Head Down, Hopes Up

My wife asked the question I dared not: “What is his life expectancy under the circumstances?”

“Five years, more or less,” replied my oncologist. A month earlier, surgeons had cut a section from my scalp to excise a melanoma and remove a primary lymph node. They pulled back half my scalp and tried to stitch it all back together. They couldn’t sew it shut for two weeks. They tried to get all of the cancer. They didn’t.

About a week after that conversation, I left the hospital on a Tuesday morning, sick and weak from two rounds of powerful immunotherapy drugs. One of my first tasks was to inform my friend Paul that he would need to find a new partner for our member-member that coming weekend. He insisted we wait until the end of the week.

I woke up in a fog on Friday, but we decided to give it a go. I had previously won Player of the Year and the match-play championship at our beloved Money Hill Country Club in Abita Springs, Louisiana, but not the member-member. No one had won all three. Paul knew I wanted to be the first.

Our member-member format is a Stableford best-ball net, with the six flight winners moving on to a five-hole drop-out shootout, with putt-offs to break ties. Paul and I started on No. 8 on a damp and cloudy Saturday, with temperatures not expected to break 70 degrees all weekend. He led us off on the 150-yard downhill par 3 over a front bunker. It went in. Right in. First shot, hole-in-one. Despite my mostly poor play over the next 35 holes, the points from that eagle carried us into the shootout.

The pea-sized pituitary gland is your body’s thermostat. It regulates your metabolism, glucose, blood pressure, thyroid, testosterone, water and sodium levels. Without your pituitary gland, you must take medication to make your body function properly. I was told initially that there was a 13% chance I might lose my pituitary gland function if I took the immuno drugs. I later learned that the percentage is much higher. It was a relief to concentrate on different numbers that weekend. Paul carried a 6 handicap, and I was a 10 but playing much worse. On the first shootout hole putt-off, Paul went first and missed from 4 feet. I had to make a 10-foot uphill slider or we would not advance. It went in.

On the second hole, Paul chunked his approach into the water fronting the green. I was in a deep greenside bunker. My shot barely cleared the lip and settled 3 feet away. We moved on again. In the putt-off on the third hole, I had an 8-foot downhill putt that broke slightly to the left at the hole. Hit it too hard and it would stay straight, too easy and it would break under. Miss and we were out. But I’d had the putt before. I knew what it did. 

There were about 75 folks watching the shootout. The drinks were free, and the gallery was raucous. But I was exhausted and feeling increasingly weak. My head and body slumped. I thought I’d hit the putt too hard, but it broke at the last second and fell in on the right edge. It felt like half of the adrenaline keeping me upright drained away. I steadied myself on my putter. Paul asked if I was OK, and I nodded for us to continue.

About 20 years earlier, a palm reader at a convention had told my fortune. She said my lifeline ended abruptly; I would likely die young. Shocked, I turned to walk away, but she asked me to come back. “You have a long lifeline farther down, which means you will have a long period of illness. Survive that and you should live a long life,” she said. Better, I thought, except for the long-illness part.

After surviving another putt-off, we made the final hole. The ninth is a long, uphill par 4. The sun dipped lower in the sky, as did the temperature. I had little left to give.

Corey, my opponent, and I both had strokes. His partner had played himself out of the hole early. My approach nestled in the right rough, 40 yards from the hole and with a deep bunker in between. Corey chose a 9-iron from 135 yards, but the cool, moist air held it up, and it plugged in the first bunker. His best would be 5-net-4.

The grass was sticky. Only half of my ball was visible. As I brushed the turf to get a feel for it, my wife, Lindsey, came to me. “Stay down. Follow through,” she said. I emphatically asked her to back off.

I thought I’d chunked it, but the gallery roared. When I trudged to the green, it was 18 inches from the cup.

They put the winners’ jackets on us in the clubhouse, but I felt bitterly cold. I bolted for my house, gratefully nearby, and into the shower. I turned the hot water all the way up. I couldn’t stop my body from shivering or my teeth from chattering. I crawled into bed under three layers of heavy covers. My pituitary gland was failing.

In the months that followed, I endured six rounds of chemo and a laser that blew up most of the blood vessels in my scalp to keep the cancer from spreading. Through it all, I kept looking at my palm and that lifeline below the gap. I believed. My wife was there at every step, reminding me to keep my head down and follow through. Finally, Dr. Jerry Brewer at the Mayo Clinic started injecting interleukin directly into my scalp. It took multiple injections over two years, but today my scalp appears cancer-free. All six annual full-body PET/CT scans also show no sign of cancer.

The next time you play golf, I implore you to wear a hat and generously apply sunscreen. Try the UV arm sleeves in different colors. Member-members are already difficult enough. 

Ray Ladouceur has been a Broken Tee Society member since 2021.