Brick Basketball Player's Cancer Battle: 'I Can Make This My Story'

(Brian Oehme, a 6-foot-5 standout for the Brick Dragons, is battling testicular cancer. Karen Wall photo)

BRICK, NJ -- When he was playing basketball at Brick Township High School, Brian Oehme did everything he could to lift up those around him.

“There was never a day when he did not come into the gym with the mission of getting his teammates and himself better,” Mike Gawronski, Oehme's coach at Brick High School, said.

Now Oehme is the one being lifted up -- by those same teammates, his new ones at Drew University, where his freshman year just concluded, as well as his family and friends -- as the 19-year-old battles stage 2 testicular cancer.

The support the 2015 Brick High graduate is receiving is bolstering his resolve against an aggressive cancer that in the span of less than two months turned his focus from rehabbing from an injury to fighting a far more insidious opponent.

"This disease is nothing to be ashamed of, and I will not let it beat me physically or emotionally. I know that there are 2 roads I can travel from this point heading into the future. I can let this be my excuse, or I can make this my story," Oehme said in posts on Instagram. "I know that this is going to the biggest challenge I've ever had to overcome in my life, but I will never shy away from a fight."

Gawronski, who coached the 6-foot-5 forward for three years, said it is that willingness to fight hard regardless of what happens that makes him so special.

"He's a workhorse," said Gawronski, who has organized a fundraiser to help with Oehme's medical expenses. "He's the reason we had a pretty good year this year. He didn't reap the benefits of it but he helped build the culture of 'I'm going to work hard, and no matter what happens, I'm going to keep my head high and walk out a winner.' "

"This has been the lowest of lows," Oehme said by phone Wednesday. "I'm using this to take me higher than I've ever been."

'It shook me up'

Oehme came off the bench for the Drew Rangers in the 2015-16 basketball season, averaging 17 minutes a game. But a broken foot cut his season short, and Oehme said he had just gotten back to working out when he realized something wasn't quite right.

"I was working really hard," Oehme said. "I had an early jump to the preseason workouts."

But after a couple of weeks of feeling that something wasn't quite right, Oehme went to the doctor. He was diagnosed on March 18 and underwent surgery to remove the tumor on March 21.

"It shook me up," Oehme said. When he first suspected something was wrong, the only people he told outside of his family -- his parents, George and Kathy, older brother Patrick and younger sister Madeline -- were a couple of his closest friends. But when the diagnosis was in, he went public, telling friends and calling Gawronski, his old coach.

Gawronski was stunned by the news.

"When we got off the phone, I said, we've got to start something to help," he said, and that's when he came up with the idea for T-shirts and rubber bracelets. The T-shirts are simple: a royal purple color with the words "Oehme Strong" in white with a white basketball -- but the response has been overwhelming, Gawronski said, far surpassing his wildest dreams.

"Brian's a special kid," he said. "I knew that the first time I saw him in the gym."

The support he has received, Oehme said, has bolstered him, especially in the wake of more serious news: the cancer had spread, with a tumor the size of a golf ball forming below his left kidney. He started chemotherapy almost immediately at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Basking Ridge, traveling daily to receive two drugs to fight the cancer. Oehme said he will undergo a total of four cycles of chemotherapy over a 12-week period that will end in early July, followed by surgery to dissect his lymph nodes and pick out the cancer cells that still remain.

"Looking at other cases, this isn't as bad as other people have it," Oehme said. "I feel very blessed to be in the situation i'm in" with the amount of support he has received from so many people.

His teammates at Drew and there was a leadership meeting of the captains of all of the sports teams, and they had their teams sign balls and hats and sent them to him. The calls and text messages and social media messages have poured in.

"Receiving this news has been by no means easy, but with every member I have in my support system, every person I have with me standing in my corner, it has made beginning this fight so much easier. Every text and call I receive telling me to be strong has given me the courage and the confidence to say that I will beat this thing, and get through onto the rest of my life," he said.

But there's an inner strength that comes through -- in his social media posts, in text messages and in his calm demeanor on the phone -- that makes it clear cancer has picked the wrong person to fight.

'Remember this pain'

Gawronski said it is because of the example that Oehme presented through his work ethic that the Dragons had their best season in several years in 2015-16, finishing 13-12 and qualifying for both the state and Shore Conference tournaments for the first time since Gawronski's senior year in 2007.

"He didn't reap the benefits of it," Gawronski said, "but without kids like Brian we wouldn't have achieved it. They (Brian and his Dragons teammates) bought into what we preached. They're the ones who made basketball relevant in Brick again."

The outpouring of support reflects the kind of kid he is, Gawronski said, noting he's had trouble keeping up with the T-shirt orders because they've been coming in so fast. Shore Tees has been a huge help, Gawronski said, giving them a reduced rate so that as much money as possible will go to Oehme's family.

"It's crazy how many people want to donate," he said. "He's that kind of kid."

So far the chemotherapy hasn't taken an extreme toll, Oehme said. He has started to lose some hair but physically he is doing OK, he said. While he will not be healed enough from the surgeries and the chemotherapy to resume playing basketball, Oehme said he does expect to be back at Drew in the fall, where he has not decided on a major but is considering going to law school.

Oehme said that while he's still processing what's happened in the last two months, it has given him a much different perspective on life.

"I'm not even half way done with my treatments but I know that after I complete this whole process, a truly 'bad' day is going to be very hard to come by," Oehme said.

He said that if he were giving advice to someone else facing the battle he is fighting, he would tell them to remember the pain.

"Remember this pain," he said. "There are going to be a lot of people who try to make you feel better but it's going to be hard to hear them because they won't have any idea of what you're going through. It's going to take a while to see it, but you will find the silver linings for yourself.

"After so much of what you thought was important has been taken from you, your idea of what happiness is, is totally going to change," Oehme said. "You can find this all new appreciation for things that you never even would have noticed before."

"Remember this pain now so you can use it to your advantage later," he said.

That's exactly what he is doing right now for himself:

"I promise that I will flip all the odds against me and use them to my advantage, and prove everybody that doubts me wrong. I will make this#MyStory #LIVESTRONG"

People wishing to order T-shirts, which are $10 apiece, or bracelets, at $2 each, can contact Gawronski by email at mgawronski@brickschools.org or John Lynch at jlynch@brickschools.org.