Many know Ryan Reynolds, the action movie actor, but not as many are aware of his role as the owner of a football club. Specifically, from the Welsh team Wrexham A.F.C., nicknamed “the Red Dragons” and which this season is already playing in the fourth division after 15 years.
The team, which is also owned by actor Rob McElhenney, has become like a real family. Even more so for the player Anthony Forde, for whom Ryan Reynolds is now also a hero after saving the life of his wife after she received the diagnosis of a brain tumor.
Just days after the Wrexham defender became a father to his first child, Paddy, Anthony Forde and his wife Laura received tragic news: a neurosurgeon diagnosed her with a malignant, inoperable tumor in her brain, leaving Laura with just a few months to live.
Tragic news that left the footballer and his wife devastated. “The neurosurgeon told us that he was inoperable and that his time was limited,” Laura Forde said in an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper. “We said we didn’t want to know how long I had left. Paddy was only four weeks old and they were basically telling me I wouldn’t see him turn one. He was planning my funeral while I fed him at night.”
The diagnosis caught the attention of Ryan Reynolds, who without wasting time made them another appointment for a second opinion. A crucial decision, since this new specialist, located in the United States, was much more positive and optimistic than the first. The new neurosurgeon, from New York, sent Laura Forde for a biopsy, from which surprising results were obtained: the tumor was benign, a grade 1 thalamic pilocytic astrocytoma.
“It was an emotional roller coaster,” Laura said. “At first I was in shock, I couldn’t believe it. I felt so vulnerable… But I felt like I should be happier about all this. I had just gone through the worst seven weeks of my life, and with a newborn. Now I have stress syndrome consequently post-traumatic and I have had to start therapy,” the player’s wife confessed to the aforementioned media.
Laura’s health still needs to be monitored and she must undergo more tests to ensure that the tumor does not grow, but the specialist who gave them hope is doing just that. The couple cannot but thank Ryan Reynolds enormously for having given them such an opportunity. “It’s so normal… There’s not even a chance he did it to give himself a chance.”
The couple’s story is covered in the docuseries Welcome to Wrexham, which already has two seasons and is currently broadcast on Disney and tells precisely how the performers raised the Welsh team from nothing.
