Clive Rice has lifesaving procedure on brain tumor

JOHANNESBURG: Former South Africa cricket captain Clive Rice said he had a lifesaving procedure on a cancerous brain tumor in India after doctors at home told him there was nothing they could do and he was going to die.
Rice was diagnosed with the brain tumor after collapsing last month, he said in an interview released on Tuesday by South Africa’s Eyewitness News. However, neurosurgeons in South Africa told him the position of the tumor ruled out surgery.
So, Rice traveled to India for robotic radiation treatment, a procedure where a machine sends radiation into the brain using lasers to destroy the tumor without needing to cut into the brain.
“From being in a state where they told you, you’re basically going to die, well, that’s what we’re all going to do. But I’m not in a hurry to die,” Rice said. “Through this treatment we managed to sort it out.”
The 65-year-old Rice said he was recovering at home, and must return to India in three months for a scan to make sure remnants of the tumor have left his brain.
“Every day now you wake up, you just feel better and better and better, and I was very happy with what happened,” he said in the interview.
Rice was a tough, uncompromising all-rounder in the 1970s and 1980s whose career was spoiled by the sporting ban on South Africa because of apartheid. He played just three one-day internationals, captaining South Africa in a three-match series in India after the country was allowed back into international cricket in 1991. By then he was 42. He was dropped from the 1992 World Cup team and didn’t play for his country again.
Rice also represented English county side Nottinghamshire, and is credited with convincing former England batsman Kevin Pietersen to leave his country of birth to seek a future in English cricket.
Rice said the first diagnosis he was given by doctors after he collapsed on his way to play a round of golf was not good.
“I was taken off to hospital,” he said. “They then did a scan and found that I had a brain tumor, and where that brain tumor was they said the neurosurgeons couldn’t operate. So it was a hell of an unsatisfactory position to be in, but we had plan B in place.”