From the Dallas Morning News....
Prestonwood Senior's Faith an Ally in Fight Against Rare Cancer
12:27 AM CST on Friday, February 27, 2009
By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News
bhorn@dallasnews.com
Cody Novak's pain playing in that last game – it was excruciating. A boy shouldn't be playing basketball with a bleeding, grapefruit-sized lump on his thigh a short time after being sliced open for surgery.
But he desperately wanted to. It was senior night. The diagnosis hadn't come in yet. And so, with blood oozing from a popped stitch, he wobbled up and down the court for a few minutes until his coach had seen enough.
"I told myself this is probably the last game I will play in, and the pain is not important," Cody Novak said, recalling that game back on Feb. 12.
Cody hopes to join his Prestonwood Christian Academy teammates Friday when they play Houston Christian in a Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools state championship semifinal playoff game at Mansfield Timberview. Not to play. Simply to watch. The pain hasn't disappeared. His situation is more severe: He has cancer.
"I'll go if I feel up to it," he said Wednesday, perched on a chair in the living room of his North Dallas home while his teammates practiced at the school just up the road. "Not being able to play, it would mean everything to be there."
It's his reaction to chemotherapy that could keep him away.
Cody had discovered what looked like a small cyst on his upper thigh during Christmas break. He would have someone look at it after Prestonwood's season. There was still basketball business to take care of, even as it grew to the size of a golf ball. A possible state championship was in sight. How much damage could a lump do to an otherwise healthy, 6-6, 230-pound, 17-year-old high school senior?
Kristi Novak (right) says doctors believe that Cody Novak's attitude, youth and unwavering Christian faith will serve him well in the battle of his life.
But by the first day of February, Super Bowl Sunday, the lump seemed to be growing daily. It was black and appeared ominous. He could barely sit. There was immense discomfort. He could hide it no longer. Finally, he told his mother.
Cody's ensuing whirlwind February chronology went something like this: trip to doctor; referred to cancer specialist; unsuccessful surgery to remove what was now being referred to as a tumor but couldn't be removed because it had grown too large and remained too mysterious to the pathologists; six days later, play in game against John Paul II; diagnosis of malignant cancer – extremely rare soft tissue sarcoma; discovery of small cancerous nodules on his lungs; begin chemotherapy.
The cancer, the doctors have told him, is very aggressive and very rare.
"It's the Cody Novak Cancer," he declared with a smile. The line surprises no one who knows him. It's the same kind of Cody comedy he used when the Cowboys' Tony Romo called last week to offer best wishes. "I'm not gonna lie," said Cody, who was a quarterback on the Prestonwood football team before he was moved to receiver. "I could out-throw you."
That may be debatable, but there could be little debate that there has ever been a more upbeat cancer patient. Among the things Cody was buoyant about on Wednesday was that he consumed chicken quesadillas, chips and salsa, and they had all stayed down.
Kristi Novak, his mother, says the doctors believe that attitude, his youth and his unwavering Christian faith will serve him well in the battle of his life.
"Cody, do you want to cry?" the widowed mother remembers asking her youngest child as the news seemed to get worse and worse by the day.
"I have not cried over the cancer," Cody said. "I have cried only over the overwhelming outpouring of concern."
Cody Novak was buoyed for out-of-nowhere tragedies back in September 2005. On a Sunday drive home after an afternoon throwing around a football, his father, Dan, keeled over in the front seat of the car. Sister Courtney, celebrating her 16th birthday, struggled to find a pulse. Mother Kristi frantically administered CPR. It didn't help. Dan Novak, 47, died. A diseased heart valve had given out.
As they sought to cope, Cody, Courtney and oldest sister Casey took a vow.
"He was my hero, my best friend and my dad," Cody recalled. "But we said we were not going to be that family that is always mourning."
Soon after, however, Kristi, moved her family from Frisco to Dallas and transferred her children to Prestonwood, in hope of finding spiritual support at the smaller, private Christian school. The girls graduated and moved on to Baylor. Now Cody is teaching his schoolmates and their families a lesson.
"Our seniors have grown up in North Dallas, where life is fast, but this puts everything else in perspective," said Larry Taylor, Prestonwood's head of school. "This has become a real emotional time here. We're getting ready to play for a possible state championship, and that's no longer important in relationship to Cody."
Those are not the words Cody, who was the team's sixth man, happily hears. A state basketball championship has been his goal in his final season of playing. When freshman Zach Peters, a 6-8 phenom with a national reputation, transferred to Prestonwood this year and took what might have been his place in the starting lineup, Cody welcomed him.
"I felt honored to play with him," Cody said. "I learned a lot of skills from him in practice, but perhaps I mentored him in some ways."
If Cody, the only senior among Prestonwood's top six players, lacked Peters' skills, he made up for it by being a fun-loving, smiling kid who would do anything for the team, said Prestonwood coach Brad Freeman.
With Cody in a Dallas hospital recovering from chemotherapy treatment on Saturday, Prestonwood defeated Houston St. Thomas in Salado to advance to Friday's state semifinal. From his bed, Cody exchanged text messages with fans and an assistant coach throughout the St. Thomas game. At times, he offered coaching tips for Freeman and words of encouragement for teammates. On the bench, his teammates propped up a life-sized cutout photo of Cody and high-fived it as they left and entered the game.
When the game got too close for comfort, the Prestonwood fans chanted Co-dy No-vak. In the end, Prestonwood won by 13 points.
Cody visited with his teammates at school briefly Tuesday. He thought he might be able to see them again on Wednesday but didn't feel quite up to it.
Back in the living room of his family home, Cody Novak volunteered an answer to the No. 1 question his friends and family have wanted to know.
"People always ask me if I am scared," he said. "I'm not scared at all. But there are days when I feel I am in a pit of hell. But life has been a blessing. God has a plan. There is no reason to ask why."
The next round of chemotherapy is scheduled to start March 13, Cody's 18th birthday.
"I'll be wearing my state championship ring to the hospital," he said. "You can be sure of that."
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