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Longtime coach preparing for the battle of his life

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Paul Dailey of Beloit will undergo a bone marrow transplant Aug. 20, 2010.

BELOIT — Paul Dailey of Beloit has been coaching young athletes for more than 25 years and has always told his players, “Good things happen to good people.” That’s now the personal hope for the 53-year-old husband and father as he awaits a bone marrow transplant Friday at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.

“It is what it is,” Dailey said. “I’m ready to go and get on with our lives.”

Dailey was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May when he went to the emergency room at Beloit Memorial Hospital with a sore shoulder.

Doctors first thought he might have suffered a heart attack, said his wife of 32 years, Cindy, and then they thought he may be suffering from a viral infection. The mood of the ER doctor changed dramatically, Cindy said, when he entered the room a half-hour later.

“His whole body language was different, so that you knew it was something serious,” she said. “We were stunned.

Acute myeloid leukemia is a cancer that starts inside bone marrow, the soft tissue inside bones that helps form blood cells. The cancer grows from cells that would normally turn into white blood cells. Acute means the disease develops quickly.

The bone marrow donor is Paul’s older sister Marge Wood, one of 11 siblings.

“That’s a winning-the-lottery moment,” Cindy said. “She’s a 100-percent match.”

Wood, 66, of Madison passed her presurgery physical exam last week.

Those who want to follow Dailey’s transplant progress can do so online at www.caringbridge.org.

“He’s had over 5,000 hits on that website,” Cindy said.

Read the full story in the e-edition of The Stateline News, HERE.