Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Doctor JP McConkey — in the fight of his life

"It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, 'so don't fuss dear; get on with it.
opinion_altastates1

"It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, 'so don't fuss dear; get on with it.'"

- Actress Audrey Hepburn

It almost brought me to tears. One of the talented young freeriders I was working with that year had come up short on one of his flamboyant cliff jumps in a contest down in Southern Colorado and had torn his knee to shreds.

He didn't have any money of course. Hell, the guy was living in a snow cave when I first met him. But skiing was all that he lived for in those days. The only thing he could think about, he told me over the phone, was getting back on his boards.

Still, like so many risk-takers his age, the 21-year old had no backup plan. No sense of his own mortality. In other words, he didn't have a clue what to do next. And now he was leaning on me hoping against hope that I could fix the problem. What to do?

It was the late 1990s. And I knew from personal experience that orthopedic surgery — and particularly knee surgery — had come a long ways since my own introduction to its barbaric practices in the mid-sixties.

Still, there were knee surgeons.... and then there were knee surgeons. The biggest problem, of course, was access. Under B.C.'s "take a number and wait" medical regime, my young freerider would normally watch months flow by before he would even be able to see an orthopod. As for getting operated on, well, that could take even longer. It was a situation, I already understood, that would be disastrous for his career.

He needed access to a knee surgeon. And he needed access fast. Sigh. But not just any knee surgeon. I needed to find a guy who understood the kind of kamikaze ethos that this young athlete lived by. A doc who could fix the damn knee properly, set reasonable rehab targets, and finally, offer the kid a hard-eyed and honest assessment of his future comeback.

I didn't need a doc with a sweet disposition or a kind bedside manner. I needed a tough jock type who spoke the same language as my kid. A straight talker you know — no crap. Oh yeah, and one who was just as committed to high performance sports as my young skier was. You see, I had learned from sad experience that "normal" (as in non sport-obsessed) doctors regularly underestimate an athlete's healing power. Most don't realize just how crazy and hard-working and focused and determined young jocks can be when they really believe in what they're doing.

But there was one guy I knew who fit all the criteria. So I called him.

And he didn't disappoint. It's probably been fifteen years since that conversation. But I still remember it almost word-for-word — the long silence after I'd presented my case, the trademark sigh, and then: "Get him home as quickly as you can," he'd said in that calm, quiet, take-charge voice of his. "I'll book some surgery time."

And that was that. I didn't have to plead or beg or offer up my first born as collateral. Didn't even have to apologize for the fact that the poor kid didn't have a B.C. medical card. Those were mere details. Taking care of the patient was all that mattered now.

A few days later, the inimitable JP McConkey operated on my guy. But that wasn't the end of it. He then stayed in touch with the young skier during his rehab so that he could make sure, as he later told me, "that the kid wouldn't rush back into action too soon and undo all my hard work" (this of course, delivered in an ultra-dry tone that always, always, masked a finely-tuned sense of humour).

As for my young skier, well, he went on to fame and fortune as one of the most aggressive and acrobatic big-mountain athletes on the planet. Indeed, he was part of that new wave of Whistler-based riders who re-wrote the book at the turn-of-the-new-century and cemented the Coast Mountains' reputation as one of the great crossroads of the snowplay universe.

Fortunately, he knows exactly who to thank for his success. If not for Dr. McConkey's timely intervention, he's told me often, who knows where he might have washed up?

I know. I know. There are dozens of people in this town — maybe hundreds — who have a similar story to tell. Or if not similar, at least recognizable. Generous. Hard-working. Committed. Selfless. Big-hearted. Patient. Unflappable. There are so many adjectives that one could use to describe JP McConkey.

But it comes down to even more fundamental issues. McConkey, you see, changed lives. It's that simple. Whether downhill stars or ski school instructors, Sunday afternoon skiers or big mountain adventurers, didn't make any difference to the guy. When you were in his hands all that mattered was getting that complicated, difficult, impossible, near-miraculous joint between thigh and lower leg to function properly.

He could be funny. He could be stern. But mostly he was all-business. If you were looking for a chatty, fun time with your surgeon, he wasn't the guy. But if what you cared about was getting back on your feet quickly and getting strong again, then he was the best.

There's no question — Pat McConkey is a legend in southwest B.C. And I've wanted to write about the guy for years.

Alas, he would have none of it. "It's not about me," the hard-working surgeon would insist when I would bring up the subject from time-to-time. "I'm a doctor. That's what I do — I certainly don't need public accolades for doing my job." And then he would soften the blow. "Besides," he would say with a twinkle in his eye, "I'm sure there are other, way more interesting stories to tell than mine..."

Hmm. Not really, I wanted to argue. But I respected his request for privacy. Heck, the guy had done so much for Whistler and the snowsliding/gravity-sport community over the years. The least I could do was shut my yap and let him retire in peace.

Which he did last September — to great fanfare and pomp. Everyone understood what the community was losing when the 68-year old finally closed his Squamish clinic and terminated his weekly consulting stints in Whistler. Still, we all wished him well. How could we not? I mean, the guy had performed over 13,500 surgeries and more than 3,500 ACL replacements since his start in the late 1970s. He deserved a happy and active retirement.

Sadly, no one knew then just how quickly Dr. Pat would succumb to his own medical emergency. "It was last November," remembers his daughter Bronwen, "And dad was assisting my orthopedic surgeon brother Mark on an operation at Abbotsford Hospital. Suddenly he started to lose sensation in his hand. Actually dropped an instrument." She stops talking. Sighs. "And if you know my dad, that's totally out of character..."

Turned out McConkey had an excuse. Turned out there was a nasty tumour in his brain (as well as a cyst) and they were both pressing on his motor cortex. "That's why his hand was going numb," explains Bronwen. "It was also quickly determined that the tumour was really large. So they decided to operate immediately."

There's really no good news when it comes to brain tumours. Still, says Bronwen, the first operation was a success. "They got 90 per cent of it. It hadn't metastasized, you know. So that was good news. But it was malignant. And that wasn't so good." She stops, struggles to keep her composure for a few seconds. But she's nothing if not her father's daughter and she powers on. "He recovered quickly, you know. We went up to Whistler for Christmas and we were able to go snowshoeing together..." She lets the sentence hang. Since then, Bronwen admits, it's been tough sledding.

Three rounds of chemotherapy, another operation to drain the cyst, no energy, no appetite, more dramatic weight loss — the intervening months have been fun for no one. But the McConkey family is made of stern stuff. Rather than sit back and feel sorry for themselves, they've decided to use their considerable energy to raise money for brain tumour research.

As Bronwen puts it: "We talked to a few family friends and raised $15,000 in 15 minutes. So then we thought, 'Hmm. Maybe we could become the number one fundraiser in Canada for the Brain Tumour Foundation.'" She smiles. "We're a pretty competitive bunch you know, so that got us really motivated."

The event the family is focusing its efforts on this year is called The Spring Sprint. And it's being run in Burnaby on May 26, 2013. "You can come out and run it yourself of course," says Bronwen, "Or you can support our team, The Brain Ninjas."

For more info on the event, contact her at bronwen.mcconkey@gmail.com or go to this site: http://bit.ly/14NoxgN. And please keep in mind: if you're donating money to the Brain Ninja Team, make sure you state that clearly when you sign up.