Scott Radley: Community rallying around one-time star athlete who lost leg to flesh-eating disease while fighting cancer

He's one of those guys that just made it look easy. Put him on a track and tell him to run and he flew like a gazelle. Put a football in his hands and he was unstoppable.

And basketball?

He was just unbelievable," says his old high school coach, Brad Bonitatibus.

Joshua Kwajah - but call him Junior, everyone else does - was so good that after being named 2005 athlete of the year at St. Jean de Brebeuf Secondary, he headed to Missouri on a college hoops scholarship. It was perfect. He'd get his school paid for and chase his dream of playing pro at the same time.

In the end, the pro thing didn't pan out. But he loved sports and found a passion helping kids excel in athletics. He volunteered with the CANUSA Games. He created a business called Good Vibrations and Sports Entertainment that was designed to do that and got at building it. That ultimately took him to Alberta.

But a few years ago, he started feeling unwell. Some internal stuff at first. That led to tests. Eventually a meeting with a doctor he hasn't forgotten.

When they first told me (I had cancer) I was like, Are you kidding me?'" he says.

Then it got really serious.

They mentioned I have only so many hours to live," the 34-year-old says. I have to take out my spleen."

Emergency surgery saved him. Chemo eventually sent the disease into remission. But it wasn't done with him. Soon it came back angrily. When it did, his family brought him home to Hamilton, yet it was clear he wasn't well.

His younger brother, Kwasi, hadn't seen him in two years.

I saw a difference," he says.

Junior was thinner. More than that, his attitude about everything seemed off. Usually upbeat about everything, he was so down Kwasi thought he might be having mental health issues.

But just in case this wasn't enough torment, things went completely haywire in November. While he was undergoing treatments in Hamilton, he developed an infection in his left leg. Necrotizing fasciitis, he says. Flesh-eating disease. Within hours, it had spread rapidly.

The next thing you know, my mom's calling me saying they're about to cut his leg off," Kwasi says.

Mercifully, Junior didn't realize what was happening at the moment. Between the drugs and what he describes as the coma he was in, he didn't find out what had happened for weeks.

All the while, Kwasi says he was worried to tell his brother about the latest blow. He was thinking that for someone who loves sports as much as his brother did, this meant his life was over.

He knows. He was a heck of a football player himself, who played for Wilfrid Laurier University after scoring the touchdown on a five-lateral-one-pass play known as The Steel City Miracle that might be the most incredible in local high school history. Taking this away would be devastating.

In time though, Junior was able to grasp what had happened. And the response?

It was tough," he says. But it was either my life or my leg."

That's the right answer. Tragic, but correct.

But now what?

His leg has been amputated at the hip. That reduces the types of prosthetics he can wear. The specialized kinds that can do the job are seriously expensive. The one he's been told he needs goes for $80,000. Plus, he'll need a wheelchair and some other adjustments to wherever he lives in the future.

He can't work right now. He's still at the Juravinski Cancer Centre getting treatment so he can't pay for all this. His father, who had come here from Ghana, died of a sudden asthma attack when Junior was 10. His mom has been on disability for years after two accidents at her workplace. She certainly can't afford it.

No, no, no," Mary Kwajah says. I cannot. I've tried my best to do what I can."

So Kwasi helped start a GoFundMe account (go to GoFundMe.com and search Kwajah" to find it) to see if he could raise $100,000 to buy his brother some future mobility. Friends have contributed. The local African community has helped. People from his church have sent donations. Hundreds of people have given something.

Including his old basketball coach.

Bonitatibus remembers what a polite, hardworking, good student Junior was. He remembers how he was always upbeat and a terrific leader. And he remembers his incredible athleticism that helped the Braves knock off some teams that were supposed to be way better but for the fact that Junior was there.

I was hurt greatly when I heard what happened to him," the coach says. It's very sad."

It really is.

The one glimmer of good news in this? All that generosity from all those people has pushed the fund halfway home. It's not there yet but this outpouring means Junior is as close to being back on his feet as he has been in a while.

Literally and figuratively.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com