Mark Gastineau's 40-year odyssey: Sleeper, sack dancer, cancer patient

[FrFan]

I truly admire his strength, will, his fighting spirit going through  a stage 3 cancer plagued with dementia, Alzheimer and Parkinson.

The NYSE was a blast !

I think his life is worth an episode of "A Football Life"

Good luck Mark, I wish you a total recovery and no setbacks.

 

• Broke his leg as a child so badly doctors said he’d never walk again.
• Was the first ever draft pick for his college
• Collected 107.5 career sacks including 22 in 1986
• Created a sack dance that was so infuriating to opponents it was eventually banned.
• Went to five Pro Bowls and still holds the Pro Bowl record with four sacks in a game

 

Mark Gastineau's 40-year odyssey: Sleeper, sack dancer, cancer patient

 

On April 8, Mark Gastineau emerged from his eighth and final chemotherapy session and walked through the first-floor waiting room at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Wiping tears from his eyes, he stopped at an antique ship bell mounted on the wall beneath a flat-screen TV. Eschewing the nearby box of tissues, he reached for the bell. Old No. 99, wearing an NFL alumni shirt underneath an unbuttoned, blue-denim, long-sleeved shirt, turned this into a vintage Gastineau moment.

The former New York Jets star rang the bell as part of Fox Chase's traditional, end-of-chemo ceremony. Five nurses, a couple of receptionists and a handful of patients came out to watch Gastineau, once a flamboyant sack dancer, perform before the assembling crowd...........

Edited May 5 by FrFan

[Malapropismic Depository]

Cancer, Dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's.

All at the same time.

What a battle.

What a story.

A lot of things to take from the story, but seeing the extremes he had to go to to pay his medical bills (which still he fell far short of), one thing pro players need to do,

is set aside an investment account for medical bills for when they get older. Insurance isn't enough. And saving for other stuff isn't enough.

Apparently selling your home to pay for medical bills isn't enough. NFL as employer isn't enough. You're on your own, when you play pro football, and have to deal with

the medical issues that hit you when you're older. Not sayin the cancer was caused by football. But those other things may have been.