WDBD anchor Mike Sands is planning on using a sense of normalcy and his sense of humor to win his latest battle with cancer.
Sands found out he had cancer for a second time three days before Christmas. He was diagnosed with a malignant tumor near his left ankle in 2012 while at WABG in Greenville, Ms., but says he kept working to “maintain some sort of regular normalcy in life.”
“There were a lot of hard phone calls, a lot of hard texts,” he said about his latest diagnosis. “There were a lot of emotions that day, for sure from my end and the people on the receiving end of the calls and the texts. What was readily apparent, to me at least, was there was no other option but to give this 100 percent just because of the people that I love and love me weren’t going to let me do anything else.”
Sands says he sees himself as the class clown at work. He’s worked at the Jackson, Mississippi Fox affiliate since March 2014.
“I’m still trying to be that even if I don’t feel my best,” he told The Clarion-Ledger. “It’s that normalcy. I don’t want to be the one in the corner over there, looking like death, feeling like death even if I have to project otherwise I think I will.”
“I’m ready to grin and bear whatever is coming, almost in a way of a challenge,” he said. “It’s almost like, ‘Alright, Mike. Prove to everyone you’re as tough as you’ve been trying to tell them for about 15 years.’ Here’s my challenge, and that’s what I’m going to do.”