A Rocky River senior overcame cancer. Now he’s playing football, and has bigger dreams

Nakiylon Lee didn’t know why he couldn’t eat.

Out to dinner with his family one night in April 2022 at Texas Roadhouse, Lee felt something on the back of his neck. His mother, Nicole, suggested it may have been from a cold, as she noticed he was drowsy and tired.

They went to see a doctor, who said it could be mono. Lee went to school that Monday anyway.

During his first block of classes, he felt tired enough that he asked his teacher if he could go somewhere to lay down. After taking a brief nap, he felt good to go to his second block. But, after throwing up, Lee had to go home.

On April 12, 2022, after further examination, Lee’s doctor told him he might have cancer, and sent him to the hospital for further evaluation. The next morning, the Rocky River sophomore learned that he had leukemia.

“Once you hear cancer, you think of death. So, I was thinking, ‘I don’t want to die,’” Lee, who is now cancer-free, told The Charlotte Observer. “I was just thinking about my hair falling out. I wasn’t expecting it. I just remember crying.

“I’m like, ‘What did I do?’ Everybody’s saying it’s gonna be OK and this and that, but I didn’t feel OK.”

Lee loved football and basketball, and had dreams of suiting up for his high school teams, but those had been in the back of his mind. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out his freshman seasons in 2020, and he was more focused on school as the restrictions lifted.

Physically taxing

Early in his chemotherapy, Lee wouldn’t spend more than five or 10 minutes at a time awake. He’d have to take a drug to put him to sleep, then briefly wake up before being so drowsy that he’d fall back asleep.

Lee missed the rest of his sophomore year, not even receiving grades during those last few months, and he took a few classes virtually as a junior. Every two days, he would go to get three shots in his leg, in addition to receiving treatments most other days during the week.

Physically, Lee felt himself getting worse and worse. There was a period when he felt his symptoms calmed down, only for them to pick up again. And eventually, he started losing his hair.

“That wasn’t easy mentally,” Lee said. “It bummed me down. It was probably the last thing I was holding onto at that point. That I held with pride. And that happened.”

Lee starts to see improvement

Lee’s symptoms persisted throughout his sophomore year and about halfway into his junior year before he felt well enough to return to school this past January. He was officially cancer-free in late July.

Nicole Lee, his mother, noted how positive his attitude has been. Once he was feeling well enough to hang out with his friends, even if he felt badly that morning, he’d be pushing to resume his normal activities as a teenager that afternoon.

She emphasized that some weeks were tougher than others for him. Having at least four appointments every week — during which doctors would be poking him with needles — took a toll. But throughout the process, he did what he needed to do, and eventually felt normal enough again.

“It’s amazing,” Nicole Lee said. “I looked at different stories about leukemia, and his didn’t do anything like theirs did. If he was in the hospital, it’s because it was part of the treatment plan, not because he was extremely sick or extremely weak like I’ve seen.”

Still in his last phase of chemotherapy, which he receives once a month, he still goes to the hospital every two weeks.

Getting onto the football field

Nearly every day during the final stages of his chemotherapy, Lee was telling his doctors he wanted to play football this fall.

“They were kind of getting annoyed by it,” Lee said with a smile. “But they kept saying no. … They weren’t saying, ‘No, you can’t do it,’ they were saying, ‘No, don’t do it.’”

Eventually, his primary doctor gave him the green light that he was cleared to play football, but advised him that it would be hard to be a normal football player physically. Lee still takes pills every day, and the doctor felt playing a contact sport like this could be tough on his body.

But all Lee heard was that he was allowed to do it. He joined the Ravens in July during workouts, and eased into it. Over the past three weeks, Rocky River’s defensive tackle felt himself not be overly tired anymore, even feeling well enough to stay awake and do normal activities when he’s at home.

“He doesn’t waver at anything. He just takes it on,” Ravens head coach Tyson Fernandez said. “He’s a very soft-spoken young man, really reserved. He just goes through life with this calmness about him — that I’m very jealous of as a head coach who’s put in some stressful situations.”

Sparking an interest for the future

Having always had an admiration for science, and then going through this process, Lee said he wants to go to nursing school.

While in the hospital, he found himself always asking the nurses questions. Not being in school, he was always academically-motivated, and hearing these nurses’ explanations of what they were doing to him made him interested in doing their jobs.

“From daycare, I know they didn’t get grades in daycare, but he was always academically advanced,” Nicole Lee said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. That was him.

“He’s always been very smart and knew what he wanted to do. If he saw a bad grade and didn’t like it, he did what it took to change it.”

Overall, Lee said this ordeal has helped him realize how certain things aren’t as hard as people make them out to be. He’s never taken things for granted, and always just tries to make it through whatever is in front of him.

He’s always enjoyed going to school and never took that for granted. Being able to walk the halls at Rocky River again has been gratifying, giving him a greater appreciation for academics and other aspects of life.

“Coming on the first day of school, being able to go to practice after school, it just feels good,” Lee said. “Around this exact time last year, I was just sitting in the house, not being able to do anything. And I know how much I hated that. Seeing the complete turn just feels great.”

This story was originally published October 13, 2023 at 12:00 AM.