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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Ex-NMSU Coach To Have Surgery
By Randy Harrison
Journal Staff Writer
Former New Mexico State head football coach Hal Mumme will undergo surgery today in Lexington, Ky., to treat prostate cancer.
"I have cancer, but it's not untreatable," Mumme, 56, told the Journal on Tuesday.
Mumme, held a news conference Tuesday at the University of Kentucky, where he was the head coach from 1997-2000, to discuss his condition. He said he opted to go public about his condition for two reasons. One is to clear up misinformation. One media report said errantly that he has brain cancer.
"In my business, you tell everyone or you tell no one. If somebody hears you have cancer, they don't want to give you a job because they think you're dying," said Mumme.
He's been looking for a job after being dismissed in December after four years as the Aggies' coach, during which his teams went 11-38. So his attorney, Russ Campbell, has issued a four-page news release covering everything from Mumme's prognosis ("excellent"), his program-building challenges at New Mexico State (injuries and "strugggling to build depth in the face of NCAA scholarship penalties arising from graduation rates and academic performances ... under the previous staff") to his desire to coach again ("as soon as possible").
The other reason Mumme is speaking up is to call attention to the da Vinci procedure, a cutting-edge robotic and minimally invasive prostatectomy, that he will undergo today at the Markey Cancer Center.
"It's only been out since '05, and the doctor who's doing it (Stephen Strup) is pretty skilled," said Mumme. "And so we wanted to draw attention to that, help out the hospital and the Markey Center. They were great with June when she had breast cancer."
Mumme's wife, June, was diagnosed and began treatment in 1996. She since has made breast cancer awareness a mission. She co-chaired two highly successful Tough Enough To Wear Pink fund-raising campaigns at NMSU in both 2007 and 2008.
Mumme revealed Tuesday that he started to turn ill a week before two-a-day practices began in August. At first it was thought he had heat exhaustion. As his sickness persisted, he had a blood test in September that revealed alarming Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) numbers.
Team physician Dr. William Baker then suggested an infected prostate, and high doses of antibiotics that at first sickened Mumme seemed to help, making him think "I was over it."
Then, when further blood tests at midseason revealed the PSA numbers were still high, doctors said he needed a biopsy to confirm or not the presence of cancer. But Mumme wanted to wait until the season, then the holidays, passed. He had his biopsy Jan. 9 in Las Cruces.
Mumme said he's fortunate his delay was merely "stupid" rather than deadly.HAL MUMME
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