Former NBA player Jason Collins has broken his silence about his recent health problems, revealing in an ESPN interview that he is undergoing treatment for Stage 4 glioblastoma and may not have much longer to live.
Collins, the first active male athlete in a major U.S. team sport to come out as gay, said that a statement issued by his family in September that he was battling a brain tumor was ‘intentionally vague’ at the time because ‘I was mentally unable to speak for myself.’
Glioblastoma is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, Collins said, and without aggressive treatment, ‘I’d probably be dead within six weeks to three months.’
Collins, a 7-foot center, played 13 seasons in the NBA with six different teams from 2001-2014, averaging 3.6 points and 3.7 rebounds per game
In his first-person article published Dec. 11 on ESPN.com, Collins recounts first experiencing ‘weird symptoms’ this past August, having his mental clarity, short-term memory and comprehension disappear.
He says the aggressive form of cancer has spread rapidly: ‘Imagine a monster with tentacles spreading across the underside of my brain the width of a baseball.’
He goes on to describe his treatment with anti-cancer drugs, as well as radiation and chemotherapy at a clinic in Singapore in the hope that doctors can develop a personalized immunotherapy treatment for him.
Collins says the average prognosis for his current treatment is 11-14 months, but he’ll continue to fight.
‘If that’s all the time I have left,’ he says, ‘I’d rather spend it trying a course of treatment that might one day be a new standard of care for everyone.’
