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Johnson Battling Eye Cancer

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 23, 2009

TAMPA - Winning a spot on the New York Yankees' roster was at the forefront for Jason Johnson. Then the cause of blurred vision in his right eye changed everything just days before spring training began.

An eye doctor saw something he didn't like. A specialist agreed and sent Johnson to the Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia, where the problem was confirmed.

The 35-year-old pitcher had a small melanoma cancer tumor, and Wills' staff offered a sobering assessment.

"They're like, 'There's three things we do,'" Johnson said. "And I said, 'Yeah, what's that?'"

Johnson was told: "The first thing is to save your life. Save your life, save your eye, save your vision in that eye in that order."

"All right, I'm worried to make a baseball team this year, and now I'm worried about my life. It's kind of scary," he said.

Johnson was told he had a rare form of cancer that affects at most 2,500 people each year, but that it can have a 98 percent treatment success rate.

"They don't know the cause of it," Johnson said. "It doesn't run in families. They say a lot of times people don't even notice it. The tumor was actually seeping and like bruised something, so it kind of separated the retina a little bit and caused my vision to get a little blurry. It was lucky, but unlikely."

The tumor was located at the back, lower part of his retina near the optic nerve. Johnson underwent successful radiation therapy treatment, spending four days at the Philadelphia institute.

"I'm all right," Johnson said. "It was a shock."

Johnson, a nonroster invitee, will be limited to indoor workouts until a week from today because doctors want to avoid the risk of infection from the playing field dirt.

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