Koivu's return a miracle

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By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun

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It is said that only the good die young. Thankfully, some of the good ones live on as well, even in cases when death is a very real possibility.

Tonight, Saku Koivu returns to the Montreal Canadiens lineup, the culmination to a wonderful story that couldn't have started out much worse.

The news broke when most of Canada's hockey world was attending Team Canada's September training camp in Calgary. Koivu, it was reported, had developed some form of cancer.

For hockey people, who live mostly in a fantasy world and who rarely come face to face with tragedy, the reports, while greeted with alarm, also were treated with equanimity.

After all, Mario Lemieux had battled cancer and won. So had Roger Neilson. And in an aside, had it not been for the news of Koivu's return coming on the same day, the report that the Ottawa Senators plan to have Neilson coach two games to enable him to reach the 1,000-game plateau would have been the runaway leader in the feel-good-story-of-the-day category.

But back to Koivu. The news, while disconcerting, didn't seem to be too bad until one of the hockey crowd who has extremely close connections with the Montreal medical staff, dug into it a bit further.

The chilling report came back. "Saku will be lucky to see Christmas."

The initial prognosis involved cancer in the abdominal region and of every 10 people who hear that diagnosis, only one survives. If the cancer gets into the liver, there virtually is no hope. The same is true of the pancreas.

But it turned out that Koivu had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Most of us, as laymen, saw this as a good thing. If you hear, "non-Something," it's probably not as bad as the "Something".

But it turned out that in this case, the logic was flawed. Hodgkin's lymphoma, which afflicted Lemieux, is much less serious than non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Still, the pancreas and the liver, those two vital organs, were unaffected. There was hope.

That didn't mean it was clear sailing. Far from it. The man in charge of Koivu's treatments, Dr. David Mulder, instituted a "comprehensive multi-drug chemotherapy program," and even after the first of seven three-week cycles produced some cause for optimism, Koivu's chances of survival were still no better than 50-50.

It was at that point that Koivu's dedication to his craft put him in good stead.

He is an extremely dedicated athlete and even though today's National Hockey League demands superb conditioning from all players, Koivu was in better shape than most.

Chemotherapy takes a significant toll on the body and it inflicts a lot of pain.

At one point in the first stage, Koivu's headaches were so bad that he had to sit in a quiet, darkened room for four days. On another occasion, his white-cell count deteriorated to such a level that he had to have bone-marrow stimulation. That too required further rest while the cells regenerated.

But because Koivu was in such superb shape, the doctors were able to prescribe massive doses of chemotherapy, knowing that he would be able to withstand levels that would simply be too much for most people.

The more chemotherapy he endured, the better the odds of his survival became.

Now, there is no longer any need to worry about the odds. Saku Koivu has conquered cancer and will be back in the lineup tonight.

Throughout his ordeal, the class and grace that he has exhibited throughout his NHL career never wavered. A month after the initial diagnosis, during the brief window between cycles of treatment, he insisted on holding a news conference.

He wanted to let his fans know how he was progressing and how much he appreciated their concern and support. He received more than 30,000 e-mails and mountains of cards, flowers and letters.

At Christmas, he and his wife sent cards to everyone who had written to him -- 20,000 of them.

It may be that his return to the lineup will coincide with a clinching of a playoff spot by the Canadiens, but this is much more than a hockey story.

It is a story of a life-and-death struggle, a battle that pitted courage and technology against nature's most-feared killer.

We are all so very thankful that it also is a story with a happy ending.

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