Boomer Esiason, the perennial MVP contender from the 1980s, had led the Cincinnati Bengals into the 1988 Super Bowl, where they lost to San Francisco 49ers. Esiason won the NFL MVP award that year. Presently, he’s a respected broadcaster and pundit. However, all those achievements pale in comparison to the single-minded role he has played in the field of medical research.
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Boomer’s son, Gunnar, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) when he was just two years old. It is a condition that affects the lungs, among other organs, and makes breathing difficult. Many people affected by CF do not make it to adulthood. Esiason was determined that his son wouldn’t be one of them.
The QB didn’t just do the constant back-patting necessary to help clear the mucus from his son’s lungs. He also created the Boomer Esiason Foundation (BEF) in the early 1990s, shortly after the diagnosis. The foundation has been at the forefront in the search for a cure for cystic fibrosis ever since. As former teammate and now-fellow broadcaster Cris Collinsworth puts it, Esiason “took over the fight” against CF.
“He took over the fight to rid the world of cystic fibrosis. It sounds ridiculous that a football player could assume that position. But that’s what he did,” said Collinsworth.
His foundation has now raised over $175 million to support the fight against CF. It was instrumental in creating breakthrough medicine to help cure people like Gunnar. The drug, which was produced by a company funded by the BEF, has been a gamechanger for Gunnar and his wife, Darcy, who called it a “miracle”.
“I can’t even think of a word for that feeling of living inside a miracle unfolding right in front of you,” said Darcy.
After receiving that medical treatment as part of a late-stage clinical trial, Gunnar’s life has changed. He said that he was able to breathe without difficulty for the first time in his life, just days after receiving the treatment.
“Over the next two days [after receiving the medicine], I just remember coughing, and coughing, and coughing, and coughing just all of this mucus out of my lungs, and then by Thursday, it just stopped,” recalled Gunnar.
“I went to bed on Wednesday night, I woke up Thursday morning, and it was gone. It was like my entire cystic fibrosis symptoms had just gone away. It was like nothing I’m sure I’ll ever experience ever again. The full unencumbered deep breath was like pure bliss,” added the 33-year-old.
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With Gunnar’s positive response to the new CF drug, it seems Boomer’s mission has been fulfilled. And it won’t just be his son who benefits from it, but the tens of thousands of other people living with CF.
An ESPN E60 documentary called ‘Second Wind: The Boomer and Gunnar Esiason Story’, is coming out to celebrate all that Esiason has done and achieved in the fight. It would also shed more light on the condition.
