A few months ago, Jace Malek and his wrestling coach, Mike Bundy, plotted Malek's senior wrestling season at West Valley High in Spokane, Washington. Malek had already committed to play college football at Idaho, so he knew this would be his final season of competitive wrestling, and he wanted to go out with a state championship after finishing as the state runner-up as a freshman, sophomore and junior.

On Wednesday, Bundy walked into the hospital room of that same student-athlete, only this time, the discussion was much slower as Malek's body recovered from its first rounds of chemotherapy treatment for the osteosarcoma, a cancer of the bones, that ended his wrestling career a few weeks prior.

Jace Malek started feeling pain in his hip during football season. Doctors later discovered a cantaloupe-sized tumor. Courtesy Dirk Linton

Mostly, the two discussed their impending Xbox series, which would commence once Malek got out of the hospital and needed some distractions.

They didn't discuss the cantaloupe-sized tumor that has enveloped Malek's right hip, or the cancerous spores that -- because of his osteosarcoma -- are now on his lungs. He has just begun to receive chemotherapy for both, and that's why both men were in the hospital -- one as a patient, the other as a visitor -- but it didn't come up in the conversation.

Malek has taken to calling his chemotherapy his "cure" not his "treatment."

"He just really doesn't think there's any way he's not going to overcome this," Malek's mother, Anna, said.

Initially, his hip started bothering him during the football season. Malek had taken a hard hit during a game. Like most hits, he thought nothing of it until the next day when he felt a little bit sore. The pain wasn't enough for Malek to take any time off from football or the cattle ranch where he helps out his mom a few times a week. Malek had never suffered a serious injury playing sports, so he mostly considered himself lucky that this was the first time he had a nagging injury.

Throughout the season, the team trainer would wrap Malek's hip. Some days it didn't bother him; other days it did.

"It was kind of an injury that was up and down and no one really thought anything of it," West Valley football coach Craig Whitney said.

Once football season ended and Malek turned his attention to wrestling, the pain became unmanageable. Sitting for too long -- whether it was at a meal, in classes at school, or driving -- suddenly became very difficult.

Malek decided to go see a chiropractor, which is where his whirlwind began.

From Jan. 26-30, Malek and his mother visited a chiropractor, who sent them to a physical therapist, who sent them to an orthopedic specialist, who ordered an MRI.

By Friday of that week, he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Malek's diagnosis means he is unable to compete for the wrestling state championship that has eluded him. Courtesy of Dirk Linton

That same day, Malek underwent a biopsy to determine the exact type of sarcoma. Initially, the doctors assumed it was Ewing's sarcoma, which is the second-most common bone cancer that affects adolescents, but when the results returned a week later they'd discover that it was a more common but possibly more dangerous cancer, osteosarcoma.

The biopsy left Malek feeling pretty sick, so doctors kept him in the hospital overnight but allowed him to head home on Saturday to make sure he could watch the Super Bowl at home with some friends that Sunday.

The following Monday, doctors took an MRI of Malek's chest, where they found small malignant pores, related to the cancer on his hip. The next day the Maleks finally received some relief when the PET (positron emission tomography) scan of Malek's entire 6-foot-3, 240-pound body revealed that the cancer had not spread past his hip and lungs.

"It was always, 'Oh I have a pulled muscle, this chiropractor is going to find a way to pop it and I'm going to be 100 percent better and I'll be back in a week.'" Malek said. "Then, when she moved me on to the other guy it was, 'Oh, this guy is going to stretch me a few ways. Give me two weeks and I'll be back on the mat.' And then when he said I tore something, I was like, 'OK, wrestling's done but I'll take two months off and get the surgery, repair that muscle and I'll be back on the [football] field in no time.'

"And then it was cancer."

Immediately, he wanted to know when -- not if -- he beat this thing, if he'd be able to return to the football field. Doctors told him that was probably no longer going to be a part of his future.

One of his first phone calls went to Idaho assistant head coach and offensive coordinator Kris Cinkovich. Malek was quick with his delivery of his diagnosis and Cinkovich, or "Cink" as Malek calls him, was even quicker with the assurance that Malek's scholarship would be honored.

Cinkovich called head coach Paul Petrino, who called Malek to check in on him and reassure him of what Cinkovich had already told him.

His scholarship was there. Don't worry about that. Just get better.

"I never thought it would be all this publicity," Petrino said. "We just did it because it was the right thing to do."

It took Malek four hours -- from the time he was diagnosed -- to find, what he calls, "the light side" in his diagnosis.

"I'm taking this as an advantage instead of a disadvantage for my coaching life," Malek said. "Which is something I can pursue way quicker than someone else."

Malek, who hopes to be able to undergo his chemotherapy treatments in Moscow, Idaho, wants to be there this fall when Idaho takes the field for fall camp and its season opener against Ohio.

It's not the position he thought he would be in, but now he's focused on the jump start he's getting in the coaching profession.

"You've got to understand Jace's mentality," Whitney said. "Jace would never want to come off the football field for any reason."

And, if Malek's cure -- not treatment -- goes as he has planned, he'll never have to.