The Casino File
Ronnie Platt, lead singer of the veteran heartland prog-rock band Kansas, had only one thought when, a mere 53 weeks ago, he heard the word no one ever wants to hear from their doctor: “Cancer.”
“It doesn’t get more sobering than that, being totally ignorant of what I had,” said the almost-66-year-old vocalist during a recent phone chat occasioned by his band’s Feb. 21 date at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City. “To be sitting there in my doctor’s office going, ‘Do I have six months to live? A year to live?’”
As it turned out, Platt’s fears were unfounded and his tale had a very happy — and unexpectedly quick — ending. He was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer which, he was told, is the most-common — and successfully treated — form of the disease.
Something amiss
It all started when he noticed something wasn’t quite right in his neck. He had developed some hoarseness which, he noted, wasn’t particularly unusual, given the nature of his job. But this time, something alarmed him.
“I just happened to touch my neck, and it felt different; it was painful to the touch. And I’m like, ‘Eh, this ain’t right.’” Not that he eagerly jumped into investigating his condition.
One reason for his hesitancy, he explained, was his psychological response to medical appointments, a condition that is commonly known as “white coat syndrome,” which can trigger blood pressure-spiking anxiety in those affected. But his distaste for the medical realm went much further.
“Not only do I not like doctors, I really don’t like doctors,” he insisted with a laugh.
“I’ve had aches and pains that lasted for months, but eventually went away. Not this time. It was in my money-maker, you know? So, I’m not gonna put this on the back burner. I’m gonna have this checked out.
“My [ear, nose and throat specialist] knew as soon as I walked into the office just by looking at my neck, that I had a nodule on my thyroid. But he did his homework, and he went back and he looked at snapshots of Kansas shows from the previous 10 years. And he would bring up a picture and say, ‘See your neck? See your neck? See your neck?’ And it’s one of those things that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”
Then, Platt continued, came the real surprise.
An unexpected origin
“The crazy thing about this was that my ENT asked if I ever had radiation therapy. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God!
“When I was a baby, I was born with a birthmark on the tip of my nose about the size of a quarter. And, of course, my mother and my grandmother didn’t want me going through life looking like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. So, when I was probably one-and-a-half, maybe two years old, I had this birthmark removed using radiation therapy.
“And I said, ‘You mean to tell me this has been growing in my neck since 1963, 1964?’”
Actually, papillary thyroid cancer is, generally speaking, among the best types of cancer (if there is such a thing) a person can have. The five-year survival rate is a whopping 98 percent, probably because it seldom spreads to vital organs like the liver and pancreas. And so, he was able to pretty much breeze through the surgery.
“Luckily, I only had to have that cancerous nodule removed, and I had my surgery. I was in recovery for about two hours,” reported Platt, who replaced original lead singer Steve Walsh in 2014. “I didn’t even take a wheelchair out of the University of Chicago hospital. I walked out. They gave me a prescription for pain medicine, and I never even opened the bottle.”
Actually, to hear Platt tell it, the toughest battle throughout his whole ordeal had nothing to do with the cancer itself.
“Just trying to [figure out insurance coverage] was a nightmare. A nightmare followed by another nightmare,” he lamented.
A quick return to action
For all the ease of treatment, Platt was nonetheless told to expect his return to performing to take between six months and a year. But he would have none of that.
“I had the diagnosis of thyroid cancer at the end of January, and I had my surgery on March 6. And on April 6 — one month to the day — I was back on stage with the band,” he proudly proclaimed. “So,” he added with a laugh, “to come away from that unscathed is just, boy, talk about a guy that should be buying lottery tickets!”
A ‘bump in the road’
Not surprisingly, he described that first post-surgery performance at the famed Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre outside Denver as “pretty emotional.
“Did I have to play it very safe? Of course I did,” he said. “But it was a great gig. And it only goes to prove what you can do when your back is against the wall.
“And every show got better and better and better. And right now, looking back, it just seems like it was a bump in the road.”
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
