‘Face it with courage’: Through a brand-new diagnosis, tennis legend Jaime Kaplan keeps fighting

Jaime Kaplan got started turning heads pretty early in life.

When she was all of 9, Macon hosted a pro men’s tennis tournament that included the likes of Rod Laver and Stan Smith. It moved from Wesleyan’s gym to the Macon Coliseum.

Tennis tournaments need ball boys. This one, though, had a major rarity: A ball girl.

The Kaplan Family housed some players during the tournaments, and one, Jan Kodes, took the 9-year-old Jaime to Idle Hour Country Club and threw tennis balls at her.

“For like 15 minutes,” Kaplan said. “He took me home and told my mom she had a tennis player.”

An understatement.

She went undefeated in singles and doubles in five years at Stratford, was a top-5 youth player all those summers, and won conference titles at Georgia and Florida State before embarking on a half-decade pro career that included trips to every Grand Slam event.

A tennis player indeed.

A knee injury in 1989 ended the professional tennis career but not the game completely for the youngest of four children of Letty and the late Leonard Kaplan.

But it started so much more for the Kaplan everybody — from somebody sweeping up courts at John Drew Smith Tennis Center to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, to legends of tennis to an owner of No. 1 pop songs — seems to know. It turned tennis into a life of giving and decades of involvement in Macon, Middle Georgia and the state of Georgia. She contributes to tennis, fund-raising, coaching, celebrating others, putting on events, mostly to raise money for those in need.

A veritable celebrity in Macon. When Jaime calls…

“I love to be a connector, I love doing things for people,” she said, sitting on her porch on a pleasantly mild June afternoon last week. “For me, it’s just… when I do the tournament, when I do other stuff, that’s what makes me tick. That’s just my daily things that I do. That’s just how I’m built.”

And yet Jaime Kaplan, of all people, a seemingly indefatigable Macon poster child, is on the clock. Life’s clock. The woman who never slows down has been slowed down, the woman with infinite energy for involvement is dealing with something quite finite.

“The surgeon said he has seen patients in my situation live up to two years,” she said in a March social media update.

The situation is pancreatic cancer, and it’s complicated.

It’s the reality that nobody connected to her – and that’s a group of folks that would take up a hefty chunk of seats in the Macon Coliseum – wants to think about or deal with. Yet it’s the reality that many in that group, Kaplan’s “prayer warriors,” are thinking about, and are dealing with.

Again.

Back in 2009, Kaplan was diagnosed with extramedullary acute myeloid leukemia. In August of 2010, she had a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

A win.

Then in June of 2020 came a diagnosis of hATTR amyloidosis, a genetic disease with several variants. It has no cure but is treatable, and Kaplan’s treatment has been successful with no interruptions of progress.

During the treatment for amyloidosis, Kaplan started having some back pain that only got worse. Finally, in June 2022 in Boston, home to her amyloidosis doctors, a chest X-ray showed a few nodules on her lung. The plan was for a CT scan upon returning home, then another in December. All was well, and Kaplan was told there was no need for another look-see for a year.

Kaplan’s back pain returned near the end of 2022, and doctors couldn’t really find anything, so it was treated with some therapy and medication.

A win.

Then a year after that Dec. 2022 chest X-ray, a routine scan on the regularly scheduled Dec. 2023 exam showed a mass on her pancreas. As she posted on Facebook at the time: “It was seen in the scan only because the top part of the pancreas happened to photobomb the picture.” And her doctor said the tumor had probably existed for more than a year, quietly, and hiding, as pancreatic tumors are wont to do.

“Just minding my own business,” she said with a chuckle. “And then …”

Not a win.

And so began a dizzying, and inspiring, journey of the past six or seven months.

A conquered disease uncovers a new one

It’s September 2023. The Five Star Kevin Brown Russell Henley Celebrity Classic is underway, with a golf tournament as the centerpiece of action along with a clay shoot and auction dinner to raise money for the Rescue Mission of Central Georgia, the Macon Volunteer Clinic, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

It was a much smaller event, the Charter Celebrity Tennis Classic, when Kaplan started it in 1989. The 2023 version took in more than a million bucks, the 10th straight year it passed the seven-digit mark. Kaplan was having the back issues, but otherwise normal physically.

“About a week later, the (back) pain became really, really severe,” she said.

It was during the event that singer Taylor Dayne, in town to perform at the Grand Opera House, met Kaplan — then in what had become “normal” health for somebody who had leukemia a dozen years earlier and then was hit with hATTR amyloidosis.

In the process, Dayne became a fan of Macon. And Kaplan.

Fast forward to December, as Kaplan tried to get scans for her back — the pain had become somewhat debilitating at times — but was denied by insurance, for a variety of reasons. She already had a CT scan scheduled during her yearly amyloidosis visit, so that would have to suffice. The phone rang a few days later, and caller ID stated the “Georgia Cancer Specialist.”

“I’m like, ‘Why are they calling?’” she said.

It wasn’t for a donation.

It was because the scans showed pancreatic cancer, adenocarcinoma. After some rough days and weeks of chemotherapy, it was determined in February that there was progress, but that the location and complex logistics made it inoperable.

Well, sort of.

Surgery would involve removing her spleen, and pancreas, and celiac plexus, a nerve center for the abdomen, all of which, if successful, would have major quality-of-life impacts. But more than that…

“The doctor at Sloan Kettering (Cancer Center in New York) is the one that said there’s a double-digit chance that I wouldn’t make it out of the hospital, maybe not even off the table,” said Kaplan.

Jump to early April, when so many of those people Kaplan had worked with and touched continued to research, talk, discuss and inquire.

Kaplan was sitting on her porch on a breezy afternoon chatting. As is the case throughout every day, her phone kept going off with text messages. And about four times, in short order, it was Dayne, who had a treatment option or two to consider.

“I’m on it,” read one text from the latest addition to Team Jaime.

About that clock…

It was in late February that life delivered the gut punch. As it stood, with the tumor and its difficult location almost eliminating surgical options, patients with similar situations, Kaplan was told, lived up to two years after routine treatment.

After a short break from social media and the Caringbridge website, Kaplan broke the fairly quiet stretch with a lengthy and knee-shaking update.

“We met with the surgeon at Emory last week and he did not have good news regarding surgery,” she posted on March 8, sharing the brutal news that the cancer was inoperable.

That post drew more than 500 Facebook reactions and nearly 400 comments.

In April, Stratford held a surprise celebration for Kaplan at the tennis complex bearing her name to celebrate her 500th win — to go with 13 team state championships, and 10 singles or doubles state titles, in the GISA/GIAA and GHSA — as the Eagles girls and boys coach.

It wasn’t a large gathering — the Stratford teams, school staffers, coaches, family, and close friends. After all, it was to be a surprise, coming on the same day the school honored former tennis standout Link Leskosky McNure with a jersey retirement.

Throughout presentations, short speeches and then a video with the likes of Martina Navratilova, John Smoltz, and Russell Henley, among others, Kaplan was emotional after each change of speakers.

After all, she was unprepared, thinking the day was about Leskosky, who was thrilled to be part of the whole celebration.

“Total surprise,” she said. “I thought I was just going to a luncheon to celebrate Link. I didn’t know what was coming. Like I said that day, one of the positives —”

A slight hit of emotions emerges:

“—about having cancer is that you know what people think about you while you’re alive. That’s why I encouraged people that were there to tell people what they think about ‘em, because it doesn’t do any good when they’re gone.”

The suggestion that Kaplan knows her impact — through the health battles, tennis stewardship, connecting people and organizations, raising money for so many charities and organizations and reputations with big-name sports people throughout the state and nation — draws a slight frown of deference.

It’s just how she’s built.

‘My intention is to beat this’

The past six weeks or so have been a flurry of possibilities and action.

The first discussion of optional or alternative treatment came in mid-April with a doctor at Vanderbilt.

Soon after that, she got word of the experimental treatment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and she had an appointment at one of the world’s top treatment facilities.

Her second tussle with chemo — she underwent sessions for leukemia in 2010 — is over, as of May 31.

“When I have adversity, I tackle things head on. ‘This is what it is, and this is what you need to do to get past it.’

Jaime Kaplan

The Sloan Kettering treatment is five high-dosage radiation sessions, all done in a week. The “mapping” process of her insides takes 10-14 days.

“It’s a scheduling thing, too,” she said. “It takes these specific nurses, and (the doctor) has to be available. It’s very, very specialized. I’m just waiting for the call from them to tell me, ‘OK, these are the five days we’re going to do this.’ They’re not giving you options.”

Kaplan got the call last week, and she’s set for five days of intense radiation in July.

She hasn’t had any treatment since May 31, and only recently had her first visit in months to a hair salon. She feels good. Good and anxious, for adding to the already phenomenal waiting game was the call from MSK, and what’s next.

There has been good news along the way in a process where any good news is good news. While the tumor has not decreased in size, it has decreased in power, and it hasn’t spread to any other organs.

In July, that intense radiation treatment begins, and the waiting game intensifies.

The positivity Kaplan has always had admittedly took a hit in December and then in early March, but it returned with the possibilities of alternative treatments. The longer Kaplan stays healthy and the cancer gets no worse and treatments lead to progress, the longer she’s around for the possibility of other advancements, and other experimental treatments.

What didn’t exist four months ago now exists, so who knows what may develop four months from now?

Her hair went from dark brown to white after leukemia, and her weight has dropped drastically in the past eight months or so. So much has changed, and so much hasn’t. The intestinal fortitude of a successful athlete — having battled through injuries and pressure and setbacks and life in general, the lectures from coaches decades ago taking hold again — is exhibited.

“I think that in the end, things that have happened to me in my life, I just try to tackle it, adversity,” she said. “When I have adversity, I tackle things head on. ‘This is what it is, and this is what you need to do to get past it.’

“I remember when I got diagnosed with leukemia, my brother (Mike) saying to me, ‘You can have a pity party today. Come tomorrow, the pity party’s done, and we’re gonna fight this.’ Obviously, this is the most serious setback that I’ve ever faced, but I’m trying to face it with courage and fight.”

And with the confidence, if not mild arrogance, of a true athlete, digging inside to a life of competition, achievement, coaching, and success.

“You know, my intention is to beat this,” she said, voice cracking ever so slightly, for only a moment. “And I’m going to do everything I can. I’m going to do what the doctors tell me, I’m going to exercise and eat right.

“And then the rest is left up to God.”