Brewer’s Kiah is ready to battle cancer

Popular Brewer High School athletic director Dennis Kiah said he will count upon his years as a coach to battle his toughest foe: cancer.

Kiah had a cancerous tumor removed from a swollen gland in his neck on Jan. 24 and doctors discovered that it had originated in a tonsil.

He will begin radiation treatments at Cancer Care of Maine in Bangor on Wednesday. Kiah explained that the treatments will last 61/2 weeks and he may also undergo some chemotherapy treatments.

“I’m approaching it like I’m coaching against an opponent,” said Kiah. “I’ve tried to find out as much about it as I can, I’ve drawn up a game plan and intend to put my best players on the field. If the game plan doesn’t work, I’ll make adjustments.”

The 53-year-old Kiah, who lost his mother, Josephine, to lung cancer several years ago, said he wasn’t shocked when they discovered the tumor and he is ready to begin the process to eradicate the disease.

“There’s no sense crying about it. It’s an obstacle I have to overcome so I can get on with the rest of my life,” said Kiah, who intends to take a positive attitude into the treatments.

“There is a line in [the movie] ‘Shawshank Redemption’ in which somebody says, ‘You can either get busy living or get busy dying.’ I intend to get busy living,” said Kiah, who has also called upon the words of late former North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano, who died of cancer several years ago but told people to never give up in their fight against the disease.

Kiah has no intention of doing so.

He will undergo one radiation treatment per day but he and his doctors may elevate that to two treatments per day.

He has been encouraged by the doctors he has talked to at Cancer Care of Maine in Bangor and at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. They consider it beatable.

“They believe the cancer is localized and hasn’t spread,” said Kiah who has never smoked or chewed tobacco.

He knows there are going to be side effects.

They will include a raw and parched throat which will make it difficult for him to eat; he will lose his taste buds and his salivary glands for an extended period of time as well as some hair follicles.

“They even suggested that I might have to have a stomach tube inserted to keep up my nourishment. So I asked if my wife [Betty Ellen] could just put dinner in the blender and then put it in my tube,” chuckled Kiah. “It sounds like I’ll be having a lot of liquids.”

He said his mother put up a valiant fight against the disease and never let it impact her desire to live life to the fullest.

Kiah said the support he has received has been tremendous and he intends to keep working as long as he can during his treatments.

Kiah was a multi-sport athlete at Bangor’s John Bapst High School before graduating in 1965. He went on to catch for the University of Maine’s baseball team. He graduated from Maine in 1971.

He coached football and baseball at Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft before coming to Brewer where he has been the head basketball and baseball coach and a football assistant.

He was the Maine high school baseball coach of the year in 1988 for leading Brewer to an 18-2 record and an Eastern Maine Class A title. He also coached the Brewer American Legion team with Dave Gonyar for several summers before giving that up two summers ago.

He has been the athletic director at Brewer for eight years. He and Betty Ellen have two adult children, Jill and Andy.