For the longest time, the cancer and its ravages were hers alone, to secrete away in a box, to have and to hold in silence, to deal with by herself. She could handle it. Could, in fact, handle anything. She was stubborn that way. Why define herself by a disease, and more to the point, why be defined by it?
For the longest time, the cancer was hers alone, until a year ago, when it became her son’s cancer too. And whatever had been in that box after 26 years was laid raw, like a bad burn. Eleanor Hartl’s pain was now Matt Hartl’s pain, and that hurt more than anything.
All along, she had operated under one premise, that Hodgkin’s disease did not pass down through families, that her offspring had no more chance of getting it than the general population did. That’s what the doctors had told her. So when the telephone rang a year ago and it was Matt saying he had a fist-sized tumor near his sternum and it was caused by Hodgkin’s, well, that was almost too much to bear. Was she somehow the cause of this?
That eventually gave way to resolve. They would fight this together, the mother and the Northwestern fullback, united by a disease and a telephone line, she in Denver, he in Evanston. She had gone through the cancer 26 years before, when treatments weren’t nearly as sophisticated or successful. It would be better this time, she knew.
“Some of his hardest times, he would call and talk to her,” said Matt’s sister, Beth. “Being his mom, she probably gave him more comfort than anyone else could. We have a pretty strong family and a real strong extended family. I just think she kept telling him that there was all these people to help him.
“It was hard for her not to be there for him. But it was just reassuring to him that it wouldn’t last forever, and that she had overcome it herself.”
This week, barring the unforeseen, Hartl is expected to be cleared to play football again. The cancer is in remission. He is stronger than he ever has been, and the only hint that something terrible had invaded his body comes with each breath during heavy exercise. A nerve that controls the diaphragm has not functioned since the tumor was discovered, so he is operating on one lung for now.
Hartl, a key ingredient on the Wildcats’ 1995 Rose Bowl team as a redshirt freshman, will meet with his oncologist once more this week. After a year of chemotherapy and radiation, of nausea and weight loss, of renewed strength, he is expected to take the field when Northwestern opens camp in Kenosha on Monday. He’ll have a lot to play for this year, especially his mother.
The Hartls buried her May 29.
`She never complained’
The disease lived with her, but it was cloaked in disguise.
In the early 1970s, doctors treated Hodgkin’s disease much differently than they do today. They eradicated an enlarged lymph node in Eleanor’s neck through cobalt treatments, but her heart and lungs were radiated in the process and severely damaged. In subsequent years, she underwent surgery to strip her heart’s lining of scar tissue. The lining was so brittle, her heart couldn’t expand. For a while, the surgery helped.
But there was much damage, so much that doctors eventually rejected the possibility of a heart and lung transplant. Two and a half years ago, she was given a pacemaker after her heart failed, and she was forced to quit her job as a medical center manager. On doctors’ orders, she spent much of her time in bed. Eventually, her heart would betray her, but that looked to be a ways down the road.
In May, she began feeling poor, but doctors thought it was because the 19 medications she took were out of balance. They were sure they had it figured out. They did not.
She died of heart failure at 45.
“The last week, she knew it was time because she said her eyes were failing a little bit,” said Bill Hartl, Matt’s dad. “She knew what was happening. She never complained one day of her life.”
Matt Hartl watched his mom struggle with the results of a long-ago cancer treatment, but even when she died, his friends said, he never worried about walking where she had walked.
“In my discussions, he never had any fear about himself,” Northwestern athletic trainer Steve Willard said. “He just was really upset that his mother was no longer with him. I don’t think he ever felt he was headed down that same path. That never crossed his mind.”
The funeral took place in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., where she had grown up, and coach Gary Barnett and several coaches and players attended. A speaker said that after 26 years of suffering, Eleanor wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.
Had she lived, her health wouldn’t have allowed her to watch her son play in person this year. But she would have understood everything he felt, the moment of anticipation just before kickoff, the opportunity for another chance.
“She would be real excited that he gets to play again,” Beth said. “She would say that everything he has been through will give him even more motivation and courage to maybe even play better.”
She would have known.
Trials and tribulations
Northwestern will wait until Saturday to announce Hartl’s status and allow a 21-year-old to tell his own story. But his friends and family can’t say enough about where he has been and where he’s going.
“I first thought, `What more can this guy go through? Why does this guy have to go through more tests in life?’ ” running backs coach John Wristen said. “But life is a bunch of tests to see how you respond to them.”
The first test came last summer, when Hartl began having trouble breathing during workouts. By August, he had taken a raft of tests, and the consensus was that he had a virus–until a doctor heard a faint rasp in Hartl’s breathing and took an X-ray. That’s when the tumor was found deep beyond his sternum.
Less than an hour later, Hartl, Willard and Wristen, the man who recruited him out of Denver, were crying in a huddle.
“That’s one of the toughest things I’ve ever gone through,” Wristen said. “The initial thought was, `What the hell happened?’ I mean, here’s this guy who’s in the top shape of his life and the next thing that happens, he has a chance of dying.”
In Denver, the news hit even deeper.
“I just couldn’t believe it actually happened again in our family,” Bill Hartl said. “It’s such a rare cancer. It tore at everybody because we went through 26 years of it.”
Hartl began chemotherapy almost immediately. By October, the team announced he might not play football again.
After traveling with the team to the Citrus Bowl, Hartl began radiation treatment in early January. His weight dropped from 235 pounds to 200 pounds. His face was drawn. He looked, said strength coach Larry Lilja, like a “regular college student.”
Eleanor Hartl walked him through it by telephone, told him what to expect, what it would feel like. He called several times wondering whether he should come home, but she talked him into staying in school. Live your life, she told him.
The radiation was hellish and the restrictions placed on his life made him feel worse. He couldn’t lift weights. For football players, the weight room is a place for perspective, where quality of life is measured in 5-pound increments. Not to be able to do any lifting, to be kept away, is to be lost.
“At first, you could tell it was really bothering him that he couldn’t even lift and couldn’t work out,” Lilja said. “But the one thing about Matt, he always believed he was going to be able to eventually get back into it. He never, ever entertained a thought that it wasn’t going to happen.
“He stayed focused on what he wanted so that when he eventually got back into it, he was champing at the bit. He couldn’t wait to work out. I think that’s why he excelled at it, because he was deprived of it for so long.”
When the radiation treatments ended in February, X-rays showed a pea-sized spot. Doctors are confident it was scar tissue. And modern treatment has little or no effect on the heart.
He could get on with his life now, they told him.
The comeback was slow. The man who had been able to bench press 350 pounds before his illness began by lifting 135 pounds–and was sore the next day. By spring, his strength was returning. Every small victory in the weight room was cause for quiet celebration.
His teammates had marveled at how he carried himself through his difficulties. And when he was able to work out again, they marveled at what he put himself through. Even now, he gets painful cramps if he exercises too hard.
“You can’t even begin to understand all the things he has been through, to be 20 years old and to go through chemo and the pain,” wide receiver Brian Musso said. “He stayed at school during that. You could see the pain that he went through every day, the trouble he had eating, just feeling nauseous all the time. It’s just an unbelievable deal.
“And once he gets through that, his mother passes away. It’s just amazing stuff he has been through. Then you look at it and hang around with him, he handles it. It’s just amazing. He continues to work hard. He still has a burning desire to play football. I don’t know how he does it. If I had been through what he had, I think I would have shut down a long time ago.”
Lilja said Hartl will bench-press 385 pounds soon, more than he ever has in his life. He weighs 235 again.
“When he was sick, he had lost almost all the muscle mass he had put on through weightlifting,” Lilja said. “If you hadn’t seen him, you probably wouldn’t have recognized him. He was just a shell of himself. For him to come back the way he has has just been unbelievable.
“He has a remarkable temperament, that’s for sure. Just a tough kid, mentally and physically.”
The biggest question now is whether Hartl will be able to catch his breath enough to be able to play football. The tumor invaded the phrenic nerve on his left side, which controls the diaphragm. The nerve has not yet begun to function again. Until then, Northwestern plans to have oxygen on the sideline for Hartl.
“Luckily, football is an anaerobic sport,” Willard said. “It’s a series of 6-second explosions, not like basketball where it’s a lot more aerobic. That’s why he has a chance.”
Barnett likes Hartl’s chances.
“I feel good about him,” he said. “I’ve watched him work out, so I know he’s running and he’s in decent shape. The doctors have to have a conference. I think it’s more just procedural. I expect nothing but good news. I don’t expect this thing to fall through.”
The journey to here has not been enjoyable, and whether it has made him stronger or better off is an abstract concept. He was down there, and now he’s here. Northwestern opens Aug. 23 against Oklahoma.
“Everything hit us all at once,” Bill Hartl said. “But it’s just the way life is. You’ve only got so many heartbeats, and you have to make them good.
“I know he probably has a lot of hate and frustration built up. I don’t think I’d want to be Oklahoma’s defense. The frustration has to come out somewhere.”
There’s a high success rate for Hodgkin’s disease patients, although Hartl won’t be totally out of the woods for another five years. Pittsburgh Penguins great Mario Lemieux is the best example of an athlete overcoming the same cancer.
Can something good come out of cancer? Certainly Matt Hartl must ask himself that question. But deep down, he knows the answer.
Twenty-five years ago, physicians recommended that Eleanor abort her baby. There was too much risk with the cancer treatments. Eleanor refused. She would do it her way.
Beth Hartl, Matt’s sister, turns a healthy 25 next month.
