I remember years ago during Bama week that the late Keith Hatfield (hatvol96 if any of the newer folk around here aren’t familiar) said something along the lines of “enjoy this, because most of us will only get 70-80 of these in a lifetime.” This year will be my 39th (although it’s reasonable to assume I have only actively watched about 33-34 of those and didn’t realize the magnitude of the rivalry until even a few after that). He said this at a time when we had lost several in a row, and I don’t remember who was coaching that year or whether it was one of the blowouts or one of those random years we kept it reasonably close. Regardless, never did those words hit me more than last year. There’s a dozen or so people here that know this, but I’ve otherwise kept it under wraps on the board. Last July, I was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 38. I had surgery to remove most of my descending colon in late August, right on the cusp of football season (I literally got home 3 hours before opening day kickoff and was so tired and sore that I had to watch most of it from my bed). A couple days later I was back in the hospital for a short stay due to a relatively common complication. I was discharged on Labor Day. The next few weeks were painful, and difficult. I could barely eat, or walk, or sleep, or get comfortable enough to play video games, or do anything really. I basically just immersed myself in sports from my iPad in my bed (which luckily was adjustable and the only place I could be somewhat comfortable). It all sucked but I wasn’t going to let it take football season away from me. I’m sure you all remember, we looked a little up and down those first few weeks, but I was enjoying it despite it all, and we were still putting Ws on the board. Meanwhile my body just wasn’t healing. I have a step tracker on my phone and my goal was to get 1500-2000 steps a day within a couple weeks of surgery. I was told this was reasonable and to build from there. Three weeks later I was barely averaging 600, and it was painful to do so. I had also lost about 20 pounds. I looked awful, and I knew something was wrong but I was determined not to watch the Florida game from a hospital bed. Well, that didn’t work out. My wife looked at me one morning and told me we were going to see the doctor and there would be no discussion, and thankfully so. I had an leak in my anastomosis (where the colon was reconnected). Due to this I had a serious infection and I would need to be readmitted. They put me on IV antibiotics and some pain meds and ran tests to determine the extent of the leak and the infection. The antibiotics showed immediate effect and I woke up my second day in the hospital hungry for the first time in almost a month. Here’s the kicker, I was hungry, but the leak was serious enough that I needed more time for it to heal. This meant I would need to be on IV nutrition for at least a month and would need to have a PICC line placed to facilitate it. Around this same time I found out that the cancer had spread to some lymph nodes and I would need chemotherapy. The PICC line was placed as I was watching the Florida game with some friends who came to the hospital to make sure I had company for it. They took my blood pressure as we were looking like we may blow the game, the nurse laughed and said she would come back when it was over to get a more accurate read. We won, and I spent another several days in the hospital unable to eat anything but a small cup of ice twice a day I went home with instructions on how to continue my antibiotics and IV nutrition and also with probably the most annoying piece of equipment I’ve ever had the displeasure of wearing (an abdominal drain). We kept winning and I immediately came down with COVID. Well, the COVID came and thankfully went without much issue aside from feeling real shitty (and the cough torching my healing abdominal muscles) for several days. All the while that team was rising in the rankings and our big test was looming. Now the Alabama game for me, like for all of you, is a bit of an event. We make a lot of food, have some good beer, have a few folks over and just enjoy the Third Saturday, even though we know it’s probably going to turn out poorly for the team. But last year was different for a lot of reasons. I couldn’t eat or drink, and despite feeling remarkably better, wasn’t really in a position to entertain. We also appeared to be a damned good football team with a chance to win. I wanted to go but that damned abdominal drain made getting around or being in a crowd extraordinary difficult. So I just had a good friend over and he watched with my wife and me The way we started, I thought we may just make it a laugher and I was stoked. But we all know that’s not how it went. Then they came back and took the lead, and then the fumble return and I thought “well, we gave them hell, we are almost there.” But we all know that’s not how it went. For the first time in a long time I saw a Tennessee team look at Alabama and just refuse to lose. And boy I needed it (and I’m not gonna lie I was told by my doc a couple days before that I could start having some small amounts of liquid so I had about half of a cocktail since I spent a lot of that hospital time stocking my home bar and learning recipes for when I was back to 100%). We won. I was absolutely overjoyed to the point of tears. With so much uncertainty about my health, I had at some point after the fumble wondered to myself whether I’d even see us beat Alabama again, and by God the boys came through and made sure I would. Now there were obviously some hiccups the rest of the way, but despite that they became my favorite team ever that night. I will cheer for every dude involved in that win no matter where the play in the NFL (well, assuming they aren’t facing the Niners). That Third Saturday became and will probably always be my favorite moment in my now 39 years of Tennessee football history. This has been long, so I’m gonna start wrapping it up. But, I figured I should let you all know where we stand now. Not long after the Bama game they found lesions on both my lung and my liver. I started chemo with the understanding that I would be a candidate for resection for these lesions should they turn out to be cancerous. My oncologist continued to tell me even if both were metastases, we were treating with curative intent. We believe now that the liver lesion is benign, but will continue to watch it. I had surgery to remove a portion of my left lung in early June. I was found to have had what’s called a complete pathological response to chemotherapy. Meaning, the lesion that we assumed to be cancerous spread had first shrank, and then become completely inactive with no detectable cancer cells due to chemotherapy. I have since had scans that indicate no new spread. I had my one year colonoscopy a couple weeks back and it found no sign of recurrence. I also had a newish blood test called Signatera that uses your tumor specimen to look for cancer cells in the bloodstream and it found no detectable cancer cells. None of that means I am cured, or even cancer free, but it’s more possible now than it ever seemed before. I will have more scans and blood tests next month shortly after my 40th birthday. If any of you ever have questions about my experience to this point feel free to ask them here or DM me. I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability But to wrap things up, I want to echo what Hat said. Enjoy this, you don’t know how many you will get and I just never really thought about it until 2021 when he passed, and then last year when my own mortality was at the front of my mind. However, I genuinely hope you are all lucky and get 100. Go Vols, beat ‘em again in their house. But no matter the outcome, thanks for beating ‘em last year.
Stand with your testicles close to the microwave. Bonus is that you’ll have an excuse to go to Virginia for pot
Emain I had no idea. That’s a lot of mental and physical shit. Best wishes for you and family. And for your wife. I’ve been the spouse dealing with cancer and it hurts us deep. Props to staying in the fight. Also a lesson for us all, we never know what people have going on…
Thank you, and I am sorry that you and your wife have had to go through it as well. I feel like I saw you mention but didn’t remember. I hope your road has eased.
But it is not really the same thing. Emain is not as attractive as Ssmiff's wife. It is emain's wife we should be apologizing to. A double whammy.
I'm sorry to hear you've been going through all of this, @emainvol . I'm going to be praying for you. Just an FYI, the thread you're referencing is from the '08 game for anyone who wants to find it. I remember because the message behind it has always stuck with me. In short, he was telling everyone to keep things in perspective because we were all lost in rooting for Fulmer to fail that we were missing out on one of the truly special events that you have as a fan. Thank you for your post.
This is a really good point. Most of us assumed emain is like he is for no reason, but turns out he was like that for no reason and had cancer.
