Everybody tells him it's not possible, and today, maybe he's starting to believe them. With only three of his torturous six weeks of treatment done, and the inside of his mouth looking like he just took 100 bites out of a lava-hot pizza slice, and his head throbbing and his eyes hollow, Karl looks like a guy who should be on a stretcher, not an NBA bench. "George, this is only going [...]

2010-03-18T09:51:54-07:00March, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Nuggets’ coach again fighting cancer- this time of the throat

Source: ESPN Author: Ric Bucher Denver Nuggets coach George Karl informed his team Tuesday afternoon that he is in another fight for his life with cancer. Karl, who had been cancer-free since prostate surgery in July 2005, discovered a worrisome lump on his neck about six weeks ago. A biopsy determined that it was "very treatable and curable" form of neck and throat cancer, Karl said, but it will still require an intense program of radiation and chemotherapy that will probably force him to miss some regular-season games. "Cancer is a vicious opponent," he said. "Even the ones that are treatable, you never get a 100-percent guaranteed contract." Treatment will consist of 35 sessions over the next six weeks, for what the Nuggets Web site called squamous cell head/neck cancer. The sessions are expected to leave his throat extremely raw, requiring him to be fed through his stomach in the final weeks. "Keeping up your nutrition is a big part of the challenge," he said. While the condition is treatable, his doctor, Jacques Saari, said Karl faces a taxing treatment regimen. He said the chemotherapy was intended to make the cancerous cells in Karl's body more susceptible to the effects of radiation. Then, he said, "The idea is to really hit it hard with radiation therapy." But the radiation, to be administered continuously for five days a week for the next six weeks, will take a physical toll on Karl, especially during the latter portion of treatment, Saari said. "Coach [...]

2010-02-17T15:41:54-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|
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