Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 1, 1993 TAG: 9303310408
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB TEITLEBAUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEW CASTLE LENGTH: Medium
BEATING THE ODDS
After battling cancer for eight months, Craig County softball coach Tom Rudisill might not be certain about the future, but he's sure he has won this bout with the disease.The veteran coach learned last fall that he had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After a trip to Boston and chemotherapy treatment, Rudisill returned to coaching. He missed just two girls' basketball games and a few practices.
Now he's coaching softball; and, the happy-go-lucky coach says, about the only thing that ever was different is his hair, which has grown back after he lost it because of the recently completed chemotherapy.
Rudisill, 48, noticed a lump in his left groin in August. At first, his doctor suspected an infection. Antibiotics failed to reduce the lump, and a biopsy confirmed the worst.
"The doctor came in and said he had a heavy load to lay on me, that I had cancer. He didn't know what kind or the prognosis, but he referred me to an oncologist," said Rudisill.
The oncologist didn't answer those questions either. He did prescribe a course of action and sent Rudisill to see a specialist in Boston. The specialist didn't promise a cure but said patients with that particular cancer usually don't see a return of the disease for seven to 10 years after treatment, if it recurs.
Part of what has made Rudisill's recovery so quick is his attitude.
"When the doctor told me, my first reaction was to accept it. I never went through the `why me' attitude like some people do. I'm a very optimistic person and take things as they come."
The chemotherapy could have knocked him out of girls' basketball, but it didn't.
"To be frank, I don't remember feeling very sick," said Rudisill. "I was very honest with the kids. I told them what was going on because they get scared. We talked about it, about the loss of hair. One girl's mother had taken chemotherapy treatments and had a horrible experience."
At the state basketball tournament in November, Rudisill, nearly bald, ran into an old coaching buddy who didn't know about the cancer.
"He said, `I've known you to do some weird things, but nothing like this with your hair.' At the time, I had little wisps," said Rudisill. "People asked if I was going to wear a hat or a wig. I said, `No, it [the loss of hair] doesn't bother me.' "
Rudisill says he has received a lot of support from the Craig County school system; from his parents, who came from Clifton Forge but every Friday to drive him to chemotherapy treatments in Salem; and from his fiance, Evelyn Short.
"She'd [Short] come over from Lynchburg for weekends because I wasn't supposed to drive after treatments because I might have a reaction," said Rudisill.
Then, there was a matter of getting his energy back. That was no trouble. Rudisill is as hyper as he's always been.
"In my classroom, I always walk around a lot, gesture and tell a lot of jokes. I guess I wasn't doing it [as much] at the time [during treatments]," said Rudisill.
There was a possibility Rudisill could have undergone bone marrow transplants to make sure the disease had less of a chance of returning, but doctors decided against that course. Even if the cancer returns in a few years, Rudisill says, the way research is developing there will be more ways for treatment than there are now.
Rudisill, whose coaching career began in the late 1960s in Northern Virginia, says he feels so well that it's hard to believe he was sick. Doctors even have wanted to use him to talk to other people who face chemotherapy for the first time, but they've had to temper their enthusiasm.
"They want me to tell people what to expect and how to handle it. But they wouldn't want me to talk to someone that chemotherapy won't help or who is only taking it to extend their time. I'm so bubbly, and that's not for everybody," he said.
Rudisill's next challenge is to make Craig County girls' sports competitive in one of the toughest Group A districts, one that Glenvar's teams have dominated on the state level. He started the softball program at Salem and took the Spartans to state tournaments before leaving to return to his alma mater, Emory & Henry, as an alumni director in 1988.
Is the veteran coach cured?
"I like the way one of my doctors put it," said Rudisill. "He never considers a cancer patient cured until they die from something else."
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