Alex Smith took to social media on Saturday and shared some heartbreaking news about his daughter.
The retired NFL quarterback announced his daughter Sloane, who is the youngest of three children he has with his wife, Elizabeth Barry, underwent an emergency craniotomy to remove a malignant brain tumor. Sloane was taken to the emergency room on May 10 with “stroke-like symptoms” before an MRI revealed “a large brain tumor.”
The procedure lasted 10 hours, which Smith called “the most excruciating time of our lives,” but the neurosurgeons at Stanford Children’s removed 100 percent of the tumor.
“Sloane—in her true form—bounced back from brain surgery like a rockstar! She didn’t skip a beat,” he wrote. “After weeks of waiting on pathology, we learned that Sloane’s tumor is a very rare malignant tumor with very few documented cases—without a clear road map for treatment. We are currently awaiting more tests and gathering as many opinions as we can from doctors across the country to decide the best path forward. We wish this were easy, clear-cut and someone gave us a how-to guide. It’s anything but that.”
He added that Sloane has recovered from surgery and is “back to her bubbly self. Singing, dancing, laughing and feeling good.”
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“We know it’s not over and we have a journey ahead of us, but without all of you we could not have gotten this far. We are sorry if we seem withdrawn. It’s because we are… We have been inundated with doctors appointments, scans, labs and trying our best to navigate through this. Most importantly, we’re healing together as a family.”
Smith played for the San Francisco 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs and Washington during a 16-year NFL career after he was selected first overall in the 2005 draft by the 49ers.
He retired in April 2021 after completing a miraculous comeback from a devastating leg injury suffered in 2018.
