Living Out Loud

by Craig Sager

  “But I have a huge day ahead of me,” I said, “a morning production meeting, a full schedule of player and coach interviews, the game—”

  “Well, do you have time before the game?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Then take a nap.”

  I hadn’t taken a nap in years, and I wasn’t even sure that I could slow my brain down enough to let midday sleep set in, but after our meeting and interviews, I could barely hold my head up, so I retreated to the hotel, took an aspirin, set the clock alarm, and passed out.

  When I awoke, I felt surprisingly refreshed. I smiled at the thought that, once again, Stacy had the answer for everything. I hopped out of bed, threw on my usual rainbow-colored ensemble, and headed to the arena.

  The Dallas–San Antonio rivalry was a good one, with All-Star players like Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Dirk Nowitzki facing off against one another. Of course, there was also Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, one of the best on the sidelines today and with a strong case for being among basketball’s all-time greats. His knowledge of the game, his uncanny ability to make in-game adjustments, and his relationships with his players have produced perennial winners.

  During the Mavs–Spurs game that night, I was on point—flowing from one end of the court to the other, listening in on timeout huddles, reporting on injuries, and finding time at short breaks to jot down and edit what I felt were solid postgame questions for Popovich. As soon as the game was over, I walked over to the Spurs’ locker room for some quick postgame interviews before heading down the hallway to the Mavericks’ locker room. Then, boom—the same feeling of weakness and dizziness that I had felt walking off the plane the night before hit me like a charge from LeBron.

  Dallas’s team physician, Dr. Tarek Souryal, who had operated on my knee a few years back after a skiing accident, caught me leaning against the wall.

  “Sager,” he said, putting a hand on my back and craning his head to get a closer look at me, “you feel okay?”

  “Not really,” I said, too fatigued to mount any objection. “Something … something is … out of whack.”

  Dr. Souryal looked into my eyes like he was performing an examination. “You need to get to a hospital,” he insisted, “right now.”

  “Can’t,” I said, shaking my head—an act that itself felt like it took a ton of energy—“I have to do some more interviews.”

  “Now,” he said, and with that, he pointed me to the exit to grab a taxi while he called ahead to the hospital before finishing his postgame duties with the Mavericks.

  So I wandered onto the street outside the arena and hailed a passing cab, telling the driver to take me to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. I was a little scared and, certainly, alone.

  8

  A MISTAKE

  Hospitals have always been depressing places for me. I remember visiting my parents as they neared death, and how, despite wanting to spend time with them bedside, the gloom of the hospital wards wore me down. To see my father, who’d constantly been on the move, confined to the dimensions of a bed far too short for his six-foot-three-inch frame, tubes running from his chest wall and lungs all the way to the ground, a creaky apparatus receiving his diseased blood pus and other lung fluid, was just too much. And my mother, dynamic and vigorous her entire life, was unable to stand on two purple-and-green legs, withered by poor circulation, infected with gangrene, a flesh-eating bacteria that broke down her tissues one by one, leading to this unwanted guest breaking into her bloodstream, with amputation her only chance of survival. Even when I was in the hospital for knee surgery for twenty-four hours, I wanted to break out. I have never been sick. Never missed a day of school or work. (Unless it was for the Cubs.)

  The emergency room doctor at Presbyterian Hospital ordered a panel of blood tests as nurses hooked me up to an IV to pump fluids into my body almost immediately upon my arrival. While I waited for the lab results, I began feeling better, even to the point that I was ready to get up and walk out.

  When I get out of here, I thought, I’m going straight to the bar at Hotel ZaZa.

  But I waited for close to an hour, during which I became antsy. It didn’t seem a particularly busy night for the ER, so either the doctor was grabbing an extra cup of coffee or the diagnosis was something more involved than leftover green beer.

  “Mr. Sager,” the doctor said ominously as he walked back through the curtain, “you have been basically walking dead.” He went on to tell me that the hemoglobin level in my blood was 4.6 grams per deciliter—and the normal range for a man my age was 14 to 18. Though I had no clue what hemoglobin was, his candid diagnosis told me this was a bad number for an important statistic.

  In layman’s terms, my body had stopped making new, healthy blood, something that likely had been building for months. The potential causes ranged from a typical virus to internal bleeding to “something more sinister.” Doctors began a blood transfusion—one of six that I would receive over the next twenty-four hours—and I was admitted to the hospital for further testing, including a colonoscopy and an endoscopy.

  As I was being examined, I wanted to jokingly ask, “Do I have time to run to the ZaZa for a quick beer?” but the doctor’s mood was somber and the expression on his face told me I’d better not. I called Stacy around midnight and filled her in on the current situation. She made flight plans to come to Dallas the next day. I felt so alone in that cold hospital room, more alone than I have ever felt, and I was confused about what was going on around me.

  After I managed a few hours of sleep, I woke up to find that I was still getting blood transfusions, with needles and tubes protruding from my body. Every few hours, another nurse or doctor would visit me, give me one test’s results, and then order another, all of which were inconclusive. I was growing more frustrated by the hour; I didn’t understand why the doctors couldn’t just figure out what was wrong with me and give me medicine to fix it. Stacy arrived Friday afternoon. With her biology pre-med degree and her experience as a sales representative for pacemakers and defibrillators, she got right to work as my representative, peppering the doctors and nurses with questions. Have you run a full CBC? Who is the chief resident? Have you put him on antibiotics? What are our other options?

  Saturday morning was more of the same—more tests, no answers.

  “No more tests,” I finally instructed the doctors. “I’m going back to Atlanta.”

  “Mr. Sager,” one of the doctors cautioned, “your blood levels are still very low. You really need to stay stabilized here. It would not be safe to travel.”

  Stacy initially resisted also, but seeing how much I really just wanted to go home, she relented. The doctor had no choice and he, too, gave in, but not without travel warnings and instructions to immediately go to an Atlanta hospital upon arrival.

  It took some hours to be formally discharged, but finally a kind nurse came in and wheeled me to the exit. I waited by the automatic sliding doors in the wheelchair, staring out at the parking lot as Stacy received the discharge papers at the front desk. She rejoined me and we both stood up and walked outside, where a cab met us at the curb.

  “Please take us to Love Field,” I said as we climbed in the back. We strapped ourselves in, and Stacy read the doctor’s notes as the driver pulled out of the parking lot. She did not share with me the note that read Could be leukemia.

  *

  When I was young, my father and I shared a fascination with airplanes. On some Saturdays, we would drive the thirty or so miles from Batavia to Mannheim Road, next to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and park the car and just watch. For hours at a time, we watched the planes take off and land at O’Hare. I was curious as to where the planes were headed, who was on board, and I was awed by the miracle of flight. My father, who had flown often during World War II, loved being in the air and would regale me with stories of harrowing adventures in the skies over Europe and Asia.

  Yet on this night in Dallas, the thrill of flying was, of course, subd
ued. I had to be wheeled through an airport that I have literally run through before—for what I kept telling myself was probably just a bad virus. It was embarrassing.

  I could feel Stacy watching me like a hawk, but the short flight was uneventful, and once we arrived back in Atlanta I pleaded with her to drive me home. I just wanted to be in my own bed. She initially objected, but I promised her we would go to the hospital in the morning and she reluctantly steered the car to our home in Canton, about thirty miles north of Atlanta, around 2:00 a.m. I could barely make the walk from the car into the house, and there was certainly no way I could climb the flight of stairs to our bedroom, so Stacy grabbed me by the arm and led me to our downstairs guest room, where I lay on top of the comforter. I had never felt so tired in my life. Despite the past forty-eight hours in the hospital, I continued to believe that all I needed was a good night’s rest in the comfort of my own home and all would be fine.

  As soon as I closed my eyes, I felt the room spinning. I could feel the sweat and I could hear my heartbeat. But it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling. That’s when I saw my spirit.

  I am not a deeply religious man, but there, with my eyes closed, I saw my face, saw my body, floating above the bed, dressed in a baggy white shirt and pants. I lifted up one of my arms and reached toward the image as if to pull it back inside me, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not grab it. It was as if I were trying to catch a butterfly with my bare hands, and no matter how hard I tried and how quickly I snapped my arm, I couldn’t grab it. The spirit was me, and to see my soul separated from my body was a harrowing and terrifying experience.

  I opened my eyes in a cold sweat.

  “Luv! Luv!” I screamed, using my nickname for Stacy. She had fallen asleep next to me. I told her about my vision.

  In the darkest of moments, with tears running down her cheeks, we embraced and she pleaded with me, “Please don’t leave me,” before resolutely insisting, “We will fight this together.”

  “Take me to the hospital,” I said.

  And with that, Stacy hurriedly woke up the kids and grabbed the hospital discharge papers as I crawled my way to the driveway. We drove the mile to her mother’s house and left the kids in safe hands before flooring it to Piedmont Hospital, just north of downtown Atlanta. When we arrived at Piedmont, she shared the notes from the Dallas hospital and detailed the past seventy-two hours to anyone who would listen. She even suggested that I needed another blood transfusion.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor replied, “but there are just so many side effects and risks with a transfusion that we don’t do them at this stage. Let’s do some more tests.”

  Tests. I was beginning to hate that word. Everyone wants to do tests! Why can’t someone just tell me what the hell is going on?

  Later that Sunday, the doctor ordered a bone marrow biopsy for the following day, based on his concern with my low white blood cell count. It was the first time I had ever even heard of a bone marrow biopsy.

  He explained to me that humans have both red bone marrow, which actively makes red blood cells, and yellow bone marrow, which contains fat cells. We all need sufficient levels of all marrow in our bodies to produce healthy blood and healthy white and red blood cells. Most red marrow in adults is found in flatter bones such as the pelvis and breastbone. To get an accurate measure of the level of bone marrow in a patient, doctors have only one method of testing: extracting the marrow directly out of the bone.

  I had on my hospital gown as the hematologist and a nurse came into the room and explained the procedure to me. They had me gingerly turn over onto my side on the hospital bed. They cleaned a small area on my lower back and gave me a shot of lidocaine to help numb what they told me might be extreme pain. I grabbed Stacy’s hand.

  The next thing I knew, I felt a sharp prick, then a stab, then pain like I had never experienced as the needle was screwed deep into the core of my pelvic bone. I winced and screamed out a few expletives. The initial needle insertion hurt, but not nearly as much as the aspiration, where the doctor literally sucked the marrow out of me, filling vial after vial. I could feel the marrow fluid leaving my body.

  Most hospitals have an on-site lab that can turn around test results within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so we knew we would have to wait. During that time, the doctors still refused to give me a transfusion.

  That Sunday night, I called Craig and kept it brief. I shared with him that the doctor in Dallas had noted that it could be leukemia and that I had already had multiple blood transfusions. He mostly listened, and when I hung up, I thought that the call had been too short.

  My whole life has been on the go. I can’t stand sitting around, let alone being confined to a hospital, I thought to myself as I lay in bed. I passed the time joking with Stacy, watching television, and, when I could, sleeping. I thought about missing work, I thought about Stacy, and I thought about my kids. But as panicked as I felt after my encounter with Spirit Craig, and as painful as the bone marrow biopsy was, I felt strangely calm. I had somehow convinced myself that I had some sort of viral infection that we would laugh about when it went away in a few days. That I would shortly be back on the road as the NBA regular season drew to a close.

  For her part, Stacy went right to work. She spent hours Googling potential diagnoses and treatments on her phone and called her mother, who had worked for the American College of Surgeons in Chicago and knew a lot about everything.

  Those few days of waiting would turn out to be the worst of many days of waiting. Waiting for nurses to take my blood pressure. Waiting for doctors to make their rounds. Waiting to get tests and then waiting to get the results.

  Finally, on Thursday morning, April 17, the hematologist who had done the biopsy walked in holding a clipboard and wearing a smile.

  “Great news,” he said, beaming. “The bone marrow is clean.”

  “Yes!” said Stacy, raising her hands in victory before leaning over to plant a kiss on the top of my head.

  “This may just be an infection. I really see no reason to keep you here,” the doctor continued. “I think we can discharge you today. Let’s see how you do the next few days.”

  I was going home. Not only that, but I could get back on a sideline somewhere without delay. Stacy called her mother to let her know we were coming home and began to gather my clothes. Of course, this was a hospital, so it could take hours before we were actually discharged, but Stacy’s dancelike movements as she enthusiastically packed our stuff, checked, and rechecked the room could’ve entertained me for hours.

  Around 4:00 p.m., the door opened. It was the hematologist again, this time looking grim.

  “Mr. Sager,” he said solemnly, “I am sorry. There has been a mistake. You have leukemia.” He explained that in addition to sending the biopsy specimens to the lab at Piedmont, he had also sent them to Emory University Hospital, which has much more advanced technology for examining DNA sequencing. Emory diagnosed leukemia.

  I looked over at Stacy and saw fear in her eyes.

  “We are not a leukemia hospital,” the doctor continued, “so you’ll need to go to Emory or Northside Hospital for treatment. I have an ambulance ready to take you.”

  Both Emory and Northside are good hospitals. Emory is a teaching hospital and has some of the best doctors in the Southeast, with innovative clinical trials, and I knew close friends who had been treated there, including my Turner colleague Ernie Johnson. But Emory was farther into downtown Atlanta than Northside, and I naively believed that my family and friends wouldn’t drive down that far to visit me, so I insisted on Northside and its medical team.

  An ambulance transported me on a stretcher to Northside Hospital on the evening of April 17. I can remember everything about that ambulance ride—the EMT’s face, the IV tubes, the dozens of instruments secured to the walls. I wished they could have driven me home to see my kids. For one of the only times in my life, I was scared. My whole world had been turned upside down in a matter of days. I
didn’t know what lay ahead of me; I didn’t know what the hell leukemia was; I didn’t know if I could go back to work.

  During the twenty-minute ride from Piedmont to Northside, I could see out the two small back windows of the ambulance. Stacy was following us down the highway. I had wanted her to ride with me in the ambulance, but she drove herself instead, wanting to be able to have a car at the hospital. As tears poured down my cheeks, I blew kisses and waved to her from the back of the ambulance. But she made no acknowledgment. Seeing this left me feeling so alone and scared. I was overwhelmed with grief when we arrived at Northside and immediately asked Stacy why she hadn’t waved back, and she explained that the windows were tinted on the outside and she just couldn’t see anything going on inside the ambulance. There were no tears, no laughs, just whispers of fear of the unknown.

  As soon as we arrived, I was wheeled directly up to the Blood and Marrow Transplant isolation floor. The thought that came to mind was: Jail.

  Patients on the BMT floor are in dire health and have weakened immune systems that the tiniest of germs can attack with lethal consequences. The floor has its own air conditioning filtration system, and each of the thirty-six rooms can be sealed. No flowers, no balloons—nothing that can bring germs in. Just to access the floor, one must thoroughly wash hands and adorn a fresh hospital gown, a mask, a cap, shoe coverings, and a pair of latex gloves. As you might imagine, very few people are allowed on the floor. Patients, of course, and select nurses and doctors, but visitors are limited, and no children under the age of twelve are allowed, which included Riley and Ryan.

  Stacy and I waited anxiously in a fairly large corner room with a window as nurses came in and went out, taking my vital signs—temperature, blood pressure, etc.

  “We will go over everything with you as you get settled,” a nurse said, “but get comfortable. You’ll be here for thirty days, minimum.” She said it so matter-of-factly that I almost missed it.