Ex-NBA player Jason Collins says he’s fighting stage 4 brain cancer

Brooklyn Nets center Jason Collins (98) warms up before an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Monday, March 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman, File)

L.A. - Jason Collins, the former NBA player who became the first openly gay man to play in a major U.S. pro sports league, said Thursday he’s battling “one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer.”

Collins, who revealed in a brief statement in September that he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, said in an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne published Thursday that he has stage 4 glioblastoma.

“It came on incredibly fast,” the 47-year-old said, describing early symptoms of memory loss and inability to focus that reached a tipping point in August.

“I had been having weird symptoms like this for a week or two, but unless something is really wrong, I’m going to push through. I’m an athlete,” Collins said.

But he said a CT scan revealed the extent and seriousness of his illness, which he said was a “multiforme” glioblastoma that was growing so quickly that he could die within weeks.

He said that with the support of his husband, Brunson Green, and other friends and family he began treatment with medication followed by radiation and chemotherapy.

He said his decision to pursue innovative treatment -- currently at a clinic in Singapore -- reminded him of when he decided to come out as gay.

“I feel like I’m right back in that position now, where I might be the first person through this wall,” he said. “We aren’t going to sit back and let this cancer kill me without giving it a hell of a fight.

“We’re going to try to hit it first, in ways it’s never been hit: with radiation and chemotherapy and immunotherapy that’s still being studied but offers the most promising frontier of cancer treatment for this type of cancer.

Collins recalled that when his grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer, she didn’t like to hear people use the word “cancer”.

“I don’t care if you say the word,” he said. “I have cancer, but just like my grandmother fought it, I’m going to fight it.”