Ex-Chiefs star Alex Smith recalls ‘helpless’ feeling after daughter’s cancer diagnosis
When former Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith announced his retirement in April 2021, he admitted he could have returned for a 17th NFL season.
Instead, Smith was looking forward to spending time with his wife, Elizabeth, and their three kids.
“I’m going to take a little time to enjoy a few of those walks with my wife,” Smith said in an Instagram video, “and my kids have no idea what’s coming for them in the backyard (games).”
Unfortunately for Smith and his wife, they couldn’t have expected what would happen just 13 months later. Their daughter Sloane was rushed to the hospital and had surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor.
A story in the New York Times said doctors were unable to remove all of the tumor in the first procedure and Sloane underwent a second 10-hour craniotomy earlier this year.
“We found out last fall that essentially that they had missed a piece, that there was a little piece in there left over,” Alex Smith told the New York Times’ Jonathan Abrams.
Alex Smith had his own medical emergency when he suffered a horrific injury while playing for Washington in 2018. Smith underwent 17 surgeries after two bones were broken in his right leg and he dealt with flesh-eating bacteria and sepsis.
That in no way prepared him for dealing with his now 7-year-old daughter’s medical battle.
“It’s different when it’s your little girl,” Smith told Abrams, “and you’re helpless with how terrifying that is.”
Smith added: “You just have no idea what it means. The words brain tumor are terrifying.”
In August, Smith took part in the Pan-Mass Challenge, bicycle race across Massachusetts as he raised money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Smith raised more than $45,000.
You can still donate to Smith’s fundraiser here.
Elizabeth Smith shared an Instagram post with a video showing photos and clips of Sloane in the hospital and with her brothers and parents.
“Over the past year, our daughter Sloane has been a little fighter. From 2 brain surgeries, therapies, countless MRI’s, blood draws, EEG’s, pokes, prods and a million doctors appointments,” Elizabeth Smith wrote. “One thing we know is she continues to fight and never lets her light dim. She shines bright and doesn’t let anything hold her down.
“Never does a parent expect to fight this battle. No parent is prepared to hear those words. But we continue to fight. Fight for advancements in medicine, fight for all the other families going through similar if not worse battles and fight for our baby girl.”
Elizabeth Smith also mentioned her husband’s charity ride. It’s something tangible the former Chiefs star could do for Sloane.
Before starting the bicycle trip around Massachusetts, Smith told the Boston Herald he and Elizabeth were living “scan to scan.”
“It never goes very far in your mind as a parent,” he said, later adding, “It’s not something you ever anticipate going through.”
While Smith knows hospitals all too well from his inspiring return for the leg injury, it’s a different story to be in the waiting room.
“I don’t know if you get any better at it. This is something that’s so much bigger and harder,” Alex Smith told the Times. “Do you get better at compartmentalizing? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
