Chase Smith was in Cleveland, sitting in the office of renowned hematologist and oncologist Pete Anderson, listening to the doctor’s plan of attack for the fourth round of Smith’s now five-year fight with Ewing’s sarcoma.
This time, in April, the tumor had turned up in the top portion of his left lung instead of his right leg, where it was the first time around.
Doctors in Indianapolis had suggested surgery to remove part or all of the affected lung, but Anderson was in favor of aggressive, pinpointed radiation that could save Smith’s lung while also avoiding damage to the heart and esophagus, both of which were adjacent to the tumor.
The take-no-prisoners approach appealed to Smith, but when he heard that the first step in that process would be chemotherapy — which had put him through physical hell in the past without much in the way of results — he recoiled.
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"He wanted to start right then and there, and I wasn’t mentally prepared to do that," Smith said. "It was almost like the sky came falling down on me. I just had a mental breakdown in his office."
Seeing her son in the throes of what he termed a "full-blown panic attack," Kelli Smith decided to take the initiative.
"He got very angry, which is not like him," she recalled. "So I said, ‘Come on; let’s go for a walk,’ and I got him to a place where it was a little more private.
"I took his face and I said, ‘You listen to me. I know that this sucks. I know that you don’t want to do chemo. I know that you do not want to go through all of this. But I am here; I’ve got you. We are going to do this together. I need you to take a breath, because you have a couple of options. You can do this, and you can fight; or you can not do this, and you can die. That’s it. We have nothing else right now.’"
In that moment, Chase Smith decided to do what he’s done every other time Ewing’s has landed a punch and knocked him down — or, for that matter, every time he’s stepped up onto the starting blocks at a swim meet.
Go at the opposition hard with everything he’s got, and win.
Won’t back down
The competitive fire that drove Chase Smith to become an elite age group swimmer — he was ranked fourth in the nation among 12 year olds in the 100-meter butterfly in early 2014 — has been his greatest weapon in the seemingly endless fight against a disease that refuses to let him be.
Every time cancer has thrown a haymaker at him, Smith has punched right back.
But round four has been, in some ways, the hardest one for Smith, his family and his friends. Not only do they all know the survival rates go down with each relapse, but Chase is 18 years old now, a senior at Indian Creek. It’s easier to be naive about the stakes when you’re a 13-year-old kid. And he’s much more aware of what losing this battle would mean.
So are his parents.
"Especially at this point, everything that happens, you wonder if this is going to be our last fight," said his father, Brad Smith, who doubles as his swim coach. "With every relapse, or every re-occurrence, or every little thing that happens, the percentages go down and down and down. So that’s always in the back of our mind."
How could it not be?
While the outlook is generally positive for children diagnosed with Ewing’s — the five-year survival rate for first-timers is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 percent, according to St. Jude Children’s Hospital — it gets less sunny each time the disease returns, especially if the cancer moves to other parts of the body.
Dr. Melissa Bear, who has been Chase’s oncologist at Riley Hospital for Children since his first cancer diagnosis in July 2014, says it’s hard to put a precise number on the chances for recovery, because there are so many variables to consider when discussing cases involving multiple relapses. But the odds at this point aren’t great.
Chase, though, has been bucking the odds ever since Ewing’s sarcoma showed up in his right thigh five and a half years ago.
That fall, he had surgery to remove seven inches of affected bone and muscle, with part of a cadaver bone inserted. He has walked with a limp ever since and probably always will. But that hasn’t stopped Smith from remaining competitive in the pool. He’s led an Indian Creek contingent to the state meet in each of the last two seasons, helping the Braves qualify in all three relay events as a junior.
Because of the physical toll cancer has taken on his body throughout his adolescence, winning individual races at the sectional or state level is no longer a realistic possibility. That could have been a tough pill to swallow for somebody who was accustomed to success at a national level. But Smith is still plenty strong enough to be an asset to his team, which he says has actually been more satisfying for him.
"I had a lot of individual success at a young age before I was diagnosed," he said, "and I always just looked at relays and looked at the team atmosphere, and I always wanted that. I longed for that during my individual success. That put me in the mindset — once I did have an actual team, and teammates that were dedicated and solid swimmers — now my attitude is individual success is cool, but team success is a lot better. Being able to enjoy it with other people and working as a team makes me more happy than individual success."
That team-first attitude mirrors how Smith lives the rest of his life. Those closest to him are quick to point out that despite everything Chase is going through himself, he’s always the first one to be there for somebody else.
"If I ever have anything going on, he drops whatever he’s doing to help us," said Brady Brown, a teammate and long-time friend. "It just amazes me, somebody that’s always going through something, that it just doesn’t faze him. He’s always just there for us, too; it’s a two-way street."
Family ties
Never has being a part of the Indian Creek team meant more to Chase than it does this season. Not only is it his last swimming for his father — the only coach he’s ever had in the water — but it’s his lone opportunity to swim on the high school team with both of his first cousins, Joey and Sam Smith.
Joey, a sophomore, was with the Braves last winter; Sam, a freshman, joined them this year. The two brothers were home-schooled growing up, but both started attending Indian Creek as ninth-graders just so they could be teammates with Chase.
"We’ve been looking forward to this for a while," Joey said. "Really, since we started swimming, that we’d all be on the team and be on a relay. … It means a lot to him and all of us getting to swim together, having the whole family all together."
Having the chance to go through his senior year alongside his cousins and his other close friends on the team was a major motivating factor for Chase as he underwent chemotherapy and radiation throughout the spring and summer.
In his mind, those guys were all counting on him to be there this season, and he wasn’t about to let them down. So he just got it in his head that he wouldn’t.
After being out of the water for most of May and June, when he was receiving chemo through a backpack, Chase has returned with a vengeance, determined to clear the high bar that he always sets for himself.
"Obviously, it was a slower start to the season than I wanted, going through everything over the summer," Chase said. "But it was only more motivation to fast-track the recovery.
"I’d say I’m about where I was last year at the start of the season, but I’m getting better at a faster rate. … Being behind forced me to train harder."
The volume of that training has been constrained not only by the cancer treatments, which left Chase with a cough so strong that it broke one of his ribs, but by a recent bout of pneumonia that has carried into December and limited his practice time to less than an hour a day at its worst points.
So far, none of that has held him back. While still battling the lingering effects of the pneumonia, Chase won both his individual events and swam on two first-place relays in the season opener against Mooresville, and he helped the Braves win two more relays at the Pike Invitational.
Based on those early returns — and knowing Smith’s tenacity — his teammates are feeling confident about their prospects for success over the next two months.
"We feel like we’re faster than we’ve ever been, so it’s our last chance to go fast and see what we can do," said senior Clay Key, who rounds out the Braves’ strongest relay quartet alongside the three Smith cousins. "Not just going to the state meet; we’re trying to push ourselves to actually place at the state meet this year."
Still fighting
Round four of this fight hasn’t officially reached its end, but so far, it looks as though the gamble that Chase took with Anderson and his team of doctors in Cleveland is paying off.
The tumor in his lung, which at one point had grown to the size of a fist, is either dead or dying, and scans in November revealed no new growths. Some or all of the tissue from that tumor will likely have to remain in Smith’s lung. But that’s a price he’s willing to pay to keep the lung there with it.
He takes a nightly dose of a drug called Pazopanib, which cuts off the blood supply to the tumor, but there won’t be any more liquid chemotherapy treatments, which is good because, for Chase, that has become the deal-breaker.
The doctors in Cleveland convinced him to do two cycles this past spring in an effort to shrink the tumor before beginning radiation treatments. Though the mere suggestion triggered what he called "almost like some PTSD" in him, Chase reluctantly acceded. But his parents don’t believe he would do so again. It has ravaged his body and provided no real benefit in return.
"We totally get it," Brad Smith said of his son’s aversion to liquid chemo. "We’re not sugarcoating it anymore; he’s been through hell. I think a lot of times people look at him, and here he is; he’s back in the water swimming, and somewhat competitively, and you’re like, ‘It’s great.’ He’s hurting. Anything and everything he does, he hides it very well. Sometimes it’s a mental thing; sometimes it’s the physical pain. But it’s not been an easy road."
"He hates chemo, and he knows that chemo does not work for him," Kelli Smith added. "That’s hard for extended family to hear. They don’t want to hear that. But I know that that’s his line. I just know."
With any luck, it won’t come to that.
Next month, Chase will return to Cleveland for another set of scans, including a full-body PET scan. Family and friends are always on edge when those days are approaching, but they’ve learned to adopt Chase’s mindset.
"There are some times that you think about it and the weight kind of hits you," said Andrew Long, a classmate and close friend who was by Chase’s side during that pivotal April trip to Cleveland. "But him and us have almost taken on an arrogance toward it, because this is his fourth time being diagnosed and he hasn’t lost yet. So we’re going to keep that undefeated (streak) as long as it needs to go."
It takes a village
When he’s not in a doctor’s office, Chase is trying his best to just live the life of a normal teenager.
From a swimming standpoint, that means the Johnson County meet in his home pool on Saturday, followed by a few more weeks of the rigorous mid-season training that’s meant to help his body peak for the big post-season meets in February.
When he’s not in the water, Chase enjoys doing the same things that most young men do — hanging out with his friends, playing video games, watching movies, activities that might seem quite trivial in comparison to the typically grown-up challenge of battling cancer.
The people closest to him have come to appreciate how much he cherishes those moments of normalcy, when he can forget about everything he’s enduring and just be himself, and they’re happy to help with that.
"I’m not afraid to talk about (cancer) or anything like that," Long said. "It’s just, that’s a lot of the stuff he does … when he’s not with us. When he’s with me and his other friends, we’re just trying to hang out and have a good time."
"Really, we just hang out and do nothing," Brown added, "like there’s nothing that’s ever been wrong with him. Just try to help him get away from all that."
It’s not always easy. No matter where he goes, Chase is usually going to be recognized by somebody, especially in and around Trafalgar, where he’s long since earned celebrity status. Long cracks a smile talking about how local residents have been known to pick up Chase’s restaurant tab if he’s spotted out at Mi Jefe or any other place they might frequent in town.
But Chase, who was named Indian Creek’s homecoming king in the fall, has obviously earned that stardom the hard way, and it’s gained him the admiration of not only his peers, but everyone else.
"He’s kind of an inspiration to everybody," Indian Creek athletic director Derek Perry said. "When you’re having a bad day, think about what he’s went through.Â
"We’re a tight-knit community, and when he feels it, we all feel it. That’s just the community we are, and I know he has tons of support."
As much as Chase might like a bit more anonymity, he’s grateful for all of the love he’s received.
"People really have rallied around me," he said. "It gets a little overwhelming sometimes, and I would say I take it for granted more than I should, but then I try to take a step back every once in a while and appreciate what I have here."
Always an inspiration
Chase’s status as a legend is by no means limited to Trafalgar. The entire swimming community — statewide and especially in Johnson County — reveres him, and he’s also garnered attention from all around the country.
Last summer, he was invited to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game as the guest of New York Mets prospect Tim Tebow, who first gained fame as a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at the University of Florida and was in town with the Triple-A Syracuse Mets.
He’s made the biggest impression, though, on those who have known him the longest, back when he was allowed to just be Chase Smith, a normal kid with abnormal swimming talent.
"The greatest tribute that you could make to Chase is he’s inspired a lot of people that aren’t even on his team," Franklin swim coach Zach DeWitt said. "Whether that’s from his competitions as an age-group athlete — and he really was a stud — to his far greater battle with cancer, he’s been an inspiration to everybody. I don’t care whether you go to Indian Creek, Greenwood, Center Grove or Franklin, he’s somebody that I think everybody looks to for a source of strength."
Longtime Center Grove coach Jim Todd has been a close friend of the Smith family since before Chase was born. He says he and his staff, much like the Indian Creek community, have been impacted by all the highs and lows that have come in the last five years.
Todd says the same attributes that have always helped make Chase shine in the water are what have guided him through this back-and-forth scuffle with the disease.
"He always has a very positive attitude through the whole thing, and it’s really great to watch from that aspect of it," Todd said. "If anybody’s going to beat this, it’s going to be Chase.
"He had that same attitude when he swam and raced — ‘I’m just going to beat you.’"
Powering through
An elite athlete, Chase’s body was better prepared than most for the beating the disease and treatments dish out.
That was especially true this summer, when the tumor growth was constricting his breathing tubes and causing him difficulty. Dr. Jacob Scott, the oncologist handling his radiation therapy at the Cleveland Clinic, said he might not have moved forward so aggressively on a weaker patient.
"Someone who was less healthy and and less tough, I would have stopped treatment entirely with the fear that I’d hurt them worse," Scott said. "But because of how tough and in good shape he was, we were able to really swing for the fences with him, and I think that helped."
Chase’s physical and mental toughness might have been best demonstrated by an anecdote Scott and nurse Michi Gray shared from this summer. Smith came in limping more than usual and complaining of some soreness in his right thigh, so the doctor had him get some x-rays taken.
Turns out that the metal plates that were holding Smith’s surgically repaired leg in place the last five years had come undone.
"All of the surgical hardware had completely ripped off of his leg," Scott said, "and he literally had a broken femur and was just walking around on it like it was no big deal, taking, like, Tylenol. I was like, ‘Man…’
"He’s as tough as nails and has a smile on his face all the time."
Chase hadn’t mentioned it at all. Go figure.
Looking ahead
The future isn’t something the Smiths were always sure would be there for Chase — prom, graduation, college and beyond. But Brad Smith said those events started to feel a lot more real a few weeks ago when he got to order his son’s cap and gown.
Now, he’s even letting himself look forward to those days, at least a little bit.
"There’s been some points four years ago when we thought, ‘Are we even going to get to this point?’" Brad said. "And now we are. And even his doctors in Cleveland reassured us, ‘He needs to apply to college; we’re going to get him there.’ That was huge for us.
"We always tell parents that we have no idea what the future holds, so you’ve got to plan for it," Bear said. "Right now, we know Chase is doing great, and hopefully that’s how it stays, and so he absolutely needs to set his goals and make his plans, whatever that looks like for him."
What it looks like isn’t entirely clear yet.
Swimming in college has been a dream for Chase since he was a very young kid watching Michael Phelps race on TV and practicing flip turns on the couch. But while that’s still an option, he’s been eyeballing another pretty appealing one — the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.
Smith was evaluated before and deemed ineligible, but the certification process has changed, and the family has been led to believe that Chase would almost certainly qualify now.Â
It’s something they haven’t really followed up on yet with everything else that’s been going on this year, but it’s definitely piqued Chase’s interest.
"We’ll see in the next few months," he said. "The whole process will happen fast if it does go through, but as far as I understand, I should be able to hop right in and represent (Team USA)."
The good place
Swimming has been Chase Smith’s sanctuary for most of his life, and his father’s even longer than that. But for the past five years, having access to that happy place has been more important than ever.
Brad Smith usually arrives at the Indian Creek pool around 4:45 a.m. These days, he has an even greater appreciation for those quiet early-morning moments when nobody else is around.
"Just hearing the water going through the gutter system and what not, it definitely kind of relaxes me a bit," he said.
Like father, like son.
Through this entire ordeal, the water has been a big part of what keeps Chase sane. So on trips to Ohio, part of his father’s job is to find a pool that he can use, whether it’s for training or just to get in and get wet for a few minutes.
Either way, it’s home.
Swimming has not only helped Chase power through his cancer fight from a mental and emotional standpoint. Perhaps more than anything, it’s been his own sheer force of will that’s kept him alive and flutter kicking this whole time.
Chase Smith doesn’t accept defeat, period. He hasn’t let cancer get the better of him yet, and he’s not going to. He readily admits to having had brief periods of doubt and vulnerability throughout this whole process. Even so, when you’re sitting across from him in his father’s poolside office and he says, "I’m by no means invincible" …
… Well, it has become pretty damn hard to believe him.
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Johnson County swimming and diving meet
When: Today, 9 a.m.
Where: Indian Creek High School
Tickets: $5
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