By: E&P Staff Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Lacy J. Banks first disclosed his fight with prostate cancer and two other life-threatening health conditions during the paper's week-long offer of free prostate screenings.
Now, he's launching a blog about his struggle with prostate and brain cancer, and congestive heart failure.
"My blog will take you with me as I go from serious sickness to, I hope, miraculous recovery, by the grace of God and the aid of God-gifted doctors and nurses," Banks wrote Tuesday.
Banks, 64, has been a sports reporter and columnist at the Sun-Times for 35 years -- but he's been a Baptist preacher for two decades longer than that, and his faith is evident in the blog. He wrote that he's determined to steer the course of his treatment, with help from God.
"In other words, I have promoted myself to being CEO, as best I can, of my medical dream team, where, first and foremost, God is my primary-care physician," he wrote.
Banks has been in tough medical straits before. He has a family history of congestive heart failure, which killed his father, two siblings, and an aunt. Prostate cancer killed three uncles.
He had triple-bypass surgery in 2001, and was forced to undergo a serious operation just three months later to replace experimental titanium plates that failed to stabilize his sternum.
His diagnoses now include brain cancer might require surgery, "end-stage congestive heart failure, which definitely requires a heart transplant," and prostate cancer, which also requires surgery.
"Any one of these diagnoses is enough to drape a man with doom and gloom," he wrote. "But the Lord has seen fit to visit me with all three."
A Vietnam War veteran, Lacy and his wife, Joyce, have three daughters and five grandchildren from 39 years of marriage.
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