new delhi the series of events this year has made so far so good the leading cliche uncertainty prevails and most people perhaps thanked their stars more in the past six months if that wasnt enough courtesy the coronavirus pandemic in sydney former india hockey coach michael nobbs had another monster riding his back a stage iii lung cancerthe 66yearold nobbs world came crashing down when the diagnosis was revealed to him back in march like most suffering from the highrisk disease the question troubling the australian was why mea father of two daughters kaitlin and jaimee nobbs was looking forward to seeing kaitlin play for the australian hockey team at the tokyo olympics but instead the dad had a battle on his own hands that he wasnt prepared for but had no choice left to face it after getting over millions of questions in a state of soliloquy the sportsman in michael came to the fore and told him to put his boxing gloves on to give up is not part of the aussie dna and the olympian from the 1984 games didnt want to be an exceptionthe account of nobbss life over the last six months is a gutwrenching journey but he has come out as a winner the malignant tumour has vanished and he has been declared cancerfreenobbs coached the indian mens team from 2011 to 2013 and took indian hockey back to the olympics after the 2008 nadir sharing how his life fought through rapids to reach calm waters nobbs shared the following note with timesofindiacommichael nobbs wrotei was living a wonderful life coaching two wonderful children a small business owner and great friends well on the 31st march 2020 i sat in professor michael wilsons office and had the wonderful news given to me that i had advanced stage iiia lung cancerdiagnosis 260320 summary stage 111a t1n2 nsclc adenocarcinoma lul mass with mediastinal and subcarinal lns egfr mutated deletion in exon 19 for concurrent rt with weekly carboplatin and paclitaxel followed by surgery 290620my world came tumbling down in that moment all the questions why me i dont smoke never have whats next am i going to die how will i cope how will i tell the girls daughters my friends professor michael asked me if i have any questions i dont even remember what i saidi left and sat in my car and cried and cried i never do that how the hell did this happen to mei started to make some calls and after the initial shock i came to realise what a wonderful family and friends i had my time as a sportsman started to say to me its just another battle albeit the stakes were rather highi was rather fortunate to be under three professors at one of the leading teaching hospitals in the country the macquarie university hospital sydneywhen you get cancer everyone is so kind and helpful and you start looking at what treatments are out there medical