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Editor's Notes |
He was a different kind of football player. He ran with the power of a speeding train, never hesitating to collide with whatever stood in his way. He even seemed to enjoy the contact. It was evidence that he could take as well as give. Despite the way he hurtled downfield, he seemed more like a gazelle than a rampaging rhinoceros. To those defensive backs he sent flying, he must have seemed like Superman.
It wasn't his on-field running that earned him the nickname "Sweetness." But the appellation fit all of his being—the quiet voice, the gentle mannerisms, the way he could talk with a child who worshiped him.
In every picture, his eyes were sparkling. His appreciation for life was evident. There was a special grace about him, an aura that befits a clergyman more than a fierce football competitor. While many athletes led lives of excess as though they were immortal, "Number 34" appreciated the transient niche that humans hold in the scheme of things. He never hesitated to remind us that "tomorrow is promised to no one."
By the time I came to Chicago, his glory days were behind him. I didn't pay much attention to him. I knew he was a special football player, but I never realized that he was an even more special person.
The sports hero of my youth was Gil Hodges, a legendary first baseman, who, despite his soft voice and a reputation for being genuinely nice, was a physical giant of a man. During a time when athletes were still gentlemen, he was considered the most gentle of them all, a role model for those of us in Brooklyn who had no choice but to learn that winning wasn't everything. As a little boy, I proudly wore a Brooklyn Dodger uniform with his number 14 on it.
Hodges was managing the New York Mets in spring training, a healthy man taking time off to play golf. He stood tall like a redwood. And then a heart attack took him. He was one of those Dodgers whom we call the "boys of summer," players whose careers and sufferings were chronicled by many authors. These were the Dodgers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, including Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, men whose greatness was undeniable and whose personal tragedies seemed inexplicably cruel. Had they been filled with hubris, their sorrows could be rationalized in legend as the humbling of mighty men by angry gods. But these Dodgers needed no gods to humble them. They had the Yankees.
Looking back on his death, I now see an undeniable metaphor. He was like one of those great buildings that cease to exist in one dramatic implosion. Even as they fall to the ground, we appreciate the strength they once had, and we are awed by what it takes to bring them down. The same cannot be said for Sweetness, who, as befitted a great running back, died while dodging death. He was looking for a move—one last, desperate move—that would take him across the goal line toward a cure for his liver disease. But like Hodges, Walter "Sweetness" Payton was both blessed and cursed
As my own liver disease (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis) progresses, I need to rest more often, and I have to plan how to use my energy. Even though my symptoms steadily progress, I feel blessed that so far there have been no life-threatening episodes, and I don't believe that there will be many before my transplant. But rest is important, which is why on a hectic day last February I took a break from APTA's Combined Sections Meeting to take a nap. When I got back to my hotel room, I turned on the television, and there was Walter Payton—his face frighteningly thin, his normally dark black skin ashen, sunglasses covering eyes yellowed by bilirubin. It was as though he was unwilling to appear in public without the sparkling eyes, so on this day he covered them.
His son sat beside him, and the son's size and vigor made the father's illness all the more obvious and dramatic. Payton, his son, and his doctor were there to tell the world that this Hall of Fame player, this mighty athlete, had primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), which they characterized as a rare liver disease. I had forgotten how rare PSC was. After regular visits to liver clinics and endoscopy suites, nothing seems rare anymore. Every disease seems all too commonplace.
Payton needed a liver transplant.
On television, he cried and was comforted by his son. He admitted to the world that he was afraid.
Sweetness spoke volumes for all those who live in a world where getting healthy may mean moving further from a cure (because you lose points on the transplant waiting list) and where symptoms can wreak havoc while not necessarily threatening your life or increasing your likelihood of getting a transplant. The organs go first—as they should—to people like Payton, who need them to live.
We all expected Number 34 to find his way through another hostile field and reach his goal despite the odds. His condition was diagnosed early, and he should have had more than enough time for a liver to be found. But no one knew that even as he spoke of a posttransplant future, cancer had already developed. With many liver diseases there is an increased chance of developing cancer, but with PSC the odds are much greater and the type of cancer much more problematic. Payton died less than 10 months after that press conference. He never got a chance to even wait for a liver.
The day he died I was angry. My daughter asked, "Are you crying for him or for yourself?" I did not know. I do know that now when I see his image in commercials designed to encourage organ donation, I cry for Sweetness, for the family he left behind, and for his extended family—a family that includes people like me, people who are more likely to get organs because he reminded us all of our mortality and of our obligation to help one another. As I write this, I wear my favorite Christmas gift, a Chicago Bears jersey with number 34 on the front and Payton's name on the back.
Even if I was not on the transplant list, I hope I would still be reminding physical therapists that, as health care professionals, they should be role models and sign donor cards and inform their family members that they want their organs used to give life to others. (The American Medical Association has a vigorous policy about encouraging its members to become donors and distributes donor cards at some of its meetings.) My guess, however, is that I would not have written this Note and a previous Note on organ donation if I was not constantly being reminded of the organ shortage. Doing the right thing always seems easier when it is in our own self-interest.
Payton's last months remind us that although we may begin a righteous campaign because of our own needs, the campaign, if it is virtuous, will continue after we are gone. In the Chicagoland area, the appeal that Sweetness made seems to have saved many lives. Organ donations appear to be on the rise, though the supply is still short of the need. I want to thank him in this Note. He never got to receive an organ donation, but curiously enough he did live long enough to become a donor—a donor of goodwill and inspiration, a man who gave hope to all those who wait, a man who reminded all potential donors that even in death, they can give the ultimate gift, the gift of life.
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Physical Therapy 2000 80: 527.
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