Jason Collins says he has brain cancer.
The former NBA player, who was on six different teams during his 13-year career, said he was diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma.
He made the revelation during an interview with ESPN.
Collins explained, "A few months ago, my family released a short statement saying I had a brain tumor. It was simple, but intentionally vague. They did that to protect my privacy while I was mentally unable to speak for myself and my loved ones were trying to understand what we were dealing with."
Collins, who was the first openly gay active player in NBA history when he came out in 2013, said in the interview, "In May I married the love of my life, Brunson Green, at a ceremony in Austin, Texas, that couldn’t have been more perfect." But when they were preparing to travel to the US Open in August, he couldn’t focus on packing for the trip.
He said he was having weird symptoms for about two weeks, but he powered through.
"Something was really wrong, though. I was in the CT machine at UCLA for all of five minutes before the tech pulled me out and said they were going to have me see a specialist. I’ve had enough CTs in my life to know they last longer than five minutes and whatever the tech had seen on the first images had to be bad," he said.
Because of the location of the tumor, it cannot be operated on safely, but he has undergone radiation and is on Avastin to stop the tumor’s growth, The Athletic said.
He will also be undergoing immunotherapy, but hopes that the current treatment will allow him to live long enough for the personalized immunotherapy to be developed.
"Due to my tumor’s genetic makeup, the standard temozolomide (TMZ) chemotherapy for glioblastoma doesn’t work on it. Currently I’m receiving treatment at a clinic in Singapore that offers targeted chemotherapy -- using EDVs -- a delivery mechanism that acts as a Trojan horse, seeking out proteins only found in glioblastomas to deliver its toxic payload past the blood-brain barrier and straight into my tumors," he said, according to ESPN.
He said the average prognosis with the treatment is 11 to 14 months.
“If that’s all the time I have left, I’d rather spend it trying a course of treatment that might one day be a new standard of care for everyone," he said.
Glioblastoma is an aggressive type of cancer that starts in the brain or spinal cord. There is no cure, the Mayo Clinic said.
It can grow quickly and destroy healthy tissue. Glioblastoma can occur at any age, but it happens mostly in older adults.
Symptoms include worsening headaches, nausea, vomiting, blurred or double vision, problems speaking, altered touch, balance issues, problems with coordination and seizures, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Collins was from Southern California and, with his twin brother Jarron, signed to play basketball at Stanford. He started his NBA career in 2001 with the New Jersey Nets after being picked by the Houston Rockets in the first round in 2001, The Athletic reported.
He retired in 2014.
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