'Don't Give Up'
EAST BRADY — Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly in no stranger to pain.
The pain of the loss of his son, Hunter, to Krabbe Disease.
The pain of losing four Super Bowls with the Buffalo Bills.
And the pain of three separate battles against oral cancer.
Although he is now cancer free, Kelly is still suffering more than a fair amount of pain.
“He's hurting,” said Terry Henry, Kelly's former high school football coach at East Brady High School and close friend.
Kelly, 58, was first diagnosed with oral cancer in 2013 and had surgery. Shortly after, doctors determined the cancer had spread to his nasal passages and he underwent chemotherapy before being declared cancer-free in 2016.
The cancer returned once again this year, necessitating another surgery, this one lasting 12 hours to remove the oral cancer and reconstruct his upper jaw.
Kelly is still recovering and will undergo future procedures to reconstruct his jaw.
“His mouth is still full of stitches,” Henry said. “He has trouble eating — he eats a lot of soup. He has no teeth on top so he can't just pick up a hamburger and eat it.”
Kelly, though, has remained in good spirts, Henry said, despite all he has been through.
“He's good,” Henry said. “He always says, 'It is what it is and I have to deal with it.' He was just in East Brady last week. We were out on the river Thursday and Friday.”
Kelly will be in Los Angeles Wednesday to accept the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPYs.
The award is named for former North Carolina State men's basketball coach Jim Valvano.“He's honored to get it,” Henry said. “He's looking forward to it.”Henry said Dan Marino and John Elway, two other Hall of Fame quarterbacks selected with Kelly in the 1983 draft, will introduce Kelly, as will his daughters, Erin and Camryn.In an interview in June when Kelly announced he would be receiving the Jimmy V award, he acknowledged the unpredictable nature of cancer.“As people out there know, when you have cancer, you never know what tomorrow holds,” Kelly said. “When I was diagnosed for the first time, it scares you. Second time, even more. Third time, I don't even worry anymore. It is what it is. If it comes back, it comes back.”Kelly has built his persona on toughness, on and off the football field.But he even admitted this is the hardest battle of his life.Jim Valvano's words in that speech in 1993 while he was waging his own battle with cancer — “Don't give up. Don't ever give up.” — ring with Kelly as well.“People talk about this 'Kelly Tough' part,” Kelly said. “Yeah, it is. But after a while, even when you're strong like that, you sometimes look and wonder why all this continues to happen. And then, to be honest with you, I know why. I've been through a lot. Faith is my No. 1. I know why I'm still here. I know why I'm going through (it). It's to be able to go and tell other people going through similar things never to give up.”
