Coaches qualified to tell players to never give up

McKinstry, Reeves share bond after surviving cancer

By Pat Rooney, Special to the Rocky

Published December 25, 2007 at 12:45 a.m.

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Photo by Evan Semon / The Rocky

Smoky Hill coach Russ McKinstry has plenty of life lessons to share with his team after surviving bouts with cancer.

Photo by Evan Semon / The Rocky

Arvada West coach Ed Reeves has plenty of life lessons to share with his team after surviving bouts with cancer.

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One of them is reminded of the price of his illness every time he opens his mouth to shout instructions to his players.

The other keeps waiting for the promised aftereffects - the loss of vision in one eye that has not happened yet but could show its shadowy beginnings at any time.

They are survivors, the same as countless of thousands others who have battled cancer and lived to tell about the seemingly endless months of anguish and debilitating treatments.

Yet Ed Reeves and Russ

McKinstry share a unique kinship, a bond that has added a large, meaningful dash of humanity to the life lessons they impart on young athletes in their care.

Reeves, the boys basketball coach at Arvada West, and

McKinstry, the boys basketball coach at Smoky Hill, were diagnosed with similar yet relatively unusual forms of cancer roughly within one year of each other.

McKinstry, who was diagnosed first and endured the brutal treatment months ahead of Reeves, later reached out to his colleague and sometime rival to offer support and guidance.

Now their shared stories, full of perseverance, perspective and old-fashioned toughness, are forever intertwined.

"There is a bond there that can't be denied," Reeves said. "I knew (McKinstry) because we had played years before, but you find out what kind of a dynamic person he is. He gave me some advice on what I'd be facing and gave me some nutrients that he had taken. He went through the same thing.

"It was information that was very helpful, because some of the things you're going through you're like, 'Wow, I hope this doesn't last forever.' Periodically I would call him and he'd say, 'No, that will get better.' It was a pretty good support system, and when we see each other we have a pretty special relationship."

Unhappy anniversary

Nov. 17, 2004, was supposed to be a day of great joy for

McKinstry. It was his 20th wedding anniversary, yet by the end of the day he had reason to wonder if he'd make it to anniversary No. 21.

McKinstry was found to have cancerous growths on his tongue. His family had just returned to the Denver area, with McKinstry landing the head coaching job at Northridge High School after leaving a position in Arizona to be near his terminally ill father.

Unfortunately for the Mc-

Kinstry family, the caregiver soon became the patient. McKinstry underwent surgery to remove a portion of his tongue. While learning to talk and eat again proved frustratingly troublesome, it was nothing compared to the diagnosis McKinstry received about three months later, when he learned the cancer had spread to his neck and lymph nodes.

"The initial diagnosis was probably one of the toughest things I've ever gone through, when I got that phone call," McKinstry said. "That's pretty tough to deal with. I've never drank. I've never smoked in my life. And the type of cancer I had was indicative of somebody who smoked and drank a lot. You go through the 'I don't deserve this' and 'What's going to happen to my family?' For about a 24-hour period you can hardly function.

"Then you realize you have to fight it. And I said I was going to do whatever it takes to make sure I beat it."

McKinstry's second round of treatment for the cancer in his neck and lymph nodes proved disheartening. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments were followed by another surgery to remove 22 lymph nodes. McKinstry lost 60 pounds in two months and was down to about 145 pounds when he underwent his second surgery.

"When I initially was diagnosed, they said I had a seven out of 10 chance to beat this. Being a basketball coach, I kind of liked those odds," said McKinstry, whose two sons were teenagers when he was first diagnosed. "But then when it came back in the lymph nodes and they had to go to some real radical treatments, the odds dropped to about three out of 10. That was pretty scary.

"But again, your athletic background reminds you that you have been preaching 20 years to kids about how to fight through adversity, and taking a negative and making it a positive, and not wallowing in self-pity. Life isn't fair and you have to battle. And that mode takes over."

Just as McKinstry was beginning to feel a little better, he had an opportunity to pass on his new wisdom to an ailing Reeves.

Deadly fingers

When fall 2005 arrived, Reeves had been battling cruel headaches and was popping pain pills for months before finally learning the source of his ailment was not migraines or an abscessed tooth. Reeves was suffering from cancer of the sinus and pharynx, but of most concern was the way the tumor was slowly spreading.

Called "fingers" for the way they were branching deeper into his head, the tendrils of the original tumor were pressing against nerves, causing severe pain. Moreover, the fingers prevented doctors from performing surgery, forcing Reeves to endure a particularly harsh form of treatment, receiving chemotherapy once a week and radiation treatments five times a week for seven weeks.

During this period, Reeves began receiving messages from

McKinstry. Having endured a similar treatment only months earlier, McKinstry helped prepare Reeves for what he was about to face and also provided a number of tips to help him get through the grueling process.

Fitted with a mask for the radiation treatments, Reeves, like

McKinstry, had his saliva glands fried and essentially had to learn to drink water again. Portions of the left side of his face remain numb, but Reeves has escaped the loss of vision in his left eye, which likely remains in his future, or the promised loss of facial hair.

The treatment, though "very hard to take," was very effective, Reeves said.

"I don't know this for sure, but I think five or 10 years earlier I would have been dead," he said. "I don't think they would have had the equipment to do that.

"It's tough, because they are killing you to save you. I lost 35-40 pounds and was down to nothing. But once I started gaining my strength, it really was a miracle process. There were some really good people that were there to really make a difference in my life."

Remission

Both coaches report themselves in fine health now.

McKinstry took the 2005-06 school year off and returned to coaching at Pomona last season before returning this season to Smoky Hill, where he coached before moving to Arizona. Reeves missed the second half of the 2005-06 school year but returned last year, admitting he was weak at first but now is feeling stronger.

Their shared experience extends beyond the illnesses and treatments. Each man stresses the positives - such as the $15,000 members of the Arvada community raised to help pay some of Reeves' expenses, or the touching video tribute Northridge students put together for

McKinstry - rather than lamenting their bad luck.

"I know (McKinstry) handled it in the way I'd always known him to handle things - very professionally and with integrity and thinking of everybody else besides himself," said Lewis-Palmer principal John Borman, a longtime friend of McKinstry's who was the principal at Northridge when McKinstry was diagnosed.

"People rally. It's probably in every profession, but in education there tends to be people who are in the human business. That had to make a big difference."

Additionally, and perhaps predictably, both coaches are changed men. McKinstry was a long-term planner who always fretted the details of the future. Now he relishes each day and tackles hurdles only as they come.

Reeves, 42, who has no children and has never been married, no longer sees himself as a career coach and says that in time he likely will tackle other interests that have been ignored, like perhaps getting his doctorate or venturing into real estate.

"I always felt like life was a gift, a blessing, but you feel like you're in overtime now. I tied it up and I've taken it to overtime," Reeves said.

"So I feel fortunate and I think I learned a lot about how wonderful people are. There were a ton of positives to come out of something that you would think would be so negative. There might have been more positives than negatives, to be honest."

He said it

"I really believe it is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I know it's weird to say that, because the treatment is an unbelievable nightmare. But, once you make it through there, it can't help but change you. I was always trying to think of my next move, or worrying about this or that. I don't do that anymore. It makes you appreciate every day. I don't have a bad day anymore."

Russ McKinstry, Smoky Hill boys basketball coach, on how cancer changed him

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