Health crisis gives Falcons’ Avery Hoffman a sense of perspective and a love of science

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Avery Hoffman lay crumpled on the turf during a recent game against Montclair Kimberley Academy after the Riverdale senior suffered what at first was thought to be a serious knee injury. It was a scary sight for all on hand at Frank J. Bertino Memorial Field as Hoffman, Riverdale’s workhorse running back, was being attended to my medical personnel.

Other players in this situation might have fretted that their day — or even their season — might be over as the inevitable ‘Why me?’ questions pervaded their thoughts. But not Hoffman. His day was over, but for him it was more a disappointment than a tragedy. 

If his season — even his football career — had come to a premature end on that play he would have felt the same. You see, these days Hoffman has football and everything else in his life in its proper perspective. He has a unique outlook that many people his age simply don’t possess, all because of a life-changing experience that occurred on his 10th birthday seven years ago.

“I was sick for a couple of days with a fever but my parents just thought I was sick,” said Hoffman, the heart and soul of Riverdale Country Day’s football team. “Then one day I was sitting on my couch and I felt something move somewhere in my stomach. So I went into my room and I ended up passing out on my bed. My parents took me to the emergency room that night and when I woke up the doctors thought I had appendicitis so they prepared for an appendectomy. When they went in they realized that my appendix had actually burst so they took out the ruptured appendix and cleaned everything out and sent it to pathology.”

 

Frightening discovery

 

A close call and a happy ending was what Hoffman and his family thought they had just experienced that day in February, 2009 at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. But shortly thereafter, Hoffman’s life took a terrifying turn, one that neither he nor his parents could have fathomed a day earlier.  

“I remember it well because it was my 10th birthday, Feb. 10, 2009, and I was still recovering in the hospital and all my friends were in my room celebrating my birthday when the doctor came in and asked them if they would leave,” Hoffman said. “They didn’t want to go, they were like, ‘He’s my best friend. You can tell him anything while we’re in here.’ But he made them leave and they were upset. My parents were there with me, and then the doctor told me he they diagnosed me with lymphoma.”

Burkitt’s lymphoma to be exact, a particularly aggressive form of lymphoma that is recognized as the fastest growing human tumor but which is also extremely rare in the United States, with only 1,200 cases diagnosed each year.

“It’s funny but one of the first things I was concerned about was whether or not I’d be able to play football that next season because I was playing pee wee football,” Hoffman said. “But then I remember distinctly the doctors explaining to me what cancer was and how when cells mutate they grow uncontrollably and that it happened inside my appendix. Most of what he explained to me I kind of tuned out because tears started coming down my face. I wasn’t really sure what to think.” 

Hoffman said he was pretty sure some grim news was coming his way from the doctor that day once his friends were asked to leave the room and he got a glimpse of his parent’s faces right before the diagnosis was delivered. Still it did little to cushion the blow.

“It was definitely really tough for my parents,” Hoffman said. “I could tell the doctors told my parents before they told me because when the doctors told me in front of my parents I looked at them and I could tell they knew already and that they had cried already. It was really hard for my mother because my mom lost her mom to cancer when I was four years old. But my parents were amazing throughout my whole treatment. Honestly I couldn’t have done it without them.”

 

A living hell

 

What followed was a grueling four-month regime of chemotherapy with all the usual side effects. It was a hellish experience, Hoffman said, one that now makes those two-a-day football practices in the August heat feel like a day at the beach.

“I got lucky that it was a relatively short treatment, it was for four months of intensive chemotherapy. It was from February to June,” Hoffman said. “I was constantly in and out of the hospital getting chemo. The treatment was one week in the hospital. Then there was the next week where I was prone to getting very sick with a fever because my [white] blood counts were very low and I’d have to go back to the emergency room. I’d be in the hospital for a few more days and then there was the next week when I was more or less OK. Then it would start all over again. I lost a lot of weight. I remember my parents trying to make me eat. I also lost my appetite, I lost all my hair and there was also a lot of nausea.”

But Hoffman ground through it all with a never-quit attitude, the same one he displays each Saturday when he pulls on his maroon Riverdale football jersey. And his reward for getting through chemo?

“That August I actually played in my Pop Warner football season,” Hoffman said with a grin. 

Hoffman said there was a lot of down time, a lot of loneliness during those four months when he was doing his treatments and his friends were all at school. There were even some times when his mind would drift to dark places, however briefly, before he would again focus on the task at hand.

“It’s definitely tough, especially as a 10-year old, dealing with things like dying,” Hoffman said. “But for better or worse I tried not to think about that and instead just think about the next day, the next round of chemo, and focus on the positives and not the negatives. But dying was definitely something that I did think about at times.”

Something else his down time afforded him was a time to satisfy his curiosity and his thirst for knowledge about Burkitt’s lymphoma and all things cancer. As the saying goes, knowledge is power.

“During my treatment I actually learned a lot about science and cancer and chemotherapy, especially when you’re not with your friends and you kind of have all the time in the world,” Hoffman said. “I became very interested in science so I learned what Burkitt’s was and the kind of chemotherapy I was getting.”

Once his treatment was over, Hoffman continued to pursue his growing love of science and it sparked a particular interest in pediatric cancer. It eventually led him to become involved with an organization called “Hope and Heroes,” a group he remains involved with to this day.

 

Life-saving work

 

According to its’ website, the mission of “Hope and Heroes” is to fund the life-saving work on childhood cancers and blood disorders at Columbia University Medical Center, including cutting-edge research, support for families and care that always puts children first. It has become something as important to Hoffman as football — maybe even a little more.

 “Starting right after I finished my chemotherapy I started doing a lot of work for “Hope and Heroes.” They do a lot of work funding treatments and they also help families pay for their cancer treatment and fund alternative therapies like massage therapy and acupuncture which is actually very helpful,” Hoffman said. “Two summers ago I went and worked in a pediatric cancer research lab at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital where I was treated. It was really interesting to see how far cancer treatment has come since when I was treated. The biggest thing I learned is that they are actually changing the way they think about cancer because each individual is different so each specific cancer is different. So when I was working there they were actually sequencing the DNA of tumors removed from patients and they were able to find the specific mutation that makes it cancerous at the genetic levels. Then they were able to select the chemotherapies and treatments based on those specific mutations so that eliminates a lot of the side effects and negative aspects of the chemotherapy because you don’t have to give someone a full regime. You can hand select the ones that are actually going to work and not give the ones that might have terrible side effects.”

It was a fascinating experience for Hoffman, except it took some coaxing from the organization to come aboard.

“I went on rounds with the doctors for that week and that was probably one of the harder things that I did because after leaving the hospital when I was sick I promised myself I would never go back,” Hoffman said. “Actually the first time I was asked to go I told them I’d rather not, but a couple of weeks later they asked me again so I decided to go.”

Hoffman’s off-the-field schedule includes a lot of work with “Hope and Heroes,” but it’s work he finds fulfilling despite the occasional speech he had to make in front of large crowds.

“I host and emcee the Annual Gala Dinner, which is in November,” said Hoffman, who had his Riverdale football team don gold socks this month in honor of September being Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month. “I am also the co-chair of our Annual Walkathon which is in May and I do various other speaking engagements throughout the year. I think it’s super important to stay involved, keep spreading awareness and keep fighting for it.”

These days, seven years removed from the hardest period of his young life, Hoffman is required to do follow-up checkups with his doctors to make sure he remains cancer-free. There are blood tests and cardiac exams all of which have come back perfectly normal.  

The timeline for being “clinically cured” of Burkitt’s lymphoma is one to three years, according to Hoffman. “So I’m in the clear,” he said with a smile.

 

Looking ahead

 

So, with cancer now firmly in Hoffman’s rearview mirror these days, the senior is looking ahead to his college years, and while he doesn’t quite know yet where he is heading — the Ivy league is a very definite possibility, he said — one thing he would like to do is remain close to the field of science.

 “Science is definitely something I’m very interested in whether it be in healthcare or something biomedical-related,” Hoffman said.

The terrifying days of February 2009 may be long since passed but they did leave a mark on Hoffman. But whatever happens with Hoffman the rest of the season on the football field, however many victories the Falcons may pile up the rest of this season, one thing is for sure — Avery Hoffman has already faced the toughest opponent life can throw at you and he came out a winner.

“I’ve done my best to forget all the bad experiences and I focus more on what good has come from it,” Hoffman said. “It definitely changes my whole outlook on life in that when you get hurt in a game or you have to miss a game, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really the end of the world. Also I know that I’ve been through the worst so any challenges that come up, anything that I have to face, I know I’ve already faced worse.”

Avery Hoffman, Riverdale Country School, Sean Brennan

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