Frenchie

'Team Frenchie' has coach's back
Soccer champ has plenty of help at kicking rare cancer

By DAN RALEY
P-I REPORTER

ISSAQUAH -- Michelle French's face and eyes were swollen. Clearly, this was an allergic reaction to something, her doctor advised her. Medication was prescribed.

Players from the three soccer teams she coaches, girls ranging in age from 9 to 16, all competing at the premier level for the Eastside Football Club, wanted to know what was wrong with her. Some got right to the point.

"Is your hair going to fall out?" one of the youngest ones asked.

"I don't have cancer!" French responded, humored by the impertinent question.

Three days of drugs didn't work. French, 31, noticed she now felt dizzy when lifting weights, out of breath when running on a treadmill, all of which she did inside her Issaquah Highlands home. She had run the Seattle marathon and was training for a half-marathon. She felt light-headed even while leaning over to pet her dog.

French's hands, arms, shoulders, back and neck started to swell. She changed doctors. She made an appointment at Eastside Family Medicine in Bellevue. She was asked to come in on a Saturday at 10:20 a.m. due to her unusual symptoms. She showed up with her mother, Jeannine, in tow. She had soccer games to coach at 3 and 5 p.m. She kept checking her watch, thinking there was plenty of time to get there.

After a round of testing, the doctor asked French to step into another room for a different exam and to allow him to speak with her mother. The technician setting up the next machine asked French if anything had been explained to her, to which she answered no.

"You're going to have a long day," he warned, offering nothing more.

French returned to the consultation room and found her mother teary. This wasn't any allergy. French had a lemon-sized tumor in her chest, one wrapped around her vena cava superior, an artery that controls the blood flow from her upper body to her heart. She had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a kind so rare her doctor hadn't seen this strain in six years.

It was all sort of cruelly ironic because French was normally healthier than all but a tiny sliver of the population. She was the state's second-most-decorated women's soccer player behind Michelle Akers, a first-team All-American for the University of Portland, a U.S. Olympian in the 2000 Sydney Games and a three-year defender for the Washington Freedom and San Jose CyberRays until the Women's United Soccer Association disbanded.

She was admitted to Swedish Medical Center that night.

Seven weeks have now passed, and French is back coaching her girls and working out. The swelling has disappeared. So has her curly hair. She had it shaved off after it started falling out in clumps. She is receiving six chemotherapy treatments to shrink the tumor. She has a very optimistic 90 percent chance of recovery. All that swelling was a blessing.

"It's pretty lucky," she said. "If it wasn't in the spot it was in, they might not have found it in time. It sort of backed up the plumbing."

More amazing is how French had handled her ordeal. There's been no panic, despair or loss of control -- sort of how she handled herself as an elite soccer player. Forget any medical privacy issues. She wanted to share her situation with everyone in her world.

During a weeklong hospital stay, French sent out e-mails to her 45 players and their parents explaining her cancer, and then provided updates. She invited everyone to come visit her.

"She has always been a role model and an inspiration as a player, but through this illness the way she's connected to the girls has been totally unbelievable," said Linda Whatley, who has one daughter coached by French and another who has been a French teammate when both played for the Seattle Sounders women's team. "She's just as positive as can be."

Rather than ask why me, French says she understands why she contracted this rare form of cancer. "I think it's to give the kids I coach a good learning experience," she said. "You see this as a scary thing, but it's an opportunity. It's how you deal with adversity."

There also has been plenty of humor involved, not to mention an abundance of gifts, flowers, greeting cards and Halloween candy that practically turned her Swedish hospital room into a dorm room. Some of her younger players made and delivered handmade cards that were created in typically brutally honest fashion, depicting the coach with an oversized head.

French joked about the original lemon diagnosis by writing the following in an e-mail: "I'm totally, completely, absolutely ready to kill this bugger and get back to my amazing teams! As the saying goes, 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!!!' And that's just what I will do!!!"

People responded by bringing lemonade to the hospital and making toasts. One parent bought her a shirt with a lemon on the front and the words: "If life gives you lemons, squirt them in people's faces."

Former teammates contacted her through text messages or e-mails, with the exception of one fairly high-profile individual who insisted on calling straight through to her hospital room. It was Mia Hamm.

If there is a downside to her illness, French had planned to give the newly created Women's Professional Soccer League a try and might miss her chance. She attended the combine in Tampa, Fla., to show off her skills before falling ill. The seven-team draft will be held in January. It might be tough to persuade a coach to pick her up and ignore her health issues.

Yet she's not spending a lot of time stressing over that opportunity. If it happens, it happens. Her unfailingly upbeat attitude won't let her have it any other way. Besides, she's still got a meddlesome lemon to deal with.

"This is obviously a life-changing thing," French said. "You can't have a bad day anymore. Every day is a good day."

FUNDRAISING
Several fundraising efforts have been started in the local soccer community to help defray Michelle French's burgeoning medical costs. Donations can be sent directly to Team Frenchie, P.O. Box 880, Issaquah, WA 98027-0032. Soccer mom Linda Whatley is urging local teams and others to buy red wristbands inscribed with the words "Team Frenchie" and "Just Kickin' It" by e-mailing her at ltwhatley@comcast.net. The Washington Youth Soccer Association is raffling off a trip for two to watch Manchester United play at Old Trafford football stadium in England, with details available at wsysa.com.

P-I reporter Dan Raley can be reached at 206-448-8008 or danraley@seattlepi.com.