SAUGUS — John O’Brien thought he’d suffered a basketball injury, and why would anyone have an issue with that?
“He loved basketball,” said his younger brother, Dan, a former School Committee member. “He didn’t play much for the (Saugus) high school team, but he got better after he graduated. He grew a little, and ended up playing in adult leagues around town.”
But it wasn’t a basketball injury. It was brain cancer. And it has left John O’Brien unable to use the left side of his body.
Dan O’Brien used to go to his brother’s games to watch, and says they were a lot of fun to see.
“These guys really played,” he said. “They went all-out. You could smell the Ben Gay, smell the linament. I remember one guy had to get cortisone shots just so he could play.”
After one of those games, O’Brien asked his brother how things had gone.
“Not good,” his brother told him. “My legs felt a little heavy.”
John O’Brien, a painting contractor with the firm he established — O’Brien and McKenney of Saugus — initially thought he had a back injury and didn’t think that much of it.
“We went to see Southside Johnny at Lynn City Hall. He absolutely loved Southside Johnny. He had front row center tickets.
“But I noticed he had a limp,” Dan O’Brien said. “And that week, he was going to go get it checked out.” Aside from the limp, he had also developed a dropped foot, Dan O’Brien said, and he was going to go get it checked out by a nerve specialist.
The next thing anybody knew, John O’Brien was at Mass. General getting a CAT scan. There, he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a very aggressive brain cancer.
“This was discovered about two weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown,” O’Brien said, “which made it tougher for his family. Nobody could see him once the shutdown started. Not even his wife (Jeanmarie) and kids.”
O’Brien has gone through his first rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, and he has lost the use of his left arm and his left leg.
“I’m sure he’s in some pain, though I don’t know how much,” his brother said. “But the central issue is more the paralysis than it is the pain.”
O’Brien said his brother’s nature shone through once he was diagnosed.
“He was worried about everybody else,” he said. “He was worried about how people were doing, and how people were handling the diagnosis.
“And when he was at Mass. General, and then Spaulding Rehab, it was amazing. Even the shift workers who weren’t assigned to him would come by his room to see how he was doing. He treated everyone the same — always warmly and with respect.”
O’Brien, his brother said, was always a basketball fan. He used to go to the Daily Evening Item’s basketball camps in the early 1970s, and among his basketball-playing friends back in those days were Tony and Eddie Thurman. He was also a paperboy, and delivered the Item.
And the basketball genes continue. His sons, Joe and Jack, played for Malden Catholic and are now in college, and his daughter, Hannah, will play again this coming year for Bishop Fenwick.
After his latest round of treatment, O’Brien is home now.
“He has an incredible network of friends, from Saugus and elsewhere,” Dan O’Brien said. “They’ve started a GoFundMe page for him, and in a matter of two weeks, the contributions went through the roof.”
Jeanmarie O’Brien has had to take time off from work to care for her husband, Dan O’Brien said, “and she has a very challenging situation of figuring out how to keep the family’s financial ship afloat while she takes a prolonged leave of absence. The loss of her income will create an extreme level of family financial hardship that will impact the family not only now, but well into the future.”
