Teammates Rally as Star Player Battles Life-Altering Diagnosis

Teammates Rally as Star Player Battles Life-Altering Diagnosis

San Francisco 49ers left tackle Trent Williams (33) is one of the best players in the NFL. But as he recently spoke about I Am an Athlete show just a few years ago, he came dangerously close to a potentially terminal cancer diagnosis due to an alleged lack of follow-up by his former band’s team doctors.

Williams first felt a lump in his head in 2014, five years before his cancer diagnosis, but Washington Commandersand#039 told him; to the team doctor it was probably just a cyst and nothing to worry about. According to Williams, over time he underwent other medical procedures on his knee and thumb and asked them to “kill two birds with one stone” andquot; removing the “cyst too. Each time, he said, the doctors refused to do it.

 

According to Williams, he felt that his head grew even bigger and began to feel additional growth, so during his physical rehabilitation in 2018, he told the team doctor and trainer to make an appointment with a specialist as soon as possible.A specialist removed one of the tumors, and Williams soon learned that it was not a cyst, but a tumor.

He says the team doctor initially tried to reassure Williams, telling him the tumor was probably benign, but that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny either. Williams realized the seriousness of the situation after going to the oncologist’s appointment and started crying at that moment, she remembers.

 

Doctors told him he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called DFSP, and he was reportedly shocked to learn Williams had warned the team about a lump on his head years earlier From there, the situation got even worse. Williams later underwent an MRI, which showed how far the cancer had already spread. Williams visited another doctor, assuming his football career was over, but the doctor told him, “football is the least of your worries.”Williams says her doctor told her to get things together and spend as much time as possible with her children, who have not yet been diagnosed with cancer.

But as it turned out, Williams was very lucky – the cancer did not fully metastasize in his skull, as feared, and doctors were able to effectively treat it.That doesn’t mean he and Washington’s commanders patched things up and moved on.

 

Williams says he could not sue the team because of the league and collective bargaining agreement; he later sought a trade and ended up in San Francisco in April 2020, receiving a fifth and third round pick in exchange. The trade was a huge win for the Niners, but more importantly, Williams was able to continue his career and put aside concerns about what was feared to be a terminal illness..

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