Former South Carolina QB Stephen Garcia humbled by support after cancer diagnosis: 'It's truly amazing'

Stephen Garcia didn’t have the first clue what was going on. He had just awoken from his colonoscopy and couldn’t understand what his doctors were saying. But when he looked at his wife, Maria, who sat there with tears streaming down her face, he knew something was wrong.

All Garcia wanted to do was leave the hospital and go home. His doctors knew that wasn’t an option. Once the anesthesia wore off, the reality began to sink in: he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer.

“I kind of was like, ‘Well, that kind of sucks,'” Garcia told reporters on May 8. “‘That’s pretty shitty news. What now?’ Because we had no idea what was going on.”

Garcia, a former quarterback at South Carolina from 2007-11, first began experiencing pain in the lower left side of his abdomen last July. At the time, he didn’t think much of it, believing it might simply be irritable bowel syndrome and something he could get through without much concern.

But after a few months, as Garcia put it, “it just never ended.” That’s when Maria urged him to get an ultrasound.

“When I got an ultrasound, the ultrasound noticed a few spots on my liver, and they recommended getting an MRI. So we got the MRI, they found two lesions on the right side of the right lobe of the liver, and they said, ‘You’ve got to go get a colonoscopy immediately,” Garcia said. “So we did, and the guy went up there and said he was 13 centimeters up and said, ‘I can’t pass through there without knocking anything down. We’re going to order a biopsy to make sure it’s the same cancer, because that’s what we think it is.’ They matched. So it started when the colon trickled into the liver.”

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Garcia publicly revealed his cancer diagnosis for the first time last Wednesday. That also marked the day he officially began chemotherapy treatment.

Doctors are confident that Garcia, 38, will be able to overcome it in the end. They understand that, aside from the cancer itself, he remains healthy and active. The following day, he was back to work, training young quarterbacks from where he lives in Tampa, Fla.

“The doctor said there are going to be times where this game is going to whip your ass and you’re not going to feel like moving, but we encourage you to continue training, continue working out, continue staying active. Don’t set any PRs on bench or squat, but continue to lift weights,” Garcia said. “… But yeah, as far as the day-to-day goes, it’s changed drastically.”

In the days that have followed, Garcia has received an outpour of support, not just from the Gamecock community but from all over the college football world. He’s received messages from countless former teammates and coaches, even some old rivals like Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.

“The fact that AJ McCarron reached out, Roll Tide Willie reached out, you know, the guys from Auburn, just all over the country, Dabo Swinney, he’s literally texting me right now, Coach (Shane) Beamer, Jeremiah (Donati), the athletic director at South Carolina. He’s like, you know, ‘We have a plan. We’re going to have a meeting today, and we’re going to pull through for you,'” Garcia said.

“There’s so many people that have come together and it’s been wild to see. My phone’s here. It’s died like 50 times already because I’m just trying to respond to everybody and just make sure they know that I’m genuinely extremely thankful for them even caring about what I have to do and what I’m going through.”

Garcia and his family have also created a GoFundMe page, which, at the time of this writing, has raised more than $225,000 toward its $250,000 goal.

“It’s truly humbling. I say that, and I’ve said that over the last few days, of just how humbled I am for these people that I have no idea who they are,” Garcia said. “I mean, there’s people that are sending $7 at a time. There’s people that are sending $5,000, $10,000. It’s truly amazing.”

As his fight continues, Stephen Garcia knows it won’t be easy. But much like the way he approached playing football at South Carolina, he believes he’s “built for this kind of operation.” To him, it’s simply another battle and another obstacle to overcome.

“There’s a book that I read a long time ago, ‘No Easy Day.’ It’s about Navy SEALs. And one of the things that I’ve always remembered is, ‘How do you eat an elephant?’ And it’s, ‘One bite at a time,'” Garcia said. “So that’s the model I’m going with right now. Just taking one day at a time and trying to stay as positive as possible. We’re going to kick this thing in the teeth and knock it out. There is no other option. There is no other plan B; this is what we’re doing. And I have complete faith in the team that I have around me.”

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