Retired NBA player Jason Collins is receiving treatment for Stage 4 glioblastoma, described as “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer,” three months after his family shared he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Collins — who played for six teams across 13 seasons and was the first active, openly gay player in NBA history — recently told ESPN that the average prognosis is only 11-14 months to live since his brain tumor is unresectable and he is going solely with the “standard of care.”
“Currently I’m receiving treatment at a clinic in Singapore that offers targeted chemotherapy — using EDVs — a delivery mechanism that acts as a Trojan horse, seeking out proteins only found in glioblastomas to deliver its toxic payload past the blood-brain barrier and straight into my tumors,” the 47-year-old Collins said, emphasizing he won’t “let this cancer kill me without giving it a hell of a fight.”
Collins explained that he will undergo radiation and chemotherapy, as well as immunotherapy that’s still being studied.
“The goal is to keep fighting the progress of the tumors long enough for a personalized immunotherapy to be made for me, and to keep me healthy enough to receive that immunotherapy once it’s ready,” he said.
Collins’ family released a statement on his social media in September revealing his diagnosis, as he said he was mentally unable to speak for himself.
The former center, who ended his career with the Nets in 2014, recalled having “weird symptoms” around August, which caused him and husband Brunson Green to miss a flight.
“We were supposed to go to the U.S. Open, just as every year, but when the car came to take us to the airport, I was nowhere near ready. And for the first time in decades, we missed the flight because I couldn’t stay focused to pack,” Collins said.
A CT scan at UCLA showed that “something was really wrong” with Collins’ brain.
“According to my family, in hours, my mental clarity, short-term memory and comprehension disappeared — turning into an NBA player’s version of ‘Dory’ from ‘Finding Nemo,’” Collins said, referring to the fictional cartoon character who suffers from memory loss every 10 seconds or so. “Over the next few weeks we would find out just how bad it was.”
At one point, Collins said his friends and family visited him in the hospital to presumably say their goodbyes because he was in “a fog” they feared he wouldn’t come out of.
“By the middle of October I started to go on short walks around my neighborhood,” Collins said. “My husband even gave me back my phone. (Apparently I was sending very weird text messages and watching mindless TikToks for hours while I was out of it.)”
The couple attended the premiere of Paramount Pictures’ “Regretting You” in Los Angeles in October.
“… You’re reading this now because I eventually got myself up and figured it out. Anyone who knows me knows not to underestimate me on this, either,” Collins said.
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