Great Read - Tisdale's biggest rebound comes after loss of leg to cancer

Celtic Fan · Dec 3, 2008

a truly touching story about one of those good guys who went largely unnoticed in the NBA.

As Wayman Tisdale tells it, there are a lot of loves behind his trademark smile.

There's his wife, Regina, whom he loved when he first saw her walk into church on April 17, 1981. They were high school juniors attending different schools in Tulsa, Okla., and she'd never heard of the basketball player who was a nationwide prep star. On their first date, he flashed that smile and made her laugh, igniting a romance that's continued through 27 years and four children.

There's basketball, which he didn't love until he learned to dunk in the eighth grade. He'd never liked it when his older brothers, Weldon and William, insisted on playing pickup games in the yard. Wayman usually quit before they finished, running over to the sandbox instead. But that dunk (of a stick, not a basketball) ignited a career that saw him become a three-time All-American at Oklahoma, an Olympic gold medalist and a 12-year NBA veteran.

Then there is music, Tisdale's "first love." He never took a lesson and still doesn't know what key his songs are in or the names of the notes he strums. He spent every Sunday playing the bass guitar in the Friendship Church where his father was pastor, even throughout college. And since retiring from the NBA in 1997, he's recorded eight jazz albums, performed on worldwide tours and collaborated with artists like country music star Toby Keith.

ESPN

Tisdale says his experiences on the basketball court helped him face the challenges of cancer.
In February of 2007, Tisdale fell and broke his leg. Over the next 22 months, he endured a cancer diagnosis followed by bouts of chemotherapy so painful that he sometimes refused to let his children see him. When his treatments all failed, he agreed to let doctors cut off his right leg.

Still, the physical trait that friends say distinguishes Tisdale even today rarely waned. "Cancer might've taken my leg, but it can't take my smile," Tisdale says. And in a flash, it happens again, that famous, ear-splitting grin.

The fall happened almost two years ago, when Tisdale was walking down the stairs of his L.A. home and he slipped. When he tried to move, "it felt like someone swung a baseball bat and just shattered it," Tisdale says of his right leg. "I screamed like crazy and almost blacked out."

Doctors at UCLA wondered how a former pro athlete who'd never broken a bone in 20 years could so easily shatter his leg. They ordered X-rays of every bone in his body and waited two months for the results. "Try to sleep eight weeks not knowing if you have cancer," Tisdale says.
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the rest of this feel good story is here;
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/stor...=tisdale-081203

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