Doyel: Back on his feet, with help from No. 12

The football was in the hall.

Colton Crace didn’t know it was a football. Didn't know anything about it. “A surprise,” he was told. Out in the hall. If you’re interested, that is …

Well, of course Colton Crace was interested. It's a surprise. He’s a teenager. He's interested. But he was lying in a hospital bed in Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health, where he’s been since June 23, two weeks after doctors told him the lump on his neck wasn’t an infection. It was cancer.

Round 1 of chemotherapy was that weekend, and it drained Colton of energy. The whole thing has been devastating, several weeks of high anxiety over the unknown, then the diagnosis and chemo, cutting his weight from 134 pounds to 98. For 10 days he didn’t get out of bed.

Exercise? This week he was ready to start. Maybe. When I saw Colton on Tuesday and asked about exercise, he pointed to a white board across the room.

Leg lifts, the board said.

Knee bends, it said.

“You’re going to exercise in bed?” I asked him, teasingly incredulous.

Colton smiled wearily and shrugged and gave me the sign-language word for: “We’ll see.”

Colton’s deaf, but he can carry on a conversation just fine. In addition to sign language he's a great communicator, gesturing for the non-reader of sign language.

And the surprise, someone told him. It’s in the hall.

* * *

Nothing’s come easy for Colton, and by that I mean nothing. Cancer came for his eye as a baby, and eventually the eye was removed. A cyst-covered kidney also was removed, just to be safe.

Now this. Metastatic cancer that started in his sinus cavity and has spread to his spinal column, ribs and several other skeletal parts.

Toughest kid I’ve ever seen? Probably Colton Crace. One eye, one kidney and he’s been playing sports for years. Playing them well. Colton was one of the leading hitters in 2015 for the Indiana School for the Deaf, and I will remind you he was hitting the baseball with just one eye. Try that.

Doyel: Teen has lost much, but his courage holds fast

Last year Colton joined his fraternal twin, Cody, at Gallaudet University, the country’s premier college for the deaf. Cody played basketball as a freshman. Colton was a team statistician.

Cody’s going back to Gallaudet this fall. Even though he aspires to return to Gallaudet as well, Colton’s staying home to fight cancer, and that’s what his metastatic cancer faces: A fight from Colton Crace. This kid, he just attacks life. He was attacking me the first time I saw him in the hospital last week, responding to my feeble attempts at humor by reminding me — unnecessarily, I may add, Colton — “you’re no Pat McAfee.”

Oh heck yes he’s a Colts fan. Colton’s cell phone has a Colts protective case. On his hospital bed is a Colts pillowcase, handmade for him by a family friend. When Colton tells me that he wants to own a business someday, preferably something in sports, he adds a few words in sign language that his mother, Jodee, translates for me.

“Like Jim Irsay,” she says.

His favorite player is another Colt: quarterback Andrew Luck.

Oh, and that surprise? It’s in the hallway.

* * *

This is what the chemo did to Colton Crace: made him too tired to communicate with me. The first time I saw him at Riley, his parents handed me a notebook. Asked me to write down what I wanted to say. He’d read the paper.

Well, I can tell you one thing: everyone got tired of waiting for me to write whatever question or statement or stupid joke — I’m no Pat McAfee, you know — and so eventually the notebook was gently taken from me and his parents translated by signing the words to Colton.

Colton was slightly better Tuesday, and the white board had suggested exercises written for him. Those were goals. Colton wasn’t sure he could do it. We’ll see, he said.

A day later Colton was summoned to the hallway. Well, sort of. Come out here, don’t come, whatever. Up to you, Colton.

Colton rose into a sitting position. Family and medical staff helped him out of bed. Guided him to the door. In the hallway was Colton’s palliative care doctor, and he was holding something.

A football. Signed by Andrew Luck.

Slowly, cautiously, Colton kept walking.

Now he was holding the football, and now this kid — this kid who hadn’t been out of bed in more than a week, whose goal 24 hours earlier was to do knee bends while on his back — was slowly walking the hallway for exercise.

“What a beamed up smile!” says his mom, Jodee. “What a joy.”

What a strong kid. He’s going to own a business someday, you know. Something in sports. Maybe the Colts.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter:@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.