Character Driven: Life, Lessons, and Basketball - Softcover

Fisher, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451672071 ISBN 13: 9781451672077

Publisher: Howard Books, 2030

Synopsis

A three-time NBA champion reveals the Christian faith and family values that shaped his successful career and personal life, describing his achievements, his decision not to play in the 2007 playoffs when his daughter required treatment for a rare form of eye cancer, and his return to the Los Angeles Lakers.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE
Putting Your Skills to the Best Use:
Performing When It Really Matters

When people found out that my wife, Candace, and I were expecting a child, more than a few of them said, “Your life is about to change.” Candace and I each had a child from a previous relationship, so we had some idea of the truth of that statement. What we didn’t know was the extent to which our lives would be altered several months after our twins, Tatum and Drew, were born. I don’t know if having twins changes your life twice as much, but when you find out that one of your newborn children has a serious illness such as cancer, little in your life and your routine remains the same. We suspected that something was wrong with one of Tatum’s eyes; after first dismissing the difference in its appearance as parental paranoia, we took her to a specialist. When we learned that she had a rare but dangerous form of cancer known as retinoblastoma—a tumor of the retina—it was as if someone had sucked all the air out of the doctor’s office.

After we were initially told that there was little hope of saving Tatum’s eye, we were momentarily stunned, and that pit-of-the-stomach sinking feeling could have overwhelmed us. I don’t want to trivialize the situation by comparing my daughter’s dire diagnosis to the game of basketball, because truth be told, thoughts of my career, the Utah Jazz’s prospects for the play-offs, and any thoughts of winning a championship were very, very far from my mind. My energies were concentrated on doing whatever I could to help my daughter and support my wife, who was understandably upset and fearful. I was experiencing a lot of the same emotions as Candace, but I could sense that this was particularly hard on her. Her maternal instincts were running at their highest level, and they had been for some time prior to the diagnosis and prior to her pregnancy. Before her getting pregnant with the twins, we’d experienced a miscarriage. Losing that child was a blow to both of us, one that we’d recovered from to a certain degree, but not something we had by any means forgotten.

In the wake of that sad event, we’d decided to explore medical options to ensure a safe and full-term pregnancy. As a result, we’d seen a few fertility specialists, and we’d decided on what we were told would most likely be a safer alternative—in vitro fertilization. My whole life, I’ve been someone who looks at all the alternatives and choices before making a decision based on a careful risk/reward analysis. If the doctors we were dealing with felt that in vitro fertilization offered us the best chances of having a child, then that’s what we were going to do. I can still remember sitting in that doctor’s office talking about everything that needed to be done. I was able to block out all thoughts that in vitro wasn’t normal or natural and that the procedure would be done in a lab instead of in the privacy of our home. What mattered were the results. Candace and I both were eager to have a family together, and so we were going to do whatever it took to make that dream come true.

I do have to admit to trepidation in regard to one part of the procedure. To increase the chances of having a viable fetus develop and to avoid having to repeat the painful procedure of harvesting one of Candace’s eggs, we were told that it would be a good idea to fertilize and then implant more than one ovum at a time. If they “took,” we could decide if we wanted to bring those ova to full term. Candace and I knew that we would of course not destroy one or more of the eggs, so we had to decide just how much we wanted to increase the odds of our successfully producing a child together. I was cool with the idea of having twins, but when the doctor said that we could go for three if we wanted to, I had to call a time-out. I looked at Candace and she looked at me. We each did some elementary-school math and came to the same conclusion. There were two of us, and if God willing Candace would get pregnant with twins, we could each handle one of the twins at a time. Two parents, two hands/arms each, two children. That would work. Any number of children above that would make the math, and the amount of work we’d have to do, that much harder. If circumstances were different and we didn’t have any kind of control over the situation and God willed that we would have triplets or even more children, then we’d have accepted that also.

We looked at the doctor and said, “Two, please.”

When Tatum was diagnosed, my career as a basketball player came into play in the way I handled the situation. Like many people, I believe that God never puts on our plates more than we can handle, and that everything that happens in our lives fits into a pattern of His creation. When you are faced with challenges the way Candace and I were, all the choices and decisions and experiences you have had leading up to the specific moment of having a seriously ill child fall into place. Because I’d dedicated my life to basketball, because I had been in pressure-packed situations, and because to succeed in basketball I had to understand the role of focus, tenacious diligence, teamwork, and sacrifice, we were all able to do what it took to secure a successful outcome for Tatum. Ultimately, whether Tatum’s eye would be saved was out of our hands and in the hands of God. I truly believe that, but a lot of other human beings made that possible. Looking back at all those choices I made that led us to those wonderfully skilled individuals who did save her eye, I see ample evidence of the guiding hand of God at work. We asked Him to lead us and were comfortable with knowing that His will would be done, and we put the power of prayer to use.

Let me give you one example of how a choice I made in my life paid unexpected dividends down the line. We were fortunate to have a family friend who worked in a medical-school library and was familiar with all kinds of print and electronic resources. When Tatum was diagnosed and we were essentially told that our only option was to have Tatum’s eye removed so that the cancer would not spread, my basketball training and God’s intervention combined to make me realize that I needed to pass the ball off. This was not a shot I could take independent of the team; I needed to turn to forces greater than my own. I really believe that God put this friend in my life to be more than just someone to socialize with. He put him there because with his medical background and training, I could turn to him to do the necessary research and study to find an alternative to surgically removing my precious daughter’s eye. He was able to quickly sift through much of the medical literature and report back to Candace and me.

We knew that time was running out, and the longer it took us to find alternatives, the riskier those procedures might be. Cancer has unflagging energy, and we knew that with each passing day, the tumor was growing. Candace and I could have tried to do all the research on our own, but poring through medical journals to try to understand all the complications and even just the possible approaches to treatment would have cost us precious time. Even developing a basic understanding of the options and then trying to track down doctors who either did those alternative procedures or who might be able to better explain their potential risks was not something we could do either. The clock was winding down, and we knew we needed to rely on someone who could quickly cut through the lingo and technical aspects of the treatment options and feed us the information as quickly as humanly possible. As a point guard, I have always had to assess the situation on court and distribute the ball to those who are in the best position to score. Evaluating time on the clock, the score, the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses, and a dozen more factors are things I’ve spent nearly a lifetime doing. I had some idea those skills would transfer to life off the court, but being able to assess situations and make decisions quickly under such extreme, nonbasketball circumstances put those skills to the test in ways I had never anticipated.

That our friend found two doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York who had experimented with a radical new treatment, one they’d only performed on fourteen patients, without publishing the results, is in my mind nothing short of a miracle. Those doctors had just begun the treatment in 2006—a year before Tatum was diagnosed. Another stroke of good fortune we could add to our score: When Candace and I sat in an office speaking with Dr. David Abramson and Dr. Pierre Gobin, they at first told us that the only real choice we had was to have Tatum’s eye removed. I’m sure that they figured that we were parents doing our due-diligence work, getting a second and third opinion, hoping against hope that we could avoid surgically removing our daughter’s eye. Of course, if removal of the eye meant preventing the possible spread of the cancer, and that was truly our only option, we would have agreed with that treatment. Something had told us, in the face of all the other opinions that lined up with Dr. Abramson and Dr. Gobin’s initial assessment, that we had to dig deeper. If nothing else, we wanted to hear that dire prognosis from the best doctors in the field, and Dr. Abramson was considered the go-to guy in retinoblastoma.

Like most people, I’d heard of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (though I knew it simply as Sloan-Kettering), even if I’d been fortunate not ever to have had any firsthand experience with the place for myself or any of my family members and friends. I knew that this cutting-edge facility was recognized worldwide as one of the most advanced cancer-treatment and research facilities out there. What I learned as we pursued a potential treatment for Tatum was that...

Edition details

• Publisher: Howard Books
• Publication date: 2030
• ISBN 10: 1451672071
• ISBN 13: 9781451672077
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272