Piston fan doesn't let brain diagnosis stop his renewal of season tickets
· Yahoo Sports
Dan Bellmore has already renewed his Detroit Pistons season tickets for next year.
Visit michezonews.co.za for more information.
If you ask him how that reflects his optimism, he'll tell you, of course he's optimistic. Have you seen the team lately?
"Are you kidding?" Bellmore says. "Just look at the team we have, they're a shoo-in."
It takes a gentle nudge to remind him of the other thing.
Bellmore, a 63-year-old East Lansing resident, is dying.
"Oh," he said, realizing the intent of the question. "Personally? Every game I can go to and make it to, I'm there."
Bellmore knows it's possible he may not be around to use his season tickets next year. But he's facing his ticket-buying decision the same way he's facing the rest of the time he has left: full speed ahead.
"I can overcome it," he said. "Or be the first to try."
Pistons fan battles rare brain disease
It's not that Bellmore forgets he's dying. His brain is still working well enough for that. He just doesn't dwell on it.
He's known about it for some time, after all. It was six years ago when the doctors sat him down after he suffered a stroke to tell him they had bad news.
"The only time doctors say that is to give you a bill or give you a death sentence," Bellmore remembered telling them. "Do you have a bill?"
It was the other thing.
Bellmore has a rare degenerative neurological disorder called Fahr's Syndrome, which causes the brain to calcify, essentially creating bone where there should be soft tissue. Bellmore calls it "Parkinson's on steroids." There is no cure, only the management of symptoms before it is ultimately terminal.
Bellmore doesn't have any sight out of his left eye and no hearing in his left ear. He speaks with a bit of a stutter and has a hard time saying words that end in "-ed" or "-ing." He called them "slight disabilities" that he can work around. He always picks his seats at Little Caesars Arena so he can see and hear the whole game from the right side.
Bellmore doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to go to games. But he isn't thinking about that right now.
"Does that stop me? Not at all," Bellmore said. "You've gotta live life. You live every minute. You never know when it’s your time. Only the man upstairs knows when it's going to happen."
He brushes off the notion that his time and his life are more limited now.
"I said to the doctor, 'I know a terminal disease everyone has, called life,'" Bellmore said. "No matter what, it takes you out. So I'm not going to dwell on what's going on. I'm just going to work around what challenges it offers."
Canadian heritage failed to convert Bellmore to a hockey fan
Bellmore's grandfather was from Canada, so everyone assumed he would grow up a hockey fan. He hates hockey, he noted.
As a kid with a November birthday, always looking for something fun to do inside. It was open gyms that brought him and his friends together to celebrate his day. Basketball became his sport, although he's a Detroit Lions fan as well.
Bellmore had a half-season ticket package this year for the Pistons. Next year, he already has upgraded to the full-year package. He often comes with close friend Jesse McCutchen, a Rochester Hills resident who, along with his daughter, absorbs some of the games in Bellmore's plan if he can't attend.
Bellmore's season ticket representative, Membership Experience Executive Alexis Wenger, said she reached out to Bellmore two years ago when she started with the Pistons, and they talked for "quite a while." He never mentioned his illness until months later. She didn't realize he had been battling it for so long.
Wenger said Bellmore always drops by the service desk to say hello as he walks laps around Little Caesars Arena.
"He's so positive, he never wants to miss out on anything, even given his condition," she said. "He's such a committed fan and renews each year even not knowing how long he has, which I think is very special."
Bellmore couldn't make the first round of the playoffs against the Orlando Magic after a cousin passed away, and he had to travel for the funeral. But he was in attendance for Game 2 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, standing with the rest of the crowd at the end of the game, celebrating the win and giving his all to the DEEE-troit, Basket-ball" cheer.
Bellmore is set to be back in the arena for Game 5 with the series tied 2-2.
Husband gets love of his life to love basketball
For 21 years, Bellmore's plus-one was his wife, Michelle. She wasn't much of a sports fan before they married in 2002. But Bellmore somehow managed to convince the love of his life to love, well, the other love of his life.
Michelle loved going anywhere Dan went. And Dan loved going to the Detroit Pistons games.
"She saw my excitement and joy, and she wanted to be part of it," Bellmore said. "It grew on her."
It was somewhat like, he admitted, Michelle grew on Dan. The two dated for a time before splitting up, Michelle perhaps more keen on Dan at the time than Dan was on Michelle.
He left the Army after two deployments, including one overseas during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s and joined the Air Force. Bellmore traveled the globe, working for companies like Ford, General Motors, Saab and Honda, and always found ways to watch the Pistons from abroad.
But years later, he couldn't get Michelle out of his head.
He reached back out, and they married and moved to her hometown of East Lansing, building a home right next to her dad's house.
They didn't have kids, but enjoyed having other people's kids to love on. They attended Pistons games whenever they could.
"We were always together," Bellmore said. "We never ended a conversation without saying 'I love you.' You never wanted to regret not saying it."
The couple starts to battle health problems
Bellmore started to battle his health troubles in his late 50s. At the same time, Michelle started to battle her own.
She died two years ago.
"It was a blessing," Bellmore said. "She was in terrible pain."
She always wanted to come back into the world as a butterfly after her death, Bellmore said, so he had a butterfly tattooed on his back.
"What better? She always had my back," he said. In a demonstration of his ability to alternate freely between being sentimental and witty, he added, "I can't see it, so I don't know if it's good."
He misses her, but said she's "always with me, always whispering in my ear."
Bellmore doesn't seem to believe he has had to endure more than anyone else. If he does, he takes comfort in his faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He draws inspiration from the biblical story of Job, how Job was given more suffering than a person should, but refused to back away from his faith.
"I actually feel blessed," Bellmore said. "I'm closer to God now."
So every chance he gets, he makes the three-hour round-trip to a Detroit Pistons game.
"Whatever games I can make it to, that's to be determined," Bellmore said. "But my enthusiasm for the game and the team will never end. It's part of who I am. I won't get down on life when life is too good to me right now."
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Piston fan battling brain diagnosis keeps showing up for his team