STrib: 5-time cancer survivor and Gophers holder Casey O'Brien eager to return to field

[BleedGopher]

per Megan:


Planning big

It’s been the same for O’Brien’s other team. He’s used to popping his head into hospital rooms to meet other patients. He still stays in touch through social media and video chats, even recently talking with a family from Illinois that just reached out about the daughter’s osteosarcoma diagnosis. Those fill the void for now, but O’Brien craves real time with his people.

“It’s hard to understand and hard for me to explain,” Dan O’Brien said, “how important Gophers football has been to him and his recovery, on the bad days and good days.”

On those good days, O’Brien is full of plans. For what his Gophers team can accomplish this fall, for graduating a semester early with his finance degree, for internships, jobs, having a family of his own, moving somewhere warmer.

The darker moments — he doesn’t share with many. That late-November day when his fifth round with cancer began was one of the bad ones.

“I remember just being so down,” O’Brien recalled. “And I wasn’t as much down about the fact that, like, the cancer had come back. Obviously, that was a big part of it.

“But I think that I was more sad about the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to dress [in uniform], and I wasn’t going to be able to be on the sideline for a game that was to go to the Big Ten championship, and it was ‘College GameDay,’ and there was so much energy around that game.

“And I felt like I wasn’t going to be a part of it anymore.”

But that could never be true. Because this past season, it wasn’t really Gophers football without Casey O’Brien.

5-time cancer survivor and Gophers holder Casey O'Brien eager to return to field

After beating cancer five times, Casey O'Brien is ready to reconnect with his fellow Gophers.

www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[PMWinSTP]

Five-time?

 

[highwayman]

Five-time?

In the end you can really only beat cancer once. Remission is a very broad term, and until you die from old age, you've never really beaten cancer.

My best friend died last October from 1) rectal cancer, 2) colon cancer, 3) lung cancer, 4) colon cancer again, 5) liver cancer, 6) lung cancer again, 7) liver cancer again, 8) brain cancer. Started in June 2013 and ended in October 2019. Each cancer would go into "remission" and pop up somewhere else in a different form. He plugged along, and always had a positive attitude, looking for the answers. But for each month in that 6 plus years he fought the fight, he aged six. As he said to me days near the end, "I never really beat the cancer even once. It's finally going to beat me." And it did.

Even if you go into "full" remission, the cancer still takes years off your life, and still destroys your quality of life until you die--sometimes subtly--sometimes radically.

It's all about how you handle it. Casey (and my friend Al) are/were inspirational for their attitude, and for what they can teach us in our own cancer-free lives.

I wish Casey well.

 

[#2Gopher]

Very true highwayman. Cancer has a way of keep coming back into your system. Somehow I hope Casey can beat this in the end. He has been an inspiration to many.

 

[PMWinSTP]

In the end you can really only beat cancer once. Remission is a very broad term, and until you die from old age, you've never really beaten cancer.

My best friend died last October from 1) rectal cancer, 2) colon cancer, 3) lung cancer, 4) colon cancer again, 5) liver cancer, 6) lung cancer again, 7) liver cancer again, 8) brain cancer. Started in June 2013 and ended in October 2019. Each cancer would go into "remission" and pop up somewhere else in a different form. He plugged along, and always had a positive attitude, looking for the answers. But for each month in that 6 plus years he fought the fight, he aged six. As he said to me days near the end, "I never really beat the cancer even once. It's finally going to beat me." And it did.

Even if you go into "full" remission, the cancer still takes years off your life, and still destroys your quality of life until you die--sometimes subtly--sometimes radically.

It's all about how you handle it. Casey (and my friend Al) are/were inspirational for their attitude, and for what they can teach us in our own cancer-free lives.

I wish Casey well.

Yes, a little tongue in cheek from me (five or six). The young man is simply incredible. As I've posted before, this cancer bastard has taken more than its share of close loved ones from me.

 

[GoldenRodents]

Casey lights up whatever space he occupies.