ARVADA — Nate Jurney has been told he shouldn’t be playing baseball today. If the Ralston Valley High senior listened to his doctor’s advice, he wouldn’t be. He’d be on an operating table with his chest pried open and a team of surgeons removing cancerous tumors from his lungs.
But Jurney decided he had been cut enough for now. Surgery would have cost him his final season of baseball, as well as many of the experiences unique to being a senior in high school.
“I want people to think that this is a kid that never gives up,” Jurney said. “This is a kid that loves life, that loves baseball and doesn’t lose sight of a dream.”
So he’ll wait. And he’ll hope.
Hope that the tumors in his lungs, which have shown some shrinkage with laser surgery, continue to recede. Hope that his cancer won’t surge again.
And hope he can help Arvada’s Ralston Valley keep its dream season alive today against Skyline and bring home a state championship trophy Saturday.
Jurney can’t help but dream of where baseball might take him. A left-handed pitcher who began playing when he was 5, he made Ralston Valley’s varsity squad as a sophomore and helped pitch a combined no-hitter early that season.
He was right where his father, Mark, who had coached his son and many of Nate’s current teammates for nearly a decade, had envisioned. Then came a nagging pain in Jurney’s left knee. A trip to the doctor revealed osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.
“When it was first diagnosed, it was absolutely devastating,” Mark Jurney said. “Cancer is one of those ugly things, and we’d never been exposed to it in our family.”
Nate began therapy soon after. He remembers the two weeks following his first chemotherapy treatment were vacant days of sleep, a druglike haze and severe weight loss. Once the tumor on the end of his femur had been greatly reduced, doctors removed parts of his bones and rebuilt his knee joint — sans the patella — out of titanium, a full knee replacement.
He walks with a noticeable limp. When he runs, “it’s not pretty,” he admits. His teammates hung his jersey in the dugout for the rest of his sophomore season. No one knew whether he would play again. Jurney always believed he would. He attacked his therapy and kept telling himself he would get back.
“You got your whole life ahead of you,” he said. “Just got to keep going. There’s no other option.”
Cancer found in lungs
Then came a quarterly checkup this past September. Dark spots in his lungs confirmed Nate’s cancer was not gone.
It was hard for Mark Jurney and his wife, Sarah, to imagine things getting scarier for their oldest of four children. Cancer in their son’s lungs, however, escalated everyone’s fears.
“If it’s going to come back, the lungs are the most common place it comes back,” said doctor Lorrie F. Odom, who has been treating Jurney since he was first diagnosed with cancer. “It’s probably present in the lungs in 80 to 85 percent of patients at the time of diagnosis.”
Jurney was put back on a list of drugs while undergoing less invasive surgery using lasers to help shrink the tumors. The surest method to remove the tumors is major surgery, but Nate decided he had had enough. He wanted to feel as normal as he could as a high school senior, and most of all, he wanted to play ball.
“I love baseball,” he said.
Odom has walked a fine line, attempting to aggressively treat Jurney but also respect his wishes. Nate would be having the surgery today if she had her way, although she is a firm believer that pursuing dreams can have positive psychological effect for patients, albeit usually short term.
“One has to respect where he’s coming from, too, which I do,” said Odom.
Nate’s parents were fully behind his wish.
Dad proud of son’s decision
“I just absolutely respected and supported that beyond words,” Mark Jurney said. “To even have a kid faced with a decision like that, and make the decision he did, to say, ‘No, I’m done with it. I’m going to go on.’ I was very proud of him because it’s absolutely not an easy decision.”
Jurney can’t push off the mound with his left leg the way he used to, but he has delivered some key scoreless innings this season for the Mustangs (21-3), one of four Class 4A teams left playing. He can’t play a position in the field other than pitcher, but he swings a strong bat.
“A lot of people on the outside kind of felt like he may never play again,” said Mustangs coach Shane Freehling. “They didn’t know the heart and drive that this kid had in him.”
Nate credits much of that drive to a little girl named Hope, whom he met during rehabilitation with the Limb Preservation Program at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center. Jurney knew Hope for a year before the 11-year-old died of leukemia. She touched his heart. He writes her name in the dirt on the back of the mound every time he pitches.
“She had such a good attitude,” he said. “She was never down. Always had a smile on her face.”
Jurney wears his smile easily, too. He exudes strength in every word. He teaches perspective with every step.
He won’t entertain the thought of the disease ending his life. Asked what he sees five years from now, he said, “I don’t see the cancer with me. I see myself as a coach. I’m going to be coaching baseball, cancer-free and I’m going to be happy.”
About osteosarcoma
Osteosarcoma is the
most common bone cancer
in children and adolescents.
A closer look:
It’s most common in patients
ages 10-25, when
bone growth is rapid.
It occurs more frequently
in males.
Around 400 new cases
are diagnosed each year
in the United States.
Patients with lung metastases
that are removable
at diagnosis have a
survival rate of about 30
percent to 50 percent.
Source: Osteosarcoma Online
