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By Rebecca Rakoczy
Special To The Bulletin
ATLANTA--It was more than game pressure; it was his life. And if basketball
was a metaphor for life, Mark Kelly had the shot clock run down on him twice:
once when he was given no hope of surviving cancer and then again after he
contracted a deadly disease while recuperating from a ruptured colon.
Today as athletic director of St. Pius X High School, Atlanta, Kelly credits
the faith of his family and friends, and the unstinting dedication of doctors
and nurses, who helped pull him through what could have been his end game.
It’s a subject that is not brought up easily, for it is history and not
his life now.
He remembers discovering the cancer by accident, while a junior at St. Pius,
playing football and basketball for the Golden Lions. It was 1968, the football
team was winning, and he had that self-assured attitude that often comes with
being a jock.
“I was shaving and I cut a mole on my neck,” Kelly recalled.
“It wouldn’t stop bleeding.”
When he went to the doctor, a biopsy showed he had a malignant melanoma, but
the cancer hadn’t spread and aggressive treatment was delayed. Two years
later, it came back, this time behind his ear. Doctors removed lymph nodes in
his neck.
Kelly went back to school, but his beloved athletics were scrapped. He
graduated from St. Pius and started college at Christian Brothers in Memphis.
Then he got sick. The cancer had invaded his lymph system and spread to the
abdominal wall. He left college for good and came home to begin chemotherapy
treatments.
An experimental treatment called immunotherapy was being tried at UCLA and
Kelly and his parents were referred to doctors and researchers there.
“They decided I was not a good candidate,” he said. “They told
me I couldn’t be cured; I could live two years ‘max’ and there
was nothing they could do.”
Although it was almost three years since the first malignancy was detected,
Kelly wasn’t about to quit.
“I grew up in such a supportive family, I didn’t think about not
fighting it,” Kelly said. “I didn’t feel like I was alone in
this. Plus I had a big ego. The concept that I couldn’t do it, that I
wouldn’t make it, was enough for me to prove them wrong.”
Researchers at UCLA knew of a group of doctors and scientists at Emory
University working on a special “vaccine” and they referred Kelly
back home. In 1974, he became one of 13 people with Stage 4 melanoma cancer who
were involved in the lysate vaccine human clinical trials, initiated by doctors
Bill Cassel and Douglas R. Murray. Designed to stimulate their own immune
systems, Kelly and the others began receiving regular injections of the drug.
The “vaccine” called the Newcastle virus, was an altered form of the
melanoma cancer, cultured with a chicken virus.
It was a risky business, recalled Dr. Murray. Although a great deal of lab
work had preceded the clinical trial, “we did not know for sure if the
tumor would grow at the injected sites,” Murray said. “Mark had Stage
4 disease and was ostensibly incurable. He was with patients that had a
projected survival rate between eight and 15 percent.”
Kelly didn’t listen to nay-sayers. He began taking classes at Georgia
State University, pursuing a teaching degree. He saw the clock ticking, but
also saw an opportunity and was allowed to teach and coach at St. Pius while he
gained his degree.
It was 1976, almost a decade after that first incident, and the cancer had
not come back. All the other participants in the lysate trials had died, but
Kelly continued to receive his shot. Every six weeks he would receive his
“vaccine” and then go back to the classroom, teaching social studies
and physical education, and coaching basketball, and take night courses at GSU.
He was fighting cancer on every level, from chemotherapy to visualization to
praying.
“I would see the cancer diminishing in my body,” he said.
“Dr. Murray told me, ‘If you make it, you’ll be the
first.’”
He met the love of his life, Linda Buechner, a nursing student, and by 1978,
the two were married. But not before Linda was called on the carpet in the two
doctors’ office.
“They insisted I come in and talk to them--alone,” recalled Linda,
who was 21. “They wanted me to know what I was getting into, with
(Mark’s) history. It was a protective kind of thing. They loved Mark so
much; they didn’t want anyone bailing on him. I remember leaving there
feeling it was great to have people like that worried about him.”
“Although things looked good, marriage was a risk,” said Kelly,
who was 26 at the time. “No one knew if the cancer would reappear, but
somehow I felt good about it. But it was Linda who had the faith that things
would work out.”
There were a few scares, but Kelly underplayed them. Once when he needed to
go into the hospital for a biopsy of some suspicious tissue, he didn’t
tell anyone but his wife.
“He told me he was checking himself into the hospital,” she said,
“and that it was probably nothing. He went into the hospital on a Sunday,
checked himself in, and left to run a basketball practice. They figured out he
was gone when they tried to find him for pre-op routines.”
But the trials ahead would not involve cancer. The couple had three
children; two boys and a girl. Linda worked as a neonatal nurse at Northside
Hospital. Their youngest was 18 months old when Mark got sick again and almost
lost his life.
It was 1984 when Kelly suffered severe pains in his abdomen and went to
Emory University Hospital. Doctors thought it was a ruptured appendix, but it
was an undiagnosed case of diverticulitis gone haywire. His colon had burst
open. “When he woke up from surgery, he had a colostomy and he was
fighting mad,” recalls Linda.
But that would be the least of his worries. Within a day of his operation,
Kelly contracted a serious infection known as “necrotizing
fasciasitis.” The disease destroys protective layers of skin and muscle
until it becomes paper-thin, leaving organs vulnerable to outside exposure.
“He had every complication you could have,” recalled Linda.
“It was a very bad situation. I didn’t leave the hospital for days at
a time. My brother and sister-in-law had an apartment nearby and I would run to
the apartment, shower, change clothes and come back. I was never gone for more
than 45 minutes because I was afraid to leave.”
“When a particular crisis would begin, that waiting room on the sixth
floor would fill up with Mark’s family and supporters,” she said.
“A lot of time no one was even talking ... it was an intense prayer.”
“At St. Pius, everybody was praying for Mark. Anybody who knew anybody
passed (prayer requests for Mark) on and it just radiated out from the center
and all over the place.”
Parishioners from his home parish, Holy Cross Church, made dinners, while
people from St. Pius mowed the grass and helped in other ways. Their families
took turns taking care of the children.
As a nurse, Linda knew that Mark’s illness was very serious and she
needed to talk to her children.
“They didn’t know what was going on. I told them that Daddy might
not come home. Eric and Nicholas said, ‘We feel so sad we want to
cry,’ and I said go ahead. Sarah was too young to voice her sadness. And
we sat on the back steps all of us, just crying. I talked about what we had
told them about God and we prayed. And that made us feel better.”
More than two months after he had entered the hospital, Mark was moved out
of intensive care. It was the day before Halloween. He had received 133 units
of blood and endured more than 20 operations. He had a reconstructed stomach
and had dropped 55 pounds.
“I remember this so vividly because he hadn’t seen our children
since August,” said Linda. “They dressed up in their little costumes,
but we could hardly get down the (hospital) hall. It was lined up with staff
members from every part of the hospital who were trying to see him see his kids
for the first time.”
Mark came home the day before Thanksgiving 1984. “He was weak and
wasn’t eating, but we were home and we didn’t care,” she said.
That Christmastime, Kelly came back to St. Pius for a reception in his
honor. It was to a standing ovation in the gymnasium. He still required a
feeding tube and respirator. But he had survived once again.
“It was a moment I will never forget,” he said.
“Those kids stood and carried on forever. There was not a dry eye in
the gym; he was so overcome with all that support, it was really cool to
see,” Linda said.
The celebration of his life came with a surprise bonus; their daughter
Meghan was born a year after his brush with death. “We call her our
miracle child,” said Kelly.
Kelly remains a strong presence at St. Pius. He goes about his daily
business, sometimes not getting home until after the last game or meet. Many
students today have no idea of Kelly’s ordeal 15 years ago. That’s OK
with Kelly, who doesn’t dwell on the past, but knows what a difference
prayer and support can make.
“He draws on his experience, but he never refers to it directly,”
said his brother-in-law, Rob Buechner. “That’s what’s remarkable
about him. He’s very forward thinking, and has an incredible zest for life
… He wants other people to succeed and wants to help other people bring
out the best in themselves.”
For Kelly, bringing out his own personal “best” means being able
to do a job he loves and be with his family. It means living the moment and
enjoying each day.
Kelly credits the heroics of the doctors and nurses and the continued prayer
and support of his extended “St. Pius” family, for helping him
through his illness.
“The fact that I was saved was because of people around me--they saved
my life,” he said.
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