Peyton Manning left a legacy of caring for kids

This story was originally published on Nov. 7, 2015:

So the dad asked a question.

“What kind of story is this going to be?”

Jesse Collins is looking at me, and the rest of the room is looking at me, and until then I’d been gazing at all the football stuff in here — one of five rooms in the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital at St. Vincent that was decorated personally by Peyton and Ashley Manning.

Now I’m looking at the kid on the bed, a boy of 12, sitting next to an Indianapolis Colts jersey and helmet signed by Manning, who from 1998-2010 was the greatest player in franchise history. In a few days, for just the second time since joining the Denver Broncos in 2012, Manning will play as a visitor at the football palace he helped build, Lucas Oil Stadium.

This kid on the bed, he has an appallingly aggressive form of cancer. His hair is falling out. His arms are bruised from all the needles that have been jabbed into them. His throat? Don’t ask about his throat. And whatever you do, don’t ask to see the picture this kid took, of the blistering sores caused by chemotherapy.

“It’s gross!” says the kid’s sister.

“It’s a memory,” the kid says. “After I’m done with this, I can look at the picture and say, ‘I got through this.’”

The kid is sitting in his hospital bed in a Colts jersey. He’s wearing Colts pajama pants, and he’s sitting under a Colts blanket. Over his shoulder, Peyton Manning is throwing a pass from a picture on the wall.

His dad wants to know what this story will be about.

I look at him, at his wife, his daughter, the nurse. I look at the kid on the bed. And this is what I say:

The story will be about your son. Also it will be about the great, great things Peyton has done in Indianapolis.

And I can tell you one thing it won’t be about.

It won’t be about football.

* * *

Well, maybe a little bit about football.

See, the kid plays. His name is Carson Collins, and a few years ago he played in the Brownsburg Junior Football League. He was a quarterback, like Peyton Manning.

In March he was playing baseball when his right shoulder got sore. He’s a pitcher. Shoulders get sore.

Then his back started hurting. His neck. An armpit. He had a fever. Doctors tested for meningitis. They gave him a CT scan, drew blood, noticed a lump near one of his lymph nodes and took a biopsy.

In July the doctor at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital asked Carson’s parents to come into the hallway.

Carson’s older sister started to cry. Bailey Collins is 17, and she knew. Carson, he knew too. But he snapped at Bailey.

“Be positive!” he said. “It could be nothing!”

It was cancer. Burkitt lymphoma, it’s called. It’s a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a real long shot, diagnosed in about 500 U.S. kids every year. It’s often fatal, but doctors caught it early in Carson Collins and are treating it aggressively at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital while the kid stays in a room decorated by Peyton himself, with a playroom down the hall and arcade video games and gentle nurses and positive doctors.

Peyton Manning, the man who saved the Colts in the late 1990s and could save them again — imagine him coming back as general manager — returns Sunday. His Broncos play the Colts.

I can’t bring myself to write about football.

Because this kid. Stop reading and look at his picture. But come back, when you’re done. I’m about to write some words about Peyton Manning. Welcome home, 18.

* * *

He left us, but not really. He left our NFL team — but he left behind something as lasting, something as life-giving, as the children’s hospital that has borne his name since 2007.

And Peyton Manning, he isn’t like a lot of athletes — most athletes, I’d say — who lend their name to a cause and consider it a job well done. And it is, it is. Put your name on a library, a foundation, a hospital, and you’re making the world a better place.

But do what Peyton Manning does, and you’re doing more. He didn’t forget Indianapolis even when a neck issue in 2011 — and the availability of Andrew Luck in the 2012 NFL draft — ended his career here. His children’s hospital at St. Vincent has treated more than 100,000 kids, kids from all 92 counties in Indiana.

And Peyton Manning takes this very seriously.

“The commitment you see from Peyton on the field, the commitment he expects of himself and his teammates, we see that here,” says St. Vincent Health CEO Jonathan Nalli. “Even with him not being in town, it’s like he is right next-door. When it comes to strategic planning for the children’s hospital and pediatric services — cardiology, oncology, you name it — we bring Peyton into the loop and he provides guidance. The level of his engagement is phenomenal.”

Peyton writes letters to families at the hospital, and sometimes he decides a letter isn’t enough. Sometimes the phone rings in a patient’s room in the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital and the voice on the other end says something like, “Hi, this Peyton Manning. I’m calling to see how you’re doing, how we’re treating your son, and what else we can do for him. And is it OK if I speak to your son?”

So this is what else I tell Jesse Collins, when he asks what this story will be about. Peyton plays football, I tell him, but he left behind something bigger. He left a legacy. It’s this hospital, it’s this room, it’s that kid on the bed. Your kid.

Jesse Collins nods.

* * *

Carson is going to beat this. The odds say he will — they were better than 50-50 when he was first diagnosed, and they are better now after his first four rounds of chemo — and so does his attitude.

See, Carson Collins has no doubt he will beat this. You saw his comment earlier, about the photo he took of his throat.

“After I’m done with this,” he had said, “I can look at the picture.”

After I’m done with this ...

They’ll be happy to see him back in Brownsburg, where public schools all over town are raising money to help cover his medical bills. More than 75 people from Brownsburg have paraded through the hospital, including his fourth-grade teacher from three years ago at White Lick Elementary, Mrs. Smith. After Carson is done with this, he will return home a conquering hero.

But, man, are they going to miss Carson Collins at the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital.

Carson doesn’t miss a beat here, see. He asks Dr. Doug and all his nurses a litany of questions, he knows how the machines in his room work, he knows this is his eighth stay in the hospital since July 24 — he knows the date — and he knows he has two chemo treatments left.

When I get to the room, I’m asking his parents about the diagnosis. Carson takes over the interview, and, believe me, it’s for the best. He knows this stuff cold and when someone interrupts him — usually Bailey, that sweetheart — Carson gets exasperated and then announces:

“BTTS — back to the story,” he says, and he’s back at it, telling me about the spinal tap he will get soon. He knows it’s called an intrathecal, and he tells me what that means. I’d tell you, but I didn’t understand.

Later, Carson’s mom — Bobbi — tells me something heartbreaking.

“He knows more than me sometimes,” she says. “Some of it, I would like him to forget.”

BTTS …

Carson is so on top of things, he knows the nurses’ schedules for the rest of the year. He knows his sixth and final chemo treatment will be in six weeks or so, and he has asked Dr. Doug to time that treatment so that he is discharged from the hospital either on Dec. 11 or Dec. 27, because both of his favorite nurses — Allison and Lacey — are working those days.

Carson knows this.

Carson also knows how to do the nae nae and the whip, and he does those dance moves with Karen, a physical therapist. See, at the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital they’re caring not just for his condition; they’re caring for every bit of the kid.

Each room is decorated differently. One of them, a little girl who loved horses raised the money herself to decorate the room in an equestrian theme. She had cancer, see, and that’s the room where she was treated. The cancer is in remission, and the room remains an equestrian theme. The girl donated her medals and ribbons to the room.

Peyton and Ashley Manning decked out two rooms in football gear. Carson Collins is in one of those, and he’s dressed in Colts apparel. He has schoolbooks on the table next to his bed, and he has an open invitation to wheel his rolling IV to the nurses’ station one floor up. He hangs out with his friends up there. The nurses, I mean.

And someday he’s going to leave Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital and never come back, not as a patient anyway, and that’s why this story about Peyton Manning is finished and I’ve written almost nothing about football.

Because some things are more important than football.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.