|
|
The Courageous Figure Skating
Phenom
|
|
||||
|
|
|
by his MHCR fans |
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It was
November 11,1997, and out on the ice, shooting a telecast on CBS, was Olympic
gold medalist Scott Hamilton. He beautifully skated the dual roles as Scooch
the Zambony Man (the ice scraping machine that smooths the ice on almost
every rink) and Snowden, the Snowman. He skated with his familiar energy,
humor and athleticism. He also included his trademark backward flips across
the ice (it's not hard enough to do two or three backward flips in regular
shoes! Can you imagine on skates?) We have come to expect this type of
performance from Hamilton, and on this night he lived up to his reputation.
However, just nine months before, his present, much less his future, did not
look quite so bright. On March 18, 1997, Scott had been diagnosed with
cancer. The
winter Olympic Games consist of skiing, both downhill and cross-country,
bobsledding, luge, speed skating and every other conceivable form of cold
weather sport. For many of us, though, the jewel of the Games is the ice
skating competitions, whether it be the graceful ice dancing, or the artistry
and jumps of figure skating, either doubles or men's and women's singles. We
have gasped in amazement at the way the super-talented folks on the ice defy
gravity. Whether the spectator is braving both wind and cold attending the
Games, or watching from home in warmth and comfort, we have nevertheless been
awed by the feats accomplished by these athletes. We have watched transfixed,
open eyed in amazement as a talented skater flew across the ice, spinning and
jumping, whirling and twirling with seemingly effortless grace into the
record books and into our hearts. Scott
Hamilton has been one of the most talented such sports figures for years.
Because his joy of being on the ice is so obvious and genuine, it can affect
even those of us watching the unmistakable thrill that Hamilton is feeling.
Scott began ice skating at the tender age of eight and has not stopped since.
He placed third at the U.S. Championships in 1981), and earned a berth on the
U S. Olympic Team for the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. There
in New York, he was chosen to carry the American flag in the opening
ceremonies and subsequently placed fifth in the competition. Hamilton became
one of the most celebrated figure skaters when he won four U.S. and four
world titles m four years (1981-84). He capped his amateur career at the 1984
Olympic Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where, with an athletic and inspired
performance, he became the first American male figure skater to win a gold
medal since 1960. Scott,
ever the performer, has skated professionally since the 1984 Olympic Games.
He also continued to garner top awards including the 1984 World Challenge of
Champions, the 1990 U.S. Open Championships and the 1992 Diet Coke Skaters'
championship, in which he defeated 1992 Olympic champion Victor Petrenko. In 1990
Hamilton, was inducted into the Halls of Fame of both the U.S. Olympics and
the World Figure Skating Association. He was the recipient of the Jacques
Favart Award, the International Skating Union's highest recognition of merit
in 1988. The U.S. Committee also awarded him the first Olympic Spirit Award
in 1987. Hamilton covered the 1992 Olympic Winter Games in Albertville,
France, and the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, for CBS Sports. He also
worked many other Network figure skating broadcasts, including several World
and European Figure Skating Championships. However,
as we now are aware, in March of 1997 Scott began battling the biggest
competitor of them all-CANCER, in the form of a large germ-cell tumor. This
was caused by drainage of cancerous cells from his testicular region, but the
tumor was behind his intestines in his abdominal area. When Scott was told
that it was malignant, he said, "Is that all it is?" He was just
kidding, and perhaps also was trying to calm his own fears. His mother,
Dorothy, had died of breast cancer when he was only 18, and he had seen the
pain she had suffered. If this cancerous opponent expected to put in an
appearance and win automatically, it had another think coming! Scott
Hamilton had always been a winner. As a baby he had a chronic illness. A
malabsorption syndrome left him diminutive in stature, but certainly not
small-sized in talent. Scott has never been a quitter either. Ever since he
was adopted as a child, he has had a will to win and to be the very best that
he could be. Certainly his battle with cancer was not going to be an
exception. He was going to win, so he gave his doctors the go-ahead with the
regimen of chemotherapy that they outlined to him. The doctors told him they
would have to remove the tumor and perhaps his right testicle as well. Scott
didn't find out until after his third course of chemotherapy that the tumor
had been twice the size of a grapefruit! They also told him the cancer was
curable. He said, "Everything I heard about this cancer was that it was
something I could beat and should beat." He put total faith in his
oncologist, Dr. Ronald Bukowski of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (one of
the top cancer centers in the country), who would be in charge of shrinking
the tumor. Dr. Eric Klein would perform the surgery later on. They got
started right away. The day
after he was diagnosed, he got together with the Stars on Ice cast with which
he was touring. After he told them his news, the dozen cast members decided
to bus up to Dayton, Ohio on their day off to have lunch with their friend.
The meeting was hysterical and naturally, most of the jokes were at Scott's
expense. They even joked by making up a Top Ten list of things he might do
with his potentially discarded body part. His doctors told Scott that his
ability to father children someday should be fine. However, since there was a
fifty-fifty chance chemotherapy could harm his sperm, and because he does
hope to be a father some day, he decided to have some sperm frozen and stored
in a sperm bank. His girlfriend Karen Plage, 28 was at the clinic with him.
She and the 31 year old Hamilton live together in Denver, Colorado where she
studies singing and acting. His
hair began coming out in small clumps after his first chemotherapy session,
and Karen shaved his head before he began his second round of treatment. At
the end of that round, Scott remembers thinking that it was a breeze. He had
a private room with wooden furniture that seemed quite homey. When
therapy began he asked his nurse why she was putting on thick rubber gloves.
"Well," she said, "these chemicals eat skin." He asked,
"And you're putting this inside my body?" The nurse told him that
the chemicals would work like a forest fire. They would burn up everything
that they touched, but the cells that were healthy would recover. During
each five-day chemo cycle, the chemicals were injected from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
He then got a break until 11 p.m. when he returned to the hospital to sleep
at which point the nurses hooked him back to an IV to keep him hydrated.
Although many chemotherapy patients suffer from nausea, Scott did not.
Instead, he had surprising cravings for fast food and sent out for burgers,
chicken and Chinese food. The
treatment did bloat his abdomen. He also put on eight to ten pounds from all
of the liquids that they pumped through him. Scott wants people to know that
chemo is different for everyone. Even though he didn't find it to be
horrible, that was not necessarily true of the next treatments with
Bleomycin, another powerful cancer-fighting drug. "By
my third chemo, on May 2, I was tired of being sick and tired all the
time." He took strength from a sign in the Denver cancer center that
said, "Life Isn't Fair." He said, "It lets you know that
cancer is not evil, it's just something that happens." Finally,
it seems there is good news for all the fans who have been pulling for
Scott's recovery, including the 55,000 who sent get-well wishes. Since his
grueling course of chemotherapy and the subsequent operation, it's beginning
to look as if Scott Hamilton is well on the way to recovery. We all
think you are just great, Scott Hamilton. Please keep skating, not only for
your own enjoyment, but for ours too. We thank you for your example of how to
do it - both the sport of skating and your courage. One
last thought... On December 20th at 8:00 p.m. we had another opportunity to
watch the phenomenal Mr. Scott Hamilton skating, performing his famous jumps
and spins as no one else can! The show on ABC TV was a Disney Production of
the Beauty and the Beast. Also staring in this spectacular ice skating show
was the lovely Ekaterina Gordeeva and the wonderful Victor Petrenko as well
as several other talented skaters in the company and other actors as well as
singers, giving the production an unusual three dimensional feeling that we'd
not seen before. The entire show was spectacular, but no part of the show was
anywhere near as inspiring as the energetic part played by Scott Hamilton, as
he ran up and down the two swooping staircases over and over again, obviously
enjoying himself to the maximum, playing to the audience, and to the other
skaters with the sheer love of his sport and of his life in general. He was
having a blast and everyone could tell it. |
||||||
|
BRAVO
SCOTT!! GOOD FOR YOU. IT'S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU DOING WHAT NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER
DONE WITH SUCH JOY!!! MHCR
thanks Time Warner Publications - People Magazine for allowing us to reprint
some of their article with permission. Other sources that we thank are CBS
National Sports and the Internet. |
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
