Carden found gift in cancer
Cancer changes everything, even when you beat it.
But that hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing for Ryan Carden, who used his lengthy battle with nose and throat cancer to launch himself onto a career path he had never previously considered.
The 22-year-old Coeur d’Alene resident spent the better part of this week in Huntsville, Ala., representing North Idaho College and its fledgling golf program in the NJCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships.
Despite a disappointing performance that left him well back in the medalist standings of the four-day, 72-hole event, Carden, a freshman, plans to return home and continue his pursuit of a career in the sport he reacquainted himself with after spending nearly 1 1/2 years fighting off the deadly cancer cells that had invaded his body.
Earlier this week, prior to playing a practice round at the long and difficult Hampton Cove River Course in Huntsville, Carden took time to reflect on the unlikely series of events that led to his competing for an NCJAA title.
“If the cancer never happens, I probably wouldn’t be here in Alabama right now,” he said. “When you go through something like that, sometimes people might brood over what cancer took away from them, but I tend to look more at what it gave me – which was golf.”
Carden was an active 16-year-old attending Coeur d’Alene High School when he first noticed the soreness and swelling in his neck. At first he thought it was mononucleosis, but as the conditioned worsened, he sought medical advice and eventually received the grim prognosis.
What followed was nearly five months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments that scarred his throat and left him unable to open his mouth.
“Everybody was telling me the chemo would be the hard part and the radiation would be the easy part,” Carden recalled of his near-fatal ordeal. “But it turned out to be quite the opposite for me. The chemo was pretty rough, but it was the eight or nine weeks of radiation five days a week that really put me down and out.
“I even spent a couple of weeks in the ICU because of it.”
Because of the blisters that developed in his throat as a result of the radiation treatments, Carden was unable to eat or drink and dropped 35 pounds in 10 days. He emerged from the ICU weighing a mere 111 pounds.
He was allowed to return home following the last of his radiation treatments, but was “pretty much” confined to bed for the next six months as he recovered from the treatments and weaned himself from the strong pain medications he had been taking.
It was another three months before he picked up a golf club again.
“It was probably a year and half between swings,” said Carden, who had been golfing, casually, since he was 12. “Even though I was able to pick up a club, I didn’t, because I had to get back in school and find some source of income because we had a lot of doctors’ bills fall in our lap.”
Carden ended up obtaining his high school diploma from The Bridge Academy, an alternative school in his hometown, and went to work as a dishwasher at a local restaurant where his older brother, Travis, also worked.
The two were exploring the possibility of becoming electrical linemen, when golf suddenly got in the way.
Carden was playing at Prairie Falls Golf Course in Post Falls when he first learned about the golf program at NIC from head professional Darrell Hull, who had cut Carden from the Coeur d’Alene High School team when he was a freshman.
Hull hooked Carden up with NIC athletic director Al Williams and Cardinals golf coach Randy Boswell, who also serves as the school’s head athletic trainer.
“And those two just sort of made it happen,” said Carden, who went on to land a job as a forecaddie at the Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course that allowed him to quit his restaurant gig. “Before cancer, I had always been an athlete, so being a college athlete was a pretty big dream back then, and to have a second chance at it was pretty cool. When the opportunity comes up to go to college for cheap – and play golf, too – you just can’t say no to that.”
NIC’s golf program, after operating for two years at the club level, was granted varsity status this year, and Boswell put together a six-tournament schedule.
Carden, who carries a 2-handicap, proved to be the Cardinals’ top player, posting a low round of even-par 72 in the Columbia Basin College Invitational, the last tournament of the regular season. But Williams and Boswell felt Carden had earned a chance to play on, so they made the commitment to send him to the NJCAA Championship.
Because NIC is the only Region 18 school with a golf team, Carden did not have to qualify for nationals.
But any chance he might have had at finishing among the leaders there was quashed by the opening-round 95 he posted Tuesday. He recovered nicely, however, and finished with rounds of 81, 83 and 78.
It’s highly unlikely he will let his opening-round disappointment fester.
“Another thing the cancer did was make me a more positive person,” Carden said. “I always try to look at the bright side now. You have to kind of step back and reflect on all the things that were involved in my being here, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Carden, who has plans to play for NIC against next year and would like to eventually move on to play at a four-year school. He hopes to stay involved in the golf business in some way, perhaps as a club or teaching professional.
As far as his battle with cancer is concerned, Carden considers himself the winner.
“I’ve been cancer free for five years now, so I can technically call myself a cancer survivor,” he said. “At my last checkup, my doctor said it was probably going to be the last one for a good while. From here on out, I’ll probably go in to see her once a year, just to say, ‘Hi.’
“That’s the kind of doctor’s appointment I like.”