Saku: The human side of Hockey... Part 1

[WhyteKnight63]

Here's an article I just found that I thought I would share with you. It is a bit of a tear-jerker and it reminds us of the human aspect of our beloved game. Although we are all fully aware of Saku ordeal with cancer and how he is doing, I thought some of you may still like to read this:

Link:
www.canada.com/montreal/sports/teams/canadiens/story.html?id={06549551-B549-43EB-AD24-704CFE62D05F}

'One goal - we'll beat this'
Saku Koivu, fiancee recall hockey star's battle against cancer

RED FISHER
Montreal Gazette

Monday, March 04, 2002

GAZETTE
Only one day short of six months to the day he was confronted with everybody's worst nightmare, Saku Koivu still remembers the fear. Cold. Relentless.

He still remembers the words, although he admits that at first he didn't understand the chilling message because he had never heard the word "malignant" before.

Canadiens physician David Mulder had walked into Koivu's Montreal General Hospital room on this early September morning, squeezed the player's toes, saying nothing for several moments.

"I don't know if he was expecting the worst and didn't want to tell me," Koivu recalled.

Mulder finally mentioned the word nobody wants to hear.

"What's that?" Koivu asked. "I don't understand."

Saku's fiancee, Hanna, understood. She burst into tears.

"It's cancer," she said in Finnish.

The man in her life for the past 31/2 years stared straight ahead, eyes seeing nothing, his mind in a terrible turmoil. How could this happen? He was a world-class athlete awaiting his 27th birthday. He was the captain of the Montreal Canadiens. He was in the prime of his life, for heaven's sake!

That was then, but now, after months of chemotherapy treatment and almost one month after being told he was in remission, Koivu sits in his home, a 10-minute drive from the Molson Centre, hours before the Canadiens' 4-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Now, he's insisting he doesn't want to think about that terrible day.

"It's there and it comes to my mind, but I don't want to think about the day I found out," he said. "This first year is the toughest, because as soon as there's pain anywhere in your body, you think, well ... is it coming back? Or when you have the checkups ... you start feeling it a week before, or a couple of days before and you get nervous and yeah, it's there and I think about it."

- - -

The story has been told over and over about how he fell ill on the flight from his native Finland to Montreal for the start of training camp, and that in the preceding weeks there had not been even a hint of trouble. The fact is, the signs were there, but he chose to dismiss them.

"Looking back on it now, I was feeling really good during my workouts. I was always improving. On the ice, I felt great. But when I started skating in August, I had this sharp pain under my ribs on the right side. Whenever I took a deep breath, it was - kind of like - it was there. But I thought maybe it was the skating, or maybe I got hit ... maybe it was the cold air," Koivu said.

"It didn't really bother me. It went away. You don't worry about things that go away.

"And then, just maybe a week, two weeks before we came out here, my stomach got a little puffy. After all the work I did during the summer I knew I was in shape ... knew I wasn't getting fatter. It was just weird, but when I woke up the next morning, I felt fine. I never thought anything about it."

"I know now that my stomach puffed up because there was so much liquid in it and the liquid was pushing on my lungs. That's what caused so much pain."

- - -

[WhyteKnight63]

It was six months ago yesterday that Saku and Hanna left on the first leg of their trip to Montreal. It had been a long, hot summer. Koivu was looking forward to attending his team's annual golf tournament the next day.

"On the first leg of the flight from Helsinki, it was about three, maybe 31/2 hours to Amsterdam," he recalled, "and for about half an hour my back was a little sore - kind of achy, you know. But the pain went away again. I never thought about it. Then, about halfway through the Amsterdam to Montreal flight, I started to get like ... unbelievable pain. I thought it was my kidney. I never had that pain before. Then, it kinda moved to my stomach. I had really bad cramps. I felt like vomiting, but nothing was coming up.

"That lasted for three hours. Finally, when we got to Montreal and we were waiting in line with our passports, I really got sick. I didn't sleep at all that night."

Early the next morning, Koivu telephoned Canadiens athletic therapist Graham Rynbend.

"I can't make it," Koivu told him.

"What's wrong?"

"I have unbelievable pain in my back and my stomach," was the response.

Hanna's father is a doctor. She phoned him and explained what had been going on.

"That doesn't sound right," she was told. "You'd better go see a doctor."

Hanna called Mulder, who was struck by the fact that Koivu looked extremely ill. He was tender in the abdomen. One of the hospital's general surgeons was consulted, the usual amount of blood samples were taken and a series of investigations were started with an ultrasound exam. On Wednesday morning, 25 or 30 ccs were extracted. A sombre Mulder visited Koivu with the terrible news that malignant cells had been discovered, and that more studies were needed to determine what form of cancer was involved.

Five days later, Koivu had the first of eight cycles of chemotherapy - one week on, one off - to combat what was determined to be non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

"After that first cycle, I've never been so sick in my life," Koivu said. "I couldn't take any light. No noise. I'd sleep for 25 hours straight."

"He couldn't even walk, except go to the bathroom to throw up," Hanna said. "He couldn't walk up the stairs. It was awful."

"If I had to go through that after every treatment. ..." Koivu said.

"That would have been a different story," said Hanna. Her chin trembled.

One month ago, after a PET (positron emission tomography) scan at the Universite de Sherbrooke, Koivu and Hanna finally got the word they wanted to hear: remission.

"Looking back on it, I don't know how I ever could have handled it without Hanna," Koivu said. "She went through everything with me. She was there every day. She slept with me. She had a bed next to me. Nobody ever asked her how she was doing.

"We think we're tough," he added, "but when it comes down to a lot of things, they're a lot tougher than we are."

- - -

[WhyteKnight63]

Finland-born Hanna Norio and Koivu have been together for the past 31/2 years after several years of being no more than "how you doing?" friends, as he puts it. They'll be married in July. She has high cheekbones, not a blond hair out of place, a complexion to die for and a never-ending smile that lights up every room she enters in their cavernous home. In three words: drop-dead gorgeous.

So how did Hanna handle these demons? Did she speak to them when she was alone? Did she ask them: why me? How?

"Especially after getting engaged, 10 days before it all happened," Hanna said. "We were on top of the world and then the next thing we knew, we were on the bottom of the world.

"How? There's really no choice ... you just do it. That's the only thing you can do. I have to say the first moments - the first week - were awful. Just awful. When he was first told about it, I could tell he didn't realize what the doctor was saying, what 'malignant' meant. He was like ... what? what is that? ... So I told him in Finnish. I started crying right away. It was awful.

"Then right after that, we kind of wanted to sort of catch our breath. We had already told friends we'd call them back when we heard from the doctors, but then they called us just when we found out. We didn't have a chance to let it sink it in, and I had to tell them on the phone. It was the most awful thing I've ever done in my life.

"I don't know - I have to say we were really optimistic from the start. I don't know why, but we were," she said. "I wasn't scared to death. I wasn't scared of him dying. 'It's going to be a hard six months,' I kept thinking. But a hard six months, I mean, anybody can do that.

"He's strong and I'm strong, but I really can't emphasize how much it helped that so many people cared. Two things made a huge difference: how many people cared, which is like ... incredible. That was one thing. The other is that we didn't have any setbacks. If we had had even one setback at the start - the worst thing would have been that the medication wasn't working any more - that would have been a whole different story.

"We actually had a good time after that. I mean, it was different. We were just together all the time. We played games and talked a lot more than we normally do. It really wasn't that bad after that, because we knew we were going toward better times and he was getting better. That was the key thing. I really don't know how people go through it without other people caring.

"Everybody knew about Saku right away. So that was kind of easier, because we didn't have to make a decision about which people we had to tell. They always were very empathetic and sympathetic and helpful. And then the fact we knew he was getting better by the day - that made the whole difference. It was like every day was a little better," Hanna said.

"How do you stop from breaking down? I don't know. I thought of it afterward, because I didn't really think of it during the treatments. People kept telling me that what happens is that if you're acting stronger, it's an act. I don't feel that it was.

"They told me that what's going to happen is that afterward, when everything is fine, then you just break down and get to cry.

"In our case, we talked about it a lot at the beginning. It's probably a good thing. Then, after a while, we didn't even feel like talking about it. It was like - just part of our everyday life. It wasn't a big deal.

"Well, we just got used to the fact that we spent about a week home and then we'd spend a week at the hospital and then we'd spend a week here and then a week at the hospital. He was always in a grumpy mood when he had to go back to the hospital," she added with a laugh.

"I feel I can go through anything after that. The only thing is ... I'm still a little bit nervous, because, you know, we sort of have to wait around and see what's going to happen."

- - -

[WhyteKnight63]

Hanna and Saku know that remission, and the joy that comes with it, is only the first step toward a cure. He is skating with the team, but that's only a blip on the screen leading to the Canadiens captain going all-out at a practice.

There surely remains much to be done, starting with blood tests every month, CT scans every two months and a definitive PET scan every six months. Before and after, there's always the wondering, the waiting.

There's also the formidable challenge of rebuilding his body with a program prepared for him by Chris Carmichael, the personal trainer for Tour de France triple winner Lance Armstrong.

Carmichael's program, along with Armstrong's dedication, played an important role in bringing the elite cyclist back from advanced cancer and, in the process, en route to the three Tour de France victories. Carmichael and Koivu met for two days last week and they're to meet again in about 10 days.

"When it happened, I didn't think about hockey for the first two months," Koivu said.

"There were other things going on. I didn't care about hockey. But right now, just skating with the guys, being able to live a normal life makes me more than grateful for everything I've got. The second step is to be back and playing.

"Is it realistic that I'll be back this season? I think it is, but I don't know. In five weeks. I'll know, but everything has to go the way we planned. You always have to have some goals. I can't wait to play my first game, but if I can't practice for a week because I'm too tired, or if I pulled a muscle. ..."

- - -

The picture of that first game back, whenever it happens, is imprinted on his mind in brilliant shades of reds, whites and blues. Even now, he knows he'll be nervous and, most likely, scared, for at least a little while.

Hanna, of course, is developing a colour print of her own in the darkroom of her mind.

"When he takes his first faceoff, will you cry?" she was asked.

"Oh, for sure. For sure," she said. "And I think he will, too."

(I think a few of us 'softies' may feel a little dampness around the eyes also when that time comes...WK)