from DMN: Mavs summer-leaguer makes miracle shot

[Murphy3]

originally posted by David at LMF

Mavs summer-leaguer makes miracle shot

Given a 10 percent chance to live, Johnston beats the odds

01:32 PM CST on Friday, January 21, 2005

An informal reunion of the Mavericks' summer league team convened in the club's locker room the other night after the Wizards game.

Marquis Daniels, Josh Howard, Devin Harris, D.J. Mbenga ...

... and Ray Johnston.

Maybe the last name's not as familiar, but the Mavs were sure glad to see Johnston, who wasn't expected to attend.

Mavericks' summer-leaguer Ray Johnston was in a coma for two months and hospitalized 41/2 months with a rare form of leukemia. He's home now, with his mother, Martha, still at his side. A miracle, a doctor called it.

Not after he checked into a hospital in August and didn't wake up for two months.

Not after the diagnosis of a rare form of leukemia, and that wasn't the half of it.

Lungs full of fluid. Kidney failure.

Systemic shock. Heart fibrillation.

Seizures. Blood clots.

How bad was it? The last time Dirk Nowitzki saw Johnston, he prayed over him.

The Mavs know this story, a tale of survival so powerful that the team doctor, T.O. Souryal, said it "changed the way I view medicine."

A 10 percent chance of survival, those were the odds given Johnston. And optimistic at that.

One doctor told Ray's mother, Martha, that only one in a million could survive all the ills that raged against her child's life.

"Then you're looking," she said defiantly, "at the one that's gonna make it."

Ray Johnston made it. He made it because of all that medical science has to offer as well as what it can't.

Donnie Nelson knows this story, and this is how the Mavs' president frames it:

"The theme of this is the power of prayer," he said, "and the love of a mother."

•

Ray Johnston had all this going for him at 25: a great job with a mortgage company and looks good enough to get him occasional work as a model.

Chances are that if you walk into a FedEx Kinko's these days, a life-size replica of Ray is smiling back at you.

"They were looking for a dorky stand-up guy," he said, "and I was it."

How good was life? Ray meets a former Miss Texas, Sunni Cranfill, through the modeling agency, and now she's his girlfriend.

A Mavericks dancer, too. And, of the two of them, she was the only one who could get on the floor of the American Airlines Center.

He quit organized basketball six years ago. Or basketball quit on him. After lettering as a walk-on point guard at Alabama in 1999, Ray left the team because his coach told him he wouldn't be playing much.

Bottom line: He got his degree in marketing and moved to Dallas in 2001 and got on with his promising life.

Never stopped playing basketball, though. Pro-am leagues, the Signature Athletic Club, any place he could get a game.

Playing at Hoop-It-Up, Ray was surprised when a Mavs scout invited him to a tryout for the club's summer league team.

Why Ray? "His teams won," Nelson said. "There wasn't anything he was afraid of doing."

Ray made the cut, but he never played much. A 6-2 walk-on three years out of college probably doesn't have much shot against a first-round draft pick.

So the summer season of his dreams ended, and Ray went back to his pick-up games.

Then, on Aug. 26, his life changed forever. He collided with another player and bruised his right shin, and it hurt more than it should have.

His lower leg swelled until the pain became unbearable. The next morning, at 7:30, he banged on the door of Souryal's office.

Souryal relieved the swelling and left Ray in recovery. Not 20 minutes later, a nurse summoned the doctor: Blood everywhere.

They immediately took him to the emergency room at Presbyterian Hospital, where Ray called home to Montgomery, Ala.

"Mom, don't worry," he told her. "They say I've just got low blood platelets."

By the time his mother reached him, he was in a coma. Diagnosis: acute promyelocytic leukemia, a rare, fast-moving form of cancer.

Doctors put Ray in intensive care, where he would remain for the next 70 days.

His mother, too. Day after day after day. Nothing could remove her from the son she raised 16 years as a single mom.

Nothing could dent her enthusiasm. A former elementary school teacher, she decorated ICU as if it were one of her old classrooms.

"When he woke up," she said, "I wanted it to be happy."

Wallpapered the place with 270 e-mails, each pasted on a bright sheet of paper to create a virtual rainbow of get-well wishes.

She hung streamers. Kept a record of his charts. Wrote in her diary.

Warned visitors.

Everyone got the same speech on the way in: No gloom. Talk to Ray as if he can hear you, and don't stay long.

Still, it was hard. Nelson was out of the country when he heard about Ray, and when he got to the hospital, the sight stunned him.

His body bloated, his toes blue, Ray had swelled to 236 pounds from his normal weight of 176.

"What I was looking at," Nelson said, "was a corpse."

Josh Howard couldn't get past the door.

"Weeped like a baby," Martha said, softly.

No one got off without an assignment. Visitors had to sign in and pen a note of encouragement in Martha's loose-leaf journal.

What do you write to a dying man? Charlie Parker, the Mavs assistant and Ray's summer league coach, wrote, "I know you'll fight just like you did to make our team."

Del Harris came. So did Thomas Everett, the former Baylor and Cowboys safety who befriended Ray at the Signature Club.

People came and talked and prayed. Ray's father. His family and friends from back home.

Friends from Dallas, including the scruffy guys who vowed not to shave until Ray woke up.

Famous or not, nearly all were strangers to Martha, at least on the first visit.

Even the big blond. Martha had no idea who he was, but she took his hands in hers, and together they said a prayer over her boy.

"I am praying that God would quickly restore your health," Dirk Nowitzki wrote in Martha's journal.

Over those first two months, Ray would need the prayers. His lungs failed him, and at least twice he went into cardiac arrest.

Calls went out. "Pray for Ray," the desperate e-mail read in the Mavericks organization. Entire congregations responded, here and in Alabama.

And then one day, out of nowhere, out of one prayer or a thousand, Ray's eyes fluttered.

Martha cried.

Over the next couple of weeks, he floated in and out of consciousness. He couldn't talk, most likely because of the ventilator, and it was hard to know how much brain damage he might have suffered.

But, per Martha's instructions, everyone remained upbeat. Nelson visited once with his 10-year-old son, D.J., and as they were about to leave, the Nelsons placed their hands over Ray's, a pincushion of IVs.

"All right," Nelson said. "Mavericks on three.

"One ... two ... three!"

"Mavericks," Ray whispered.

•

What do you say to a man who's just come back from the dead – not once, but two or three times?

Ray Johnston slurps a bowl of stew as he talks, and he looks as if maybe he's had a bad cold.

A few weeks ago, it was all he could do to sit up on the side of his bed for more than 10 seconds.

He's been home two weeks now, but the welcome home banner is still up:

"Alive in 2005"

Recovery comes in stutter steps. From a high of 236, Ray's weight dropped to 128. He's still recovering his balance, too. Because of a lack of oxygen, his body suffered, essentially creating a case of frostbite, he lost all the toes on his left foot and two on his right.

But there was no brain damage. Even better: His leukemia is treatable in 90 percent of patients and curable 75 percent of the time.

Souryal, an orthopedist, said Ray's case changed his mind about the limits of medicine.

"You can't give up," he said. "You shouldn't give up. The possibilities of recovery are remarkable."

A miracle, the doctor called it.

And from here on out? Ray goes back to his job as a mortgage banker, most likely sometime next month. His future as a basketball player, if he still had one, is over, though other possibilities loom as a part-time scout for the Mavs.

As for what he went through, he's still learning. He looks at photos and reads from his mother's 200-page journal, but other than those collected memories, he has no idea what happened.

"When I woke up," he said, smiling, "I thought it was the next day."

His mother's still here to fill him in. Can't quite bring herself to go home, even though she knows she'll have to one day.

"You give 'em roots," she said, "and then you give 'em wings."

A mother knows these things, you suppose. Just like she knew one day her son would wake up.

E-mail ksherrington@dallasnews.com
Online at:
Link to story

[V2M]

A very uplifting and inspiring story. Hope he recovers fully to lead a normal, healthy and a long life!

[chumdawg]

That's a deeply, deeply moving story. God bless the kid's mother. Man, is there anything stronger than a mother's love?

On a side note, I'm sure every organization has people who would have reacted similarly, but this story does give you good feelings about the Mavs organization. Bunch of really good guys, it seems.

Live long and prosper, kid.