By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Jaime Kaplan doesn’t have her dark hair back – that ship sailed for good in 2010 when she faced down extramedullary acute myeloid leukemia.

But here in her 21st month since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – after overcoming leukemia in 2010 and then handling amyloidosis in 2020 – she’s pretty much herself.

Including her silly. She’s got that back.

Sitting on her porch a few months ago, before she and buddies Patty Gibbs and Jeff Battcher started on their Wimbledon 2025 Tour for a week, Kaplan was talking about the last several months.

The period included a stretch where her hands and feet were something of a mess, battling neuropathy – a nerves-related condition that can cause weakness, numbness, and pain, usually in the hands and feet - off and on for several months.

Sitting on the table aimed at her was a cameraphone. She is asked about different issues of the past 21 months, including her feet.

All of a sudden, a goofy grin crossed her face and she stuck her feet in front of the camera and wiggled them.

**Kaplan was celebrated in April of 2024 for her 500th win, the day coming in the middle of chemotherapy treatment.**
*Photo: Michael A. Lough/The Central Georgia Sports Report*

“See my feet?” she said with a giggle, and is told that indeed, that could’ve been skipped. “You can edit that out, right?”

We’ll see. Cash and checks are accepted.

Kaplan has packed a lifetime of life – good and bad, chilled and stressful, worried and optimistic – into the last two years, from wondering what was wrong to worrying about how much time she had left to exhausting and losing weight to travel abroad and normal coaching routine and red ball games and porking up and visiting Wimbledon for the first time in 20 years.

She can dabble in spicy foods again. Not pig out, but dabble.

“I asked the doctor when I was at Emory, ‘The fact that I can't have spicy food, is that because it's going to hurt me or because of the aftermath?’" Kaplan said. “ ‘The aftermath.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, I'm experiencing that anyway.’ So I occasionally I have a teeny bit of spicy.”

That’s just one example of the progress and changes Kaplan has undergone since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December of 2023, her story one of the complexities and unpredictability of cancer, and the belief in the possibilities to handle them.

Kaplan has been as close to normal as normal can be, and maybe, to a point, a little better, for most of about 15 months. She couldn’t do dishes or take a normal shower, among other normal routine tasks, for months, sometimes slept for half a day, underwent assorted digestion adjustments, had hand and feet issues, and couldn’t do much of anything for most of the first several months.

Now, there’s not much of anything she can’t do that she wasn’t doing before the diagnosis, from golf to travel to work.

Kaplan retired from pro tennis in 1989, but remained active on the court for awhile afterward. She went from athlete to coach, teacher, fund-raiser on a variety of levels, consultant, life and guidance counselor, and advisor, booster/ambassador of tennis and Macon and sports, among other things.

But she’s back in action, almost to her pre-diagnosis level. She said last December that outside of some hitting with Stratford players on occasion, she hadn’t much picked up a racquet since 2012.

Now, she’s regularly playing “red ball,” a fairly new sport that’s not far removed from pickleball, other than a bigger ball and bigger racquets, a little closer to tennis.

And while she can’t happily dive into bowls of chips and salsa, she can have some pepperoni on pizza.

“I’m doing better with pepperoni,” she said. ‘I can tolerate it.”

**In July of 2024 on her back porch, Kaplan was returning to normal physically.**
*Photo: Michael A. Lough/The Central Georgia Sports Report*

That’s quite a change from 15 months ago, one of many changes since her diagnosis and beginning of treatment. She’s gone from the normal first months of exhausting and painful treatments to inquiring about other treatments to losing weight and the natural wonder of how much time she had left to new intense treatments and proper self-maintenance to a remarkable level of normalcy.

“Once I started gaining weight and getting my energy back after radiation,” Kaplan said while returning from a regular trip to Emory in Atlanta. “it was game on.”

The reality is that almost nobody who gets cancer is ever cancer free. Victims who ring the bell upon leaving a cancer treatment facility are in reality ringing a bell that indicates a cancer – and the variety of cancers is vast – is no longer dominant.

Back in December, Kaplan talked tentatively on the topic, a tentativeness shared by one or two of her doctors. Early in the month during regular scans, one doctor said she was in remission.

A month later came another visit to Emory.

“They're like, ‘You're stable, we don't use that word with pancreatic cancer,’” Kaplan said. “The reason they don't is because you never really get rid of it. You go into remission, then you’re in remission, remission, remission.”

She still has a cancerous growth on her pancreas. A reason any cancer is rarely actually “cured” is because microscopic cancer cells can remain – and may have broken away from the primary location and become “undetected” - which is why regular monitoring is a must.

There is a difference between “remission” and “cancer free”, the latter being the very rare case where there is no detectable sign of cancer or cancer cells. You needn’t monitor something that no longer exists. Thus, there is always a chance of some level of recurrence, and permanent monitoring and checkups remain.

**A year after the intense treatment at Sloan Kettering, Kaplan was preparing for a trip to Wimbledon two months ago.**
*Photo: Michael A. Lough/The Central Georgia Sports Report*

And pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult, because it progresses quickly and there’s no solid method of early detection. It is a key component in blood flow and digestion.

“The most complex collection of body organs,” said Kaplan, starting to grin. “Literally, all the ---- flows through your pancreas.”

Yes, there’s a little more potty humor to Kaplan these days, too.

Most anybody who has known Kaplan for years has seen the 112-pounder – the digestion issues - who was back to wearing a mask long after COVID-19 had for the most part moved on, who couldn’t hug anybody, who for months couldn’t attend 90 percent of the events that were previously automatic.

Back in April of 2024, she was the guest of honor at a surprise celebration honoring her 500th win as a high school tennis coach. That sunny spring afternoon was likely the first time many in the invited audience of nearly 100 saw Kaplan since her diagnosis three months earlier and the ensuing treatment.

She looked like somebody who had gone through a cancer diagnosis, the emotions, and then the immediate chemotherapy: a little leaner, a little older, and tired.

Kaplan is, well, happily heavier, and has aged in years but not appearance, a marked change to the Kaplan of a year and a half ago.

The only way to cover the last 21 months of Kaplan’s life is to cover life as it happens: In order.

Around the time of the yearly Five Star Kevin Brown/Russell Henley Celebrity Classic fund-raising event with former Major League pitcher Kevin Brown and PGA Tour golfer Russell Henley in September of 2023, Kaplan had assorted pains, especially in her back.

Kaplan tried to get scans for her back, but was denied by insurance, for a variety of reasons. She already had a CT scan scheduled during her yearly amyloidosis checkup, so that would have to suffice. The phone rang, and caller ID stated the “Georgia Cancer Specialist.”

“I’m like, ‘why are they calling?’” she said. It wasn’t for a donation.

On Dec. 5, 2023, after months of some physical issues, a mass was discovered on her pancreas, and further testing indicated a malignant tumor, Adenocarcinoma, that was intertwined with three blood vessels, rendering it all but inoperable under normal circumstances. She began chemotherapy four days before Christmas. A bad reaction to the first session landed her in the hospital for a day.

The tumor was in such a high-traffic area that doctors said it was inoperable. She would lose her spleen, pancreas, and celiac plexus, the abdomen’s nerve center. If successful, though, her quality of life would drop severely.

And that was a big “if successful” anyway.

“The doctor at Sloan-Kettering 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, who recalled a story of a financially successful man who accepted all those risks, made it off the table and out of the hospital only to die three weeks later of a blood vessel burst.

A few months and a few opinions later came a mild adjustment in the surgical possibility: it could be operated on, but there’d be little quality of and normalcy in life.

As her chemotherapy neared an end, it was a Kaplan with more juice and energy accepting a Distinguished Alumni award from Stratford, and then speaking at Stratford’s commencement ceremony a few days later on May 18, 2024.

Few knew that the speech came a day after a round of chemo. She was ready to surrender her speech to brother Mike, but felt good enough to battle through a little over four minutes with some ease.

A visit that month to Vanderbilt opened the door to alternative surgical options, as well as an adjustment in treatment. Another surgical option was discussed and dismissed, and there was one test that showed the cancer had spread, and yet another that it hadn’t.

At the end of that month, her chemotherapy was over, and considered a success. She made her first trip to a hair salon in many months.

Her cancer number remained monitored. It had been a scary 3,700 – 0-35 is normal -- and was slowly dropping.

She went from the yearly June doctor visit in Boston regarding her amyloidosis treatment – she got that in 2020 – to a first meeting with doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City – a connection sparked by singer Taylor Dayne, who hopped on Team Kaplan during a visit to Macon around the time of the Celebrity Classic and when the back issues started - to discuss MRI-guided, high-dosage radiation treatment, returning a week later for an MRI-like “mapping” of her organs and the tumor.

There were five MRI-like treatments over the course of eight days. A body cuff, similar to that for blood pressure, was strapped around Kaplan’s midsection and inflated.

**Kaplan took a picture in July on the same spot at Wimbledon she took a picture of in 1985.**
*Photo: Jaime Kaplan*

“And then when I thought they couldn't inflate it anymore,” she said. “they would inflate it some more.”

Each such session lasted just short of two hours overall, to pinpoint the tumor’s location each time. And Kaplan had to remain completely still.

“Don’t feel a thing, but I’m about ready to crawl out of my skin,” she recalled. “That cuff being on me for so long and being still was pretty rough. By the end, the last probably 15 to 30 minutes, I could feel tears running down the sides of my eyes. It was tough.”

It was intense, the equivalent of 30 treatments into five. Throw in the stress of everything and the inability to move for more than 90 minutes, and she was beat for a few days, although the impact wasn’t as exhausting as chemo.

Having a day between sessions allowed for some recovery, and a little visiting of New York. Of course, it came during a tennis major, cutting down on tourism.

“Getting ready to watch Wimbledon,” she posted on Facebook on July 14, 2024, in between sessions at Sloan Kettering. Also watching was Battcher, who had started talking to Kaplan about going to Wimbledon for the first time.

Kaplan: Just go next year.

Battcher: Well, why don’t you go with me?

Kaplan: OK, we’ll go to Wimbledon next year.

And it was filed away in the growing folder of Wishful Thinking, except …

“So every text message that we've texted in the last year has ended with ‘W 25!’ Kaplan said of Battcher’s encouragement campaign.

The next year and Wimbledon were nowhere on Kaplan’s radar as she waited out another round of treatment and its uncertainty.

So began a routine of scans locally or at Emory, and six-month visits back to Sloan Kettering, and a collection of assorted medication, with accompanying side effects.

So began also a slow but steady return to normalcy after recovering from the intense treatments.

A few weeks later after the sessions at Sloan Kettering in July of 2024, she attended the USTA Southern Summer Meeting in New Orleans. Scans a few weeks after that showed no evidence of spread, with actually slight shrinkage.

She was pretty much back on schedule working for the Southern Tennis Foundation as well as again helping organize the latest Five Star Celebrity Classic, which last year raised $1.23 million.

That was a huge eight-day period for Kaplan.

As part of the Classic’s event Monday-Tuesday schedule, she became the first woman added to Idle Hour Country Club’s Wall of Fame, joining the likes of Alfred Sams, Henley, Peter Persons, among others.

**Kaplan gets a hug from Martina Navratilova in July at Wimbledon.**
*Photo: Jeff Battcher*

That weekend was “Jaime’s Love Weekend”, a collection of events at John Drew Smith Tennis Center and Idle Hour intent on raising money for tennis scholarships in her name with the Southern Tennis Foundation. About $4,000 remains to reach the goal of $200,000, a much larger number than originally planned.

Officials from assorted tennis organizations as well as several former Kaplan players attended the weekend.

After a few weeks to regroup came 11 days in Europe, and ever so slowly, she gained weight and cracked a whole 120 pounds for the first time in a year.

“It was such a strange mindset to know that I can eat whatever,” she said. “ ‘Yes, I'll have some of that. I'll have some of that. I can't have that. I'll have some of that.’”

The tennis freak hadn’t picked up a tennis racquet and done anything with it since about 2012.

“I hit a couple of times I've hit with kids at Stratford,” she said. “I tried to hit with a couple of my boys. I think it was Samuel Barrow and Daniel Cohen. I tried to hit with them and it felt so foreign. It felt like I had never played tennis before.”

All of a sudden, there was Kaplan with a racquet in her hand and on a court and swinging. Granted, it wasn’t tennis, it was red ball, the child of tennis and pickleball, so to speak, with the same court as pickleball, but tennis-like racquets and a bigger ball, with fewer pickleball rules.

She attended an introductory red ball session at Rhythm and Rally in the Macon Mall in November of 2024, an event with plenty of familiar tennis faces. Before she knew it, she was on the court, with a racquet that felt familiar, and moving around.

“It's just like playing tennis, to me,” she said. “That was a happy day. Oh, it was awesome.”

The Kaplan of that evening was a familiar Kaplan, certainly not the same one of about seven months earlier, worn down and worried.

Then came December, and the year anniversary of the diagnosis. Quite the anniversary, for that was when she was first told she was in remission. It made for an even nicer trip to New York City for the six-month checkup at Sloan Kettering.

Then, she was pretty much normal when the Merrie Christmas Project arrived just before Christmas. That’s the charity started by her brother Mike and sister in law Nancy as a tribute to their daughter Merrie, who died in 2019. The project helps people in need with food and basics as well as Christmas trees and gifts to help spark the season for struggling families.

Jaime’s cancer number had dropped so much, down to 24 in January of this year after peaking at 3,700, but has crept up a little bit each month, adjusting her treatment and doctor schedule returned to a little more often. She visits Emory in Atlanta once a month.

The increase hasn’t affected how she feels, only adding a little concern.

Nevertheless, the change from July 2024 to July 2025 in Kaplan’s life and prognosis is staggering.

On July 14, 2024, Kaplan wanted simply to be in decent enough shape to watch Wimbledon from a room in a lodge in New York City connected with Sloan Kettering, completely unsure what the future held.

On July 5, 2025, Battcher, Kaplan and Gibbs hopped a flight to London, with a full schedule.

They saw “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables” and ran into current Stratford player Lauren Little and former player Hadley Cullars, and toured the House of Commons, and Westminster Abbey.

There were, yes, visits to some pubs while bouncing around on the Hop On Hop Off buses.

And there was tennis at Wimbledon, some of which came in Martina Navratilova’s on-court box and on Center Court, in between visits with Gigi Fernandez, Pam Shriver, Kathy Rinaldi, and Virginia Ruzici, among others.

A Kaplan mainstay picture is of her standing in front of the Wimbledon logo and a green façade back in 1985. In July, 40 years later, she took a picture in the same spot.

“It was like I was there for the first time,” said Kaplan, who last visited Wimbledon in 2005. “So many memories, a flashback , but certainly the most memories were 1985, the first time I played.”

The grounds of 2025 bore little resemblance to those of even 2005. Kaplan put Battcher and Gibbs in charge of getting the map of the complex and leading them to where there were supposed to go.

Sitting in a fog of quasi misery and hope in New York one year, sitting in Center Court the next.

In August, she celebrated her other “birthday,” 15 years since she got a bone marrow transplant to fix her leukemia. And this Monday and Tuesday, another Five Star Celebrity Classic.

The tentativeness of describing her situation as “in remission” is still there.

“In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have put that word out there because I think a lot of people think it equate that with ‘cure’,” she said. “I still need prayers. Like I said, this stuff comes back 95 percent of the time, and it comes back with a vengeance.

“So, that's why I said in my post that the little boogers are traveling around trying to reorganize. The tumor is still there. It sunk a little bit. It will never go away.

Kaplan said it’s almost safe to say that the tumor itself is dead, but the tumor itself was never alone.

“If it came back, that’s not where it would come from,” she said. “It would come from the fact that it’s in my blood, traveling around.”

Nevertheless, it no longer prevents Kaplan from traveling around, or getting back to normal. In fact, she returned almost 100 percent of the time to coaching Stratford tennis last spring, having given up part of the duties to Sandy Burgess.

In the first season after the diagnosis, Kaplan only attended most home matches, wore a mask, and moved slowly. A year later, in 2025, she was back to normal, with a co-head coach matchup.

“He does a lot of the things that I used to do,’ she said. “We talk. But Sandy's brilliant about that stuff.

“When we get in the huddle, Sandy talks first to the team. I'm walking around and doing drills with the kids, and teaching stuff. He's not a tennis teacher, he’s a great tennis coach.”

This year’s Five Star Classic marks two years since that initial back pain emerged that set up the diagnosis three months later. The Classic of 2025 will feel a lot like the Classic of 2022: normal

“Last year I didn’t expect to feel as good as I did,” she said. “And then, this year, I didn’t expect to be here. This is a bonus year.”

Kaplan’s faith has allowed her to bypass concerns of mortality, of being on life’s clock, of whether there’s a recurrence. She’s just rockin’ and rollin’.

“I’ve always just trusted God, from the second I got that phone call to come back down to Georgia Cancer,” Kaplan said. “It's hard to describe It's this same thing I did when I had leukemia. I know this is different, but you know, I want to live like I'm living and not live like I'm dying.

“I do my thing.”