A Port Moody hockey player who twice before was able to resume his professional career after beating cancer is facing another comeback.
Wade MacLeod has a glioblastoma tumour in his brain. It’s his third encounter with the disease.
According to family friend Mike Armstrong, MacLeod was diagnosed following a seizure last September while camping with his wife and two young daughters.
Just last week, MacLeod said on his Facebook page that brain surgery in early December confirmed the tumour is Grade 4 — the highest, most aggressive form of the disease.
“That means I must go back on chemotherapy for a time that is unknown,” MacLeod said. “It is what it is. I’ll beat it again, no doubt in my mind.”
MacLeod, a left winger, was in his second season of professional hockey in Springfield, Mass., when doctors removed a golf-ball sized non-cancerous tumour from the left side of his brain after he’d collapsed on the ice during a game.
MacLeod lost the ability to speak, but extensive speech and physical therapy restored his voice and got him back on the ice. He played for various teams in the ECHL and a 34-game stint with the Toronto Marlies in the American Hockey League, a rung down from the NHL.
The following season, MacLeod headed to Germany where he scored 61 points in 50 games with the second-division Rosenheim Star Bulls.
But during the off-season, MacLeod got sick again and in September, 2016, he underwent a second surgery for another brain tumour, this time a cancerous glioblastoma.
Six months later, MacLeod was back in the ECHL.
“I’m here now and I’m ready to play,” he told broadcaster Tommy Daniels when he signed in March, 2017 with the Allen Americans in Texas.
MacLeod scored 13 points in 13 games and added eight in 11 playoff games. The following September, he signed with another German team, the second-division Frankfurt Lions.
There, MacLeod continued his point-a-game scoring pace.
He was getting ready to return to Germany with his wife, Karly, and their newborn daughter, Ava, in September, 2018, to play for a team in Dresden when he had another seizure.
Doctors removed a Grade 3 glioblastoma tumour from MacLeod’s brain and he embarked on a six-month course of chemotherapy along with speech, occupational and physical therapy. He also connected with Port Moody Integrated Health that devised a holistic healing regime including dietary changes and special hyperthermia treatments using high temperatures to kill cancer cells.
As much of MacLeod’s treatment lay outside the bounds of provincial and private health insurance, Armstrong launched a Go Fund Me campaign that raised more than $120,000. Money and messages of support came from everywhere MacLeod’s career had taken him — from former teammates with the BC Hockey League’s Merritt Centennials where he’d played junior, to Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., to the pro teams he’d alighted across North America and Germany.
“Wade’s a popular player wherever he goes,” said Armstrong, who’s reprising the fundraising effort to support his friend in this latest challenge.
“Wade’s journey is not just a battle against a medical condition; it’s a narrative of love, dreams shattered and the unwavering determination to rebuild.”
That determination was in full force in the wake of MacLeod’s 2018 diagnosis.
After receiving the all-clear from doctors in November, 2020, MacLeod started training for another crack to continue his hockey career.
“I said from the very beginning that cancer wasn’t going to be the reason I retire from professional hockey,” he told the Tri-City News.
Working out at Coquitlam’s Planet Ice with trainer Kai Heinonen and veteran NHLer Brad Hunt got MacLeod into what he said was the best shape of his life. By the early summer of 2021 he’d given his agent the go-ahead to find him a contract.
MacLeod signed with the Manchester Storm in Great Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League.
“The biggest thing is never give up on your dreams and always stay positive,” he said.
MacLeod scored a single point in the seven games he played for the Storm before heading to the Narvik Arctic Eagles, in Norway’s second division. He played six games there, and another for Lillehammer, scoring a single assist for each team.
In June, 2022, MacLeod said his hockey journey was over. He announced his retirement on his Facebook page.
“I gave all of my life to hockey and now it is time to turn the page on something that I am equally passionate about, one of the universe’s greatest gifts: life.”
MacLeod went into the insurance business, fuelled by a determination to help other families avoid some of the hardships his own had to endure when he got sick.
“I don’t wish this upon anyone, but it is now my responsibility to make sure all of you and your families are protected,” he said on Facebook.
Armstrong said he’s confident his friend has the resolve and fortitude to come back from his latest setback and defy the odds that seem stacked against him yet again.
“Wade, Karly and their families plan to not let the statistics distract them towards any sense of discouragement,” he said, adding they “plan to beat those odds by doing everything western medicine offers and then some.”
Karly MacLeod concurs.
“We did this once before and we can do it again,” she said. “Cancer will never break us.”
