(Photo courtesy of Local Sports Journal)
By Nate Thompson
LocalSportsJournal.com
The Pannuccis of North Muskegon are a self-proclaimed sports-crazed family, so it was only natural that when one of their own was dealt a life-changing diagnosis, they broke down the recovery into four quarters.
Lo and behold, 16-year-old Tate Pannucci has completed the most difficult four quarters of his young life. On April 16, Pannucci and his family shed tears of joy at DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, as doctors said he was in remission after being diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on Dec. 4, 2020.
Still, the North Muskegon junior cannot be declared cancer free until 5 years after his last treatment. So he’ll likely be a 21-year-old college student when he can celebrate his final hurdle in beating cancer.
“It was just an awesome feeling,” Pannucci said when he heard he was in remission. “A year before that, the doctors told me I could play football, but with no contact. So I basically said, ‘Oh, so no football?’ But I was on the right track. So I played tennis last year. It’s obviously not my favorite sport, but I felt like I was back on a team, and I needed that.”
All Tate needed was that glimmer of hope. There are many dark days in a fight against cancer, as Tate can attest. Through all the long days and nights at the children’s hospital, all the blood transfusions and chemotherapy treatments that made him sick to his stomach, there was always one goal that kept him fighting.
“Deep down, I’ve always dreamed of playing football for North Muskegon,” he said. “My dad played and coached there, my brother (Brennan) played quarterback. I was the water boy, the ball boy for those teams. There’s just something about pulling on that jersey and being able to represent North Muskegon and what it means to the community.
“Hopefully my dream is finally happening.”
Although he’s been working in the weight room religiously, hoping to regain the strength and the nearly 40 pounds he lost from his 2½ years of chemo treatments, the 6-2, 200-pound center still has another obstacle to overcome. Due to the high-dose steroids and the oral chemotherapy treatments, a condition called osteonecrosis has made his bones become brittle. And an injury to his femur in his knee he sustained midway through his recovery has not fully healed. The injury reared its ugly head during the start of fall camp, when the knee got twisted at practice, and Tate went down in severe pain.
“The crack healed (in his femur), but the end of his bone has essentially died,” said his father, Vince Pannucci. “He’ll likely have to go through surgery at the end of the season. Doctors have said they’ll have to replace the bone with new bone and hope that it grows.”
Still, it seems like it will take a whole lot more to keep Tate off the field this fall for the Norsemen. His doctors have told him if he can endure the pain, he can try to play.
“The way that I look at it, what I’m going through now is not as worse than what I’ve been through,” Tate said.
Pannucci knew something was off when, as an eighth-grader, he was completely winded after running up the basketball court just once during a game. He also was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning and had occasional spells of light-headedness and noticed he was looking extremely pale. His parents, dad Vince and mom Jennifer, credit the swift action of Tate’s pediatrician, Dr. Karl Nicles, for having Tate rushed over to DeVos after a blood test. The family later learned that Tate’s hemoglobin – the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen -- was at an intensive care unit critical level.
“It was at a 3.6 or 4, and it’s supposed to be 18,” Tate said. “The doctors said if I wasn’t in good shape from playing sports, I could have been in a really bad spot.
“I knew something was wrong, but there were like a thousand things going through my mind,” he added when he arrived at DeVos. “There were like 10 different doctors and they were running IVs, doing all these tests. Something inside me said, ‘this doesn’t feel right.’”
When doctors confirmed the leukemia diagnosis, Pannucci said ‘his whole life stopped.’
“You think it could never happen to you, but once it hits, it’s a whole different story,” he said. “Obviously, we all broke down. It was a dark, dark day.”
Still, Tate found solace in the incredible staff at DeVos, including the nurses, doctors and support staff that made him feel incredibly cared for.
He also had a small army of support not only in North Muskegon, but throughout West Michigan.
“I had to battle and I wouldn’t have gotten through it without all of them,” Tate said. “There’s a motto that goes, ‘Norsemen never fight alone,’ and I’ve really tried to adopt that.”
A special source of motivation was a close friend of his dad named Dusty Mysen, who was battling pancreatic cancer at the same time as Tate’s diagnosis. Mysen’s tumor eventually shrunk, enabling doctors the opportunity to perform successful surgery.
“He stayed in contact with me and gave me that motivation to keep fighting,” Tate said. “I always tried to keep the mindset that they picked the wrong person to have leukemia, because I was going to beat it.”
“The community was phenomenal,” added Vince Pannucci. “It’s crazy with this Snapchat stuff, the kids knew he was in DeVos before many of our other family. I think our phone rang about 45 times that night.”
At the time of his diagnosis, older brother Brennan was a senior at North Muskegon, while his sister Natalie was a sophomore. Both were ... multi-sport standouts.
“Tate’s mom took a year and a half off work, and I remained working, but I’d go to DeVos and often stay from 4 until midnight,” Vince recalled. “But we always had people helping us out, running our kids to different sporting events when we couldn’t be there, or cooking us meals. All of the support was just a huge blessing to us.”
Even people whom Tate had never met provided support. When his brother Brennan’s North Muskegon squad met Pewamo-Westphalia in the playoffs in 2019, the Pirates’ coach, Jeremy Miller, heard about Tate and his diagnosis. So Miller sent a Cabela’s gift card to the family for $250.
“So during quite a few trips we made to DeVos, we’d often stop at Cabelas for a treat for the boys,” Vince said. “Just generosity of people like that. It’s amazing.”
According to research from St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, recovery of ALL is remarkably successful, as 98 percent of children go into remission within weeks after starting treatment. Still, Tate had some extremely tough days.
One of his worst weeks he said was dealing with severe headaches, which kept him at DeVos for four straight days.
“Finally, my doctor ordered an MRI on my brain, to just make sure there were no blood clots, because that could be a major issue,” Tate said. “They were able to pinpoint the issue due to a sinus infection and they were able to get that cleared up.”
He also was diagnosed with Covid, but doctors performed a blood transfusion and injected antibodies that cured the virus quickly.
He’s now reduced to visits to Devos once a week, but his most recent caused him to miss the first day of school. Swelling in his knee also limited him to just be a spectator for the Norse’s opening-game victory over Pewamo-Westphalia. Tate did dress for the game, a thriller North Muskegon won on a last-second field goal, 17-14. Brennan, who is now playing football at Kalamazoo College, was excused from fall camp to watch the team in action and support his brother.
North Muskegon coach Larry Witham said he’s pulling for Tate to see some game action this year, but at the same time, using his junior year as a “redshirt” year to rebuild his strength and stamina, while hopefully not further injuring his knee, could also be an option.
“He’s just a real happy-go-lucky type of kid,” Witham said. “Very bright scholastically, and just the kind of kid you want to root for. I know his mom and some in his immediate family are less than excited about him playing this year, but Tate’s determined to get back to a normal life. He’s always been bound and determined to beat it.”
And Tate’s using the same mindset he used to beat leukemia to get back on the field.
“I’ve really been working as hard as I possibly can this off-season,” he said. “I’ve worked 20 times harder than I ever have before because I know I’m 2½ years behind everyone else. Most of my teammates have played a couple full seasons since I last played. So I know I have to try 120 percent harder on everything I do and play that much harder on every single snap.”
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