Having become in 2013 the first active player in a major American championship to have revealed his homosexuality, ex-basketball player Jason Collins revealed that he had stage 4 glioblastoma (a brain tumor).
Three months ago, the NBA and the family of Jason Collins announced that the former American basketball player was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. “Jason and his family appreciate your support and prayers and ask that you respect their privacy so that they can fully concentrate on his health and well-being,” the statement said, without elaborating. On Thursday, the ex-NBA player spoke out to tell his story and revealed that he had stage 4 glioblastoma, a brain tumor, “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer.”
The 47-year-old American traces the moment when the diagnosis was made, after a scan and a biopsy, and looks back on the weeks that followed. “According to my family, within a few hours, my lucidity, my short-term memory and my understanding disappeared,” he details in a first-person account published on the website ofESPN. “My glioblastoma is extraordinary, and not for the right reasons. It’s a ‘wild’ strain, with all these mutations that make it even more deadly and difficult to treat. You know that mythical creature where you cut off one head, but then grow two back? The hydra. That’s the kind of ‘glio’ I have.”
A life expectancy of 11 to 14 months
“Completely in a funk” when “all this bad news” fell, Jason Collins says he is proud to have “the good people” in his life. And take the opportunity to look back on his coming out in 2013. He became the first active athlete in a major championship in the United States to openly display his homosexuality, in an article published in the monthly Sports Illustrated, while he was without a club. “I wasn’t afraid that the information would leak before it was published, because I trusted those I told it to. And guess what? Nothing leaked. I was able to tell my story the way I wanted. And now, I can honestly say that these last twelve years have been the best of my life,” he confides.
After starting a first treatment called Avastin after leaving the hospital, Jason Collins researched all his options. He is currently being treated at a clinic in Singapore that offers targeted chemotherapy using extracellular vesicles, because due to the genetic makeup of his tumor, standard temozolomide chemotherapy for glioblastoma is ineffective. “We are not going to sit idly by and let this cancer take me away without fighting like a lion,” he assures.
While his average life expectancy is estimated at 11 to 14 months, he hopes that his current treatment will allow him to continue fighting the progression of his tumor long enough that a personalized immunotherapy (which offers the best chance of treatment) can be developed and he can receive it. And concludes: “If I only have this time left, I would rather use it to try a treatment that could one day become the new norm for everyone. I am fortunate to have the financial means to seek treatment anywhere in the world. So, even if what I do does not save me, I find comfort in the idea that it could help someone else who one day receives a similar diagnosis.”
