Burns overcomes cancer diagnosis
CORAL GABLES — Not long after the ball cleared the fence, there were tears. Then there was laughter. And dancing.
Anita Burns wasn’t in Coral Gables the night her son Michael, an outfielder at Miami, crushed a grand slam against in-state rival Florida State back in April. But the steady updates from her husband Mike Sr. — who was at Mark Light Field for that dramatic moment — had her celebrating back at the family’s home in Colorado.
The home run itself was pretty great. So was the ground ball Burns hit later in the game that eventually lifted the Hurricanes to a much-needed, 5-4 extra-innings win over the Seminoles.
For Anita and Mike Sr., though, the fact Michael Burns was merely on the field that night was reason to smile.
Less than a year before those well-timed hits, a cancerous tumor, two surgeries and 37 radiation treatments put Burns’ dreams of playing at Miami in danger and threatened to end his baseball career.
But the former two-sport athlete, his parents and his doctors had other ideas, formulating a plan that would not only get rid of his cancer, but protect the limbs Burns needed to continue playing.
Among those plans? Inserting a 17-inch titanium rod into Burns’ leg to support the femur that was weakened by the radiation treatments the 22-year-old needed after he was diagnosed with myxoid liposarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer that usually affects people between 40 and 60 years old.
“You think about what you were doing a year ago and it’s like a dream come true now. I was learning how to walk again last year,” said Burns, who began radiation treatments last May while playing at Cisco College in Texas. “Now I’m battling for a playoff spot at the University of Miami. … Life stops on a dime when you hear that word, ‘cancer.’ I had plans, so many plans and they got stopped very fast. When that happens, you don’t have plans anymore.”
Among those cheering Burns throughout his treatment and recovery has been Hurricanes pitcher Jeb Bargfeldt, who was Burns’ roommate at Cisco last year. The two met while at Wichita State, where both signed out of their respective high schools.
Eventually, both transferred to Cisco, their sights set on one day playing again at the Division I level.
But before the two landed in Miami, it was Bargfeldt who pushed Burns to tell his parents about the lump that was growing on his leg, even as Burns was hitting .363 last spring at Cisco.
Burns was initially hesitant. The lump wasn’t painful, he was still playing well and another friend of his had just dealt with a similar lump, one that turned out to be nothing more than a fluidfilled cyst. The possibility of it all being anything more serious than that never really crossed his mind, he said.
And so, it wasn’t until Anita and Mike Sr. came to visit their son that they learned about the mass — and only because Bargfeldt jokingly brought it up over dinner.
Once Anita Burns saw her son’s leg, though, she knew something wasn’t right.
The very next day, Anita began pushing for her son’s treatment, something that wasn’t exactly easy in a smalltown of roughly 4,000. There was, first, X-rays with a nurse. Then an MRI, the results of which Anita had overnighted to Colorado where a friend of hers, an oncologist, could read them.
It was only then — when that oncologist recommended removing the lump before it could further impact the blood flow in Burns’ leg — that the family began to worry.
Two days later, Burns was back in Colorado for surgery with Dr. Ronald Hugate, a limb-preservation specialist who removed the tumor. Because of how it had grown close to some blood vessels and nerves, some of the tumor’s margins couldn’t be removed without damaging Burns’ leg. Initially, the thought was that wouldn’t be a problem because the tumor could be benign and that one surgery would be the end of Burns’ treatment. That wasn’t the case. Further testing revealed the tumor was cancerous, and again, the Burns family scrambled, with Michael having a second surgery to insert the metal rod in his leg. Radiation began soon after.
“It was week after week of a lot of bad news,” Anita Burns said. “He thought he might never play baseball again and we really didn’t know if he’d ever play any sport again. You just don’t know.”
Burns’ treatment went as well as the family could have hoped, with the outfielder even playing some through radiation. By July, Burns was playing summer ball and communicating regularly with Miami’s staff, which was eager to welcome him to campus.
Last fall, Burns was participating in offseason workouts with the Hurricanes, proving to his new teammates, coaches and even to himself, that he was well.