A Division I Fencer And His Duel Against Cancer

#SawyerStrong

Sawyer Cornett, 19, competes for the Cleveland State University Vikings in the foil discipline at the NCAA Midwest Regional hosted at Notre Dame. This tournament would be the last in which Cornett would be able to compete. During summer break Cornett was diagnosed with leukemia and is now fighting a bout against cancer.

By Brandon McGlone
sports@garrardcentralrecord.com

Lancaster, KY (April 30, 2020) — The Garrard Central Record and many of our readers were first introduced to Sawyer Cornett and his family in the summer of 2017. An article titled “En Garde!” profiled a 17-year-old who had found success in the relatively niche competition of fencing -- a combat sport that displays swordsmanship. Cornett’s weapon of expertise was the foil, and having been involved with the sport since age nine, his future in the discipline was bright.

We followed Cornett through his commitment to Division I Cleveland State as a senior at GCHS and caught up with him in March 2019 to see how his first year of school and competition were going. Sawyer had helped the Vikings to one of their best seasons of late and had qualified for the NCAA Midwest Regional.

Little did anyone know that the regional hosted at Notre Dame would be the last time Sawyer Cornett would strap up his jacket, slip on his mask, and hoist his foil for competition.

A few months later and now 19, Sawyer was back home enjoying his summer break -- swimming, catching up with friends. He was soaking up every ray of sunshine he could before having to return to classes for his sophomore year. But about a month before heading back to Ohio, with just a few brief words calmy uttered by a doctor, Sawyer’s world was flipped upside down -- invaded and ransacked by an enemy that has no deference or discrimination on those it targets.

It was July 16, 2019. The culprit was cancer. Leukemia.

“There’s just a rush,” Sawyer said with a grin during his first interview with the Central Record in 2017 when describing fencing. “Winning a tournament or a bout against a difficult opponent is so rewarding.”

Sawyer Cornett during his initial stay at Kentucky Children's Hospital in July 2019. According to his mother, Stephanie, it was typical for Sawyer to make friends with the staff to the point that nurses would playfully argue over who was going to get assigned to his case on a given night. "He has always had a positive, fun outlook on life -- that hasn’t changed." Sawyer has used 30 units of blood throughout this process so the family asks that everyone consider becoming a blood donor as it could save someone's life.

Over the past nine months Sawyer has been fighting the most difficult opponent and toughest bout of his life. With support from his family, his community and through his own competitive grit, Cornett is valiantly mounting a counter-attack, recouping the advantage, and showing cancer what it means to be “Sawyer Strong.”

The Diagnosis

It started harmless enough -- soreness in the upper thigh of the left leg.

“I really didn’t think much of it,” Sawyer explained. “Being an athlete I’m used to aches and pains. I thought I might have pulled a muscle. The days following the pain increased. I went to the ER and was diagnosed with cellulitis, given some antibiotics and sent home. That is where I thought this story would end…it didn’t.”

After a couple days the pain was to the point he couldn’t walk. His mom, Stephanie, took him to Ephraim McDowell in Danville where she works as a respiratory therapist. Blood was drawn and an IV put in.

“The doctor came back and asked my mom to step out into the hall,” Sawyer recalled. “Immediately I knew something was wrong. After a few minutes the doctor came back and sat down beside me. He told me I had a very high white blood cell count and, long story short, I had cancer. He couldn’t tell me what type or how bad it was. My mind was all over the place. 

“I realized my life was about to change completely.”

Stephanie vividly remembers the chill down her spine when the doctor told her.

“I can’t explain the feeling when a doctor says those words,” she said. “It’s like you see the life you imagined for your son vanish. You’re just numb and autopilot takes over.”

Sawyer’s dad, Nathan, recalled receiving the news.

“Stephanie called me that day and was crying, ‘They think Sawyer has cancer! You need to get over here to the hospital,’ ” he said. “Wow. There’s not a parent anywhere that wants to hear those words. It’s a feeling that I know everyone can relate to. That deep, gut-dropping, knees-immediately-become-weak feeling. 

“Our lives were immediately turned upside down.”

Hudson, Sawyer’s younger brother, had slept in as teenagers are apt to do during summer break. He wasn’t even aware Sawyer had been taken to the hospital.

“Dad came in and told me Sawyer was in the hospital and they think he has cancer,” Hudson, age 16, said. “I didn’t really know what to say or how to react to it at first.”

Sawyer was immediately sent from Danville to UK Hospital where more tests were run. That night a bad fever set in. The sore leg muscle was actually a deep infection which the staff had to deal with on top of waiting for lab results for an official diagnosis.

The next morning the diagnosis came in as T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), a type of aggressive blood cancer that happens when too many immature white blood cells are found in the bone marrow. Although he was 19, the team made the decision to move Sawyer to Kentucky Children’s Hospital. T-ALL can be treated more aggressively in the pediatric population and thanks to Sawyer’s athletic, physical background the oncologists felt his body could handle the pressure.

The Treatment

“The next few weeks involved lots of poking, no privacy, sleepless nights and a very swollen leg,” Sawyer explained. He spent 15 nights in the hospital for that first span.

Things progressed quickly as medical staff raced to gain an advantage over the disease. A port was inserted into Sawyer’s chest to better access his body to chemotherapy drugs. Surgery was performed to try and remove the infection from the thigh. A whirlwind of emotions and thoughts swirled within the family as another whirlwind of nurses and doctors swept in and out of Sawyer’s hospital room.

“For the first couple weeks I didn’t eat, sleep or anything,” Nathan said. The amount of stress that is dropped on you is crazy. You’re just so sick to your stomach, laying awake at night and just praying that God will spare your child.

“Stephanie has the medical background. I’m a teacher. I hung on her every word as she would explain things to me. Your mind races and races. Again, you just want your child to live and be okay.

“For the next several weeks Stephanie was in the hospital with Sawyer. My job was to tend to Hudson as he had just started playing summer baseball. I would take Hudson to games, practices, then run up to the hospital. On the weekends Stephanie would come home for the day and I would stay with Sawyer. I remember walking out of the parking garage one day early on and just thinking, ‘Wow. This is our new normal.’ ”

“The first month of treatment was brutal,” Stephanie recalled. “As a mom you just want to fix everything for your child. I watched Sawyer endure so much. Early on we said this was just a detour in Sawyer’s life -- a bump in the road. I think the hardest part for him was having to sit out a year of school. We kept reminding him he would get back there. But we had to tackle eight months of chemotherapy first.”

Sawyer’s treatment plan was broken into phases which are designed to essentially knock out the immune system before building it back up. The body is forced to reprogram itself into making only healthy cells instead of cancerous ones. While effective it also leaves the patient highly vulnerable to virus and infection. 

Sawyer was social distancing and staying healthy at home long before Governor Beshear ingrained the phrases into our terminology. When COVID-19 hit the country Sawyer basically said, “Welcome to my world,” because of the precautions he lives with daily.

Sawyer reached remission after three months on Oct. 17 but that didn’t mean cured. He just no longer had disease in his bone marrow. Nine months after his initial diagnosis, Sawyer’s prognosis is looking strong. 

He is hoping to enter into his final phase -- maintenance. His body has rebooted and now doctors want to see his ANC (white blood cell) count climb back up to a healthy 750 in order to begin. Maintenance involves two years of monthly chemo infusions and medications from home. Every Thursday he has his count tested with the original goal date for maintenance having been April 16. But like several other setbacks in the process Sawyer’s ANC levels weren’t high enough. They weren’t last Thursday either. The hope is that by the time subscribers to the newspaper get this article in the mail on Thursday, Sawyer will have reached the 750 bar at his next appointment at UK’s DanceBlue Clinic.

“It was hard at first not knowing a game plan or how long I would have cancer,” Sawyer described his thoughts from diagnosis until now. “My faith has played a big role in surviving the past nine months. I believe wholeheartedly that God has given me a second chance at life. Cancer isn’t a personality trait. I don’t let it define who I am because this is only temporary. What lasts is how I handle my situation and what I learn from it.”

Family Dynamic

“When something happens like this to your family it is traumatic,” Stephanie explained. “We were in survival mode for months just trying to find some sort of new routine. I ended up taking off about six months of work. Getting Sawyer to all his appointments was a full time job.”

It’s easy for a family facing adversity to come closer together or fall further apart. For the Cornetts however, they described less of a movement in either direction and more of a reaffirmation of the strong dynamic they already felt they had. Like carbon beneath the Earth, the pressure from the outside hardened the diamond they knew was already there.

Still, the demands were high, but each member took on the role they had to take and coalesced into one formidable unit.

Sawyer’s job was obviously to focus solely on his health, but that required support.

“My mom was there every step of the way,” Sawyer said of his rock during these past several months. “Honestly a mom shouldn’t have to go through what she has, but I never had to doubt she would be there. She constantly stays positive and tells me I will get through this.

“My dad is always the support guy, checking on me and making sure I’m okay.

“Hudson is just... Hudson. He’s always the same -- never treated me any different. We’ve always been close and that will never change.”

Stephanie stepped into the mama bear role, protecting her cub.

“That’s just me anyway,” she said with an emotional break in her voice. “I think Sawyer has always felt that we were going to be there for him no matter what.”

Nathan took care of the home front and provided support where needed.

“Steph and I have such a strong marriage and we understand how we truly do kind of complete each other,” he explained when asked if he was proud of how the family has handled the situation. “I think I would have crumbled if she didn’t have the medical background. They probably would’ve had to institutionalize me. I’m a very stressed out person anyway and Stephanie isn’t. 

“People have their problems and we have our problems, but we just kind of clicked in terms of our roles. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pry her away from the hospital and she knew I would take care of Hudson. So it isn’t so much being proud. If anything I’m just thankful we have such a good marriage that we were able to see it through this crisis, even though it’s not over. Whatever happens we’re going to be good -- we know we’re going to be okay.”

As Sawyer alluded, Hudson’s job was to just be Hudson. He is the comic relief and the typical little brother -- the steady North Star in an otherwise tumultuous atmosphere that grounds the family through consistency.

“I think my role was to keep the family in good spirits and make sure they could still have happy moments in a tough time like that and not just be in the dumps,” Hudson, a junior at GCHS said. “I still joke with him and tease him like always. We’ve been close since day one and still are.”

The sights and sounds of normalcy between brothers is therapeutic for the parents. 

“Hudson had to realize how different things were going to be and he has never once complained, never once been disrespectful to us, or anything like that,” Nathan recalled. “He just goes with the flow. Every once in a while we’ll hear them upstairs giggling in Sawyer’s room, or yelling back and forth at each other between rooms because they’re playing the same video game. Steph and I will just chuckle. They’ve always been close, so hearing them laugh or even getting on each other -- that’s the best sound in the world to hear.”

Community Support

“I’m very appreciative to have people that care about me and my family -- it has definitely helped a lot,” Sawyer said about the encouragement he and his family have received from the community. “I’ve been in some very low times the past year and without a doubt the people around me have helped. I was really blown away by the support from our small town. It’s all just really nice and I’m proud to be from Garrard.”

When Sawyer’s battle with cancer was first made public the people of Garrard County stepped up. Shirts were made with proceeds going to help with medical expenses, a GoFundMe page was set up for the family, #SawyerStrong trended across social media and was used as a mantra for the Lions basketball team for which Hudson plays. Nathan’s and Stephanie’s bosses had their backs and never put them in a situation where they had to choose between work and Sawyer. Food, gift cards and prayers have come from people the Cornetts don’t even know. They feel blessed to have received such pure love from their community. 

“The support we felt from our small town was amazing,” Stephanie praised. “Our family just felt so much love from Garrard county. It was just an outpouring I have never experienced before.”

“The Garrard community is very tight-knit, and it’s definitely been uplifting to see all the support from coaches, kids in our school, teachers and everybody,” Hudson said. “It helps a lot.”

“You can never do anything to repay what was done for you or even adequately acknowledge what people did,” Nathan explained. “So you just say, ‘Thank you!’ The deepest, most meaningful thank you that’s possible.”

What’s Next?

“I don’t even know what that would look like,” Nathan said with a laugh about a return to normalcy for his family. “I keep joking, once this is all over we’re going to just take a huge family vacation somewhere. I don’t care how much it costs or if we have to take out a loan -- just to wash it all off of us. But we’re just so much in the moment, and our life has changed so much that we just don’t plan ahead for anything. We haven’t crossed that bridge yet.”

“I don’t think we’ve even thought about that bridge,” Stephanie echoed.

For Nathan and Stephanie the future is still measured in days, not weeks or months.

“In some mythical tomorrow I would love for Dr. Radulescu to come in and say, ‘He’s done. You don’t ever have to worry about this again,’ ” Nathan imagined. “But in reality that’s just not how it works. For me that’s the toughest part, because you never can relax. You just pray and hope the progress continues.”

The immediate progress hinges on reaching that 750 ANC count and beginning the maintenance phase. Having already gotten hopes up twice just to come up short is one reason they are unable to think too far ahead. Hurdles like dehydration that put Sawyer in the hospital for a few days not long ago is another reason for caution.

“For us as a family we just don’t plan,” Stephanie said. “Like the weekend before last I didn’t plan on us being in the hospital for three days. Everything can kind of change on a dime. For me there will always be a concern every time he gets his blood drawn.”

For Sawyer it is clear that he is looking a little further ahead with his eyes set on returning to school. Unfortunately he will have to move forward with a major part of his life absent. Because of the port in his chest he will no longer be able to fence -- something that has been at or near the forefront of his mind for half his life.

“It’s so frustrating to know that time in my life is over,” Sawyer shared. “Fencing gave me many great experiences. I have made peace with my life without it, but it is depressing knowing I had to stop due to something I couldn’t control.”

Sawyer, the impressive and high character young man that he is, can see leukemia for the cruel disease it is while also acknowledging there are ways this hurdle has helped him grow as a person. 

“Cancer took things away from me, but it also gave me some perspective,” he explained. “I look at things a little differently now. When you are 19 years old you don’t think you will get cancer. In one moment your life can change. You find out who your real friends are and what is most important, like family. I took for granted that I would be going back to school last fall. I had roommates and I had plans.

“Now here I am almost a year later making new plans, which include monthly trips home for chemotherapy. I am looking forward though, and it means even more now to get back to school. I’m ready to start the next chapter in my life.”

Though his initial draw to CSU was due to fencing, Sawyer is determined to get back and study physical therapy so he can put cancer in its place -- not allow it to continue to control that aspect of his life.

“While I was going through chemo and hospital stays my friends were having the time of their lives at college,” he said. “I realized how good my life has been up till this point and I’m definitely not going to take that for granted. I was blessed to have an amazing freshman year at CSU and I don’t want cancer to take that away from me.”

“To say I am proud of Sawyer would be a gross understatement,” Stephanie said. “He really approached this unwanted time in his life with a positive attitude. He never threw a big pity party for himself and believe me, he had every right to do just that.

“I believe a new chapter is opening for Sawyer. This experience has matured him beyond his 19 years. He is focused on getting back his life and getting back to Cleveland.”

Sawyer’s brother has also seen his perspective on life adjust.

“Honestly it’s just been kind of an eye-opener for me, to not take things for granted because I definitely do that sometimes,” Hudson reflected. “It made me realize not to take those things or even my brother for granted, so I let him know I love him. Seeing him and what he had to go through has made me grateful for what I have but still very sad that he’s had to go through it.”

For Sawyer’s dad he believes his son’s future is in good hands as long as he trusts the plan God has laid out for him.

“As a Christian I trust that God will take care of Sawyer,” Nathan said. “Whatever He has planned for him is going to happen. As much as we pray and plead with Him to spare Sawyer, it’s really not up to us. It’s our job when faced with uncertainty, worry and stress to just lay it at His feet. With cancer you are not in control. 

“I think we’ve made it through the past nine months because at the very beginning we knew all of this was out of our hands. We gave it to God and have trusted Him from day one to do what He wants with Sawyer. My prayer now is that He sees us all the way through this storm. That Sawyer can recover -- fully -- and return to school in Cleveland. 

“I pray that he grows up, graduates college, marries, has a family of his own, and grows really, really old. That’s what any parent wants. We are no different. But, most importantly, I want him to know that God does love him. He has a plan for his life. When life gets tough and he has no control of anything that is happening, I pray that Sawyer knows that his Lord, Jesus Christ, has his back. It’s his job to trust Him. With that perspective, I believe Sawyer is going to be just fine.”