[Photo: Scott Davis/PGA of Australia (main)]
Brett Rankin is away again this week.
Leaving his home in Brisbane last Sunday so that he could tee it up in the Asian Tour event in Chinese Taipei starting yesterday was heart-wrenching. He’s not where he wants to be; he’s where he needs to be.
Leaving behind your young family so that you can continue to earn income as a professional golfer is never easy. When your 3-year-old daughter is in the literal fight for her life, stepping out that front door comes with additional baggage. Heavy emotional baggage that Rankin is still struggling to find the way to carry best.
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“It’s just a massive juggling act at the moment. We’re just trying to do the best we can, to be honest,” said Rankin, the 2019 NT PGA champion.
“I’ve always been pretty good at, once I got on the golf course, to really separate my personal life away from what I’m trying to achieve on the golf course. I can get into that space where I’m just competing and I’m just playing golf.
“It’s before rounds and after rounds that are the hard part because you’re getting info back from your partner. And then when your daughter’s saying, ‘I miss you. Can you come home?’that gets pretty hard. I don’t really know how I’ve done it this well so far, to be honest.”
‘The doctor thinks it might be something’
Rankin was on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula playing in the second round of The National Tournament in late March when he received a message from his partner, Nicole.
The concerned parents had spent the past couple of months trying to find answers as to why their bright and bubbly daughter, Dakota, was constantly fatigued, always asking to be carried and coming home from daycare “absolutely wiped”.
There had been chest infections and a bout of pneumonia, but it was only out of desperation that Nicole sought a second opinion on that Friday while Rankin was away.
It was then that were confronted by a terrifying reality.
“That day Nicole sent me a message. ‘Hey, just a heads up. We’re going to the hospital. The doctor thinks it might be something,’” recalls Rankin, who would miss the cut at The National.
“That night she was like, ‘Hey, you probably should come home.’
“As soon as I walked in the hospital, I knew it wasn’t good news.”
Brett and Nicole were informed that night that their daughter has B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL), the most common strain of leukaemia among children.
It gives the family hope that Dakota will go on to live a full and healthy life, but they are just a few months into an almost three-year course of treatment that strips her immune system and tortures the emotions of her parents.
“My world changed pretty quickly in that next 12 hours,” Rankin said of hearing the diagnosis. “I couldn’t even talk, mate. You could ask me how I was doing, I’d just start crying. Just pretty heavy stuff.
“The hardest thing about it was you get told that at 1 o’clock in the morning and you’re like, OK, what does that mean? Is she going to die in five years’ time or in two years’ time? What does that mean for us? Do we need to put the house up for sale? Do we need money for this? What’s happening with golf?
“I was kind of in mourning for her and for my career, to be honest.”
Rankin’s emotions fluctuated wildly in the days that followed. Devastation. Desperation. Fear. Anger.
“I was just like, Why her? Why us? She doesn’t deserve this. She’s a kid,” said Rankin, who spoke of his admiration for the doctors and nurses at the Queensland Children’s Hospital where Dakota has received treatment.
“What’s she done in her life to be battling cancer? There’s just really s–t people out there in the world; they’re the ones who should be getting this.
“That’s the kind of head space I was in. I was just like, This is so unfair on everyone.”
At his lowest point, however, Rankin would find the support his family desperately needed from an unexpected place.
‘I’ve been quite shocked at the generosity’
Golf is not a team sport.
Now 40, Brett Rankin has spent his career going toe-to-toe against 100 or more professional golfers at a time, relying on no one but himself for the score he shoots.
Brett and Nicole knew they would have family and friends they could lean on. They did not expect the broader golf community to respond in the way that it did.
“The biggest shock to me was the golfing community, to be honest,” Rankin admits. “There are a lot of people who reached out that I didn’t think would reach out. And then when we put the GoFundMe page up, I was shocked at some of the people that supported and donated, which just shows how much the golfing community is a family.
“Even if you might not get along with some guys or you’re just not sure what they’re like, as soon as something like this happens, everyone has a big heart and they promote and they donate and they ask.
“I’ve been quite shocked at the generosity of a lot of the guys as well.”
The GoFundMe target of $40,000 to assist in covering loss of income and medical and hospital-related expenses is close to being reached.
With Nicole’s support and blessing, Rankin would return to the Asian Tour a month after Dakota’s diagnosis, fighting through a mental fog to forge a new normality.
‘Next year should look a lot more normal’
Throughout a 40-minute interview sporadically interrupted by his doting daughter who had lost the last of her hair the day before, it is at the mention of Christmas when Rankin’s emotions threaten to break. What should be the most joyous day of a young child’s year was suddenly not a given.
Social outings now require honest conversations with friends and family about putting an immunocompromised Dakota in a setting where the slightest infection could trigger a fever that would necessitate another, at a minimum, 48-hour hospital stay.
In treating leukaemia, the strongest dose of medication occurs in the first month. The mix of treatment and steroids can induce mood swings and a ravenous appetite.
“That first month of treatment when she was on the steroids every day, she wouldn’t smile for a week. She’d just be stuck in bed and pretty miserable,” Rankin shares.
That Dakota responded so well to that first month of intense treatment now has her in a low-risk category, still requiring a lengthy course of treatment but at a lower intensity.
It is why Christmas now feels so significant, and why Rankin can start to think about looking forward.
“No leukaemia. That would trump everything,” said of his Christmas wish. “We just know by the end of the year, by November, December, she should be starting to ease into that maintenance period, which basically becomes normal life.
“She takes medicine at home, maybe goes into the hospital every three months and potentially she’ll start kindy in February.
“Next year will look a lot different. It should look a lot more normal.”
Normal never sounded so good.
• You can help Brett, Nicole and Dakota in their battle by donating to their GoFundMe page here
