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David Lassman Caption: Tim Conners of Fulton lost his sight in a battle with cancer but he's graduating with his class at G. Ray Bodley High School on Saturday. David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com

(David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com)

Fulton, N.Y. -- The best game of Tim Conners' senior year at G. Ray Bodley High School in Fulton was one his football team lost.

Conners - six- feet- two -inches tall and 220 pounds - played center, snapping the ball only three times. Fulton drove 60 yards on those plays.

"You could just hear everybody yelling and screaming. The whistles were blowing," Conners said.

But he couldn't see a thing.

The 18-year-old Fulton teen lost his sight to cancer in 2010. That football game, which Fulton lost 35 to 7 to Nottingham High, was his first time back on the field. The coaches from both teams worked it out ahead of time: no one would touch Conners.

Conners didn't get to play in a game again. But today, he will graduate with the rest of his class. He is ranked seventh. When he takes that diploma in his hand, it will be more than an affirmation that he's a high school graduate. It is a victory against a cancer that at one point had his family gathered around him, saying their last I love yous.

When Conners was 15, he struggled with what a doctor first thought were sinus infections. Then he started having other strange symptoms: half of his face was paralyzed when he had his wisdom teeth removed. On April 3, 2010, doctors found a tumor the size of a football in his chest. He had his first round of chemotherapy that same day.

Chemo had that cancer under control within months, but in July 2010, Conners found out the cancer was back and had spread to his optic nerve. He'd been seeing strange shadows for a while.

Doctors needed to perform surgery to remove the cancer, but warned him the operation would leave him blind.

Conners asked for his mother, Betsy, right before the operation. "I told her, 'I want the last thing I see to be your beautiful face,'" Conners said.

But that surgery wasn't enough to push the leukemia out of his body. He had a bone marrow transplant at Boston Children's Hospital in September 2010. Conners' older brother, Mike Jr., was the donor. Conners' body struggled to fight back to health. His organs failed. The doctors told his family to say good bye.

Tim Conners and his parents, Mike Sr. and Betsy, at senior night.

But he rallied slowly, spending more than 100 days in the hospital. After that, his was in virtual isolation at home during his sophomore year because his immune system was so weak.

During that year, although Conners was newly sightless and weak, a teacher instructed him at home and he kept up with his school work.

Conners started his junior year wearing leg braces because his body was still regaining strength. But he continued to attend practices for the three sports he played before he got sick: track, wrestling and football. He was able to participate in all of them, to some degree, by his senior year.

Through his illness, Conners found that his story could help others. He began speaking at cancer fundraisers and events. On June 17, he told his story at the Joe Andruzzi Celebrity Golf Tournament. Andruzzi, a former player with the NFL's New England Patriots, battled non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2007. His foundation helps families battling cancer, often paying nonmedical expenses like rents and mortgages. Andruzzi visits kids and their families in the hospital.

Conners doesn't remember meeting him at the Boston hospital. Conners was too sick. But it was a high note during a difficult time for his dad, Mike Conners Sr., former Fulton football coach and current athletic director at Oswego High School. Andruzzi got Conners' dad and brother passes for a Patriots game.

Conners and his family have stayed in touch with Andruzzi, who has continued to be impressed by the positive way the teen has handled a fate that could have been devastating.

"Cancer has taken his sight," Andruzzi said. "But it hasn't taken his vision."

In the fall, Conners will go to the Carroll Center for the Blind in Massachusetts for 22 weeks. He'll work on the skills that he needs to be independent. There are good days and bad, he said. Sometimes, he can make it across the street using his cane in one try. Sometimes he gets disoriented and has to go back to the curb and start again. It's frustrating.

"But you can't give up," Conners said. And he won't. He'll start Ithaca College in the spring. He's not sure what he'll major in.

Conners said he knows the cancer could come back, but he doesn't focus on that.

"You don't always get what you want, but you get things you don't expect," Conners said. "I've had success and I'm thankful for that."



The success just looks different than it might have before he got sick. On the bus home from that football game in the fall, the team gave Conners the game ball: "It was like a win."

Contact Marnie Eisenstadt at meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 315-470-2246.

