Pro fisherman Jarrett Edwards had the world by the tail, or rather, fin, until learning this spring that he had a form of cancer. Edwards, 25, was in his fourth season on the CITGO Bassmasters tour when doctors discovered a tumor the size of a fist and a half beneath his left collarbone. He was eventually diagnosed as having Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
"It was totally unexpected," said Jerry "Bubba" Puckett, the editor of a Arizona-based fishing magazine. "One minute he's on the national tour, and the next minute he's in Denver being operated on."
Edwards, who has called Page and Lake Powell home since 2000, believes his life was saved by a helmet provided by his sponsor, Triton Boats. He was wearing the helmet when he encountered some rough water at Clarks Hill Reservoir in Georgia while shooting photos for magazine work. At first he attributed soreness to the helmet bouncing off his collarbone.
"Later on that night, I noticed my neck had taken a pounding. You can still see right here," he said, pulling back his shirt to reveal a scar. "This is where they removed the lymph node." If the helmet had not permitted early detection of the tumor, doctors told Edwards that he would have lived only 18 more months.
Surgery on March 31 in Denver revealed the worst. The tumor tested positive for a cell found in only 2 percent of people with Hodgkin's. Then came the darkest days for Edwards and wife Rebecca -- they elected to undergo chemotherapy treatments followed by radiation, and the first series of chemo "cocktails" in Denver just about did in the 87th-ranked angler on the Bassmasters tour.
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