It took them a few days to process the news.
In all the appointments David and Devin Hess have attended since David’s cancer diagnosis, there has rarely been a result that allows for the couple to exhale — to feel as though David is in control of a battle within his body.
“We’re closing in on about 2 1/2 years of going through this, and there’s been some ups and downs, but I feel like there’s been more downs than ups,” said Hess, who pitched for the Orioles from 2018 to 2020.
So when Hess’ oncologist told him there was no need for a November surgery to target the angiosarcoma that has lodged itself between the two main arteries of the heart, Hess and his wife waited for the other shoe to drop.
But this time there wasn’t a catch. There really had been progress. The tumor had shrunk more than anticipated, and now the potentially life-threatening surgery to remove the mass could be shelved.
“That was probably the first time we had really gotten good news,” Hess said, “and we really didn’t know what to make of it. The whole time, we thought surgery was really the only option.”
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Averting the major surgery finally allowed David and Devin to enjoy an infrequent respite from worries of what might be on the horizon. Instead, after a few days, the blessing that was avoiding the surgery became apparent, and they entered 2024 on the front foot for the first time in a while.
Hess was diagnosed with a cancerous germ cell tumor in 2021. He tried to make a baseball comeback the next spring, but there were additional impediments. More than two years on, the 30-year-old isn’t any closer to returning to a major league mound. He’s undergoing radiation to combat the angiosarcoma that was discovered last summer.
But, as 2024 begins, there’s hope.
“When they found the angiosarcoma, I feel like that’s when everybody was like, ‘Oh crap,’” Hess said. “We went from something really, really treatable to now the odds are not in our favor, the numbers are not looking the way we want them to. To be here right now and having this conversation that, hey, we’re a little bit more in the driver’s seat with this thing, I mean, it’s quite a miracle in itself.”
Even thinking of baseball, then, would be a step beyond a miracle at this point. Hess, whom the Orioles chose in the fifth round of the 2014 MLB draft, reached the majors at Baltimore’s low point, a 115-loss season. He threw 190 1/3 innings over three seasons for the Orioles, then had stints with the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins before cancer took him away from the sport.
In July, though, Hess stood in uniform again. He was turning 30, and for as long as he remembered his midsummer birthday coincided with him playing baseball. While he couldn’t be on the mound himself, he found a temporary haven as a coach for a teenage travel team in the summer and fall, allowing him to remain connected to the game.
“I can’t get myself yet to say it’s completely off the table, even though it probably is,” Hess said of a return to playing. “I feel like that’s how life is. There’s transitions, there’s adjustments, and you just kind of make the most of it as you go.”
The first of those adjustments came in October 2021, when he learned he had a germ cell tumor in his chest. Hess likely played much of his major league career with a sizable tumor in the chest. As his oncologist said, however, a germ cell tumor can “melt like butter” when exposed to chemotherapy.
It did. But when Hess still didn’t feel right — he attempted a comeback with the Rays but returned home to Greenville, South Carolina, over the summer of 2022 — he underwent a second full round of chemotherapy. The side effects, beyond the fatigue that left him feeling far from his baseball heights, included a seizure. They may also have included the development of angiosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in the lining of the blood vessels and lymph vessels, according to Mayo Clinic.
“We’re still kind of unclear if the angiosarcoma was always there or if it was a mutation from some form of the treatment, but either way, when we found out that component was there, it became a lot scarier,” Hess said. “Especially when we found out it had started to kind of metastasize.”
Through it all, Hess and his wife have handled the jolts with a stoic acceptance. The discovery of the angiosarcoma led to a double-lung surgery to remove any spreading cancer. They knew he was due for another round of chemotherapy — this time centered on the heart, attempting to shrink the growth enough to perform a removal akin to open-heart surgery.
The risks were numerous. With the tumor between arteries, the risk to his life was high. The procedure might’ve impacted nerves or even his vocal cords, Hess said. So when they discovered the surgery wasn’t required — that the chemotherapy had shrunk the tumor enough to begin radiation for the remnants instead — there was relief, even if it took a few days to set in.
“It was a testament to how effective the treatment had been and to how fortunate we were through that,” Hess said, “to get to a place where they felt like, for there to be life after this, we don’t need to do this life-threatening surgery now. We can continue to clamp down, to get a grip on this and, if all goes well, this radiation should clear everything up. We’re hoping that maybe we’ll get a good diagnosis at the end of this.”
In the meantime, Hess is staying in the best shape he can. He’s not doing the arduous throwing programs required of major league pitchers. He’s walking and working out when he can — or rather, when he has the energy and is away from classes at Clemson, where he’s finishing his biochemistry degree.
He could still coach. He could still play baseball in the future, although he’s not “forcing the envelope” on that dream.
No matter what, though, he’ll compete — be it against a batter or the disease that has cast him into the unknown.
