Sulphur Coach Wins the Battle of His Life

For Sulphur head football coach Paul Bourgeois, the 2008 season was the most difficult of his life. However, it had nothing to do with the Golden Tors’ 5-5 record.

After each football season Bourgeois visits his family doctor for a routine checkup. But when he went to his doctor in February of 2008, something didn’t feel right.

“I was going through a stage where I felt real tired,” said Bourgeois. “There were some things that we talked to the doctor about, so we did some blood work and everything came back negative.”

After the visit, he was experiencing the same symptoms. Bourgeois didn’t have much energy and lacked the drive to do normal daily activities. He went back to the doctor in April and asked for more blood work.

This time the doctor came back with some disturbing news. MRI results showed that Bourgeois had a quarter size benign tumor in his brain. As soon as he received the news, Bourgeois drove two hours to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston. He was scheduled to undergo surgery to remove the tumor on June 3, 2008.

“The surgery lasted ten hours and went well,” said Bourgeois. “The reason for the length of the surgery was because the tumor was in a bad location, basically in the center of my head.”

The surgeon was able to remove all but six millimeters of the tumor. What was left was destroyed through six weeks of radiation treatment.

Bourgeois began his radiation treatments in late July of 2008. He had to undergo radiation once a day, Monday through Friday. With a new football season beginning in early August, Bourgeois did not want to spend weeks at a time at MD Anderson. He decided to go back and forth between Sulphur and Houston.

“Thank goodness I have the coaching staff that I do because they were basically running the show during August,” said Bourgeois.

Many people told Bourgeois that driving back and forth during his radiation treatments was ridiculous. But the coach didn’t see it that way. Coming back to Sulphur every chance that he could gave Bourgeois a sense of relief.

“Traveling back and forth worked for me,” said Bourgeois. “MD Anderson is a sad place to be. There are some very, very sick people at that place. To be able to come to work and be with youth, coaches, and a lot of healthy people… I felt better when I came home.”

In the six months following his surgery Bourgeois gained 60 pounds. But the weight gain wasn’t due to his diet or work out habits. The tumor basically smothered his pituitary gland. The pituitary gland secretes many important hormones which greatly influence growth and metabolism.

“Basically I have no use of my pituitary gland anymore,” said Bourgeois. “It doesn’t look like I work out and diet, but I do, and thank goodness I do because obviously I would be a lot bigger.”

The road to recovery for Paul Bourgeois looks outstanding. He went back to MD Anderson in October of 2008 and learned that the lesion was no longer reasonably defined. And the news was even better for Bourgeois when he returned to Houston in April. The lesion was even smaller than it was in the previous examination.

Now having survived this ordeal, he has an even greater appreciation for being able to do what he loves, which is coaching high school football.

“This has been my most enjoyable spring since I have been in coaching,” said Bourgeois. “Last spring I wasn’t sure if I would be able to continue coaching, and with the surgery looming, I wasn’t able to enjoy myself because I didn’t know the outcome. Now I’m just happy to be here.”