Jon and Lauren Rolph find ‘enough grace for the day’ in his cancer journey

At this time last year, Jon Rolph, 45, was days into recovering from a surgery to save him from a cancerous mass the size of — to put it bluntly — a rotisserie chicken that was sitting on top of his spleen and wrapped around his left kidney.

What the perpetually positive CEO of Thrive Restaurant Group, which has popular restaurants such as HomeGrown and Carlos O’Kelly’s, didn’t fully realize is that this recovery wasn’t his only hurdle.

He didn’t foresee having other daunting obstacles to face, including pneumonia, a collapsed lung, a second surgery and, quite unexpectedly, depression.

“I had no idea that were still so many things in front of me,” Rolph said.

“I honestly think I’m still learning some of the lessons from this experience. I’m seeing and learning how I’ve changed.”

From the beginning of his cancer journey, Rolph and his wife, Lauren, chose to be as open about it as they are about most everything else.

They were careful but frank when they shared the news with their six children, ages 3 to 14 at that time.

Some knew what it meant, and some didn’t know how to react.

They had ongoing conversations, tailoring their talks to each child’s age.

“It’s scary, right?” Rolph said.

“They were amazing. Obviously, the older ones carried this a lot heavier than the younger ones.”

The Rolphs started a Caring Bridge page to update friends and family, and Jon Rolph appeared in a video explaining the situation to all of his general managers, who were free to share it with his 8,300 employees throughout Thrive.

Thrive has more than 190 restaurants over six brands, including Applebee’s, Qdoba and Modern Market Eatery along with its own concepts, Carlos O’Kelly’s, HomeGrown and Bakesale Treat Parlor.

Even in an interview with The Eagle, Rolph said, “You can ask me anything you want. It’s all reality.”

It’s all a reality he never expected.

‘Like I was fine’

When Rolph was about to turn 40, he started thinking about his health in a new way and considered getting an executive physical.

That’s something a lot of CEOs do at places such as the Mayo Clinic to make sure they’re in good health. There are a lot of screenings involved. It costs ballpark $5,000 and usually takes two days.

Three and a half years ago, Rolph and a couple of CEO buddies tried scheduling a trip to the Mayo Clinic, but they couldn’t get their schedules to align.

If they had, Rolph said he has learned his mass wouldn’t have been there yet, and he would have “been walking around like I was fine.”

Then the Rolphs built a new house that happened to be near physician Randy Mijares. As they got to know each other, Rolph asked Mijares if there might be a way for him to have the physical and all its tests over a year’s time. He had decided it was going to be too hard to squeeze in the out-of-town physical.

Though Rolph was busy as always, Lauren Rolph said they finally were feeling settled in their new house and were done having more children.

“It just felt like a season to rest a little bit,” she said.

Then Mijares, who had agreed to the ongoing physical, scheduled a stress EKG for Rolph’s first test.

It showed blockage. Heart issues run in Rolph’s family.

“That was concerning,” Lauren Rolph said.

Jon Rolph told doctors he had in fact been feeling more tired lately.

“I thought that was being in my mid-40s, having six kids and running a company.”

A follow-up heart catheterization showed an artery was diving under Rolph’s heart muscle, which mimicked blockage. Turns out he has a strong heart, which became important to know for what happened next.

‘Maybe it’s my twin’

In August 2023, Rolph went for a CT scan as part of his ongoing physical and got a call with the results, which showed a sizable mass over his spleen.

“It’s hard to believe it was in me, and you couldn’t see it,” Rolph said.

Initially, doctors thought it was the size of a fist, but it was much bigger. For those with the stomach to see it, Rolph shows photos of it next to a six-inch ruler.

The first radiologist who read the scan said it wasn’t clear if it was cancerous.

“So I made a joke,” Rolph said, referencing a scene from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

“Well, maybe it’s my twin.”

Two days later, two other radiologists confirmed it was no joke. Rolph most likely had cancer.

The best guess is that it likely had been growing for just over a year and that “inside of three years, I would have been dead.”

The good news: The cancer hadn’t metastasized.

“That was probably the life-or-death moment,” Rolph said. “We had a good celebration that night.”

That’s not all he focused on, however. Rolph said he couldn’t stop thinking about how there was only a 12-to-18 month window between when the cancer started growing and when it likely would have metastasized.

“It was a ticking time bomb,” he said. “You’re talking about a really small window that I needed to have this scan. . . . That’s why I feel like so much providence is involved in this. . . . I certainly don’t understand why the Lord would allow me to find this thing. You know what I mean? But I just feel very grateful.”

He and his wife were careful how they approached that on Caring Bridge.

“It was important for me to never . . . say, ‘Because I was spared, God’s good,’ ” Rolph said. “We believe that God’s good whether this ends up killing me.”

Two in a million

A biopsy revealed Rolph had paraganglioma, a cancer that, as it turns out, is not a good one to biopsy because of its proximity to adrenal glands, the secretions of which can result in complications or even death.

“I could have stroked out,” Rolph said.

Though he did go through a lot with the biopsy, he said, “That was the first place where it could have gone really bad, but it didn’t.”

Rolph learned this kind of cancer, often found in the neck, shows up only about 600 times a year in the United States. He and his kids joked that instead of having a one-in-million dad, they could say, “My dad is 2 in a million.” That’s what the T-shirts said that they wore to see him in the hospital.

Though there was some good news about the cancer, it was complicated news because the surgery would be, too.

Rolph knew he likely would lose a kidney because the tumor was wrapped around it.

“Anything it was touching might end up having to be sliced and diced, so there (were) huge questions going into it.”

He had to be on beta blockers for a month first to try to minimize the effects of the adrenal glands’ responses.

Rolph used that month to prepare in other ways, too, from the tangible, such as updating his will, to the intangible, such as “just dealing with what I was facing.”

Lauren Rolph was involved in each conversation and decision.

From the beginning, she said, “you just immediately go to the place of imagining the intensity of I don’t want to be a widow, and I don’t want my children to grow up without a father.”

Jon Rolph invited close friends over and, in front of his wife, told them if anything happened to him, he wanted them to encourage her to remarry.

With everything he said, Rolph said he wanted to be clear and to do so in a way that no one could later question what he did or didn’t say or want.

“That was quite an experience to ponder, you know. How you want things to go.”

The long wait

Rolph said he’s someone who likes activity, and he got it in that month before the surgery.

He was chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents, and a week before his surgery, Rolph oversaw “one of the most challenging regular meetings we had all year.”

The Regents had to approve a legislative request, which involved cutting several hundred million dollars from it.

Rolph met with his “incredible team” at work to make sure he wouldn’t be missed too much.

He prioritized time with his family, including a trip to Glacier National Park, in an intentional effort to make more memories.

During that time and since then, the entire Rolph family has been overwhelmed with love and support from around the community and beyond.

Jon and Lauren Rolph continued to enact the plan they’d had from the start of his medical ordeal: deal with the details they knew at the moment and not live in the future, which Jon Rolph referred to as “enough grace for the day.”

Finally, the night before his surgery at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Rolph had to do the same prep patients have to go through before a colonoscopy.

With a bit of help from the beta blockers, which are good at quelling anxiety, Rolph felt at peace.

“I didn’t feel a ton of worry.”

‘Is he breathing?’

In many ways, Lauren Rolph is the one who has worried the most, particularly during what was supposed to have been a four-and-a-half hour, or more, surgery.

At some point, a patient liaison came to tell her Rolph’s heart rate kept dropping dangerously low, and the anesthesiologist couldn’t bring it up because of the beta blockers.

The Rolphs learned that after making a massive cut, the medical team would stretch his abdomen muscles around a large ring so they could work unimpeded.

Each time Rolph’s heart rate dropped too low, the solution “was to pull me off the ring and hold me shut.”

At two and a half hours — much earlier than expected — the liaison came to tell Lauren Rolph the surgery was over and a doctor wanted to visit with her shortly.

She panicked, quickly wondering if things were so bad there was no hope, and they immediately sewed him back up. Or did something worse happen?

Rolph said he and his wife found KU to be as wonderful as it is renowned, but there was a bit of a communication issue at that moment.

“Is he breathing?” Lauren Rolph asked.

The liaison was uncertain.

“They didn’t really, like, say specifically.”

Fortunately, the doctor wasn’t far behind and assured Lauren Rolph her husband was all right.

He stayed in the hospital about five days instead of a predicted week.

Rolph had a painful ride back to Wichita and was about 10 minutes from home and embracing his children when he learned a friend had died following her own cancer battle.

“I was just heartbroken.”

The impatient patient

Rolph had two major setbacks following the surgery.

The first happened within days of him getting home. He’d been instructed to cough regularly to prevent pneumonia, but Rolph said it hurt too much to do.

Then he began to feel worse.

“It felt like I was dying. I had less energy every hour.”

He was advised that if he wasn’t feeling better by the afternoon, he should go to the hospital.

“If we don’t get me to the car now, I won’t be able to walk to the car in another 30 minutes,” Rolph told his wife.

He not only had pneumonia but a partially collapsed lung.

Once treated, Rolph had to start the healing process again.

He talked his care team into letting him out of the hospital to watch his sons’ soccer team, which he usually coached, in the playoffs.

Rolph ended up getting the North YMCA’s Coach of the Year award, but he particularly cherishes what one of the young players said to his father months after the game.

“Do you remember when Coach Jon skipped cancer and came to my game?”

A bend in the journey

As he recovered, Rolph budgeted his energy like time. Even as he got stronger, though, the man with normally boundless energy began to resent not having it.

Rolph was trapped in a cycle of knowing he was supposed to be grateful but wanting to be back to his old self. Then guilt set in.

“I hadn’t anticipated that part of the journey.”

He talked to a therapist.

“Hey, you’ve got to give yourself time, and you’ve got to learn how to do it,” the therapist said.

The circumstance was, of course, more layered than that.

“There’s a fragility to life that really is sad,” Rolph said. “You’ve got to grieve that, especially when you look at it close up in the mirror.”

Everyone understands mortality, but it’s in sharper focus when you’re on the brink of it.

Rolph was matter of fact as he discussed what’s happened to him — until it came to his kids.

He got choked up when praising the “amazing people who’ve loved my kids through this.”

He cried when he explained about “wondering who’s going to take care of your kids, who’s going to walk your daughter down the aisle if you’re not there?”

“It’s part of the process. You have to wrestle with some of those questions.”

A second surgery

Rolph did as he was told for about six months after his surgery. Then, the doctors released him and he “went hard.”

He got physician approval to ride on an aerobatic flight with his father, even though that meant 5 Gs of pressure on his body.

In hindsight, it maybe wasn’t the smartest move for someone whose abdomen had been sewn up especially quickly only half a year before.

Around February, Rolph began to realize his wound was reopening from the inside.

Still, he kept going.

Around March, the first signs of issues between the Rolphs began to show.

“I have to imagine this is a familiar situation for caregivers and the patient,” Lauren Rolph said.

As her husband rested, grieved and recovered, she said, “I spent that time carrying a lot of the water at home and caring for him.”

Then Jon Rolph said he “was so anxious to run, so anxious to go.”

However, it finally was a time when Lauren Rolph was able to slow down a bit and begin her own healing.

“She has had to carry an extraordinary load . . . and so she’s tired,” Jon Rolph said.

They began to have words over small daily things that don’t normally trip them.

With the help of a therapist, they discussed how Jon Rolph had time to grieve, but Lauren Rolph hadn’t had the chance, and she had a whole different set of issues to consider along the way as well.

“She’s sitting there trying to imagine what the rest of her life is going to be without me,” Rolph said.

The two got back in sync.

Lauren Rolph said she believes they simply were missing each other. She said one reason she fell in love with her husband is how he loves other people. She said the grace he’s shown others through his ordeal, even the kindness he showed nurses immediately following surgery, “was just a beautiful thing to watch.”

By May, Jon Rolph said it was clear he’d need another surgery — three hours this time — to sew him up again.

”I was walking around looking like I was six months pregnant.”

It was the beginning of another recovery.

“But I did make sure to cough this time, I’ll tell you that much.”

As Rolph finally learned to slow down — he’s not going to be released to do everything he wants till next summer — he said his wife took the kids on various adventures, such as zip lines and water slides.

“We said it’s the summer of mom.”

A new rhythm

Rolph is back to 50-hour work weeks, including his community work, and is allowed to walk for workouts. That’s what he and his wife do each morning.

“It’s been a great rhythm for us.”

Rolph said he still feels pain and can’t move as fast as he once did.

He still thinks about cancer, too.

“I’ll still think about this every single day. It’s a part of me and my story now.”

A couple times a week, he also thinks about what if.

“There’s a chance this could come back, and if it comes back, it’s not going to be good.”

Rolph continues to wrestle with questions for which there are no answers, like why is he here and his friend is not?

“I have some peace with it, that I’ll never know the answers to those things,” he said. “But it’s something I think about.”

He said he’s been gratified that his experience has positively impacted others.

“It’s either scared people or inspired them to go take care of themselves.”

Friends have gotten their own scans, which have detected cancer and other issues early.

Rolph said his children now “have a better sense of what other people are walking through when they’re going through challenges,” which he said he believes will stay with them.

“Some of those seeds . . . blossom later in life.”

Faith has played a crucial role for the Rolphs. Lauren Rolph said she’s had more faith and strength than she previously would have believed.

“I said several times, ‘I don’t even know who this girl is.’ ”

She said there’s a freedom in trusting God, but she said she also has to be intentional to get through worry, like with scans that can be triggering and the emotion of this one-year anniversary of that first surgery.

“I would say it’s an ongoing journey to . . . not be fearful, to choose to be hopeful and to choose just to enjoy what we have right now,” she said. “None of us are really promised tomorrow, right? So we just have to make the most of today.”

Despite some achingly hard moments along the way, Jon Rolph said he’s mostly living in gratitude.

It sounds like a saying that would be on the wall of one of his HomeGrown restaurants, similar to the “cultivate kindness” tagline for which they’re known.

“Any day you can live in gratitude, that’s where joy and generosity and kindness — all the things we all want — come from,” Rolph said.

“I really want to live in the sweetness of recognizing . . . (and) knowing it’s a gift that I was not promised a year ago.”