“Bro, Lebron James is better than Michael Jordan. He’s really the greatest basketball player of all time,” says a grinning Cedric Davis, as he sits down on the couch next to me.
I roll my eyes, put my phone down and crack my knuckles. This was going to be a battle. I already knew what he was going to say before he even said it. When he has that goofy grin on his face, he’s about to give me his terrible take on something in sports.
I’m usually prepared to refute his arguments with some cold, hard facts. But today, I’m just really not feeling it. “Cedric, I’m not gonna do this anymore. We’ve literally been arguing about this ever since we met. Considering that you’re a history major and a sports management minor, I don’t get how you’re wrong about everything in both history and sports.”
The smirk on his face only intensifies. “Nathan, you are so dumb. You make me dumber every time we argue about something.” In response, I can only put him in a headlock.
When Davis and I first met back in April of 2016 before I came to Union, we immediately hit it off. We are both from Memphis, and we bonded over our shared love of basketball, even if he did betray his home city in being a Lakers fan (“Nathan, the Memphis Grizzlies will always suck,” he says without any hint of remorse). And our friendship would soon develop into brotherhood. In truth, I love him like a brother.
People who don’t know us would probably think we don’t get along at all. After all, we can be seen constantly arguing and yelling at each other over something stupid. But that is our relationship in a nutshell. We argue, we fight, we laugh and we have a good time together. In Davis, I found a brother, the brother that I never had.
And the brother that I almost never got to meet.
***
“You know, my childhood was really good,” Davis says thoughtfully. “My mom didn’t even start working until I was in the fourth grade, so I got to spend a lot of time with her. My dad worked in construction. I had both an older and younger sister, as well as an older brother.”
He grins fondly. “I was never very good at sports, but man let me tell you, I loved to wrestle. I was one of the biggest wrestling fans you will ever meet. I used to walk up and try all these holds on my older brother, and I was so proud when he wasn’t able to get out of them.”
He laughs. “There was this one time where I “rock bottomed” my sister, and my mom gave me the worst spanking ever.”
When I asked him what getting “rock bottomed” meant, he said it was the signature move of his favorite wrestler Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.
“So yeah, my childhood in Memphis was pretty great,” he says, his grin now fading. “Until it wasn’t anymore. Until I was diagnosed with cancer.”
On September 11, 2006, Davis’s perfect world shattered when he was diagnosed at age 12 with osteosarcoma, a type of cancer that begins in the bones. It is a rare form of cancer, as there are fewer than 20,000 cases every year. It started in his right leg and would quickly spread to his right lung. According to St. Jude, patients with osteosarcoma have a survival rate of just 30 percent once it spreads to their lungs. Of course, Davis’s family rushed him to St. Jude in Memphis to begin treatment. And somehow, he was excited.
“It was so weird man. When you’re young, you don’t recognize the magnitude of certain things in your life, and death, well, death seems more like an inconvenience than an ending. I remember being so excited that I was gonna get to miss a ton of school.”
He smiles. “My little sister was so jealous. I also remember calling my older brother at college and being like “I’m about to start chemo later today! It’s gonna be so much fun!”
He shakes his head. “And then three hours later I was throwing up all over my nurse because my body was rejecting the treatment.”
The treatment would only get worse from there. There was no more excitement for him. There was only pain.
“Over the next year, I underwent nine rounds of intense chemo, and it was unlike anything I had ever experienced.” He pauses. “Have you ever heard of Doxorubicin?”
I shake my head.
He looks genuinely shaken as if he is reliving a past trauma. “Doxorubicin was a type of chemo that they gave me, and it was the most painful thing that I have ever experienced. Like, it was just so intense. I really can’t even put into words of how much pain I was in. Even now it’s a pain that I can remember. The worst part of it all was the side effects, which were heart disease and memory loss. So along with the cancer treatment, I had to constantly get an EKG and have my memory checked.”
For someone who was enduring so much suffering, it would only be natural for them to want to give up. He was nearly a teenager, one who was having his life and innocence slowly stripped away. I ask him if he ever truly started to despair.
“There was one time,” he says sadly. “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a rainy day about a month before my 13th birthday, and I was riding in the car with my mom and brother. And something inside of me finally just broke. I just started crying and was screaming at God for allowing this to happen to me.”
A wide smile breaks across his face. “My mom didn’t exactly offer comfort or anything like that. She had cried enough tears for me and had convinced herself that I was going to be alright. She just told me to never ask God that ever again. That God had a plan for me.”
“So how did you get through it?” I ask him.
He laughs at me. “You really are dumb, you know that? I just told you. When I realized that God had a plan for me, I didn’t despair over it anymore. My family, especially my two grandmothers, got me through it.”
“I also had my church family who were always praying over me. It was because of them that I stopped thinking of myself as sick. It was just my leg, and my lung I guess, that was sick. Through it all, I just kept telling myself that God still had a plan for me.”
And God still did have a plan for Davis. Through all of his pain and all of his suffering, he never gave up, always believing that there would be light at the end of the tunnel, that darkness would finally give way to light. And by the middle of 2007, Davis and his family’s faith were rewarded.
“The people at St. Jude were able to shrink the tumor in my leg, and they took it out on January 7th, 2007.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “I only remember the date because Ohio State and LSU played in the national championship that night. The cancer in my lung would be totally gone in early June. My last round of chemo was Aug. 8, 2007.”
The battle was over. He had won.
***
As we walk out of my room into the afternoon air together, people constantly greet us as we walk by. Davis, who is set to graduate in May, is one of the most popular people on campus and is a friend to nearly everyone. He wasn’t voted “Mr. Union” by the student body for nothing after all.
“He is so well-liked on campus because he has such a contagious, hilarious and playful personality,” said Monica Le, a sophomore nursing major at Union. “He just lights up people’s days when he speaks, and everyone just loves him. A campus without Cedric is like coffee without sugar–bitter!”
He also likes to think of himself as a pretty good wingman.
“If you ever get a girlfriend because of me, I’d consider it a far greater accomplishment than beating cancer,” he tells me.
He also walks around a campus with a slight limp. When the doctors at St. Jude treated him, they replaced most of the bone in his leg with rods. As a result, his right leg is significantly smaller than his left leg. He always jokingly says that it made him more of a passer than a scorer on the basketball court.
“So real talk,” I say as we walk into the dining hall together. “What’s the advice that you’d give to a kid out there who is dealing with something similar to what you had?”
He strokes his chin thoughtfully for a few moments. “I guess I have a little bit of my mom in me. I’d tell them to never question God. It can be so hard in situations like that, and it’s just human nature to ask ‘Why me?’ When you’re dealing with cancer, it’s going to be easy to feel defeated at times. There are going to be days where you want to give up. But you can’t ever give up. You must never stop fighting.”
And that passion for kids is why Davis wants to be a teacher and counselor after he graduates.
I laugh as I wrap my arm around his shoulders. “Even if you’re one of the dumbest people I know, I’m still glad that you’re here.”
He grins at me. “I am too. Because if I wasn’t here, who else would remind you who the greatest basketball player of all time is?”
