Adam takes up the challenge

Adam was training as hard as he ever had before and put in some long hours in the hot sun of January 2003. You’d expect nothing less from a premiership player and an emerging star.
After a training session in February that year he flopped to ground after yet another powerful running set, to catch his breath ahead of a routine massage.
Normally he’d just have his calves, hamstrings and lower back worked on, but he had tightness in his neck.
He asked the myotherapist to iron out what he thought was merely a kink.
As she started to work his neck she felt something she was not sure about.
Long-time trainer Charlie Italia came over to the table. He placed two fingers against Adam’s neck and pushed.
There was something there, just above his collarbone.
To him it felt like a knot, a large pimple underneath the skin the size of a fifty-cent coin. He tried to massage it out as you can do with knots and ripples in muscles, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You should have the doctors check that out,” Charlie said, in Adam’s new book, written with journalist Emma Quayle, called ‘Nine Lives’.
“I will,” Adam said. “I’ll be right, it’s probably nothing, it’ll go away on its own.”
Two weeks later, the lump was still there. Adam still hadn’t told anyone, but he didn’t feel alarmed.
Essendon club doctor Bruce Reid had a look at the lump and didn’t like what he saw. He described it in his notes on March 19 as “hard, craggy and dense.”
After several blood tests and discussions with two different surgeons and a set of inconclusive results it was decided he was to have a 90-minute MRI scan. The results from that scan indicated – not conclusively – Adam had a benign, localised, soft-tissue tumour called fibromatosis.
The fear – from surgeon Brian Costello – was that the lump was placed in a delicate spot. It was close to his carotid artery, which supplies blood to the brain and is entangled by nerves.
Costello decided a formal biopsy was the best plan of attack: to open Adam up and remove as much of the tumour as possible to analyse it.
Adam kept playing football. He was one of Essendon’s best in round two against Melbourne and was brilliant the following week against arch-rivals Carlton. He didn’t feel sick and was playing great footy even with the lump attached.
The biopsy results were unclear and muddy, but Adam still remained upbeat. “Okay, I’ll be right, give me a couple of weeks and I’ll start playing and training again.”
Costello believed he had removed most of the tumour, if not all, but it was difficult to tell because of its unusual shape and location.
Reid’s assessment of the pathology report was that “it wasn’t a true cancer, but it could still kill from it reoccurring.”
By the end of May, only eight weeks after the biopsy Adam had increased his training and was back doing almost everything with his beloved Bombers. He was picked in the round 12 clash against North Melbourne, gathered seven first half touches and kicked a goal in the third quarter – a trademark left foot snap.
In his mind, he was back and could start to put this nightmare behind him.
But four or five weeks after that match he had this sinking feeling in bed one night.
The lump was growing back.
His nightmare was just beginning.
The cancer returned and he missed the last six games while undergoing treatment.
He was presented with the Best Clubman Award at season’ end.
He was re-diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and didn’t play a game due to treatment. He returned to senior football in Round14, 2007, amid emotional scenes and finished with five games for the season.
Adam played 18 games in 2008 and retired at the end of the year.
Throughout that long period of uncertainty where “Rama” fought off three bouts of cancer, aside from the Bombers and close friends and relatives, Noble Park president, Kevin Wright and life member Ian “Pissy” Wilson were among the hordes of people who offered him continued support at Noble Park.
“They’ve both been fantastic to me and not only to me, but to my parents as well, but they are only two guys – there have been so many other people that have been fantastic as well,” he said. “They are a real community club, a fantastic bunch of people and you can see why they’ve had so much success over the years.”
For Ramanauskas post football life has been bustling.
With a regular spot on ABC radio, day to day player management commitments at athlete management group Elite Sports Properties and media duties for Call to Arms a Cancer Council campaign for which he is an ambassador, he’s barely had time to sit down.
On weekends, you’ll see him running around the MCG delivering messages to the Essendon players. It’s part of the small development role he has with the Bombers.
With the birth of his second child due this month, it doesn’t look like life will be slowing down for Adam anytime soon.
“I’m really enjoying my involvement with football and what I’m doing with work, to be honest,” he said. “It’s time I give back to my family but yeah life’s pretty good at the moment.”
During the Call to Arms month in July the former Bomber has been spending his time at various public speaking events at sporting clubs to help raise cancer awareness.
In its fifth year, the national program, supported by Essendon Football Club hopes to raise $1 million this year.
“It’s such a big fund-raising event, it’s quite exciting to be a part of,” he said. “I’ve been an ambassador since the start really, obviously on the back of Essendon wearing a yellow armband all those years ago against Melbourne and out of that the Cancer Council asked me if I wanted to be an ambassador.”
The St John’s College old boy went back to Noble Park for their Call to Arms match last month.
“I was down there a couple of weeks ago and they raised a heap of money for it, which is phenomenal,” he said. “They are always so welcoming, they always invite me back to the club and when I go back there, it does feel like home with plenty of familiar faces around.”
Despite being a basketball nut and after short stints of footy at Doveton, Hallam and Endeavour Hills, he was eventually lured down to Noble Park by his best mate some 14 years ago and began his football career in the under 15s. “It just so happened that one of my dad’s best mates, Peter Boyle, was coaching at the time, too,” he said. “I guess the stars aligned and the rest is history.”