Lawrence High assistant football coach Devin McAnderson huddles up with the running backs prior to Friday's game against Olathe East at Haskell Stadium. McAnderson missed two weeks of coaching due to a potentially deadly bone-marrow disorder.

McAnderson runs a pregame drill.

Roughly 28 hours before his first varsity start at quarterback for Lawrence High, senior Andrew Miller rushed off the practice field to see a man in a blue sweatshirt watching from the sidelines.

Eyes wide open, steps delicate, Miller approached the visitor and went in for a hug.

“How you doing?” Miller asked in a soft voice.

“Forget about me, man,” the man responded. “How you doing? You taken care of those nerves yet?”

Miller laughed and then turned serious again.

“How’s the treatment going? Are you feeling all right?”

The questions were aimed at Devin McAnderson, a 2001 Lawrence High grad and current LHS football coach who had missed nearly two weeks of practices after being rushed to the Kansas University Hospital in the middle of the night earlier this month for treatment of a disease known as myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a bone-marrow disorder characterized by the underproduction of one or more types of blood cells due to the dysfunction of the marrow.

It was obvious in Miller’s eyes he was worried about his coach. Despite McAnderson’s attempts to keep the exchange focused on the player, Miller had questions he needed answered.

And McAnderson did his best to deflect every one of them.

“Devin’s a very caring and sharing person,” LHS coach Dirk Wedd said. “There’s no other way to describe him. He believes the football team is a family. The kids have embraced that, and they not only respect him, but they love him, too. That says a lot about what a great coach he is.”

It says even more about what the Lions were missing while McAnderson was ill.

Six days before the assistant coach’s return to the team, McAnderson was confined to a single room at his parents’ house, off limits to visitors, fighting for his life.

The end of a football career

McAnderson’s first encounter with MDS came shortly after graduating from LHS in 2001, when he was at Garden City Community College on a football scholarship.

“I woke up one morning and was just exhausted,” Devin said. “It was almost like I was so tired, I was sick to my stomach.”

His condition worsened. In the best shape of his life, he began to lose his breath after walking up just three or four steps. Fatigue was his constant companion. His heart raced and beat in his ear “10,000 times louder than normal.”

Devin returned to Lawrence for Thanksgiving and told his family about the mysterious symptoms. Initially, allergies were the suspected cause. No one knew that Devin was experiencing the symptoms of a life-threatening disease.

It took 10 months for doctors to test Devin’s blood. Had they waited a week longer, he might not have made it, according to what his father, Ramon McAnderson, said doctors told him.

But on May 21, 2002, after a blood test revealed possible MDS, Devin was rushed to KU Med Center.

“He had seriously low blood counts when he first came in,” said Dr. David Bodensteiner, staff hematologist and professor of medicine at KU. “This is something older people get and that makes Devin’s situation so surprising. In reality, we don’t know why someone like Devin would get this.”

Ramon religiously charts the blood count results, taken twice a week.

The numbers have fluctuated since Devin’s first diagnosis. But not a day has gone by where the family hasn’t thought about them.

“You live by those numbers,” Ramon, said.

He underwent seven days of chemotherapy, countless blood transfusions and a regular dosing of a drug called Cyclosporin, which suppressed the immune system and allowed Devin’s body to accept the blood his bone marrow produced. His condition improved a few months later, and Devin stopped taking his medication.

Convinced MDS was behind him, Devin, who had moved back home from Garden City when the disease surfaced, attempted to walk on to the football team at KU, where his brother Brandon was on scholarship.

But KU doctors told him the risk – for both the university and Devin – was too great.

That led Devin back to Lawrence High, where he became an assistant coach in charge of running backs. Wedd added Devin to his staff without thinking twice, and football was back in his life.

“LHS means a lot to me,” Devin said. “I love being out there with them. I love watching them play. If I didn’t have football, this would be a lot harder to deal with because football is an outlet for me, something to take my mind off of what’s going on.”

Devin said he has used many of the lessons he learned as quarterback for the Lions in his fight against MDS.

“He’s taking it on just like he took on a 14-point deficit in the huddle, meaning he surrounds himself with positive vibes and spreads those around to everyone else,” Wedd said.

Plan of attack

Devin acknowledged the difficulty of remaining positive after the disease resurfaced after two years in remission. He tries to stay strong for his family as much as himself.

“I don’t like for my family to worry,” Devin said. “If someone’s going to worry, let it be me, and I’ll handle it. Everything happens for a reason. I’m just lucky they found it. As long as they found it and they know what’s going on, it’s easy to stay positive because it’s all I can do.”

The approach appears to be working.

“Devin’s so upbeat about it that you have to stay upbeat with him,” said his mother, Michelle.

At this point, Devin has two options. The first is to continue taking Cyclosporin. If that fails, a bone marrow transplant is the second line of defense.

Devin’s best chance at finding a suitable bone marrow donor lies within his family. His brother Brandon and sister Tori have a 25-30 percent chance of being a match, Bodensteiner said.

Devin underwent more testing Thursday. Results are expected sometime this week, and at that point the family will look into testing the siblings.

Brandon, KU’s leading rusher in this, his senior season, said he’d put everything on hold to help Devin, even if that meant leaving football.

“I love football, but I love my brother more,” he said. “I’m ready to go tonight. If I’m a match, I’ll take a little bit of pain to get my brother healthy, and I won’t think about it for a second.”

True to character, Devin insists he can wait until KU’s football season is finished.

“The risk to the donor is really very minimal,” Bodensteiner said. “The risk is being pretty sore for a week or two.”

The road ahead

Medical costs have started to pile up. Insurance covers only a fraction of what is required to treat the disease.

But the family hasn’t blinked at that.

“Finances are the least of my problems because I could care less,” Ramon said. “As long as they get him well, I don’t care how much it costs. We’re going to find a way to get him what he needs, even if we have to go broke.”

The only thing the McAndersons care about at the moment is that Devin is still with them, smiling, laughing, fighting.

He was in the press box Friday night during the Lions’ loss to Olathe East and continues to live his life the way he wants despite MDS weighing on his mind.

He plans to do that until something forces him to stop. Or, better yet, until he overcomes the toughest opponent he ever has faced.

“I just try to do everything the way I normally would,” Devin said. “If the (blood) counts aren’t as high as we’d like, I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘Oh no, the medication’s not working.’ It’s a slow process. But as long as I’m here, I’m fine.”