Mark Story: After leg amputation, an ex-Kentucky men's basketball player confronts a changed life

LEXINGTON, Ky. — One morning in late May, Todd Svoboda awakened to a searing pain in his right leg.

Nevertheless, the former University of Kentucky men’s basketball folk hero stuck with his plan to attend a 5-kilometer foot race to watch his 14-year-old daughter, Eliana, run.

So severe was the pain, Svoboda, 52, had to use a walker to attend the race.

“The rest of that day, I just went downhill,” Svoboda says. “I was in so much pain. I could not get comfortable.”

In 2014, UK Health Care doctors had installed a mega prosthesis in Svoboda’s right leg. The knee replacement became necessary for Svoboda after the former UK player discovered a small bump on the back of his right knee — which led to a diagnosis that he had osteosarcoma, an aggressive form of bone cancer.

Now 10 years later, Svoboda went back to his UK doctors to inquire about the pain in his leg. They told him an infection had set in around the mega prosthesis.

“There’s always a risk of infection. I knew that,” Svoboda says. “(The infection) just kind of appeared all at once, but I have a feeling it has been there for awhile. It hit me (with) extreme pain.”

Initially, Svoboda’s concern was if doctors could allay the pain enough to allow him to attend the wedding of his 23-year-old son, Joey, to KC Boerboom in Lewiston, Idaho, on June 11.

That goal was fulfilled. “I had an emergency surgery to just kind of suppress (the pain) and allow me to go in June and visit my son and attend his wedding,” Svoboda says.

When the Clark County resident got back to Kentucky, however, there was a medical reckoning to be faced.

“I went back to UK, my original doctor (Dr. Patrick O’Donnell), who has been on my case since day one,” Svoboda says. “He helped me figure out what was going on and what the next steps are.”

As it turned out, the “next step” involved a word — amputation — no one wants to hear.

Says Svoboda: “When I met with my doctor, he was like, ‘There’s really only one path to get rid of this nasty-infection complication that you have. And that’s to do an above-the-knee amputation on your right leg.”

That prospect would be tough for anyone to face. It was especially so for Svoboda, who has been a lifelong practitioner of a physically vigorous lifestyle.

Before he arrived at UK as a senior basketball transfer for the 1992-93 season, Svoboda was a star player at Northern Kentucky University, which then competed in NCAA Division II.

As a junior in 1991-92, Svoboda averaged 18.1 points and 10.9 rebounds for the Norse. He left Northern with three-year totals of 1,114 points and 770 rebounds. A multi-sport standout, Svoboda also won the Great Lakes Valley Conference tennis championship in 1992 at No. 5 singles.

In his one season at Kentucky, Svoboda did not log much court time as Rick Pitino’s 1992-93 Wildcats reached UK’s first Final Four since 1984. On a team whose stars were Jamal Mashburn and Travis Ford, Svoboda played in only 13 games.

Yet the 6-foot-9 product of Princeton High School in Cincinnati became a fan favorite. He is remembered even now for putting the exclamation point on UK’s return to the Final Four by swishing a 3-pointer with four seconds left in a 106-81 victory over Florida State in the 1993 NCAA Tournament round of eight.

Into his early 50s, Svoboda, a married father of three, has maintained an active lifestyle. This even after his original cancer diagnosis in 2014 and “a few battles with reoccurrence of cancer” subsequently.

Svoboda likes to bike, swim, lift weights, play pickleball and, on weekends, he relishes working on the lawn and chopping wood.

“I don’t like to sit around and do nothing,” Svoboda says.

For such a person, the prospect of losing a leg was excruciating.

“It took me several days to really come to grips with it just emotionally,” Svoboda says.

Ultimately, Svoboda says he and his wife, former UK gymnast Franci Niles, accepted there was no choice. Amputation “was the only path forward. If not, it wouldn’t get any better, it would only get worse. We were both, ‘We have to do this and we will get through this,’ ” he says.

In the weeks since the amputation was performed on July 11, Svoboda says he has experienced the common phenomenon known as “phantom limb pain” in which an amputee continues to feel sensations as if their removed extremity was still intact.

“Right now, it kind of feels like my foot is still there and it’s got an itch,” Svoboda said Monday. “The sensation is very much that my calf is still there and it’s kind of like I’ve got a charley horse. It’s weird, but that’s normal.”

Because Svoboda has lived such a physically active life, friends and family want to ensure that he can afford the highest quality of prosthetic leg and are fundraising toward that goal.

The hope is a top-tier prosthetic leg would allow Svoboda to continue to ride a bike, play pickleball or work in the yard — as well as to fully resume his duties in his job as an engineer at the East Kentucky Power Cooperative.

To that end, a GoFundMe page has been set up.

For now, Svoboda must wait until the swelling in what remains of his right leg dissipates before he can start exploring his options for a prosthetic limb. In the meantime, he is using a walker to get around and has purchased a wheelchair for longish excursions.

Already, Svoboda has returned to lifting weights. Once his surgical incision is fully healed, he will be able to resume swimming.

“I still want to be active and still do things like I have always done,” Svoboda says. “Hopefully, they will get me with a prosthetic that will allow me to do things, work out and exercise and still do outdoor activities, like I like to do.”

As he adjusts to the reality of a changed life, Todd Svoboda says, “Kind of a rough patch there, but now I am doing better. Every day, I am just trying to get better and get stronger.”