Jason Collins, former NBA center for seven different teams between 2001 and 2015 and the first athlete in a US professional league to come out as gay in 2013, revealed that he has a stage four glioblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain tumor. The 47-year-old, who has a twin brother, Jarron, also a former NBA player, told ESPN in an interview how the symptoms appeared quickly and led to the diagnosis after several tests at the end of the summer. “My cancer is inoperable, the average prognosis is 11-14 months – declared the former player -. If this is the time I have left, I will use it to test treatments that could one day become a standard for everyone. I’m not afraid, I played against Shaquille O’Neal who is the biggest challenge you can face on a basketball court, so everything else is not scary.”
Collins said he is following an innovative treatment, currently in a clinic in Singapore.
And he added: “It came incredibly quickly, the first symptoms were short-term memory loss and inability to concentrate. I had these strange symptoms for a week or two, then they reached the critical point in August. Shortly thereafter the terrible diagnosis.” A recent CT scan revealed the extent and severity of his disease, which he described as a “multiform” glioblastoma that is growing very rapidly.
“We will not let this cancer kill me without fighting it with all our strength – concluded Collins -. We will try to hit it first, in ways that have never been used before: with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapywhich are still under study but offer the most promising frontier of cancer treatment for this type of tumor.”
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