In retrospect, I was so naive because when I took a photo of Brendan at his last Pacers game, the main one I planned on using for this story, I didn’t realize how much strength it took for him just to get out of his seat and stand up straight for a couple minutes. James Boyd: In my lone season covering the Pacers, I lived my driveway dream, saw Superman cry It was an honor I didn’t take lightly and one I always knew I’d see through, but every time I tried to set up a phone interview with Brendan, he’d tell me he was having a hard day, so we eventually pivoted to an email interview. He told me that after reading my stories, he trusted me enough to tell his. When I met with him at halftime of that Pacers-Grizzlies game – the last game he ever attended – he agreed to do a phone interview with me about his life and unwavering Pacers fandom. You may be wondering why I corresponded with Brendan through email rather than just talking to him, and the truth is that wasn’t the plan. I’m 27 now and have been battling Ewing’s on and off since that fateful day.” The last game I had to use a cane for a while but eventually, I made a near-full recovery. Luckily, I was able to regain most of the feeling in my legs and walk again after a few weeks. WEDNESDAY BASKETBALL GAME FAN GETS THROWN OUT HOW TOThe tumor had compressed my spinal cord so much that I had lost feeling from my hips down and I had to relearn how to walk. “At the time I found out, I already had my emergency back surgery to remove the tumor from my spinal cord and I was rehabbing at a facility in Evansville, Indiana. 17,” Brendan wrote in an email to me before he died. It was mid-October 2014 when I got the diagnosis and my birthday is Nov. “I was first diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma a few weeks before I turned 20. He was battling cancer, and 25 days later the 27-year-old was dead.
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