On May 6, 15-year-old Johnny Brande was playing a video game with his older brother Jake in their Palm Desert home.
When the heated game of NBA 2K was over, he raised the controller above his head in victory.
“All of a sudden I had this sharp pain in my shoulder, like a 10-out-of-10 pain,” he said. “Like the nerves or something were shooting pain down my whole arm and it was terrible. We had to go to the ER, it was like unbearable.”
After a few trips to the emergency room proved inconclusive, he got an accurate prognosis for his strange shoulder pain a few days later and it blindsided Johnny and his family.
“I thought it was going to be a regular golf injury because I had played golf every day for like the past seven months,” said Johnny, a rising golf star hoping to forge a career in the sport. “There was always a bump there on my shoulder and I thought it was like an inflammation. But … it wasn’t.”
A mass on his shoulder was pushing down on his nerve. It was cancer. Specifically, it was a rare form of cancer called Ewing sarcoma which primarily afflicts young people. There are currently between 200 and 250 cases in the United States, less than 1% of all childhood cancers.
What little is known about this particular cancer is that it often occurs in people between the ages of 10 and 20, most often afflicting Caucasian males. A link has also been drawn to sudden growth spurts. Johnny ticked all of those boxes.
“When I found out, I was caught off guard, obviously, but I just sort of went into a mode like ‘There’s nothing I can do about it so, let’s go. Let’s deal with it. What do I have to do now?’ And just started thinking about it like that,” he said.
Johnny is your classic 15-year-old sports junkie. A typical outfit for him as he sits around the house these days, unable to play golf or run around outside for the time being, is a pair of Los Angeles Clippers shorts, an L.A. Rams jersey and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap.
Baseball and golf are his two primary sports to play, but the 6-foot-1 teen has made the decision to focus on golf and is all-in on his quest to make the sport a part of his future. The Brandes live in the shadow of Palm Desert Country Club and dad Jim is a caddie at Bighorn Golf Club so Johnny has ample access to the game he loves. Already hitting drives in the neighborhood of 300 yards, Johnny’s plan was to homeschool this upcoming school year to help him focus on his golf game and travel the junior circuit.
He’ll have to press pause on those plans for now.
Springing into action
While stunned by the news, the Brande family did already have some personal experience with both the emotional toll and the long road ahead that was still to come.
That’s because Jim was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2021. He went through treatment and chemotherapy, just like Johnny is doing now. Jim says he is 99% cured.
“You never say 100% cured with any cancer,” Jim said. “But (Johnny’s) handling it really well. Maybe the fact that I went through it already is helping, but also he’s just a fighter.”
Having gone through a cancer battle already, Jim knew an oncologist to call: his doctor, Luke Dreisbach at Desert Hematology and Oncology in Rancho Mirage
The Brande family credits Dreisbach with being the early hero of what they hope will be a triumphant story.
It was Dreisbach who helped fast-track Johnny through the testing, scans, biopsy and the surgery to put in the port which facilitates chemotherapy, all in the quest to get Johnny’s treatment started as fast as possible. That fateful pain during the video game happened on May 6 and Johnny had his first chemotherapy treatment on May 15, a remarkably quick turnaround.
By comparison, Jim said it took about two and a half months from the time his cancer was diagnosed to the day he began chemo. The two cancers are not linked in any sort of hereditary way, doctors have said. Both Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Ewing sarcoma are “unlucky cancers” meaning there is no rhyme or reason why a certain person gets them.
On the way home from the hospital after Johnny’s initial diagnosis. Jim and Johnny stopped at a barber shop and both shaved their heads in a moment of unity.
Ewing sarcoma is curable, but that quick turnaround for Johnny makes a big difference.
“When this was all going down I was an emotional wreck sitting next to his hospital bed, but because Jim knew Dr. Dreisbach and he got the tests and everything started right away, it gave me a sense of ease,” Johnny’s mom Erin said. “If we didn’t know him and he didn’t know our situation … I don’t even like to think about it … he really saved the day and maybe our son’s life by getting it all started so quickly.”
Johnny has begun a chemotherapy regimen at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center on the campus of UCLA. Each session is three days long and he is scheduled for 14 sessions. He has completed three so far. They sap his energy, but otherwise he has not had any ill effects from the procedure so far.
And the chemo appears to be working. The bump on his shoulder has shrunk and test results have been positive through those first three chemo sessions.
“It’s all such a whirlwind and so much happening, maybe I haven’t even fully processed it yet, but I just kind of go where I’m told and do what the doctors say and just focus on like the next day,” Johnny said. “So I wouldn’t say I’m getting used to it, but I’m just trying to get through it.”
Sports are a big part of his life
Brande is addicted to the sport he loves the most, golf, and he can be found on the course most days, but the cancer, the chemo, subsequent surgeries and the radiation treatments still to come will keep him off the links.
Though he is physically able to, doctors have told him not to take a full golf swing during this part of the process, particularly with his shoulder being the origination point of his cancer.
Undaunted, though, Johnny has a chipping net and a putting practice surface in the family living room, so throughout this process, he will be honing his short game from the living room carpet past the kitchen and down the hall.
In the hunt for a silver lining, Erin joked that maybe when he is able to play a full round of golf again, his short game will be way better than it was before. That’s been part of the family’s mindset throughout this process, keep the energy positive, finding ways to laugh and power through.
“He’s just a really tough kid and as a parent, you know your kid, but when you step back and watch them going through something like this, I mean, it’s impressive. I’m just so impressed by him,” Erin said.
And she’s not alone. Knowing he’s a sports fanatic, Johnny has received some words of encouragement and even some special visits by renowned members of the athletic community.
While he was at the hospital at UCLA, the Bruins’ golf coaches stopped by to talk to him and wish him well, and then, on the night before their NCAA regional game, the UCLA baseball team crowded into his hospital room to take a photo with him.
“That was pretty wild,” Johnny said. “They said some players from the baseball team were going to stop by and I was thinking it would be two or three but it was like 30 of them. I’m a UCLA fan now for life, for sure.”
But the most coveted shoutout he received came from a member of his favorite pro sports organization, the St. Louis Cardinals. Thanks to some family friends, word about Johnny’s plight reached Bengie Molina, the former Major League catcher who won a World Series with the Angels and is currently the Cardinals’ Spanish-language broadcaster.
Molina sent Johnny a swag bag that included among other things, a home and road Cardinals jersey autographed by Molina. And the former catcher whose brother Yadier is one of the greatest Cardinals of all time, sent Johnny a personalized two-minute video message that ended with him saying, “You are not going to give up. Many blessings to you Johnny. You have a friend here in Bengie Molina. Keep fighting man.”
That word “fight” keeps coming up when people talk about Johnny.
He and the family are in what Jim calls “Game 7 mode.” Which means doing whatever it takes each day to combat the disease.
Johnny’s older brother Jake, a 17-year-old baseball and basketball player at Palm Desert High, probably summed up the family’s attitude toward Johnny’s battle with cancer best.
“I was heartbroken at first, but the second they said it was curable, I felt better because I know Johnny and I know he’s going to beat it,” Jake said.
Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com.
A gofundme page has been set up in Johnny’s honor to help with medical expenses and frequent trips to UCLA. Search Johnny Brande at gofundme.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Focused on the fight: Palm Desert teen golf prodigy diagnosed with rare cancer
Reporting by Shad Powers, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
