Soon after taking his seat in section 132 at CenturyLink Field, Ragnar Thorisson is surprised when he notices a familiar face in the crowd. Two rows in front of him at the Sounders FC match is a man he knows quite well but has never seen outside of a clinic or hospital.
During halftime of the game, Dr. Paul Hendrie turns around and makes eye contact with Thorisson. He immediately jumps over the row separating them and the two share a giant hug.
“It was awesome. It was really meaningful after having shared that bond with the Sounders,” Thorisson said. “Somehow we randomly ended up with season tickets right next to each other.”
That moment on March 15 symbolizes the culmination of an emotional journey for Thorisson.
Thanks to Hendrie, his oncologist, Thorisson was in remission after being treated for his second relapse of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rare form of blood cancer. Hendrie had been his doctor ever since Thorisson relapsed for the first time a couple of months after moving to Seattle in 2011.
When the two first met, Thorisson noticed the Sounders FC lanyard that Hendrie uses to hold his Seattle Cancer Care Alliance badge. He started asking questions about the team. Having grown up in Iceland and attended college in Iowa, Thorisson knew very little about the club. But the Rave Green eventually became a standard topic of conversation with Hendrie – an avid supporter since Seattle joined MLS in 2009 – and Thorisson began regularly watching matches in the hospital.
Hendrie stood by his patient’s side during some of the most distressing times of Thorisson’s life. If they ever had the time and energy to chat, it was often about the Sounders. The team served as a distraction, something that could keep a smile on Thorisson’s face.
As a means of celebrating his remission, Thorisson purchased 2014 season tickets for he and his partner. The 26-year-old watched nearly every home match with his doctor just two rows in front of him.
“To see him as just another fan in the stands, and to know what he had been through to get there, it was pretty touching,” Hendrie said. “When I see him at the Sounders game, I see him as my friend, not my patient.”
Thorisson was first diagnosed with AML at the age of 14. When he reached five years of being cancer-free, he went on a vacation to Ecuador, thinking his battle with the disease was surely over. He remained cancer-free for another three and a half years after that trip.
Then one day in December of 2011, he was rushed to the emergency room with a high fever and low blood pressure. Two days later it was confirmed to be a recurrence of AML.
“It was really shocking,” Thorisson said. “It kind of came out of nowhere.”
After several months of treatment, Thorisson found himself in remission and well enough to attend his first Sounders FC match. He and his partner, Alyssa Penner, gathered all the money from their piggy banks to buy tickets for the match against rival Portland Timbers. They watched the Rave Green win 3-0 in front of 66,452 at CenturyLink Field, one of the largest regular-season crowds in MLS history.
Due in part to their experience that day, the couple grew to love the Sounders and would continue going to matches. Thorisson was diagnosed with his second relapse of AML in July of 2013, yet during the following holiday season, he was recovering from treatment and decided to buy season tickets for the first time.
Thorisson and Penner were on hand for many historic matches in 2014, including the victory over LA Galaxy on October 25 that clinched Seattle’s first Supporters’ Shield.
“The Sounders have been such a bright spot during these tough times,” Penner said. “A lot of our happiest moments have been at Sounders games.
“I’ve never seen him happier than when we won the Supporters’ Shield.”
Thorisson was looking forward to watching the Sounders in the MLS Cup Playoffs when he got devastating news once again: On November 7, he was diagnosed with AML for the fourth time. He had just moved into a new apartment with Penner, and the couple had recently gotten their first dog. Thorisson was to return to the hospital for yet another battle with cancer.
A few days after the diagnosis, Thorisson wrote in an online journal about his love for Sounders FC and the special moment he shared with Hendrie in March. Unbeknownst to him, one of Thorisson’s friends reached out to the club on social media and shared a link to the blog post. Thorisson would later receive a call from Taylor Graham, the club’s Senior Director of Business Operations, about having dinner with one of the players.
Graham decided to reach out to forward Kenny Cooper. A former player who has been with the club for almost a decade, Graham had a good sense of which players would be willing to spend some time with a Sounders fan. Within five minutes of Graham contacting him, Cooper replied with a list of things he wanted to do for Thorisson.
Last weekend Graham and Cooper dined with Thorisson, Penner, and Hendrie at a local restaurant owned by one of Cooper’s friends. They talked for hours about a variety of topics related to soccer. Cooper and Graham shared stories from their professional careers.
“It was such a great pick-me-up right before starting a rough patch,” said Thorisson, who began chemotherapy three days afterward. “They were just so incredibly nice and easy to talk to.”
The morning Thorisson was starting his treatment, Cooper sent him a video of several MLS players and coaches wishing him good luck. The video concluded with a message from Sounders FC defender Chad Marshall, Thorisson’s favorite player. Cooper wants to do everything he can to help because Thorisson has become an inspiration to the veteran forward.
“He’s an amazing person,” Cooper said. “It was awesome to be able to speak with them and hear his story. The guy is a warrior.
“He’s already beaten cancer three times, and I’m sure he will do it again.”
