Don’t Believe The Excuse You Can’t Make A Difference

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

It was the first home game in October 2021 for the new Seattle Kraken hockey team. If you’ve been to or watched hockey games before, you will see fans pounding on the plexiglass around the rink to distract and intimidate the visiting players.

On this night, one fan did it for a different reason. Nadia Popovici was in her stepfather’s season tickets when she noticed something on the neck of the Vancouver Canuck’s equipment manager’s neck.

She banged on the glass and got Brian “Red” Hamilton’s attention and held up her phone to him. It read, “The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!”

The mole was type-2 malignant melanoma that hadn’t penetrated the skin yet.

He had no idea that he had a mole there and as he left the arena, he started rubbing his neck to check if he felt something. He asked his wife and she encouraged him to see the team doctor, who took a biopsy and sent it for testing. When it was identified as cancerous, a larger amount was removed and he has been cancer-free since.

Hamilton was told by his doctor that he wasn’t pulled out of a burning car but from a slow-burning fire. In 4 or 5 years he would have been dead.