AFTER beating cancer and twice cheating death during the recovery process, Knights young gun Jeremy Papamau is not about to let a more common sporting ailment cloud his dream of making his National Rugby League debut next year.
Papamau's promising career has been on hold since he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in June during a routine injury check. He had his testicle surgically removed on July 1 then began an intense six-week course of chemotherapy which twice almost killed him.
Finally out of hospital and in the more familiar surrounds of the gym and football field, Papamau pulled up lame after two training sessions last week and is now being tested for compartment syndrome, the result of a build-up of blood pressure in his calves, which could require another round of surgery and up to eight weeks of rehabilitation.
But Papamau, who turned 18 yesterday, has taken the latest setback in his stride.
The former Australian Schoolboys winger, who won the 2007 Carlson Club-Andrew Johns Medal as the Knights' best under-18 player, has tamed tougher opponents.
"You just get confidence and reassurance from what you've already done. It's not going to stop me because I've already been through the hardest times so I know I can excel when times are a bit easier, I suppose," Papamau said.
"It's pretty common in young footballers, and one of the major factors is when you put on weight rapidly. I was weighing maybe 83 or 84 kilos when I started chemo, and now I'm up around 94 or 95 so that might have been one of the reasons.
"If it is compartment syndrome and I have to have the operation on my legs, I'm probably looking at eight to nine weeks tops before I can be back into full training.
"[Knights teammate] Marvin Karawana had the same thing and was only out for six weeks with his calves, so anything looks good after what I've been through."
Papamau said his experience had made him more determined to make the most of his opportunities in football.
"The main thing for me is I know that this can be taken away now, so I want to play every game like it's my last and treasure it while I'm out there," he said.
Papamau has remained positive throughout his six-month ordeal and said he never had "a dark day".
Regular blood tests to check his tumour markers were part of the process and "everything seems like it's going along OK".
He began chemotherapy on August 4 but, during his second week of treatment, his white blood cell count dropped from an acceptable 6.0 to as low as 0.2, and the drugs began destroying his healthy cells.
"Once it had nothing more to eat up of the white blood cells, it started eating me up and I just shut down pretty much," he said.
"I sort of passed out and woke up in hospital. They were doing ECGs on my heart rate and chest X-rays, blood tests every day, because they didn't really know what was going on with me. Instead of being out of hospital that day, I was stuck there for about eight days."
The next close call came when he had an adverse reaction to one of the chemotherapy drugs and his heart rate soared to 148 beats a minute.
Knights medical officer Neil Halpin described Papamau as an inspirational, brave young man.
"He's 18, he's had cancer, he'd had it for six months before he'd had it treated, so there was a chance of it being spread by then, but there's no sign that it has," Halpin said.
"He's been through chemotherapy, and that's a very gruelling process. They are very toxic, very potent drugs and they make you very ill, but he's got through that and I think he's shown enormous courage and determination to get through it.
"He had two hiccups that he spoke of, where he had a reaction to a drug on one occasion and his white cell count dropped on the other.
"Chemotherapy is always a fine line because it is a toxic process and the idea is to try to hammer the cells as much as you can.
"But there's a very thin margin between hammering the cancer cells and doing the same things to normal cells.
"But he looks as though he's come through it well and we expect he'll be playing again at the beginning of the season."
Halpin said former Knight Timana Tahu played State of Origin eight weeks after undergoing surgery to relieve compartment syndrome.
"If worst comes to worst and he does have a compartment syndrome and we have to do something about it, that would only put him out for a few weeks," he said. "Hopefully it's not, and we don't want him to have to have anything done about it.
"But if he has to, it's not that big a deal in the scheme of things after what he's been through."
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