Chase Rhodes is no stranger to tragedy; when he was in the 7th grade, he witnessed his father accidentally shooting himself in the leg during a hunting trip in the backwoods of Mississippi.
Just a year later, Chase took an extremely hard hit during the first few minutes of a football game and was subsequently rushed to the hospital. While being diagnosed with a few broken ribs, the doctors also found something much more serious in nature when examining his X-rays.
Tragedy struck again when the medical staff revealed that Chase had acquired Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer that impedes the body’s ability to fight infections. Chase was obviously devastated and frightened by the diagnosis as he spoke to the staff at TV news station WDAM: “When I was first diagnosed, I was so scared.
I couldn’t move in the bed. I couldn’t physically move. To me, cancer was really bad but it couldn’t happen to me because it was too bad to happen to me.” But the good news in all of this is that the cancer was detected in its early stages, otherwise Chase may have died.
After being removed from the public school system until his freshman year in high school, Chase realized how lucky he was to still be alive and receive life-saving treatment. He continued to pursue his passion for sports as he made the baseball and football teams; in fact, his hardball talents eventually landed him a spot on the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College baseball team.
His coach, Rodney Batts, expressed his sentiment to WDAM: “Knowing Chase now, being with him for six months and now knowing what he’s been through, it’s not surprising knowing that he overcame that.
It doesn’t surprise me that it was his attitude going into cancer and beating it.” This is a truly inspiring story, perhaps inspiring enough to share!
