Kids' eyes being saved thanks to Fisher, power of sports
By Christine Brennan, USA TODAY
Posted 1h 54m ago
How many times have you watched an athlete being interviewed on television
after a game and then asked yourself why you even bothered to listen? What
did you learn from those sometimes chummy questions and those often shallow
answers? Figuring it's not exactly 60 Minutes, you probably wonder why you
didn't just turn off the TV and go to bed.
If one man living on the East Coast with a sick little child had done that
late last Wednesday night, his child would be without an eye right now.
Dr. David Abramson, chief of the ophthalmic oncology service at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, cannot believe how one professional athlete
has forever altered his life's work, not to mention the lives of a very
special group of little children suffering from retinoblastoma, a cancerous
tumor of the retina that strikes about 300 children in the nation every year.
When Utah Jazz point guard Derek Fisher went on TNT after Game 2 of the NBA's
Western Conference semifinals last week and talked about the state-of-the-art
eye cancer surgery his 10-month-old daughter Tatum had undergone that day in
New York, there was a man falling asleep in front of his TV back east who
suddenly perked up.
He had been told recently that his child had cancer of the eye, and the child
was scheduled to have the eye removed within the next few days. But after
hearing Fisher, the dad got in touch with Abramson, scheduled an appointment
and, already, his child has received the same eye-saving chemotherapy
treatment that Tatum Fisher did.
"That child's eye would have been taken out already if it weren't for the
father seeing Derek on TV after the game," said Abramson, who did not release
the child's name. "It's unbelievable that it's true, but it is."
Abramson, an alternate for the 1960 U.S. Olympic team as a distance swimmer,
is not your average sports fan. He says he has never watched ESPN, ever. He
didn't watch Fisher play in Game 2 after rushing back from New York City that
day. Abramson didn't even know until the next day that he had made it back in
time to play in the game, much less talk in a post-game interview.
He might not watch sports, but today, there is no one on earth who believes
more in the power of sports to do good than David Abramson.
"It amazes me that after 30 years of writing about a disease in over 450
publications, a point guard can do a better job of getting the word out than
I can," Abramson said. "It would be like saying that I can shoot a basketball
better than he can. But in this case, it's true: He's a better public-health
messenger than I am. It's the power of sports to get the message out."
Abramson said in addition to the one child already treated, he has heard from
another four families who believe their children also might be suffering from
the same disease as Tatum Fisher. "I've also had calls from patients,
families and many calls from other doctors saying, 'Gee, I didn't know you
were doing that,' and wanting to find out more about it."
This reaction comes as no surprise to those who, in difficult times, have
successfully linked issues of health and sports.
"There is no more powerful platform in America than the platform of sports,"
said author Jeffrey Marx, who started the Wendy Marx Foundation for Organ
Donor Awareness in 1990 with his sister Wendy, who passed away in 2003, and
Olympic sprinting star Carl Lewis. "Maybe one could argue that movie stars
have that kind of platform, but if you think about it, we have a whole sports
section in every newspaper every day. We do not have an entire section on
politics every day, or on the movies every day."
Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason began a foundation in his name when his
son Gunnar was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 1993.
"We meet with CF families and they tell us, 'Don't stop. Stay out there. Put
a face on what people are struggling with,' " Esiason said. "It's remarkable
the power of the sports media in this country. The fact that Derek Fisher
didn't hide this, that he chose to talk about it, and at a time of heightened
awareness during the NBA playoffs ─ this is the flip side of the negative
stories like Pacman Jones, Chris Henry, Ron Artest."
"We have received calls only as a result of him," Abramson said of Fisher.
"Children who were going to have their eyes out now don't have to have their
eyes out. I've removed more than 1,000 eyes because of cancer in my life. I
would love for Derek Fisher to be the reason I no longer have to take out
eyes."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-05-16-fisher-eye_N.htm
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