MY first expression during an interview the morning of September 13 was, "I'm sorry." Leahey had powerful dose of best medicine
The man on the other end of the phone was as upbeat as he could be, given the circumstances.
"Don't be," he said. "I'm going to get well."
And so he has.
Jim Leahey had been diagnosed with leukemia earlier that week and had just begun treatment for the disease. His life, and the lives of those who love him, had changed forever, but his attitude was unwavering.
Leahey gets back behind the microphone this weekend. He said he will call the Hawaii-Indiana basketball game Friday night and the Hawaii-Notre Dame football game Saturday afternoon.
He didn't plan it this way, but it is more than a little ironic that he returns to KFVE's Home Team on Thanksgiving weekend.
"There were times in the hospital that I thought, 'Boy, to come back and do this would be beyond the realm of possibility,' " Leahey said yesterday.
"The worst day was the diagnosis day because that's the day your whole life turns around.
"When the doctor tells you to get to the hospital right now, you have leukemia right now . . . that was a difficult day."
Since then, Leahey said, he has drawn strength from his doctor, Randal Liu, the nurses at Straub Hospital, his family, and especially his wife, Toni, to deal with the physical and mental roller-coaster that goes along with cancer treatment.
Make no mistake, medicine and the care of health professionals have pushed Leahey's leukemia into remission.
Cards, letters, phone calls and words of encouragement also were therapeutic. Leahey says he wells up at the thought of such outpouring.
He is grateful, but says humbly, "I'm not worthy of that."
But there is more at work here, something that can never be found in a prescription or on the edge of a surgical tool.
Love is a huge contributor to Leahey's positive recovery.
The saying goes that love works in mysterious ways, but there is no mystery here. Two people who love each other are far more powerful than one person facing the world alone. Toni spent every night of Leahey's month-long hospital stay by his side. The two will celebrate their 32nd anniversary in February. They are partners and they are friends.
You can feel the healing power when Jim speaks of Toni.
"I'm not only a very lucky man," Leahey said, "I'm a very rich man."
Enough said.
Much has been made in both daily newspapers this week about how: A) Last Saturday's football game against Northeast Louisiana should never have been scheduled; B) The game should never have gone to overtime, thereby giving the Rainbows a chance to lose it on a sandlot play. I tend to agree on both counts, but for different reasons.
First, it is Hawaii, not Northeast Louisiana, that has been Cupcake U the past two years. Believing otherwise means you really haven't paid attention.
I realize schedules are drawn up years in advance and this is not to discredit the person at the university in charge of that. But why doesn't Hawaii play anyone, anywhere on the road unless it absolutely must?
Top teams pay good money for gimme wins. Sure, the 'Bows might take their lickin's in front of, say, 105,000 fans in Michigan, but at least they'd come home with a nice check in their aching back pocket.
On the other matter, I hear Northeast Louisiana players regarded the Rainbows so highly that many of them went out the night before the game and got filled with aloha spirit(s).
So, looking back, it really is a wonder the game went to overtime.
