Albuquerque Journal

'68 Medalist Treated at UNMH
By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Journal Staff Writer

Dick Fosbury's journey to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing took an unexpected detour this year when a cancer diagnosis put the 1968 gold medalist on an operating table at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center.
   
Forty years ago this summer, Fosbury revolutionized the sport of high jump and earned gold at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City with a technique dubbed the "Fosbury Flop," which involves jumping backward over the bar.
   
Televised images of the lanky, mop-haired 21-year-old springing 7 feet, 4.25 inches convinced young athletes that they should adopt the technique, which today is used by virtually all high jumpers.
   
Late last year, Fosbury began feeling the effects of a cancerous tumor on his spine.
   
"I'd been having some back pain since December," Fosbury, 61, said in a phone interview Thursday from his home near Ketchum, Idaho. "It was irritating but not really debilitating."
   
The pain forced Fosbury to delay a trip to Beijing in December. As president of the World Olympians Association, Fosbury will oversee the Olympian Reunion Center, where current and former Olympic athletes can meet, relax and socialize.
   
Fosbury's real moment of truth came in March.
   
"I woke up one day and I couldn't walk," he recalled. The undiagnosed lymphoma was putting pressure on his spine, causing intense pain in his legs.
   
Fosbury's wife, Robin Tomasi, is the daughter of Dr. Thomas Tomasi, who directed the UNM Cancer Center from 1981 to 1986. She called her longtime friend, UNM Cancer Center CEO Cheryl Willman, who asked to see Fosbury's MRI scans.
   
UNM physicians immediately recognized that Fosbury was in immediate danger of paralysis, said UNM oncologist Dr. Rob Hromas, Fosbury's treating physician.
   
"He was a walking time bomb," Hromas recalled. "He's very lucky. Lymphoma was destroying his spine. He could very easily have been a paraplegic." Lymphoma is a large group of cancers of the immune system.
   
Fosbury also was lucky to be diagnosed with a curable stage-one, or early-stage, lymphoma, Hromas said.
   
Fosbury arrived in Albuquerque on April 4, and surgeons removed his tumor April 11. He also began radiation and chemotherapy at UNM.
   
He completed therapy last week in Idaho, which will allow him to travel to Beijing on Sunday.
   
Today, Fosbury is in clinical remission, which means his symptoms have disappeared, Hromas said. He will return to Albuquerque in September for a follow-up exam.
   
Fosbury said he has regained some of the 25 pounds he lost after surgery. An avid snowboarder and mountain biker, Fosbury now wears a plastic vest to restrict the movement of his spine.
   
"I walk like an 80-year-old man," said Fosbury, who doesn't know how much longer he must wear the vest. "I'm slow and I take little steps."
   
Fosbury plans to write a blog in Beijing that will be posted exclusively on UNM's Web site. To find the link, visit cancer.unm.edu.
   
"I'm going to be talking about whatever happens to me, whatever we see on the ground there," Fosbury said of the blog.
   
The blog is intended to inspire cancer patients undergoing the trauma Fosbury himself experienced this year.
   
"I clearly understand that others are fighting a more serious battle," he said. "But at the same time, this may offer some hope and at least let me share some experiences that we've had in common."