Two fighters: Dying cancer patient meets Muhammad Ali
LOUISVILLE — When dying cancer patient Jill Brzezinski-Conley met Muhammad Ali this week, they embraced tearfully, held hands, and shared the unspoken bond of two fighters -- both betrayed by their bodies but strong in spirit.
It didn't matter that the 72-year-old boxing great, largely silenced by Parkinson's disease, never said a word.
"Even without saying anything, looking in my eyes he said everything...He jumped right in my heart and my soul," said Jill Conley, whose journey with incurable breast cancer is being chronicled by The Courier-Journal and USA TODAY. "It was one of the greatest moments of my life and one I will never forget."
Their private meeting arose unexpectedly Wednesday. Jill's husband Bart got a call at work from Jeanie Kahnke of the Muhammad Ali Center, saying Ali and his wife, Lonnie, who had been following Jill's story, would like to meet her. The Conleys attended the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards in September as special guests of the center, and Kahnke said she had originally hoped they could meet then.
"We saw a lot of qualities in Jill that she shared with Muhammad," Kahnke said. "They both want to help others. They're both fighters."
Since retiring from boxing, the center says, Ali has been involved with hunger and poverty relief, education efforts, promoting adoption and fostering respect between people worldwide. Jill, meanwhile, is devoting her remaining days to two things: her charity, Jill's Wish, which provides financial help for families battling cancer, and a mission to share her belief that beauty can't be erased by illness.
The Conleys spent a little over an hour with Ali at the downtown Louisville center that bears his name. Jill said she squatted in front of Ali, who was seated in a chair, and told him about her five-year ordeal with cancer, her outreach to others, and how much his humanitarian work has inspired her.
"You blow me away that you're still doing all this and you're still fighting despite this disease,'" she recalled telling him.
As she spoke, she said he squeezed her hands tightly and "would not let go." Tears filled his eyes, then hers.
"They must have held hands for a good 20 minutes," Kahnke said. "It was amazing."
Bart could hardly believe they were meeting their longtime hero.
"I can't tell you how honored we were," Bart said. "He's like an icon of the 21st century."
Jill said Ali looked "great" overall, although he didn't speak or walk while she was there, and appeared a little skinnier than she remembered from photos.
Ali has been struggling with Parkinson's for decades. His family released an official statement saying he had mild symptoms of Parkinson's syndrome in 1984, and the disease has taken a continual toll since.
Parkinson's causes tremors, slowness of movement and problems with gait and balance, and eventually can trap functioning minds in failing bodies. Although it's not considered fatal, victims can succumb to complications, such as swallowing problems that cause choking.
As Ali loses ground to Parkinson's, Conley, 37, is losing ground to cancer. Since it was first diagnosed in her breast five years ago, she's had a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and breast-implant surgery --then surgery to remove the left implant after radiation burned a hole in it. The disease resurfaced in her sternum two years ago, in the lining of her left lung late last year, and in her liver in September.
The Conleys said Lonnie Ali and her family invited them to spend time at the Ali home in Phoenix, Ariz., where they spend the majority of their time, to meet with a holistic doctor there who may offer hope for Jill. Jill said she would love to go.
Until then, she said, meeting Ali has renewed her resolve to push ahead with her dying mission even as she grows weaker.
"Looking at him and his life and all the things he's done," she said, "I want to do everything within my power to do all I can in the time I have left."
