Becoming a parent changes your perspective on everything in your life as well as your priorities. For that reason, many parents would sacrifice literally anything if there child's life was in danger.
After dedicating most of his life to football and his career in the NFL, one pro football player decided to give it up when his four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a deadly and rare form of childhood cancer. Five years later, the former athlete is sharing an inspiring message about their journey.
According to Still, he always dreamed of becoming a professional football player but several injuries during college delayed him from making it happen. It wasn't until he became a father during his junior year at Penn State that he really committed to making a career out of football. For Still, being a father to his daughter, Leah Still, changed everything. He wanted to be able to give her a better life and saw a career in the NFL as a way to do that. In 2012, Still's hard work paid off when he was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals during the second round. However, once Still was in the NFL, his career didn't exactly go as he had planned. "Since I got to the NFL in 2012, I feel it's been a roller coaster," Still told Cincinnati.com in an interview. "I tell people all the time that my life has been like climbing a mountain. When I got to the top of the mountain, the view wasn't what I thought. Making it in the NFL wasn't what I thought. I had so many injuries."
In June of 2014, Still was thrown another curveball that would change his life forever. Doctors had discovered that Still's daughter Leah had cancer. According to Still, his then four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma stage 4 cancer. The rare disease typically affects children under five years old and develops from immature nerve cells found in several areas of the body. Doctors told Still and his wife that their daughter had a 50-50 chance of survival. The prognosis rocked the couple, but they put on a brave face for Leah and were determined to stay strong for her. At the time, Still's career took a backseat as his main priority was seeing his daughter beat cancer. While his team and coaches understood it was a difficult time for Still and his family, they couldn't waste a spot on the roster on someone who wasn't able to make the team their priority. So a few months after Leah's diagnosis, Still was dropped from the Bengals' active roster.
However, the team decided to sign Still to their practice squad so that he could have more time to focus on Leah. Keeping Still on their practice squad also meant that he'd retain his health insurance so that he could afford to pay for Leah's treatments. Leah went through 18 brutal months of treatment in the fight for her life. During that time, she underwent 41 days of chemotherapy, 40 days of antibody therapy, 19 days of radiation therapy, and a seven-hour surgery to remove a tumor from her abdomen. At the end of a long battle, Still and his wife were overjoyed when doctors told them that Leah had officially beaten cancer and was given a clean bill of health in March of 2015. "I can really say my daughter BEAT CANCER! Words can't describe how proud I am of this girl," Still shared on social media.
"I think it's because my daddy made me [strong]," Leah told Good Morning America's Robin Roberts. "I'm just thankful," the relieved dad told Roberts. "It was definitely a long road traveled. We definitely feel blessed and thankful that we have the doctors and the people around us to help us through this battle." At that point, Still was excited to get back to playing football and signed on to play for the Houston Texans. "She's definitely excited," Still told ESPN. "She's been watching me since my junior year in college. She's been going to my games. She understands I put my career on hold for her." However, Still ended up retiring from the NFL in 2017. The decision wasn't an easy one to make, but after another foot injury, the then 28-year-old decided it was time to move on. Because of everything he had gone through with Leah's cancer battle and the public attention they received from it, Still decided he wanted to help other families fighting childhood cancers.
Still wrote a book, 'Still In the Game,' about his family's experience with childhood cancer to help others going through something similar. "We call it recycling our pain," said Still, who founded the Still Strong Foundation to help families with kids battling cancer to cover non-medical bills so that they can focus their time, energy, and money to beating cancer. "No matter what the doctors were saying, no matter what I read on the internet, no matter how stressed I was, no matter how much pain we were in, no matter how many treatments failed, no matter how many times I felt like giving up, as long as Leah was alive, we still had a chance, we were Still In The Game," Still told TODAY to encourage families not to give up. In January of 2019, Still opened up to the public through social media that doctors had found something concerning on one of Leah's recent scans and had to rely on his own advice to stay hopeful. As a result, they ordered some tests to see if the now eight-year-old's cancer had returned.
"Last night I went to bed with a heavy heart not knowing what today had in store. But when I woke up to the outpouring of support it gave me a sense of calmness. As you can see in the picture, the prayers worked! Thank you, everyone!" Still said in a tweet. Thankfully, the test results, which took two months to come back, were clear and Leah is still cancer-free three years after first beating the disease. "I try to be as transparent as possible with this journey because I want people to understand what it's like for families who are battling this disease," Still said. "With every sneeze or cold or fever you think the worst because you took your kid to the hospital one time because you thought it was a simple illness, but you found out that they had cancer," Still said in a Youtube video. "That's what we deal with. But we try to stay positive but some days are easier than others and we can't complain because so many people are going through this."
"Honestly, to this day I just sit there and stare at Leah," Still explained. "I meet so many kids that pass away from this. I may have lost something I wanted so bad — being in the NFL — but I still have my daughter and that's so much more important."