"After being signed as an undrafted free agent out of Stanford, former Chicago Bears tight end Ryan Wetnight went on to have a pretty nice NFL career. He caught 172 passes for 1,522 yards and nine touchdowns in 47 games with the Bears. Wetnight has been involved in plenty of battles playing in the trenches during his career, but now he is involved in an even bigger battle after being diagnosed with stomach cancer back in November. «When he told me that, it was the last thing I was expecting, so it was pretty devastating,» Wetnight told the Bears official website. «The whole time my mindset had been, ‘There's no cancer. I've got an issue, but we're going to be able to take care of this.' My mindset was I'm not dealing with cancer and then all of a sudden I am. «When someone tells you that you have cancer and you've got to get this figured out because if it spreads and it gets to other places, who knows what might happen. «They diagnosed it as Stage 3, so it didn't get to other vital organs, which was fantastic. But it did get to some lymph nodes outside of the stomach.» Wetnight is still weighing his options on whether he should have a surgical procedure that involves removing the stomach or try a different route in treatment. It's going to be a tremendous battle and it will certainly alter my life, but I think they'll be able to get it all out and cure it—or at least get it into remission because we caught it early enough» he said. «I'm positive about the long-term outlook. It's just a process I have to go through, especially if they're going to remove my stomach. It's a tough process to go through and it's certainly going to be a rough year to get through all of that. «The surgery is really the thing that's got me a little scared because if I have to go through the complete stomach [removal], that's going to put me down for quite a while. I won't be able to do what I normally do for several months. So that's the big elephant in the room right now.» We wish Ryan and his family all the best in his battle and look forward to future positive updates. "
