American football coach Deion Sanders revealed he had surgery to remove his bladder following a cancer diagnosis.
Mr Sanders, coach of the University of Colorado Boulder football team, is now “cured from the cancer”, one of his doctors said at a news conference Monday.
The operation occurred in May after the discovery of a tumour in his bladder as part of a routine health check up. Before the announcement, there had been media reports Mr Sanders was about to resign for health reasons.
But the two-time Super Bowl winner will remain as head coach for the upcoming collegiate football season.
The tumour was “high grade” leading to a “high risk non-muscle bladder invasive cancer,” his doctor Janet Kukreja, a urologist at the University of Colorado, said.
The operation to remove the bladder was robot assisted, Dr Kukreja added.
“I am pleased to report that the results from the surgery are that he is cured from the cancer,” she said.
Asked if he had thought the diagnosis would end his coaching career, Mr Sanders said retiring was out of the question.
“I always knew I was going to coach again,” he said. “It was never in my spirit, in my heart that God wouldn’t allow me to coach again. [I] never thought like that.”
Coach Prime, as he is affectionately called, said the surgery was a “whole life change” and he was still coming to terms to his new life.
“I truly depend on Depend; I cannot control my bladder,” he said referring to a brand of the adult diapers.
One of his sons posted a video online on Sunday in which Mr Sanders, sitting on a hospital bed, can been seen talking about his health challenges.
“Yesterday was tough,” he says in the video filmed in May, “because I had to make a will. That’s not easy at all, to think that you may not be here.”
At the news conference, Mr Sanders said: “Please get yourself checked out; especially African-American men. Get checked out because this could have been a whole other gathering if I hadn’t.”
Black Americans have the highest mortality rate for all cancers, according to the US National Cancer Institute.
Mr Sanders has had other health issues in the past and in 2021 had two toes on his left foot removed because of a blood clot.
Before becoming a coach, Mr Sanders had a successful career in the NFL, winning the Super Bowl with San Francisco 49ers in 1995 and with the Dallas Cowboys one year later. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.
He also previously played professional baseball and is the only person to have played in the Super Bowl and baseball’s World Series.
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