Doyel: The cancer was like termites in your bones and his whole deck was about to collapse

SHELBYVILLE – When the cancer comes back, and doctors say it will, Jason Ferguson will catch it sooner this time. Last time he had no idea why his hip kept hurting and his ribs kept breaking. I mean, he'd sneeze and a rib would break. He had no idea. Didn't go to the doctor.

When it comes back, he'll know better. He'll do better. Well before his next bone breaks, he'll put his hands on the sore area and test it, like he's doing now inside a locker room before the Class 1A regional at Southwestern High, testing his shoulder while his whistle hangs from his neck, over his black-and-white striped official's shirt. He's showing me what he will do by poking his shoulder and then moving to his bicep and then ...

"Are you probing yourself, Jason?"

Inside the officials' locker room, the 41-year-old Ferguson breaks into giggles. It's a tough room, a snarky room, a loving room. This is why Jason Ferguson, a 1991 Columbus North graduate who lives in Whiteland, was determined to officiate again after being diagnosed with a cancer in May – so determined that he never, um, cleared it with his doctor. On his own Ferguson decided he was ready to run the court with big, strong teenage athletes who could stumble in the wrong direction – his direction – and snap one of his weakened bones.

Before the game, I pose to Ferguson: If your doctor knew, would he let you go out there tonight?

"I don't know," he says with a smile. "It's why I didn't ask."

If the cancer comes back – "and it will," Ferguson tells me, "it will" – it won't find a man afraid to live his life. Ferguson loves the camaraderie of his officiating crew, loves it when Shawn Sherfy of Muncie catches him demonstrating how he'd examine sore areas and asks with disgust, "Are you probing yourself, Jason?"

Ferguson's crew has the regional's second game, Morristown vs. Jac-Cen-Del. When the opener between White River Valley and Tindley ends and those officials enter the locker room, Ferguson bellows to the new arrivals, "Guys, this is Gregg Doyel from The Star. He just wanted to see the best crew in the state."

The room breaks into laughter. This is why Jason Ferguson wouldn't let his fatal form of cancer kill him. This, and a few other reasons: Cole, Chase, Cooper, Cody. Those are his boys. And Brenda. That's his wife.

Jason kept the broken rib a secret from Brenda, but that's OK. Brenda's been keeping a secret from Jason.

***

The Southwestern regional wasn't Ferguson's first game since being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in May, undergoing stem-cell treatment in July and spending three months on medical leave – sleeping when he could, otherwise using a wheelchair to save his bones and his energy.

This isn't even his first sports season back.

Ferguson returned for football in October, a ludicrous, dangerous proposition given the cold weather and his depleted immune system, to say nothing of his brittle bones and the mottled football fields he was sharing with 22 high school football players.

"I was sick to my stomach," Brenda says, "but he loved it."

Ferguson's first game back was Scecina at Monrovia on Oct. 17, maybe a week since he'd started jogging again.

"And what a mistake that was," Brenda says.

It was a fluke. His son Cooper had reached the bus stop one morning before realizing he'd forgotten his backpack. Jason ran home to get it. Grand total: Two blocks. End result: Exhaustion.

A week later he was at Monrovia. Brenda drove him. The deal was, Brenda would come back after the game to pick him up. But when Ferguson disappeared into the officials' dressing room, Brenda went looking for the Monrovia athletics director and asked him to keep an eye on her husband. Then she stayed for kickoff. And a little longer.

"He doesn't know about this," Brenda says. "I watched for about 20 minutes."

***

Multiple myeloma is one of the worst cancers. There are no good ones, but the kind that attacked Jason Ferguson is particularly awful. The average life expectancy for a patient is seven to 10 years after diagnosis. It's a killer cancer, and before it kills it injures.

Jason Ferguson was driving to work when it broke his first bone. He sneezed, and a rib on the left side cracked. He kept quiet about the severity of it, but about 10 days later he was cutting grass when he turned the lawnmower – and broke a rib on the right side.

"Who's been beating you with a baseball bat?" his doctor asked.

Blood work was done. Turns out, cancer was beating him with a baseball bat. The body sends white blood cells to fight bacteria, but with multiple myeloma it doesn't stop sending them. The bacteria are gone but the sentry cells are still coming, and they're programmed to eat something. So they start eating the bone. A calcified lesion develops. Ferguson remembers being in the locker room at the Class 4A boys sectional at New Castle last March when something in his chest popped.

"I heard it," he says. "That was one of my lesions snapping. Lucky I didn't break a rib."

Ferguson tells this story in the locker room at Southwestern. Sherfy is listening. He worked the New Castle sectional, too.

"You didn't mention it the whole tournament," Sherfy says.

"Dude," Ferguson says, "I had no idea."

Ferguson's oncologist gave him an analogy to explain multiple myeloma, and Ferguson gave it to me:

"It's like having termites in your deck," he says. "Termites are there, but you don't know until you step on it and shatter the whole thing. 'How did my deck just fall apart on me?' You had underlying problems with the structure."

After the two broken ribs, a full body scan showed lesions on Ferguson's femur, both ankles, clavicle, neck and spine. His whole deck was about to collapse.

Ferguson had the diagnosis, called Brenda home from work and met her in the driveway.

"Brenda, it's all through my body," he said.

"He never used the word 'cancer,' " she says now. "But I knew."

She also knew he would fight. He is young, married, with four beautiful boys. And he loves being a referee.

***

Ferguson figures lots of officials – "Fifty?" he says. "Hundred?" – have reached the double pinnacle of Indiana high school sports, working state title games in football and boys basketball. Ferguson reached it in 2013, working the Class A basketball final between Borden and Triton at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, and the Class A football final between Tri-Central and Eastern Hancock at Lucas Oil Stadium.

He knows a lot fewer officials have worked those events, plus a state title game in girls basketball. Ferguson came close, reaching girls semi-state, and wants a title game.

"I'm convicted to get back to where I was, and if I felt like it was gonna beat me, I'm sure it would have already," he says from the crowded officials' room at Southwestern. "I wouldn't be here if not for guys like this. Obviously, getting yelled at by people in the stands for $70 a night isn't why I do it. It's for the love of the game. And the love of my partners."

Officiating paid for Brenda's engagement ring. They met at Franklin College, Jason picked up some youth games here and there, and when he popped the question he had a ring he'd bought by saving up his officiating checks.

Their oldest boy, Cole, is 15. Then it goes Chase, 13; Cooper, 6; and Cody, 4. Because Jason was afflicted so much earlier than most multiple myeloma patients – usually stricken in their 60s – doctors gave him more time than the typical 7-10 years of life expectancy.

"Eight to 14 years," he says.

"We have a 4-year-old," Brenda says. "It's devastating to hear that."

There are exceptions to multiple myeloma's death grip, and Ferguson met one at a game last month at Greenwood High. A man told Ferguson he, too, had been diagnosed at an early age – 44 – but here he was, 70 years old, and in 26 years the cancer hadn't come back.

Doctors tell Ferguson it will come back, putting the odds at 100 percent, so he checks his body – probes it, you might say – to catch it early. Meantime there are victories. He returned to the football field, then the basketball court. He goes to Cole's JV games at Whiteland High, and watches Chase and Cody play too. He fishes with Cooper.

Last weekend he had his first haircut in nine months. Chemo left him bald under his official's hat for football, then he sprouted soft, downy clumps of hair for basketball. Sunday he saw his barber for the most satisfying trim of his life.

"A watershed moment," he says.

A few days later he's in the locker room at Southwestern, teasing and being teased by crewmates. He's telling me about another missed sign of the cancer in his body, the time last year when he could feel a piece of his hip break off after being knocked down while playing basketball with kids and dads on Cody's team, and ...

"You let a kid run you over?" bellows Kerry O'Brien, an official from Indianapolis.

"Nah," Ferguson shoots back. "I was just demonstrating: 'Kids, this is how to take a charge.' "

The room explodes in laughter, and I leave. Family belongs in here, family only. Jason Ferguson has two families, and he's living for both. One of them is behind the door I just closed, their laughter following me into the hallway outside.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel