Devon Still's pep talk to his 4-year-old daughter before her pediatric cancer surgery went viral this week on Instagram, with the Cincinnati Bengals defensive lineman's words touching hearts everywhere.
Still posted the video Thursday after driving his daughter Leah to the hospital for a difficult, five-hour surgery to remove a tumor from her right adrenal gland.
"Pre-surgery pep talk . . . I might be nervous and scared beyond words but I'll never let her see it . . . let's get this done," Still captioned the post on Instagram, where it's received more than 3,000 comments and 27,000 likes.
He posted a second Instagram photograph after surgery on Thursday.
"After a 5hr 50min surgery the surgeon was able to remove ALL of her tumor and all of her lymph nodes and her right adrenal gland where it all started from," Still wrote. "Best news I've received in a long time."
"It seems the Bengals' feel-good story of 2014 is one step closer to having a good ending,"
said Ben Goldschmidt of the Cincinnati Enquirer. "Devon Still announced via Instagram his daughter, Leah, underwent successful surgery Thursday."
Still just missed making the Bengals 53-man roster this season, but was placed on the team's practice squad. The decision was a blessing in disguise, Still said later, because it's allowed him to travel back home on the weekends to see his daughter, who was diagnosed with cancer on June 2.
"They could have just washed their hands completely of it," Still told the Enquirer earlier this month when the Bengals made their decision to put him on the practice squad. "Say we don't care what's going on in his personal life, we just want people who can care 100 percent on football, that's what they pay us to do."
"But they thought about my personal issues and allowed me to come back on the practice squad so I still have insurance. They said if I keep working on my physical with my injury and mentally prepared myself to focus on football, then they can move me back up to the roster, so I am not all the way out of the loop," Still added.
Related Stories:
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.