Perhaps the only diagnosis more devastating than cancer is when it’s preceded by the word “pancreatic.”
The disease recently claimed NCAA president Myles Brand and actor Patrick Swayze. Brigham Young University basketball coach Dave Rose points to Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a personal example of longer survival.
Before the prognosis had a chance to sink in this past June, further pathology revealed a more hopeful outlook.
Rose, a 51-year-old grandfather seeking his fourth Mountain West Conference crown, had a nearly grapefruit-size tumor removed along with his spleen and part of the pancreas.
He was amazed when doctors told him he probably had the tumor growing for years.
“I was fortunate (that) by the time I recovered from surgery, the prognosis changed a little. ‘You might have caught a break. This could be extremely rare but slow growing and manageable,’ ” Rose said the doctor told him.
Rose and the other Mountain West coaches convened Tuesday in Littleton for basketball media day.
Other coaches were upbeat because everyone is unbeaten, no one has missed a rebound and the pressure is still on the football coaches. They talked basketball, nervously checking cellphones for recruiting updates.
Rose didn’t really talk hoops, not even about his preseason player of the year in junior Jimmer Fredette.
The fifth-year coach, who has won 74 percent of his games, is thrilled just to be coaching.
In June, he was rushed to a Las Vegas hospital after he nearly passed out on a flight from California during a family vacation. Diagnosed with internal bleeding, the tumor and spleen came out and 10 units of blood went in. He was sliced from stem to stern and lost a fair amount of weight.
“For me in the hospital, the doctor came to me and said the tumor is malignant, and we think it originated in your pancreas,” he recalled of the initial diagnosis. “I just thought that will be an issue I’ll have to deal with. I just thought I had a serious operation.”
All the testing was repeated when he was transferred to the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. A scan was clean in September.
Since the diagnosis, Rose vowed to take better care of himself and has been deeply touched by the love shown by friends and rivals alike.
For all the rancor whenever BYU and Utah meet, Rose and Utes coach Jim Boylen have a genuine friendship. Boylen invited Rose to join his foursome in a golf fundraiser for the Huntsman Center.
“We talk a little more than people think,” Boylen said. “Let the rivalry work for us. Neither one of us wants the rivalry to be a low-rent rivalry. We want it to be a classy rivalry. I think that’s very important for Dave and me.”
Because he was physically limited from hitting a golf ball with any kind of force, Rose said he worked on straightening his shots. He also worked the foursome that day because Boylen said one of the Utah boosters wrote a check to the charity for $10,000.
“We can all do better things and all be better people,” Rose said. “My family has been changed for the better. My team and players know there are life lessons.”
Unlike his colleagues Tuesday, Rose almost looks forward to the first miscues by his team.
“Most questions to them are going to be, ‘How’s your coach?’ I want to get to where when we miss some free throws here or make turnovers there, it’s, ‘OK, now what do you do to fix all that?’ ” Rose said. “When we get to that, we’ll just start rolling.”
Natalie Meisler: 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com
