Ken Monash had just started working at Wolverine Pickleball’s front desk when he had to take time off for cancer treatment, so he was baffled to receive an outpouring of supportive cards and emails. He later learned that coworker Kabrina Rozine had conspired with his wife and the business owners to spread the word. | Photo by Mark Bialek
Several years ago, a CAT scan revealed a cancerous 2.5-centimeter mass on the retired Ann Arbor elementary school teacher’s right lung. He says a biopsy revealed “a rare form of lung cancer called NUT carcinoma.” Surgeons removed a lobe in his right lung and thirteen lymph nodes.
Only about 200 NUT carcinomas (so named because they’re caused by a mutation in the NUTM1 gene) are diagnosed annually. Typical life expectancy after diagnosis is less than a year. So his U-M oncologist recommended he get a second opinion from the Boston researchers who first identified it in the early 2000s.
Fortunately, thanks to the scan, Monash’s cancer was caught early. “They determined that I would come back to Ann Arbor and begin the chemotherapy once I’ve recovered from the surgery.”
Monash and his wife, Jill, took up pickleball in 2022. “A very avid player at Wolverine Pickleball” in Scio Township, he began working part-time at the front desk last December. It was “a great retirement job,” he says, but almost immediately he had to tell the owners, Leslie White and Christy Howden, that he’d be off work for six weeks.
While he was home, he received an unexpected outpouring of support. “I started getting emails and text messages,” he says, “and then every day at the mailbox there were cards of support. No one told me this was going to happen.”
“I did not know how it started, why it was happening,” he says, but “I was embracing it. This helped me. It helped my attitude and helped me emotionally.”
Monash later discovered that the supportive blitz was orchestrated by a coworker, Kabrina Rozine. With the permission of his wife and the business owners, she had sent an email to the more than 1,000 members of the Wolverine Pickleball community, asking for words of support and encouragement for their fellow player.
“I sent an email blast to all the people in our community that play with Ken,” Rozine says. “I told them the basis of the situation. If they were interested in sending a card, then we would love to have it. We asked to send words of encouragement, jokes, or anything fun—he was not looking for sympathy.”
Jill also set up a CaringBridge account that provides updates on his journey. According to a post there, he completed chemotherapy at the end of August, to be followed in late September or early October by radiation five days a week for nearly six weeks. After that, immunotherapy treatment will begin.
Monash says that his fight with cancer has often led to constant fatigue. But he is excited to return to the sport once he regains his strength.
“Wolverine Pickleball’s logo says ‘Not just pickleball,’” he says. “You can feel the community spirit there. I’m the lucky person that happened to be a part of this community.”
Related: Pickleball Power
