Vada Murray

Not too often, we stray from the friendly confines of what's going on with the current Michigan squad. Today marks the start of fall practice and the first time the entire team has assembled with coaches since the end of last season. And while this is certainly a great time to look forward to the future of Michigan football, we're going to delve into the not-so-recent past.

This post is inspired from a similar post today from Brian at mgoblog. I don't make it a common practice to lift ideas from other blogs, but I just felt I needed to post the story of Vada.

Vada Murray was a defensive back for Michigan in the late 80's/early 90's. After graduation, he became a police officer for the Ann Arbor police. He's been on the force for 17 years.

In October of last year, he felt a strange lump on his rib cage. He was set to have the benign lump removed surgically...a minimally evasive operation. Once inside his chest, doctors discovered Vada had Stage 3b lung cancer. At the time of his diagnosis, he was 41 years of age and had never smoked.

There is no time frame for this particular type of diagnosis. There is no cure and operations are useless at this point. All that is left for Vada is chemotherapy, living as healthy as possible, and having a positive outlook.

Vada's wife Sarah keeps a blog about her husband's battle with cancer. Saturday's post was not good news.

Unfortunately, we learned yesterday that the chemo is not working.  There has been further growth of Vada's tumors.  He begins a new form of chemotherapy on Monday.

Many people have asked how Vada is doing.  He is tired.  We are 24 hours into receiving the news that his chemo is not working.  He is having a hard time.

As for me, I would say the same.  I am very scared.

As always, we look to you - our family, friends, neighbors, corworkers, acquaintances - for arms to catch us when we feel like we're falling down, and strong legs to help us move forward.

Sarah

I encourage anyone who feels they want to help to just visit their blog and sign the guestbook. They do read it. At this stage, that is all we can do for them.