Sheryl Magzamen, an epidemiologist and professor of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University, is also curious about how, if at all, poor air quality affects dogs. That����ap why she is helping lead a study intended to find out .

“There’s this huge gap in understanding what this means for animal health,” Magzamen said. “A lot of our recommendations right now are based on human health recommendations, and part of our question is, does that make sense given that dogs usually spend more time outside than people do? And their lives aren’t as long, so do we see that health effects have more meaning because their lifetimes are shorter?”

Leveraging the Denver-based Morris Animal Foundation’s , Magzamen and her co-researchers Craig Webb, Danni Scott and Colleen Duncan will evaluate whether smoke and specifically the chemical PM2.5 lead to higher rates of cancer in the breed or ultimately shorten their lives by causing other diseases.

The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, started in 2012, seeks to identify nutritional, environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs. It has enrolled more than 3,000 dogs located across the U.S., Magzamen said, which should give researchers a better understanding if the type of smoke also plays a role in canine illness.

Colorado dogs, for example, are more likely to be exposed to smoke from forest fires, whereas dogs in the southeastern U.S. are more prone to exposure from grassland fires and other types of prescribed burns, Magzeman said.

“Depending on what burns and how hot it burns and what other things burn around it changes the chemical composition of that smoke,” she said. “We are really trying to understand what this means not only for us, but for our canine companions as well.”

Results from her study won’t be published until at least next year. Until then, Magzamen said owners can use themselves as a barometer for their dog’s safety in smoky conditions. Humans and canines have many of the same organs in their cardiovascular and respiratory systems, she said, so “if you don’t feel good, you can assume your dog might not feel good either.”

On days when the air quality index is “unhealthy” for people to breathe (an AQI between 151 and 200), Magzamen advised limiting your dog’s activity and exercise. High-intensity activity, like runs or big hikes, should also be reduced when the air quality is less than ideal, she said. Senior dogs could be considered among “sensitive groups,” like children and individuals with lung diseases, who are at risk when the air quality index hits 100 or more, she added.

Play inside or out? How to manage Denver’s poor air quality with kids

Air pollution has been linked to in humans, including increasing the risk of premature birth, causing or worsening lung and heart disease, and shortening lives, according to the American Lung Association.

Magzamen and her co-researchers hope to understand if AQI readings are transferable to dogs or if there should be separate guidance for animals and individual breeds, such as French bulldogs and pugs that have shorter snouts and more difficulty breathing. As a dog lover, she also hopes her work can help other canine-loving families lead happy, long lives. Her golden good boy, Comet, recently died from cancer at 6 years old.

“It definitely gives me pause to think about what this means as Comet was out and about on his two walks a day. When he was healthy and doing well, these are days that we know smoke was in the air. I'm not saying that it����ap causal, but it also makes me think, did this potentially have impacts on his diagnosis and ultimately his death?” she said.

The  assigned points based on how many times each hospital lost money in the last five years, whether its debts were greater than its assets and whether its net worth had decreased between 2020 and 2024.

The report identified 602 hospitals as being “financially vulnerable” in all but four states — Alaska, Delaware, Maryland and Vermont.

“That doesn’t mean you’re going to close,” said Dan Johnston, a researcher who authored the report. “That’s just an indicator the hospital isn’t doing very well.”

The report didn’t identify Denver Health or Delta Health as at risk, despite both experiencing well-publicized financial struggles over the last five years. Both were close to the cutoff for financial vulnerability and could move into that category if their 2025 numbers don’t improve, Johnston said.

Only two of the 12 Colorado hospitals were rural, though facilities in less-populous parts of the state are more likely to run deficits.

The hospitals flagged as at-risk in the report were:

• Banner North Colorado Medical Center’s Loveland campus
• Banner North Colorado Medical Center’s Greeley campus
• CommonSpirit Longmont United Hospital
• CommonSpirit St. Elizabeth Hospital in Fort Morgan
• Intermountain Health Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge
• Intermountain Health Platte Valley Hospital in Brighton
• St. Vincent General Hospital District in Leadville
• UCHealth Broomfield Hospital
• UCHealth Grandview Hospital in Colorado Springs
• UCHealth Greeley Hospital
• UCHealth Highlands Ranch Hospital
• UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital in Longmont

All hospitals will face challenges as patients fall off Medicaid because they couldn’t navigate work requirements or the need to prove their eligibility at least twice a year, Johnston said. Those facilities that were struggling even before the cuts under H.R. 1, known as the “big beautiful bill,” will be even more likely to have to raise prices or cut services, he said.

“This bill is going to have a major impact, and it’s going to cause a lot of problems,” he said.

In addition, the end of pandemic-era enhanced subsidies for people buying on the individual market will likely increase the number showing up at hospitals without health insurance, or with a plan that involves high out-of-pocket costs they may not be able to cover.

Technically, Medicare is also on track to undergo a 2% cut as part of “sequestration” efforts to rein in federal debt levels, though Congress has never let similar cuts take effect.

St. Vincent’s has acknowledged financial troubles in its recent past, including the need for an emergency cash infusion from Lake County to cover payroll in 2022. Earlier this year, CEO Bubba Bartlett said the hospital posted a small profit in 2025 and expects similar results this year.

Banner Health said its northern Colorado hospitals are “financially strong” and not at risk of closing. The Loveland location, formerly known as McKee Medical Center, to focus solely on surgeries and cancer care.

“As one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, we have designed an approach that enables us to live up to our mission and continue serving the communities that depend on us,” the system said.

Intermountain Health said it couldn’t comment on the report’s methodology or conclusions, but has concerns about how Medicaid changes will affect hospitals.

CommonSpirit Health referred questions to the Colorado Hospital Association, which said it couldn’t speak about the specific list of hospitals, but that facilities have endured losses in recent years and will have further struggles as patients lose insurance coverage.

“Colorado hospitals work hard (independently, as a system of hospitals across the state and with the Polis administration and other stakeholders) to avoid unnecessary closure or reductions in an effort to keep health care services in communities,” association spokeswoman Cara Welch said in a statement. “Despite these efforts, we are past the point of anticipating negative impacts to care – now it is happening, and it will get worse as more provisions of H.R. 1 take effect.”

UCHealth spokesman Dan Weaver said the list seemed “odd” because it includes some of the system’s more stable hospitals. The system is adding a tower and medical office building to its Highlands Ranch campus, suggesting it sees the market as profitable.

UCHealth has dealt with the strain of a sharp increase in uncompensated care, but it still acts as a refuge for other hospitals, with Pueblo’s Parkview Medical Center and Estes Park Health joining the system after years of losses, Weaver said.

“Importantly, no UCHealth hospitals are at risk of closing. UCHealth is the state’s largest provider of Medicaid care, and we are committed to the communities we serve,” he said in a statement.

Not a knock on the big lug. Honest. The hoops wonks on The Grading The Week staff had nothing but pleasant exchanges with Val while he was a member of the Nuggets — a curious calendar year that came to a curious end this past Wednesday when the franchise waived him.

By doing it when they did, yes, Stan Kroenke and Josh Kroenke got $10 million in guaranteed salary off their books, leaving a $2-million cap hit that they’re likely to spread out over the next three seasons.

And sure, the Nuggets’ problems are largely accounting ones now. The franchise is reportedly aiming to stay below the NBA salary cap’s second apron, a hard-ish cap that freezes future draft picks, wipes out mid-level exceptions — and could leave KSE stuck with paying more than $200 million in taxes on top of projected player salaries in the $210-240 million range.

Valanciunas’ Nuggets era — C-minus

To that end, cutting Big Val was the easy part. While the 6-foot-11 Lithuanian was easily the Nuggets’ most skilled backup to franchise icon Nikola Jokic since Mason Plumlee left for Detroit in December 2000, he was probably the slowest Joker backup of the bunch, too. The former Denver center often looked painfully out of step last winter when facing the West’s best teams.

In three late-season tussles versus Oklahoma City from February-March, when the Thunder were actually trying, Big Val, per NBA.com, posted Net Ratings — points scored per 100 possessions versus points allowed — of -31.0, -120.2 (!) and -62.1. In three matchups against the San Antonio before April 10, when the Spurs were trying, Big Val’s Net Ratings were +13.0, -71.8, and -20.9. In four regular-season tussles with Minnesota, Big Val’s Net Ratings were, in order: -4.7, +13.1, -34.4, and -71.4.

That explains, at least partially, why the big man’s court time fell precipitously late last season. Valanciunas averaged just 13.3 minutes per game in February. That number was down to 8.6 minutes per game in March.

Val was one of the reasons the Nuggets didn’t go off the rails without the Joker for a month this past January. But he’ll also turn 35 next spring.

A year ago, the idea of Val and Jokic on the floor together as dual, pass-savvy, physically strong big men made Nuggets Nation’s eyes light up at the possibilities of creating matchup nightmares. In reality, the Denver coaching staff dealt with the nightmares as smaller, faster opponents knew they could probably blow by either one, if not both, whenever opportunities arose.

In no blueprint does Valanciunas, even at age 34, fit with remits of “getting younger” and “getting more athletic.” Even if those two demands are also front office code for “getting cheaper.” The Nuggets’ next cuts, you have a feeling, will be much harder. And more painful.

Tootle’s Colorado legacy  — A

Denver lost a good man and GTW lost a friend recently when former Regis Jesuit and Colorado Mesa football great Jeff Tootle passed away late last month at the age of 63. An NAIA All-American linebacker who went on to play for the New York Giants, Tootle had tackled a run of health-related issues in recent years. But battles to overcome his leg, heart, and prostate never dulled his spirits, his sense of humor, or his love for his family. Jeff’s medical bills were extensive in recent years, and a GTW tip of the cap to those who have already pitched in to help his survivors with impending funeral costs. If you’d like to assist, there’s

Beauprez, who is now a family medicine physician in Salida, was completing her residency in family medicine in Greeley at the time, and happened to be assigned to a nursing home rotation when the pandemic changed everything.

“I would be the person holding somebody’s hand when they died and hearing their stories,” she said. “It felt like the most important place that I could be at that point.”

Beauprez is part of a dwindling number of doctors looking to specialize in caring for older people.

Colorado only has four slots for young physicians who want to complete fellowships in geriatric medicine, but even so, the state couldn’t fill them this year. One doctor matched in through the traditional process after finishing their residency, another joined at the last minute because their spouse got a job in Denver, and Beauprez took a leave of absence from her job for the training.

Geriatric medicine fellowships in other states have also struggled to find doctors interested in the field, . Nationwide, about three-fifths of fellowship slots sat empty, which was both a decrease from 2023 and the lowest fill rate of any specialty.

Of the 33 states that had a geriatrics fellowship program, only seven managed to fill more than half of their slots via the matching process, though some, like Colorado, may have added nontraditional students.

As of 2020, the country had about 6,500 geriatricians — roughly one for every 8,600 people over 65. In comparison, there is roughly one pediatrician for every 1,100 children nationally.

At that time, the didn’t have a geriatrician or nurse practitioner specializing in older adults, with access concentrated along the Front Range and in Mesa County.

The geriatrician workforce is shrinking, which means fewer mentors who could help spark interest in the field, said Dr. Tyson Garfield, associate program director for the fellowship.

A decade ago, all medical students had to complete a two-to-four-week rotation in geriatrics. Now, some only get a few lectures about caring for older people, and the field often isn’t top of mind for someone in their late 20s, he said.

“Geriatrics is definitely not perceived as one of the fun specialties,” he said.

And, of course, the fact that it isn’t a well-paid specialty turns new doctors off, Garfield said. On average, doctors in geriatrics earn about $292,000 per year, which is less than half of what a cardiologist could earn and at the lower end of medical specialties, according to Trilliant’s data.

“An additional year (of training) for less pay is not that enticing for trainees who are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt,” Garfield said.

Geriatricians typically max out at about 12 patients per day, while someone with a mixed-age panel may see 18 to 24, Garfield said. On top of that, most patients will have Medicare, which generally pays less than job-based insurance.

While general practitioners can care for patients of all ages, older people face challenges that aren’t common in younger groups, such as an increased risk of from medications or if they spend too long in an emergency room. Additionally, they have to consider whether tests such as still make sense, especially if their life expectancy is less than a decade.

The existing geriatrician shortage will only grow if current trends continue, with rural areas hit hardest because their populations are aging faster and they have fewer providers, said Lori Parham, policy principle in government affairs at .

Older people with more severe needs struggle to find providers who understand how to treat someone who has dementia or communication challenges, or relies on a caregiver, she said. At the same time, doctors who aren’t trained on older people’s needs may dismiss treatable conditions as inevitable parts of aging.

“If we don’t act, older Americans and their caregivers are the ones who are going to pay the price,” Parham said.

Matching every older person with a geriatrician isn’t necessary, but all providers need to know the basics of age-friendly care, she said. AARP has pushed for all medical residents who will go on to treat patients covered by Medicare to demonstrate they can give .

“We’re never going to close the geriatrician gap through subspecialists alone,” she said.

With younger people, medicine can sometimes feel “algorithmic” and focused on getting someone’s cholesterol, blood sugar and other numbers down to levels that minimize long-term risk, Garfield said. While managing chronic conditions can still be important for older people, preserving someone’s daily functioning takes center stage, he said.

“As we get older, those numbers may matter less,” he said.

Treating patients who have complex conditions, which become more common with age, requires more work to prepare for appointments and to push insurers for prior authorization, Beauprez said.

But it also brings the opportunity to really get to know the patients and what they value. She got to see how important those relationships were when the families of two patients who died in the last year, both of whom were in their 90s, opted to thank her in their obituaries.

“I can’t fathom a higher honor,” she said.

“He’s been great, just super gracious,” Jeff Higgins told me by phone Monday from DIA before he headed out on a business trip. “The support they gave us, ‘How are the girls doing?’ Offering to come and talk for a while with us … his actions, to us, were way more compassionate than any of these narratives that were out there about him.”

Higgins doesn’t know the Wyndham Clark that seemingly half the golf-dude accounts on Xwitter despise. Or the one who spent last weekend getting razzed by the yahoos at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in New York, only to win the 2026 U.S. Open, anyway.

“It’s not right watching Wyndham take some of the beatings that he’s taken on social media,” Higgins continued. “How he handled the whole situation, I thought, was really cool.”

The Wyndham Clark that Jeff knows is a cool dude carrying around this big, broken heart. Two years ago, the U.S. Open champ reached out to his daughter Brenna’s mom, Kim, had been diagnosed with cancer in 2023. The doctors initially gave her three months. She fought for 15 more, anyway, iron to the last. Kim eventually succumbed in November 2024, at the too-young age of 55.

Brenna was a senior in high school by then, and Clark knew those scars, lived that weight. He’d lost his mother to breast cancer in 2013. Lise was 55. He was 19.

The parallels were uncanny. Brenna led Valor’s girls to the program’s first state title, just as Wyndham had done with the boys a few years earlier. She won multiple individual CHSAA crowns, same as him. Jeff even knew Randall, Wyndham’s dad.

“If there’s anything we can do,” the elder Clark had told him when Kim was diagnosed, “we’re happy to do it.”

As Kim’s fight headed into extra holes — a 3-hole aggregate became six, then nine, then 12, playing from clinic to clinic, treatment to treatment, through darkness and light — Jeff leaned on Randall about husband stuff, dad stuff.

Brenna and , meanwhile, were more … subtle. At The Phoenix Open in ’23 or ’24, Brenna spotted Clark on the putting green and hollered at him. The pair huddled for a quick picture.

“Brenna,” Jeff asked later, “did you tell Wyndham who you were?”

“No,” Brenna replied.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dad said, shaking his head.

He sent Wyndham’s old basketball coach with the Eagles, a screenshot of Brenna and Clark together. Eventually, Byler passed it along to Wyndham. Needless to say, Brenna can’t sneak up on the two-time U.S. Open champ anymore.

Kim also loved Wyndham, even before her diagnosis. She’d lost her mom to cancer when she was in college, too. The family had watched Clark, in person, during his ’23 U.S. Open win at Los Angeles Country Club. And yet, even from a distance, Sunday’s title, and all the noise, felt a little sweeter.

“I thought he handled it really awesomely (Sunday),” Jeff said. “‘New Yorkers don’t like me, but I still love them,’ that was a great comment.”

Clark paid for the lockers he’d allegedly wrecked at Oakmont Country Club last year, didn’t he? A young man lost his head. He admitted it. He went to counseling. He apologized, privately and publicly. What more do you want? In the age of social media, where cameras are never off and toxicity turns fools into kings, when did “sorry” cease to suffice?

“The crowd (there) was pretty wild,” Spencer Sheets, one of Clark’s oldest pals and a former Valor teammate, told me on Monday on his way back from Shinnecock Hills. “I’ve never seen something like that … the crowd was pretty brutal.

“I definitely had to bite my tongue several times, and some of the stuff people were saying. But I get that part of it.”

GET IN THE BUNKER!

DON’T CHOKE!

“Every single shot, someone was yelling something,” Sheets recounted. His tongue-biting continued, unabated. “The last thing you want to do is create any kind of scene or cause any kind of distraction. (As a friend), you just have to pretend like you don’t hear it. They were pretty rowdy.”

GO OVER!

GET SHORT!

“He was the visiting Nuggets playing in Knicks territory, is what it seemed like,” CU great Steve Jones, the 1996 U.S. Open champ, reflected with a chuckle. “I’ll bet it was a little bit worse than what we could hear (on TV) is what I’m guessing.”

Hale Irwin, the Buffs icon and Boulder native, remains the gold standard for men’s golfers coming out of Colorado. But the consensus No. 2, Jones, a native of Yuma, says Clark just bumped him down a slot on the list after Sunday’s performance.

“Well, he’s over me,” Jones said Monday. “(It’s impressive) to win two majors, two U.S. Opens, when both courses were playing really tough.”

Not as tough as the galleries, mind you.

“(Clark) changed a lot in his life — he looks like he’s been playing better,” Jones noted. “And his attitude — sometimes, that’s what you need.

“If you’re a kid, if you just keep getting away with these things and nobody says anything, that’s terrible for guys growing up. But he got called out on a few things. He had to look down and say, ‘I’ve got to change.’ It looks like he changed a lot of stuff. He’s reaped the benefits. Not a lot of guys want to change like that.”

Clark did. Even New Yorkers, at least the ones that didn’t get kicked out beforehand, were compelled to applaud a good American comeback story at the end.

“He won some fans back,” Sheets said. “They were cheering him on by the time he was done with his (acceptance) speech.”

None of which shocked Byler, by the way. The Valor administrator regaled me with tales of the way a young Wyndham played defense and hustled his backside off as a freshman. The way Clark got under people’s noses, the way he competed, Byler didn’t dare keep the kid off the floor.

“He’s incredibly tenacious, incredibly resilient,” Byler recalled. “He actually took those (slights) as a challenge. And he’s been that way since Day 1.”

That’s the Wyndham he knows. The guy your uncle in Jersey loves to hate once volunteered to caddy for Byler’s son Logan for 18 holes at a junior tournament in 2018. Just because. Two years ago, at the BMW Championship pro-am down at Castle Pines, Logan returned the favor.

“Sometimes we forget that these athletes are human,” Justen said. “They really are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

The best ones prefer to do it away from the cameras, away from the smartphones and judgy thumbs.

Higgins says the girls have texted Clark and his father since, even sending messages via Instagram. Bad guys lose your number. Miscreants block you. Knaves ignore you.

“Show him some grace,” Jeff said of the Wyndham haters. “He’s trying. I’ve seen some tremendous, positive changes in him. And I’m happy for him. He’s been through a lot in his life. And as much as he was there to support us, I’ll be there to support him.”

The Aurora hospital had stopped allowing providers to provide puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children in January after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding. The hospital does not perform gender-affirming surgeries.

Families of four children sued Children’s, and in May, the state Supreme Court ordered the hospital to resume offering gender-affirming care. Children’s now defines gender-affirming medication as within its scope of practice, meaning its providers can offer it — but none are doing so, as .

The doctors at Children’s are employees of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the hospital can’t force them to provide specific services, such as making a doctor opposed to abortion perform one, a senior official at Children’s said Tuesday. That official declined to speak on the record, citing the charged environment around gender-affirming care.

In this case, the doctors don’t object to the care, but are afraid the federal government will target them if they continue to provide it, the Children’s official said.

A has to individual providers of gender-affirming care in multiple states, and hospitals have come under legal pressure to fire doctors who prescribed it.

John McHugh, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Children’s, said the hospital was trying to “side-step” the Supreme Court’s order. Children’s wouldn’t allow providers to discriminate based on race or other characteristics, so it can’t permit them to deny care to transgender children, he said.

If Children’s doesn’t make a change, the plaintiffs could go back to Denver District Court and argue the hospital is in contempt, McHugh said. Kids covered by Medicaid have nowhere else to go for gender-affirming care, and the hospital’s attempt to make the doctors responsible could damage their trust and relationships, he said.

“It is, I think, devastating to our clients, to have fought this far… and to have the hospital trying to play games with compliance and to try to throw their providers under the bus,” he said.

In 2025, Children’s treated 257 kids with puberty blockers and 549 with hormone therapy for gender dysphoria, which is distress caused by a mismatch between someone’s sense of gender and how the world sees them.

Children’s paused gender-affirming care following a declaration in December from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the care was neither safe nor effective.

The declaration had threatened to cut payments from Medicare and Medicaid to any hospital offering gender-affirming care for minors. About half of Children’s patients are covered by Medicaid, and if the federal government stopped paying, they wouldn’t be able to receive any type of care there, including cancer treatment and organ transplants.

Parents of transgender kids treated at Children’s sued, arguing that the hospital was discriminating on the basis of gender identity because it still allowed cisgender children to receive puberty blockers and hormone therapy for other conditions. The hospital said its decision wasn’t discriminatory, and that possible harm to Children’s and its entire patient population outweighed damage to the plaintiffs.

In May, the Colorado Supreme Court effectively ordered the hospital to resume gender-affirming care by sending it back to a lower court, with instructions for the original judge to issue the order.

Colorado and 18 other states sued to block enforcement of the Kennedy declaration, and an injunction currently . The Department of Human Services could appeal to a higher court, though.

Federal officials had also issued a and threatened to refer Children’s to the Office of the Inspector General for investigation.

A magistrate judge recommended throwing out the subpoena, but a federal district court judge still needs to make the final ruling. A social media post suggested the Office of the Inspector General could be investigating the hospital, though it wasn’t clear if it has pursued the issue.

The Trump administration has alleged that any bills to Medicaid for gender-affirming care should be considered “false claims” and that prescribing medications off-label for that care should be considered mislabeling drugs. Off-label prescribing refers to a doctor’s decision to prescribe a drug if they believe the drug is the best option, but the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved it for a specific condition and population. Much of Children’s prescribing is off-label because drugmakers don’t always invest in pediatric studies.

Other hospitals have faced legal jeopardy in connection with gender-affirming care.

In May, Texas Children’s Hospital settled with the state attorney general to revoke admitting privileges for five doctors who previously provided gender-affirming care, meaning they could no longer see patients in that hospital. It also paid about $10 million to settle allegations it had billed Medicaid incorrectly, such as by using a different code to avoid the scrutiny applied to gender-affirming care. The to settle similar allegations.

agreed to fund for people who received gender-affirming care but changed their minds, which studies suggest is a rare experience.

, , , University of Chicago Medicine, Rush University System for Health, Children’s National Hospital and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center all stopped providing gender-affirming care to youth while facing federal pressure since 2025. Children’s Minnesota paused services in February, but .

Last November, the Broncos’ captain was diagnosed with testicular cancer after an NFL drug screening flagged an elevated hormone in his blood. A relatively carefree man’s life flipped. In the months after emergency surgery, from conversations with testicular-cancer advocates, Singleton understands that random screening may have saved his life. He was given heaps of time, really, that he didn’t know he was in danger of losing.

These days, he and Sam pay for the express lane.

“Anything like that,” Singleton told The Post on Wednesday, “I’m taking the toll road from now on. Whatever it is.”

The pendulum has swung so many times, through Singleton’s life, that he has stopped straining to push it in any particular direction. He endured more than a dozen failed tryouts as an undrafted linebacker and a stint in the CFL before establishing himself in the NFL. Finally minted as a long-term starter in Denver, he tore his ACL in 2024. Then he got cancer. Months later, after surgery to remove a tumor, he earned a new two-year contract, and he and his wife . There is no predicting life; there is only being “optimistic about what’s going to come next,” as Singleton mused, and preserving the time to do so.

He has now dedicated himself to helping others preserve that time, too.

In November, Kim Jones, founder of the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation, cold-emailed Singleton shortly after hearing of his diagnosis. The next day, Singleton hopped on a call with her for an hour and a half. He told her about symptoms he’d been feeling and shrugged off for a couple months. And Jones — respectfully — chastised him.

“I said, ‘You are the typical male that lets things go,'” Jones said. “And it could have spread a lot faster than what it did for him. So thank God he had that random drug screening.”

In October 2007, Jones’ son Jordan was diagnosed with late-stage testicular cancer two weeks before his 14th birthday. He fought, made a full recovery, relapsed close to a decade later, and died in 2016. Jones , an organization that has since established programs providing financial and educational assistance to testicular cancer patients and hosted conferences at cancer centers across the country. Singleton came away from that first call wanting to help

“I was just kinda gonna do whatever I could do,” Singleton said, “to be involved in that.”

In April, Singleton walked through Austin, Texas, with 50 other semi-naked men hosted in partnership with TCAF. In May, he flew to Indianapolis on two separate weekends to support the foundation’s outreach efforts at the Indy 500, telling his story to medical professionals and racing fans alike as part of . His Instagram has become a , with such photos of Singleton holding up a “Check Your Nads” sign at that April march.

The primary goal around testicular-cancer awareness, Jones said, is to break down any existing taboo around discussing one’s testicles so men learn to check themselves on a regular basis. Enter Singleton, a 32-year-old linebacker mature enough to captain a Super Bowl contender and disarming enough to, well, crack jokes about his nads.

“I am profoundly grateful to Alex – for Alex – for him using his platform to help support the fight,” Jones told The Post. “Because his voice will help prevent late-stage diagnosis. It will help save lives.

“I mean, if we had this before Jordan’s diagnosis and Jordan was diagnosed early, he would still be here today.”

There is an innate and complicated balance, Singleton is aware, to being an ambassador for a potentially fatal disease that becomes radically less harmful if discovered early. Testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer between men ages 20 to 40, but is approximately 99% curable when discovered at Stage 1, . The greatest defense, as Jones says, is education.

Another ultimately related defense, too, is humor. Nut-related slogans stick, Jones has found. And Singleton’s attitude toward such discussion was shaped by his doctor, who introduced himself to Singleton in a way the linebacker has not forgotten.

“He calls himself a plumber,” Singleton said. “Which was funny. He was like, ‘Yeah, I work on nuts, d— and ass.’”

At the Indy 500, Singleton became fast friends with Jack Harvey, a Dreyer Reinbold driver whose No. 24 Chevrolet partnered with TCAF and Fennec Pharmaceuticals for the “Indy’s Nuts” campaign. The first time they met was on a shoot for a “video about balls,” as Harvey put it. And Singleton fired off a joke, from his own lived experience through surgery, that Harvey would’ve never dreamed of making.

“I don’t exactly remember what it was,” Harvey said. “But it revolved around — a singular nut. And I was like, ‘OK, I guess we’re just diving straight in.’”

Singleton, by nature, is a man who does not take himself especially seriously. In an early-November game against the Raiders — while set for cancer surgery the very next day — he celebrated a tackle by cupping his hands under his privates in a “big-nuts” celebration. And the combination of both serious lived experience and unserious demeanor made Singleton the “perfect spokesperson” for the Austin march, as Nads co-founder Dan Baird said.

“That’s all it is,” Singleton said. “It����ap getting comfortable with talking about ‘em, and then being able to discuss stuff.

“Because, I think it����ap the same thing with breast cancer,” he continued. “I mean, when I was 10 years old, before the whole pink movement in the NFL — if you would’ve said, ‘breast,’ I would’ve thought it was funny at first. Or ‘boob.’ But I think we have normalized breast cancer in our culture. And I think that makes it good. It makes women be able to talk about it. It����ap comfortable if you have breast cancer to say, ‘I have breast cancer.’

“And I think a lot of men are kinda afraid to go to a doctor to have something wrong with them, because it����ap not ‘manly.’ But if we can normalize words like ‘Balls’ and ‘nads’ and ‘nuts’ — when there’s something wrong, you’ll say something.”

A living, breathing example of such a phenomenon: Singleton’s Broncos teammate Jahdae Barron, an Austin native who just so happened to be back in his hometown the day of the Nads march. While Singleton was walking back with the group in April, Barron came up — with no prior warning — and tapped him on the shoulder. His mother, Barron explained, had seen Singleton promoting the march on social media and asked him why he wasn’t going. So Barron hopped in an Uber downtown, fell in with Singleton and the group, and started chanting “Check your nads!” at random passersby.

Every day since, through the Broncos’ offseason programming, Barron has randomly yelled “Check your nads!” at teammates in the building, Singleton said.

“It’s funny,” Singleton said. “But it’s also like, man, if it just takes one guy one time in their career to feel a bump on their nuts and — they don’t have to tell Jahdae, they don’t have to tell me — but if they tell one of our trainers like, ‘Hey, I got this funny bump,’ just because he’s been yelling it every day, that����ap incredible.”

Singleton intends to continue doing several events a year to support TCAF, and Jones has offered him a spot on the foundation’s board of directors. Beyond TCAF, too, he wants to spread the message to give one’s self to something, as he told The Post. Not just money.

“Give your time,” Singleton said.

He has learned its value in all aspects, after all, heading into a season where these Broncos have only a few months to capitalize on lofty expectations.

“Knowing the team we have, and knowing how we’re evolving and how I want us to evolve, and using my messaging or my platform with the guys to do that – to just not let mundane days not make us better,” Singleton said. “Having that fear of losing it all just six months ago — now, I have two more years. So it����ap like, take advantage of those and make them as great as we can.”

In February 2024, the only mammographer at the Aurora VA facility left, forcing it to close its breast-cancer screening program and refer any veterans needing mammograms to community providers. The community care program connects patients to someone outside the VA system when they need services that the VA doesn’t offer in their area.

The VA’s Office of the Inspector General found that community care staff in Aurora couldn’t keep up with the deluge of images submitted by other centers, and that outside providers also created delays by not sending images promptly. The system didn’t have a reliable way of tracking which women were due for mammograms and sending them reminders, .

The report didn’t determine whether the processing delays caused any harm, such as late cancer diagnoses.

The VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System said it determined none of the women with abnormal mammogram results were hurt by the delay, and that it has cleared the backlog.

In a statement, the VA said it was in the process of implementing all the auditors’ recommendations, and the percentage of veterans due for mammograms who actually completed them is now in line with the national average.

While the majority of veterans are men, about 15,600 women received health care through the Aurora facility in the fiscal year ending in September 2024, according to the OIG.

It didn’t specify how many of them were between 40 and 74, the ages when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force . Men also occasionally need mammograms if they have symptoms suggesting breast cancer.

At least 4,815 sets of images got caught in backlogs when staff didn’t upload them to their electronic health records, according to the report. Surgical staff at the facility told the auditors they had to spend time chasing down images so they could prepare before removing lumps, and sometimes had to postpone surgeries because they didn’t have the images in time.

Auditors said part of the problem was that the number of images needing to be uploaded increased by 5,000 in one year, while staffing didn’t. The complexity of the process and the fact that some providers sent the images on disks also contributed, they said.

In other cases, the images didn’t even make it to the VA. The Aurora facility recorded that it didn’t receive images for 524 women’s mammograms in March and April 2025. The inspectors couldn’t tell if any of them had cancer, and if so, what the delay meant for their diagnosis and treatment.

About 10% of the women who get a mammogram in a typical year will get a call to come in for additional testing, with a slightly higher rate for those getting a first mammogram, . Only about 0.5% have cancer, though.

Community providers interviewed by the inspectors said they didn’t know they were supposed to send the actual mammogram images, and thought a report on their findings would be enough. Some thought they needed special authorization to share the images.

The VA was supposed to follow up three times if they didn’t get the images, but did so less than 10% of the time because of a lack of support staff, according to the OIG.

Inspectors also found problems with the systems for tracking if patients completed their follow-up testing and for notifying women due for mammograms, increasing the odds that someone could fall through the cracks.

The Veterans Health Administration and the undersecretary for health agreed with the inspectors’ recommendations, which included improving image-sharing technology and adding staff. They said it could be difficult to ensure community providers understand the VA’s expectations, however, since a third-party administrator works with them.

The chemotherapy she had for breast cancer 15 years earlier prompted heart failure, an ironic outcome for a woman renowned for her big heart.

Schrader – as she was known in her byline and to her legions of friends – specialized in health and science and served as an editor while working at The Post from 1979 to 2012.

She was a key reporter on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which resulted in a Pulitzer for The Post for distinguished local coverage of breaking news.

“Columbine was a big international story, but for Annie it was heartbreakingly local. She lived in the neighborhood. She knew many of the people,” said Post colleague Mark Obmascik. “In the newsroom, she was always on reporters and editors to be really good listeners — and to get it right.”

In the newsroom, Schrader also served as the Newspaper Guild steward, the commissioner of football pools, and the reporter who reminded newsroom commuters after every snowstorm to “Go before you go.”

“She was an editor’s dream,” said colleague Billie Stanton. “And she was one of the funniest, warmest and best friends I’ve known.”

After retiring from The Post, Schrader and her husband, Pat, operated the Laz E Acres horse boarding stable in Littleton. There, daughter Caitlin, now 37, became an equestrian and would go on to compete in reining at the National Western Stock Show.

Caitlin was Schrader’s proudest achievement, far more important to her than any journalism award. They shared an impenetrable bond and were together in hospice throughout Schrader’s weeks-long illness.

Ann and Pat later moved to a 10-acre farm east of Franktown, where Schrader gardened, raised hens, spoiled cats and hoisted 50-pound bales of hay among other chores for the family’s eight horses.

Schrader was born Feb. 2, 1951, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to the former Jane Schmidt and Harold J. “Gus” Schrader, a newspaper man whose love of the profession inspired her.

She graduated from the University of Iowa, where she studied English literature and journalism. She went on to work at the Cedar Rapids Gazette before coming to The Post.

She is survived by her loving husband, Francis Patrick O’Neill; her daughter, Caitlin O’Neill, and her husband, Jess Nelson; her sister, Melissa McGuire (Mike McGuire); her stepson, John O’Neill (Raquel O’Neill), and stepdaughters Jane Irigoyen (Marcelo Irigoyen) and Mary Eident (Derrick Eident).

She is also survived by grandchildren Jake O’Neill, Kelsey Huwa (Anthony Huwa), Kylie O’Neill, MacKenzie Rasvey (Matt Rasvey), Cyrus Anaya, Ryne Skiles and Lucy Irigoyen; and her great-grandchildren, Adeline Rasvey, Aria Rasvey and Emberly Huwa.

She was preceded in death by her parents and brother, Steven C. Schrader.

A memorial service will be announced later.

Billie Stanton, who wrote this obituary, is a former Denver Post employee and former member of the editorial board who worked with Ann Schrader. Her remembrance of her colleague is included here. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials issued a warning Tuesday over misleading statements made by , who recently told podcast listeners that his company’s bladder cancer drug may be able to treat, cure or even prevent other types of cancers.

The warning letter from the takes issue with a and a separate podcast episode promoting Anktiva, the lead product of ImmunityBio Inc. The drugmaker is one of several biotech firms acquired by Soon-Shiong, who also owns the Los Angeles Times.

Company shares fell more than 24% in trading Tuesday after the FDA warning posted online.

Anktiva was approved by the FDA in 2024 for patients with a hard-to-treat form of bladder cancer. ImmunityBio has been working to win FDA approval to expand the drug’s use to a number of other conditions, including forms of lung and pancreatic cancer.

Soon-Shiong’s controversial statements came during a January episode of The Sean Spicer Show podcast titled: “Is the FDA blocking life-saving cancer treatments?”

At one point during the interview, Soon-Shiong described his company’s drug as “the most important molecule that could cure cancer.” A few minutes later, Soon-Shiong — who is the company’s executive chairman and chief medical officer — said that while the drug is approved for bladder cancer, “it actually can treat all cancers.”

Later in the episode he said: “We have the therapy to prevent cancer if you were exposed to radiation, and that����ap Anktiva.”

FDA regulators said the statements violate federal drug marketing rules because they “create a misleading impression” of the drug.

Regulators also noted that the podcast didn’t contain any information about risks and side effects of the drug, which can include urinary tract infections, pain, chills and pyrexia. Under FDA law, are required to give a balanced view of a drug’s risks and benefits.

The FDA warning, addressed to ImmunityBio CEO Richard Adcock, raises similar concerns with a TV advertisement for Anktiva. Both the ad and the podcast refer to the company’s drug as a “cancer vaccine,” which the FDA said is false.

The FDA letter gives the company 15 days to correct the problems and respond to the agency in writing about its plans. By Tuesday afternoon, a link to the podcast had been removed from ImmunityBio’s website.

Sarah Singleton, spokesperson for Culver City, California-based ImmunityBio, said via email that the company takes the FDA’s warning “very seriously,” and plans to “work cooperatively with the agency to address the matters raised in the letter.”

Under the Trump administration, the FDA has against drugmakers as well as online pharmacies, including appearances by company executives on TV shows and podcasts.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.