Former Brooklyn Nets forward Jason Collins, the first openly gay player in the NBA , is battling stage four brain cancer, he announced on Thursday.

Collins, 47, has a particularly aggressive form of glioblastoma , he wrote in an article published by ESPN.

“I was in the CT machine at UCLA for all of five minutes before the tech pulled me out and said they were going to have me see a specialist,” Collins wrote. “I’ve had enough CTs in my life to know they last longer than five minutes and whatever the tech had seen on the first images had to be bad.”

In September, Collins’ family announced he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor , but he said Thursday that statement was intentionally vague and allowed him to gather his thoughts and explain his whole story.

Glioblastoma is the

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