Spartanburg, S.C. ? Mark Fields was tossing and turning, rolling over every few minutes to check the clock to see if it was time to get up.

After missing all of last season with Hodgkin’s disease, the Carolina linebacker could not wait for training camp to begin Saturday morning.

So excited to get back into his No. 58 jersey, Fields surprised other linebackers by showing up unusually early to the training room Saturday morning.

“They were like, ‘Mark, this is not like you,”‘ Fields said. “They could tell I was a little anxious to get out here.”

It was just under a year ago that a cut on his thumb sent Fields to the sidelines during training camp.

When the wound didn’t heal, the team sent Fields back to Charlotte to see a specialist. Several rounds of tests later, he found out how serious it was.

“We drove back from here to Charlotte because of a thumb injury — before I know it I had six doctors in front of me telling me that I had cancer,” he said. “It was a heavy hit. It was like nothing you can imagine. Nothing.”

In the 12 months since, Fields had to watch from an upstairs suite at Bank of America Stadium as the Panthers marched on without him to the first Super Bowl in franchise history.

He stayed out of the spotlight, giving pregame motivational speeches to his teammates before slipping away.

He shared private moments with linebackers coach Sam Mills, who also is battling cancer, as the two endured grueling chemotherapy sessions.

After a spirited two-hour practice Saturday, Fields acknowledged there were times he thought he’d never play football again.

“When you get that chemotherapy and that radiation in your body, and you’re at home and you have those days when you can’t move … you think, ‘Man, this is not going to happen,”‘ he said.

Fields made a brief return to the Panthers in June, going through light workouts during spring practices. But he wasn’t cleared to go full-speed until training camp.

The Panthers plan to take it slow with Fields and only will let him practice once a day for now.

He had a career-high 127 tackles in 2002, a team-record.