Randy Moss is trying to spread awareness about the importance of men’s health by sharing more details about his battle with cancer.
The former NFL wide receiver and Pro Football Hall of Famer joined ‘Good Morning America’ on Sept. 4 to shine more light on the difficulties he faced overcoming bile duct cancer late last year and earlier this year.
First and foremost was the shock of the diagnosis. Even though Moss had been retired since 2012, he had continued to put in work to stay healthy. When he got the news he had cancer, it was jarring.
‘I just think that when you live your life a certain type of way of eating right, taking care of your health, and all of a sudden you get diagnosed with cancer … I was overwhelmed, like hit with a ton of bricks,’ Moss said.
The next challenge came with the treatment, which included a six-hour surgery to remove parts of several organs, chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
After coming home from his various procedures and treatments, Moss said he’d feel unable to get out of bed or leave his bedroom at all. It took some intervention from his wife, Lydia, to put his recovery process into perspective.
‘We needed him, and he needed us,’ she said. ‘I was kicking down them doors, I was opening up those blinds. I was like, ‘Even if I just have to sit here, I’m just going to sit here. Even if you’re angry, even you don’t want to talk, we’re going to be here.
‘And you don’t think about that until you’re faced with, ‘What if he isn’t going to be here?’ And that was really hard. It was really hard because that’s not something you just sit around and think about.’
After Moss got through his cancer battle and returned to his duties as an NFL analyst for ESPN, it wasn’t long before he had to step up and be a part of someone else’s support system.
Moss recounted getting a phone call from Deion Sanders asking for his help and advice as Sanders went through a cancer battle of his own.
It reminded Moss of his older brother, Eric, who suddenly died of heart failure in 2019 before the age of 50. Moss shared that he didn’t get a chance to spend much time with his brother before he died, but Sanders’ call ‘took me back to my brother.’
Sanders told Moss that he was struggling and was also unable to get out of bed or leave his bedroom most days. Moss told him he related to that hardship before sharing his biggest piece of advice: what his wife told him.
‘One thing that my wife told me is, ‘Man, get on out of here and let the family love you. They miss you.”
Moss said Sanders followed that advice, then thanked Moss via text after spending more time with his family.
‘That was more of a burden lifted up off of my chest, because of what I’ve been going through over the last couple of years, that I could finally be there for somebody,’ Moss said.
‘I think that there’s a lot of – when I say, ‘selfish men,’ I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way. We just (have) that macho: ‘I don’t need a doctor to tell me what’s going on with me.’
‘I think for me it’s just more that you don’t want to go see that doctor before it’s too late.’