McCafferys recall son’s battle against cancer

IOWA CITY - Fran McCaffery slapped backs, told jokes and dispensed hugs outside of his Carver-Hawkeye Arena offices Tuesday. He worked the filled room with the same outward vigor as he would an I-Club event.

The handshakes and laughter belied McCaffery's personal trauma. Tuesday's event marked McCaffery's third annual fundraiser for Coaches vs. Cancer. It benefits the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Hope Lodge, and this year's total of $133,000 more than doubled his inaugural event's proceeds ($52,000) two years ago.

The Iowa men's basketball coach lost both of his parents to cancer, so the fight is personal. It became more intense last March when his son, Patrick, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

'I never dreamed that we'd go through last year what we went through last year and actually be the recipient of the amazing care that people get when they get horrible news,” McCaffery said.

'What are we trying to accomplish? Trying to make sure that people don't die from cancer.”

As part of last year's Coaches vs. Cancer event, McCaffery flew young cancer survivor Joey Jacobsen and his father on the team plane to a nationally televised game March 6 at Michigan State. Everyone finished their dinner and they departed for the Breslin Center. McCaffery then received a phone call, which he called 'the irony of ironies.”

The team arrived at the arena prepared, and McCaffery coached with zeal and passion against Iowa's longtime nemesis. But his mind wandered.

'I probably was as relaxed as I've ever been coaching a game,” McCaffery said.

Iowa led at the half but absorbed a 10-point loss, which continued a downward spiral on the basketball court. It was Iowa's fourth loss in a five-game stretch. Afterward McCaffery was unusually distant with reporters. He answered most questions with one-word retorts until he was asked about the inconsistent officiating.

'I give up. I surrender,” McCaffery said almost symbolically as he threw up his hands. Iowa had lost a battle on the court, but the fight off it had just begun.

Doctors had discovered a tumor on Patrick's thyroid.

THE FIGHT

McCaffery's next two weeks were a blur. Iowa lost its home finale two days later on a last-second shot. The following Monday, March 10, Iowa assistant coach Kirk Speraw took the reins for the weekly Big Ten teleconference as McCaffery and his wife, Margaret, met with surgeons. Patrick had a biopsy on the tumor, which had pushed on to his airway. It was undetermined if it was cancerous or benign, but it required surgery.

At the team facility, Margaret broke down in tears as Billy Taylor, a former McCaffery player and Iowa's basketball operations director, held her. Margaret told Fran the team needed to know about Patrick's condition. Fran was reluctant but relented.

Iowa's players gathered in a circle around the McCafferys. Fran tried to talk. Then he started to cry.

Margaret had to speak up.

'I knew Fran wouldn't be able to do it,” Margaret said. 'I knew.”

Iowa's players embraced their coach.

'I will never forget Devyn Marble grabbing him and holding him and saying, ‘It's OK. We've got you, Coach,'” Margaret said. 'The minute (Fran) tried to start talking, he broke down.”

'He wrapped his arms around me and held me,” McCaffery said as tears filled his eyes. '‘Coach, we're going to be OK. It's going to be OK.'”

McCaffery worked his weekly radio show that night. He didn't talk about Patrick but midway through the show he received a message on his phone from his guard, Josh Oglesby. The team decided to honor Patrick and their coach with warm-up T-shirts for that week's Big Ten Tournament game. The shirts read 'P-Mac” on the front and with '#teampat” and '22” on the back. That's Patrick's number.

McCaffery broke down again.

By the next day, rumors spread about Patrick's condition. McCaffery addressed the matter in a news release. He faced the unenviable task of stopping a late-season fade on the court concurrently with a battle against his son's illness.

That Thursday night, one week after the Michigan State defeat, Iowa lost to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament. It was the Hawkeyes' sixth defeat in a seven-game stretch. Iowa was deemed a potential Final Four threat one month earlier. The skid instead sent Iowa to the NCAA First Four in Dayton, Ohio when NCAA tournament pairings were announced the following Sunday, March 16.

McCaffery was visibly fatigued by the stress, and his players displayed little enthusiasm. On a day when Iowa secured its first NCAA tournament bid in eight years, all joy dissipated from Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

'The players were having a hard time,” Margaret McCaffery said. 'They wanted to do well, but yet they felt the strain of everything that was going on and having the high of finally getting in the tournament.”

Iowa's first game was set for Wednesday, March 19 against Tennessee. Patrick was scheduled for surgery the same day.

NCAA TRIP

The team flew to Dayton on that Monday, March 17. The McCafferys traditionally travel together on road trips, but Margaret stayed behind with Patrick. They discussed the scenarios with Iowa officials, and a private plane was made available. McCaffery stayed with the team through that Tuesday night and flew back to Iowa City.

'The public nature of everything was very unique, obviously,” McCaffery said. 'There's no blueprint so you sort of deal with every minute. I can't thank our administration enough. We had contingency plans. Can you get to the game? What if surgery doesn't go as well? Then I'm not going to come to the game. What are we going to do next? Those kinds of things.”

Patrick's surgery was scheduled early Wednesday morning. The operation was successful, and McCaffery returned to Dayton.

The family heard whispers about misplaced priorities.

'I think people were like, ‘Why is Fran even coaching?'” Margaret said. 'Patrick wouldn't have had it any other way. I don't think it ever occurred to him that his dad would be with him instead of coaching the team.”

The game featured three NBA draft picks and two slighted teams in the seeding process. Iowa jumped to a 16-4 lead and led for the game's first 37 minutes. After Tennessee took the lead, Marble drilled a jumper late to send the game to overtime. But Marble rolled his ankle as the buzzer sounded. He was out for the first few overtime possessions, Tennessee capitalized and won 78-65.

Few people took the loss as hard as Patrick, who saw the game with his mother in his hospital room.

'We watched the game and trying to console him and then trying to keep up with him as he did his laps around the little ward there was hard because he was so upset and sad,” Margaret said.

Had Iowa won, it would have played that Friday in Raleigh, N.C. One defensive stop, one foul called the other way, one more basket in regulation against Tennessee would have sent the Hawkeyes to a game with Massachusetts. Tennessee dismantled both UMass and Mercer with ease that weekend and nearly upset Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen at Indianapolis. Iowa had split its regular-season games with Michigan and with momentum on a neutral court halfway between the Big Ten rivals, anything was possible.

'Despite it all, we wanted to keep winning,” McCaffery said. 'It's almost like, we have to just go over here and deal with Patrick and be with Patrick. But he wanted us to keep winning. He loves these guys. He was so disappointed when we lost the game, watching it in a hospital. I really think had we won that game, he probably would have made his way to North Carolina. Somehow, some way.”

THE WORST

On that Friday, barely a full day after Iowa's loss, all of the McCafferys were at home. A phone call awoke Margaret McCaffery. She in turn, woke up Fran and they both woke up Patrick. Doctors confirmed the tumor removed from his thyroid and sliced apart was malignant.

'Everything was pointing toward the tumor being benign,” Fran said. 'It just seemed like it was going to be benign. And if it was benign, then everything's behind you. No more surgery. No radioactive iodine, no taking thyroid medication for the rest of your life. Hoping that when you have a scan, there's no more cancer there. Then when it's not (benign), now we have a different journey. A completely different journey that nobody's prepared for.”

Had Iowa beaten Tennessee, Margaret would have received that call alone. Iowa would have played a few hours later.

'I can't imagine if Fran hadn't been home on Friday because the plan was they would have left on Wednesday to go down to Raleigh,” Margaret McCaffery said. 'I can't imagine for Fran what that would have been like, and I can't imagine for me. So I guess there's always a plan, in some way.”

Patrick, now 14, had a second surgery on April 17. Doctors have removed most of his lymph nodes. He was declared cancer-free in early June. He has regular checkups, routine blood tests and a recent neck ultrasound. He takes thyroid medicine around 6 a.m. every day and waits for an hour before he can eat breakfast.

Through it all Margaret has kept her sense of humor. Next summer Patrick will have another thyroid scan, which his mother already has started to regret.

'He'll have to do his diet again, which is like death for a 14-year-old,” she said with a laugh. 'It's like, ‘I can't eat Pancheros and McDonald's and Papa John's ...”

Patrick returned to AAU basketball after his second surgery. As an eighth-grader at North Central Junior High in North Liberty, Patrick has shot up and now stands 6-foot-4. Last Thursday, his older brother Connor tweeted that Patrick had dunked twice in the first quarter of a junior-high game.

Patrick's resiliency inspires his mother.

'His first instinct whenever we told him anything bad was to be mad and kind of take it out on me, which is OK,” Margaret said. 'But it showed how much he wanted to fight. ‘No, I'm fine. This is stupid. I'm fine. Everything's fine, let's move on. I want to play. I'm good. Why can't I go just play basketball?' That's his response to everything. I respect that, I admire that. I think it really served him well as he was recovering and going through his treatment and even now trying to process everything.”

There's also careful monitoring of his health involved.

'He just won't be right some days and we have to watch, especially when it relates to athletics,” Fran McCaffery said. 'He wants to play. He's a good player, and he wants to play.”

MOVING FORWARD

McCaffery has a new look and a new attitude entering this season. During Sunday's exhibition, his well-known feistiness was less apparent. Sure, he instructed his players with passion and discussed ambiguous calls with officials. But he was more relaxed, and it was noticeable.

His sideline demeanor has changed, and it began at Michigan State on March 6. That's also the same night 8-year-old Lacey Holsworth latched on to Michigan State's Adreian Payne as he carried her around the arena on senior night. Princess Lacey, as she was known, died a month later from cancer.

'Whereas it is a business and there are lot of things riding on it, it does put everything in perspective,” McCaffery said. 'It is still a game. I coached them up and we were prepared and I held them accountable, but I don't think you have that feeling of every possession is life or death because it's not. We were dealing with life and death. I think overall that's probably a good thing in terms of how I will coach moving forward and coach our guys, who I love dearly.”

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