PROVIDENCE — Eight blocks from this particular hotel lobby, there’s a Rhode Island seafood institution that Ron Rivera . He was introduced to it by a good buddy of his, one he went to Seaside High and Cal with, who lives on Cape Cod. It’s become their tradition over the years, whenever Rivera’s NFL team is town to play the Patriots, to meet there the night before the game.
They were there on Wednesday night, and the Washington coach split some calamari with his buddy and his buddy’s wife. Rivera also had a single slice of bread and ordered the Atlantic cod as his entrée, with mashed potatoes and green beans on the side. It’s a meal he always looks forward to, and something he had circled right away when the NFL preseason schedule was released.
But as much as he wanted to, Rivera couldn’t finish his dinner, leaving scraps of fish behind.
“I couldn’t eat it all, and I the seafood,” Rivera said, about an hour later on a couch at the team hotel. “But I just can’t. It’s too hard to swallow. That’s still frustrating. It’s hard still to taste; I don’t taste everything yet either. So there’s all these little things, these little indicators, that bring me back: . My wound, my scars, they’re healing, some are going away, but if you look, some are still there. And so every time I shave …”
And this is where Rivera pauses, and recounts the story of the trigger that led to his getting checked out last summer and ultimately being diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. He was shaving and noticed a lump on his neck. He figured the swollen lymph nodes might be due to strep throat so he went to get tested for that. Doctors gave him antibiotics and told him to keep an eye on it, and Rivera went on vacation. A few weeks later, it was smaller, but still there. He again called his doctor, who told him to monitor it closely for another week.
It didn’t go away. He went in again. He left with a cancer diagnosis.
It’s been a little over a year now, and Rivera never missed a game and wound up shelved only for a few practices. He was the bellwether for a steady Washington team in his first year as coach there, with news-cycle-driving controversies involving the owner and the team’s nickname surrounding his group, and that group won the franchise its first division title in eight years nonetheless. So in a lot of ways, it’s easy to tag him as unshakable.
But that would imply that the last year hasn’t changed Rivera. Which definitely isn’t true.
