S U R V I VA L I N T H E S O U T H
“
NINETY-SEVEN
PERCENT OF THE
TIME IT HASN’T
MADE IT TO ANY
LYMPH NODES.
BUT IF IT HAS,
IT’S ONE OF THE
MORE DANGER-
OUS FORMS OF
CANCER. AND
MINE HAD.
“
S U R V I VA L
CANCER
MATT MEECE
Catch Matt Meece perform live at the Historic Savannah Theatre. Call the box office at (912) 233-7764 or go to savannahtheatre.com
IT’S THE CARDINAL RULE OF THE STAGE:
THE SHOW MUST GO ON...
N
No one needs to tell that to Matt Meece. Even as aggres-
sive treatments waged war on the cancer spreading in his
body, he still found a way to get out on the stage at the Historic
Savannah Theater and do what he does best.
“Even though I was low-energy and I know people could
tell… it was the one thing in my life I could keep normal,”
he said. “I knew if I stopped doing my work then I would be
letting it win.”
His battle with cancer began during a production of Grease.
Playing greaser heartthrob Danny Zuco, Meece was decked
out in a jet-black muscle shirt that exposed for the first time
an odd growth.
“I don’t know why it took me wearing a muscle shirt to no-
tice it,” he said, adding with a laugh, “We did Les Mis the next
year. I would have been under five layers and probably never
would have seen it.”
On his wife Michelle’s insistence, Meece had it checked out.
The innocuous growth, doctors determined, was melanoma.
“At the time I didn’t even really know what that means.
It didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” he said. “Ninety-seven
percent of the time it hasn’t made it to any lymph nodes. But
if it has, it’s one of the more dangerous forms of cancer. And
mine had.”
70
S OUT H M AGA ZI NE.C OM
His treatment began right away at Savannah’s Lewis Can-
cer Center, but first there was another medical matter to at-
tend to: the birth of the couple’s youngest child. “It was just… a
lot going on,” Meece said with his signature good humor.
Meece was put on several drug trials being done at Lewis
Cancer Center, which quickly led to complications as Meece
found himself suffering intense headaches. A brain scan
revealed that his pituitary gland had doubled in size. Sepa-
rately, doctors found a growth near his pancreas that required
further surgery.
And through it all, Meece continued to appear on stage.
“Several shows I couldn’t make it for a certain number,
where something was going wrong or something was hitting
me,” he said.
Meece recently hit the five-year mark of consistent good
news for doctors, a milestone that not only bodes well for the
father of three, but also marks how far this journey back from
the brink has been.
“We kind of thought we had the world at our fingertips and
life was going pretty amazing. For that to rock us and shape
how things have now been basically all of our kids’ lives… my
youngest has only known daddy going to the doctor,” he said.
“It’s pretty surreal.” •