Wild assistant GM Tom Kurvers has been training for this fight his whole life

ST. PAUL — Wild assistant general manager Tom Kurvers knew something was wrong around this time last year. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.

It started as a little bit of a cough, coupled with a pinching sensation he noticed whenever he sneezed. Eventually, he began feeling more and more fatigued on a daily basis.

As someone that spent more than a decade in the NHL before hanging up the skates in the mid-1990s, Kurvers has always been pretty in tune with his body.

“You’re always monitoring something as a professional athlete, and that habit doesn’t go away,” said Kurvers, who helped lead Bloomington Jefferson High School to its first state hockey tournament and won the Hobey Baker at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

“I knew there was something off; I just couldn’t quite understand it.”

While his symptoms felt manageable — more inconvenient than incapacitating — Kurvers still vividly remembers casually speaking five words that later proved to be prophetic.

“I remember one night in bed, I was sweating and I was uncomfortable, I looked at my wife Heather, and I only said this once, I said, ‘I feel like I’m dying,’” Kurvers said. “I didn’t say it every night. It wasn’t running rampant in my mind all the time. It just came out once. And I got diagnosed six weeks later.”

For Kurvers, the possibility of cancer never crossed his mind. He thought it might be pneumonia when he went in to see the team doctor Sheldon Burns before a Jan. 19 home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

He went in for a CT scan a couple of days later on Jan. 21 and the bad news came later that night: Doctors found a nodule on the upper lobe of his right lung and immediately feared lung cancer.

“I was at home and I took the phone call from Dr. Burns and he told me,” Kurvers said. “I walked downstairs to my wife and handed her the phone and he gave her the news. My mind was already racing. It knocked me out. It really did. You never want to hear those words.”

An oncologist later ordered a PET scan for a more detailed read, and finally a biopsy that confirmed everyone’s worst fears

“You’re in limbo hoping it’s something less than cancer,” Kurvers said. “I walked in (on Jan. 30) and the words to me were, ‘Unfortunately, it is cancer.’”

He’s been fighting ever since.

“There’s a lot of bad luck out there and this is just my form of it,” Kurvers said. “I haven’t let myself go down that road too much. It hasn’t been like, ‘Why me?’ I’m just taking it on every day.”

On the surface, the fact that Kurvers is now battling lung cancer seems inconceivable considering he’s never smoked a day in his life.

“The truth is, 50% of the people with lung cancer are non-smokers,” Kurvers said. “There’s just a stigma attached to it, and that needs to change. Maybe the publicity of my situation can make a dent in that mindset.”

His pragmatic approach to his fight didn’t happen overnight. There have been moments when Kurvers has felt weighed down by the gravity of the situation, especially in the first month after diagnosis.

Not only was Kurvers trying to mentally grasp the fact that he was fighting cancer, but he was also physically trying to heal from the biopsy. That, coupled with the fact that Kurvers was stuck at home and not around the game he loved, made it that much worse.

“It took a little bit to wrap my head around it and get into the mentality that I was going to take it on,” Kurvers said. “That said, instinctively, after living a life around this game, and being around all these guys that take on challenges every day, it wasn’t a big stretch to just take it on. It just took a little bit of time to pull it together.”

It’s not a stretch to say Kurvers has been training for this fight for his entire life. He just didn’t know it. Whether it was battling through an injury during his playing days, proving the doubters wrong when they told him he wasn’t good enough, or simply living through the grind of an 82-game schedule, Kurvers has made a career out of battling through adversity

“You’re pretty well set up to take on a different type of challenge,” he said. “There are plenty of things to draw on from having played the game and worked around the game. It’s not a normal way of living life. It’s nights and weekends. It’s challenging travel. It’s really hard sometimes. Now I’ve been put in this situation and that stuff really has translated from a lifetime around the game.”

Maybe the biggest thing that has translated for Kurvers is his competitive fire. As cliche as it sounds, Kurvers hates to lose more than he loves to win, and he has no plans to lose this fight.

“Anyone that plays this game past 12 years old has to be real competitive and I’m no different,” Kurvers said, referencing what his oncologist Eric Weinshel shortly after his diagnosis. “His words were awesome. It was real simple. He said, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. You’re going to live with this.’ I’ve held on to that.”

Aside from his wife, Heather — his rock over the past year — Kurvers has leaned heavily on the hockey community during his fight.

“This hockey community is built for this,” he said. “As much as it’s a rough-and-tumble way of life, at the end of the day everyone is on the same team, and that outpouring of support has been staggering.”

That was something Kurvers noticed immediately after his diagnosis and has continued to notice time and time again over the last year. He has built a massive network over the course of his career and doesn’t go many days without hearing from someone.

“As big as the hockey community is, it’s also really small,” he said. “You’re constantly bumping into people in press boxes, or basements of rinks, or airports, or concierge lounges. It’s a great community that’s spread all over the world. I can’t imagine a better support system.”

It was the same when NBC analyst Pierre McGuire was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and when fellow NBC analyst Eddie Olczyk was diagnosed with colon cancer, and, most recently, when Flames assistant general manager Chris Snow was diagnosed with ALS.

“There are so many people that I’ve connected with that are fighting,” Kurvers said. “It’s important to have that type of support, too, with people that are going through the same thing. It’s a different type of, ‘Hello.’ I’ll put it that way.”

That common thread has helped Kurvers develop an unbreakable bond with a couple of people in particular over the last year.

He was introduced to former Wisconsin Badgers star Rob Andringa by Wild vice president Jamie Spencer and now they meet at least once a month for breakfast or lunch.

“I knew of Rob enough to say hello before all of this,” Kurvers said. “Now he’s a very good friend. and has been an important guy in my fight.”

He has also developed a close friendship with Winnipeg Jets scout Brian Renfrew, who recently finished up his treatment for lung cancer.

“He’s the one who gave me the insight that I could get on the road and live with it,” Kurvers said. “That was a big thing for me to hear that from someone.”

With so many people in his corner, Kurvers wants to do the same for others taking on the fight. He recently chatted with the legendary Guy Lapointe after he was diagnosed with oral cancer.

“It was a tough phone call and he was scared and he was asking questions and I had something to offer him,” Kurvers said. “I took a lot out of that phone call, and I’m hoping he did as well. As tough as it was, I’m glad he called, and now we’re connected in a different way — even if it’s not necessarily the way we wanted.”

Every day Kurvers wakes up, he twists opens a small plastic bottle, takes one pill by mouth and then goes about his business like usual. This is his treatment for lung cancer.

It’s an oral chemotherapy medication called Tagrisso that allows him to live a relatively normal life while still aggressively fighting the disease.

“I caught a huge break because only three percent of lung cancer patients match an existing oral chemotherapy plan that’s targeted specifically for lung cancer,” Kurvers said. “It’s pill form, and it’s both more effective on my cancer and there’s far less side effects from it.”

As of right now, surgery isn’t an option.

“It’s technically somewhere between Stage 3 and Stage 4, simply because it’s moved from my right lung to the sternum and lymph nodes,” Kurvers said. “It hasn’t moved or grown, though, so that’s a good thing. I think we got on it relatively early. Plus, since I’ve been on the meds, the tumor has actually shrunk, so it’s really working.”

Besides taking Tagrisso once a day, the best medication for Kurvers has been getting back to work. He made his official return this year when the Iowa Wild of the American Hockey League made a brief playoff run. That was a big step for him.

“I was a little apprehensive to get back on the road,” he said. “I just had to get back into the flow. It’s about managing my time each day because the lifestyle takes a lot out of a person. I’ve learned a lot as I’ve gone on.”

For Kurvers, the hardest part has been making sure he gets quality sleep, which sometimes is easier said than done considering the crazy travel schedule.

“You feel it at the end of a road trip,” Kurvers said. “I still have the same job to do and I’m trying to help other people along the way and I’m trying to make good decisions. That hasn’t really changed. Just staring at it each day and taking it on

While the cancer is no longer active, according to Kurvers, he knows he can’t let his guard down. He still goes in for blood work every month and has a PET scan every four months to check for any additional cancerous activity.

“That’s kind of the sequence of things now,” he said. “I’ve had good results with both of those things so far. They can’t tell me that it’s gone or doesn’t exist anymore; they can just say it’s not active.”

That means Kurvers will likely have to take Tagrisso for the rest of his life. It’s currently in its third iteration, and a fourth iteration is forthcoming.

“My job is to get there,” Kurvers said. “That’s the game plan.”

It’s as simple as that.

“We all know we’re going to die someday; I just got an official notice,” Kurvers said. “It’s almost like I got tapped on the shoulder, like, ‘Just a heads up. This is a thing now.’ I’m dealing with that and taking it on every day and continuing to fight. That’s all I can do.”