October 17th, 2014, I was in Bakersfield, California to open up the 2014-15 season with the Stockton Thunder, my second year with the team.
I was absolutely excited to get going and get back on the air, and having New York Islanders Assistant to the GM Kerry Gwydir do the game with me was an added bonus, however game one went to the Condors.
There’s always tomorrow.
And there was a tomorrow as we stayed the night in Bako ready to play the Condors on the road for game number two however my day didn’t start out the way I had expected.
You see for the few weeks leading up to the season, my mother was telling me about her mother and how she was concerned about her health. My grandma, whom I called Nana, just didn’t look right.
Now before I progress in the story there’s a couple things you have to know. You’d have all loved my Nana. She was a spark-plug; a tell-it-like-it-is gal, and a woman who was the queen of the strong line of women that are in my family. She’s a tough person. Drank what she wanted to drink (Milwaukee’s Best actually or in my college days…The Beast!) and smoked far too much for my liking. However she seemed to always have a clean bill of health and I’d always joke with her that because she lived her life the way she wanted to, she’d outlive all of us.
I also used to tell her that I wanted to take her to a couple college parties to hustle people out of their money by telling them this small, petite woman could outdrink an entire Cincinnati Bearcats football team. She seemed to just have a hollow leg that would store the beer she drank because she’d run through a 36 of the Beast pretty quick.
Her husband, Papa, passed away in 2001 in what was a difficult year for me as an eighth grader. Papa suffered a stroke on my birthday (still my worst one to this day) and a couple days before my father’s birthday on Feburary 28, he passed. This gave Nana the place to herself.
Now I can go on and on about great memories I have with the two of them but this isn’t the time for that. What it is the time for is to talk about the events that led to the morning of October 18.
Joyce Sartori looking a bit “lobsterish” during a family vacation in Florida.
So Nana wasn’t looking so good but as any woman who’s got a strong and stubborn personality to her, she didn’t want to go to the doctor. My mom sent me a picture of her on the phone and no joke, she looked like an Oompa Loompa from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She was yellow. We were all concerned and finally the pressure broke her down and she went to the hospital with my mother.
She was jaundice and they initially thought it was something wrong with her kidneys. They ran tests and were trying to figure things out.
Then a phone call from my mother came. The cause of Nana’s yellow skin was discovered and it wasn’t good.
I’m no medical expert, in fact most of what I know is from TV shows like Scrubs, but I knew that when you hear the words “pancreatic cancer”, prognosis isn’t good. In fact from what I thought about, it was one of those forms that is one of the worst forms of the disease to have.
Looking up the stats, it is a rarer form that impacts people mostly over the age of 41.
From Google “This type of cancer is often detected late, spreads rapidly, and has a poor prognosis. There are no symptoms in the early stages. Later stages are associated with symptoms, but these can be non-specific, such as lack of appetite and weight loss.”
Nana always ate light but she was losing a lot of weight, and after the cancer was discovered, the reason she was jaundice was due to a tumor causing her kidney’s to misfire. They immediately took her to surgery and removed the tumor which caused her skin to return to its normal pigment.
This was just before the season, and unfortunately I couldn’t be there for my family and they knew that I couldn’t be there due to the hockey season. They were very supportive of me, and always have been, but you just can’t help but want to go back and spend some time and show your support for your grandmother’s battle.
But word from back home was actually that she was doing really well. I got news that she was either progressing or the same, but I never got word that things were bad.
Then I got the call.
I was Nana’s first grandchild. I used to cheat when I played games with her and make up card games with her when I was younger. She’d never let me slide…she’d always call out a 5-year-old for making up rules and cheating. You couldn’t just let it slide Nan? I WAS FIVE!!!!
October 18, 2015 at 6 o’clock in the morning while sleeping at the hotel next to Rabobank Arena my phone rang and it was my father and he was crying. Not a good start. With my roommates in the same room I answered the phone quietly and half-asleep. I was told it was time to say goodbye.
After a brief goodbye because I didn’t want to wake my roomates up I got dressed, went to the front of the hotel, called back and proceeded to say goodbye properly to Nana at the curb of the hotel on Truxton Ave.
It’s tough because when Papa died, I made my peace with him a few days before as we knew that this was coming. My grandma’s came out of left field for me and the impersonal matter that I said goodbye made it, and truthfully, still makes me feel bad to this day, and it took a conversation recently to really bring those feelings to light.
It’s tough working in hockey and seeing life happen around you. It’s a long, tough job and you don’t get to see your family often and you don’t get to go home often. Since I’ve been out in Stockton, I haven’t made a trip home and only my mom and dad have visited California. I just don’t have the time and especially planning a wedding and saving my vacation has limited the time I can spend away from the office.
And yet life goes on. It doesn’t just pause for hockey season. I’ve missed weddings, birthdays, holidays and babies born.
I also missed out on my chance to see my Nana one last time to tell her that I love her while holding her hand. Instead I was on the curb of a busy street, talking as cars zipped by during the early morning traffic. After I said goodbye, I just stayed on the curb, trying to grip with what just happened, how bad I felt that I wasn’t there, and how bad I felt that I couldn’t be there.
In the later days I chatted with everyone seeing if they wanted or needed me to come home, and maybe I was just hoping they’d say yes we need you, but they all echoed the same sentiment.
My grandmother was so proud of me for trying to chase my dream and wouldn’t have wanted me to miss anything just for her. There wasn’t going to be a funeral and the family wanted me to stay in California and continue working hard for the Thunder.
I proceeded to broadcast that night’s game, with a heavier heart, but one that I was really happy to do again because of Kerry Gwydir. It didn’t hurt that the Thunder got the 4-3 win too. Maybe my grandma helped the team out for the day.
So last night, and tonight, with the ice painted pink, the special jerseys, and the number of cancer survivors in attendance, I’ll think a little bit more about Nana’s battle at the end against an ugly, ugly disease. Even if pink is for breast cancer, I think of tonight as an ode to the people who’ve battled any form of the disease, and tonight, I’ll once again hope that Nana is looking down, hopefully with Papa (arguing about what’s for dinner of course…Papa was a great chef) and help give the Heat a boost in tonight’s game against Ontario.
I have a bit more hair and enjoyed an Oktoberfest celebration with Nana prior to leaving for Stockton. I didn’t realize it’d be one of the last times I’d see her, but an excellent beer and pretzel filled memory to leave fresh in my mind.
The team and I have a lot of respect for all those who battle this disease regardless of form and there’s nothing more they’d rather do then win on such an important night. And when they do the cancer tribute and ask for everyone in the audience who’s had a family member touched by cancer, I’ll stand straight with pride, headset on, getting ready to come back from commercial break because Nana did her best at the end, and I’m proud of that stubborn woman for trying. It’d be easy to have just given up, but that wasn’t her style.
So the moral of the story as is the case with many of my family-oriented blogs. Spend time with your loved ones. I once again look to you teens (I used to be one) because I know some of you may think your family isn’t cool or you’d rather spend time with a boyfriend or girlfriend, rather play video games, or do just about anything else…but really…spend as much time with your loved ones you can.
They aren’t always going to be around and you don’t want to end up feeling guilt that you didn’t spend time with them, or like me, you didn’t get to say the proper goodbye you wanted to.
So tonight, and last night….
well…
these games are for you, you survivors and those of you battling cancer currently….
and hopefully for Nana, listening to Spreaker in the clouds (lets be honest…the woman couldn’t figure out how to email…she isn’t listening to me via a phone app).
