Fighter: Clemson lineman wins cancer battle, finds new appreciation for life and football |
CLEMSON – “You had a tumor in your appendix.”
Clemson offensive lineman John Williams sat in head trainer Pat Richards' office on that February morning and tried to make sense of the words he had just heard. His head swimming, he knew what that meant – he had cancer. He tried to make sense of it all but felt lost in that moment. And then Williams did what he’s always done when faced with a challenge. He put his head down and fought, surrounded by the love of a family that has supported him every step of the way. And this is his story, told in his words and the words of his mother, Piper Williams. Today, Williams is in remission, and he wakes up every day feeling blessed that he’s still here, still able to play the game he loves. But when he looks in the mirror every morning, he does so knowing that the cancer could come back at any time. But he doesn’t let that get him down, because he’s a fighter and an optimist. Williams' fighting spirit started at a young age. His family heard his heartbeat for the first time on 9-11-01. Yes, that 9-11. He was born premature, at 36 weeks, at 6lbs/6oz. on St. Patrick’s Day. He was completely healthy and went home the next day. He weighed 18 pounds at three months and just kept going. He could not sit up on his own until he was 11 months old because he was so big. He never really crawled. He sat, bounced off the walls in his Johnny Jumper, and then decided to walk. Williams was mauled by a dog just ten days shy of three years old. It took two plastic surgeons two hours to put the left side of his cheek, over his eye, his hand and chest back together. But he loves dogs to this day. He “found” football at age eight and never looked back. His only fight in middle school was defending a special needs kid. Williams was a great football player but was also known for starting one of the biggest, non-school sponsored clubs (The Tabletop Gaming Club) at his high school in Georgia. He fell in love with Clemson in 8th grade when he visited campus and never wanted to go anywhere else. He’s played 29 snaps over five games in his career, playing in two games in 2020 and three last season. But he’s dealt with a concussion that caused him to miss time and then suffered a knee injury at the end of the fall camp in 2021 that caused him to miss the entire season. Williams entered this year's mat drills hoping to return to the field and earn playing time. But then he started hurting, and his mother and girlfriend's advice saved his life. “I was sitting there, and I'm like, ‘Do I go talk to Pat?,'” Williams told TigerNet. “I'm in mat drills. And I didn’t know what to do. The pain wasn’t bad – on a scale of like 1-10, it was a three or four. It's just uncomfortable. I thought I just had to use the restroom. And so I'm like, ‘It's not that bad.’ And as an offensive lineman, we're a breed. We're tough; we get through it. I mean, it's in the middle of mat drills. You have to get stuff done. So, I was willing to tough it out. And then I said that love that surrounds me... I had my girlfriend and my mom sit me down and say, ‘You got to go in.' And it saved my life.” Williams was quickly diagnosed with appendicitis and he had surgery. It wasn’t long before he was back on his feet and in class. And then he got the text from Richards that rocked his world. “That morning I was in a lab. I had just finished up with a lift that morning. We were in mat drills, so nose to the grindstone,” Williams said. “And I get that text. It's like, ‘Hey John, if you've got a second, can you please come over to the facility?’ And about a week and a half prior to that, I had just had the emergency appendectomy. And so I was super worried, and I immediately thought the worst and texted back. I'm like, ‘Yeah, of course I can, but I'm in class, is it super important?’ And Pat's like, ‘Yeah, I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I need you to get over here.’ “So your heart's pumping, and you just sit there and you're like, ‘What's going to happen?’ You automatically think the worst. But I sat there, I said a little prayer, and I got myself over to the facility and called my dad first. I didn't want to call my mom first, because she worries. So I called my dad first and I'm like, ‘I don't want to worry you. I'm heading over to the facility. Pat said something's wrong. Please say a prayer for me. We'll get through this.’ Hung up (and) got to the facility. That's when I sat down with Dr. (Len) Reeves, and they said that I had a tumor in my appendix. That was a stressful moment. That's kind of what I thought... As I said, you automatically think the worst, and that's where my head went. “But it was surreal in that moment. I wasn't even 21 at the time. I was two months away from 21. My birthday's in March. And you just never think cancer would be it. And in that moment, I was kind of shocked. I think I was shocked for about a day. And then it really sat in. And I had a lot of people around me that give me a lot of love. And I think that's what ultimately got me through it at the end of the day, was having my teammates, having my family, having my friends, having my girlfriend just all support me and surround me and prop me up. Because that kind of news can either make or break you to a certain extent.” The doctor who removed the appendix thought it looked odd and sent it off for a biopsy. It came back as a Neuroendocrine Tumor (NETs), a rare tumor in which 1-2 people per million every year are diagnosed. This is the same type of cancer Steve Jobs and Aretha Franklin had, although their NET was in their pancreas. When they find cancer in the appendix, this is the most common type and they refer to it as Carcinoid cancer (this is the name used for any NET in the digestive tract). Most of the time NETs are silent and slower growing, often developing over years, although not the case in all cases. They can be silent for years until the person has surgery or a scan for something else where they find them or finally the tumors become so large or abundant they cause symptoms. John said he feels blessed that the appendix didn’t burst during mat drills – exposing vital organs to the cancerous cells – and that the appendicitis allowed doctors to catch the tumor. “If my appendix wasn't the organ that had cancer in it, it could have been anywhere, and I would have no idea,” Williams said. “The only reason they found the cancer was because the tumor was growing where it actually plugged it up and caused the appendicitis. So, if it was anywhere else in my body, I would've never known. I got... I'm blessed. I'm very blessed. I wouldn't call it luck. I think I'm blessed.” His mother, Piper, agrees. “Early on we thought, ‘Man, he cannot catch a break.’ Every time he got close to the field, something happened. First his knee, then a concussion and now cancer,” she said. “It very quickly became clear that he had caught the biggest break of his life by his appendix not rupturing during two days of mat drills. “Our family’s priorities quickly changed. You realize what is really important. Someone asked me early on, ‘Why John?’ and my answer was, ‘Why not John?’ I would not wish this on someone else’s child. It was just our life journey, and we absolutely were not going to waste it. We were going to submit to His will and not question it. I won’t say we didn’t fail at times, but we did not stay there long.” After all, John was used to fighting back, for his life and his career. “This brings me back to my major knee surgery, my sophomore year. And I think the day before fall camp ends, I'm knocked out, rest of the season,” Williams said. “I remember I was laying there, I got back up, I've showered, went and got my MRI, and I was sitting there. Coach Swinney comes in. First thing I say to him, just super calm, was, ‘I'm going to be okay. Because I know who's got my back. I know this team's got my back. I know God's got my back. I know all my family's around me. I'm going to be okay.’ And I was.” What followed was a barrage of tests and doctor’s appointments. Everyone wanted to make sure the cancer hadn’t spread. “Although it was removed completely and the margins appeared clear, its location was concerning. It was located close to his colon and was close to the appendix blood supply, making metastasis a concern,” Piper said. “Their main concern was whether it had spread to his liver. Once it gets to the liver, it is a game changer. “When we started researching it, we also realized how much God protected him in the two days of mat drills with appendicitis. If his appendix had ruptured with the cancer, it would have spread cancer cells throughout his abdomen. Treatment for that was to wash his abdomen out with a hot chemotherapy bath. He was immediately scheduled for a second CT scan post appendectomy, along with a ton of bloodwork. That scan was clear, and his bloodwork was normal. The enlarged lymph nodes seen on the first scan had reduced in size, which was a good sign that the cancer had not spread and was not in his liver. He was then scheduled for a PET scan. That scan was clear as well.” But John and his family had a decision to make. They could play the waiting game and see if the cancer returned, or they could take what John calls the nuclear option. John chose the nuclear option. “I was seeing doctors. I had a great doctor, Dr. (Andrew) Schneider, over at Oconee Memorial, and the cancer institute's right there. Great oncologist. I had a great team around me,” he said. “Me being so young, I had an option. I could pull back. I could keep working, and I could essentially get scanned every six months and see if a tumor would pop up. Or they gave me another option, I call it the nuclear option -- where they would just come in, and they would do a right hemicolectomy, and just remove several inches of my right colon. And they would reattach it and everything. And that's the option I went with, because they would take all the lymph nodes out with it. Anywhere that cancer could have really gone, they would remove that, too. And so that's the option I went with. “I wanted to be safe. I didn't want to have it over my head (for) the rest of my life. And so I sat down, and that was the decision I made.” The medical team had to perform a colonoscopy first to ensure the rest of the intestines were healthy, and Williams had that done on his 21st birthday. A week later (end of March), Dr. Schneider and his team performed a robotic right hemicolectomy where they removed a total of approximately 14 inches of his small and large intestine and got 54 lymph nodes in the process.” Williams went home from the hospital 24 hours later and was diving into Waffle House and Chick-fil-A another 36 hours later. The doctors said he was cured and no future treatment is needed except he will have to have yearly scans for the next ten years. In mid-April, he was walking, then he was riding a bike, and then back to full workouts. He took summer school classes, managed to intern in Greenville and worked out. And when it was time for fall camp, he weighed back in at 310 healthy pounds. “I worked out really hard, and I've got my body composition better now than it has ever been. And so I really changed my body and got back to where I needed to be,” Williams said. “But that was interesting. I really thought I'd be a lot worse than I was. I was 298, maybe some change. Like I said, just blessed to be where I was.” I watched Williams taking second-team reps at right tackle during a practice the other day, and I smiled and watched a young man who has been through so much enjoy the game he loves. And then a few days later, I sat in tears as he recounted his journey and how doubts still pop into his head. “I sit there some days, and you wake up, you look in the mirror, and you go, because I'm technically in remission, I say, ‘Today's the day. It could pop back up. You never know.' And it's just... It's dreadful to think that way,” Williams said. “But you can't help it when you have something like this. And with me being as young as I am, it's difficult sometimes. But I just go back to that love piece. When you have people around you that'll support you and be there with you every step of the way, it's comforting.” It's also comforting to be with his coaches and his teammates, and his first day back in full pads was one of thankfulness. “It was great. It was good to be back. At first when I got my diagnosis...you never think you'll put pads back on; you hear cancer, and you're really scared,” Williams said. “And I realize I was super lucky. I had cancer for I think three months, at least that I know of. And some people, they toil with it for years and years and years and years, and they fight it, and it comes back, and they fight it, and it comes back, and it's a real struggle. And I connect with these people, and I got super lucky. I had it all gone really quickly. “And now I'm back, and I'm ready to go, and it's big weigh-in time, I'm surrounded by all my friends, I'm surrounded by my brothers and my coaches, and there's just a great excitement from me, and I've got a new appreciation for the game. Because when you have it pulled away from you, with the possibility of never getting it back, you have to think about it. You have to sit there, and you have to be okay with that to a certain extent. Because when I was diagnosed, I thought to myself, ‘I don't know how bad it is. It could be chemo. I mean, it could be multiple surgeries. You just never know.’ “And at the end of the day, being able to put the pads back on is a blessing, and I have a great appreciation for it and everything that goes into it. Working out over the summer, being with everybody, just being back in the meeting rooms, being back in the team meeting rooms, sitting down for a team meeting, it's all... There's a great appreciation to it, and I'm thankful for that.” Going forward, he wants to help others who are facing many of the same challenges. “I have thought about this a great deal. I said before I really relate to the struggle here. I really relate to this struggle with the cancer, and the thought of dread, and that being over your head at all times. It's scary. It's hard. It's a disease,” Williams said. “And especially for your family, you think about... I never thought about the impact it would have on my family and friends. I mean, it was devastating. Some days I think my parents were in a worse spot than I was. Sometimes I had to be their rock. “And I want to, in the future, work with charities around rare cancer and rare disease. I want to spend my time doing that. I know that there's some great institutions and great charities that will allow me to do that. And I also want to speak on it, too. I've spoken with a couple people down in my hometown, some high schools, and I want to spread the word. And I feel like, at least to me, there's someone out there that needs to know that, when you get ran over by a truck in life, I mean something comes completely out of left field, and all hope is lost, other people are going through what you're going through. “And you can get through it. And you need some good people around you. You need to hear words; you need to be inspired; you need to be motivated. It's hard to do that. And I want to help people understand that it's not all over, and there's still life to be lived. And the only shame in life is when you give up on it.” Giving up? That’s not the way John Williams operates. “You have to live in the moment. There's some things that you have to live in the moment. You have to live in the now, because the future hasn't happened yet, and the past is already gone. But I also think you need vision in life,” he said. “Your vision and your purpose need to ring true in your life. And I think your purpose needs to shine through in everything you do. So, I do think that far ahead, and it makes me super excited. “It keeps that fire burning in me to keep moving and to have those goals and to have those aspirations. It makes me want to fight every day. It makes me want to go attack everything I do, and everything is just fire to the fuel. Going to Duke is fire to the fuel. Waking up... And I do have those days when I wake up and feel scared. That's fuel for the fire. “Because at the end of the day, I know I'm blessed, and I appreciate it. And I know I still have more work to do on this earth.”Growing up
At Clemson
The diagnosis
The treatment
The recovery
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