BYU basketball: Rose shares his good prognosis

PROVO — The pancreatic cancer that has afflicted BYU basketball coach Dave Rose is in remission.

The cancer required emergency surgery earlier this month in Las Vegas to remove Rose's spleen and part of his pancreas, and the prognosis for the Cougar coach's recovery is very favorable.

"With the scan we see, there's no further evidence of cancer," Dr. Scott Samuelson said Wednesday in a press conference at BYU to update Rose's condition. "That doesn't mean there's not a possibility that the cancer couldn't come back at some point, but the encouraging thing about that is if it were to come back it would likely come back a long time from now."

And because recent CAT scans at Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City show that physicians at Spring Valley Hospital in Las Vegas were successful in removing all of the pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, Rose has no need at this point for chemotherapy, radiation treatment or further surgery. Doctors don't believe Rose's cancer has spread outside his pancreas.

"These cancers, when they do reoccur, normally don't reoccur for a number of years, and when they do reoccur they tend to be slow-growing cancers that are frequently much more manageable than we typically think of with pancreatic cancer," Samuelson said.

For now, all that is being prescribed is rest to recuperate from the surgery so Rose can regain the strength needed to resume his regular every day activities. For the next two months, Rose will be on a controlled schedule and will delegate much of his coaching and recruiting duties to his staff, with plans to return to coaching full time by September.

"I believe that I am a lucky guy," Rose said in discussing his illness publicly for the first time. "I believe that I've been hit with a challenge but that it's a challenge that is manageable, a challenge that I can handle and continue to do what I love to do. ... It's been as difficult as anything I've ever been through, but I feel like I got a second chance and I'm ready to go."

The first Rose noticed any symptoms was when he felt weak and dragging at BYU's annual fathers and sons camp a few weeks back. Then, on a family vacation to Disneyland the first week of June, Rose became lightheaded. He became even more lightheaded on a flight from California to Las Vegas to meet with wife Cheryl's family for the weekend and had to be assisted off the airplane by paramedics, who transported Rose to Spring Valley Hospital.