The Truth About Nate Oats' Wife

It's difficult enough just living life without having to deal with obnoxious nobodies on social media. But Crystal Oats handled her critic by simply telling him the truth. "Dear troll," she wrote, quote-tweeting the since-deleted insult, "That pic was taken the day before I went in for my first round of chemo. My neck was swollen because I had large tumors pressing on my airway. It was a death sentence! I entered the biggest fight of my life and came out a winner beating cancer!"

Crystal had been diagnosed with double-hit lymphoma when Nate Oats started his first year as head coach for men's basketball at The University at Buffalo. Double-hit lymphoma is a particularly aggressive strain of non-Hodgkin lymphoma because, as Nate describes in a video for Max Effort it has "two proteins attached to the cancer cells:" one "makes [the cancer] multiply faster" and the other "makes it more resistant to chemo."

But Crystal did what she could to treat the cancer, going through chemotherapy (she had a wig made from her long hair), encouraging Nate to keep working because the games were a welcome distraction, and believing in the power of prayer (she and Nate are both Christian). Fortunately, WIVB.com 4 reported in August 2016 that Crystal was cancer-free after having "a successful stem cell transplant." She returns to the doctor for regular checkups and has been cancer free for at least five years. "I'm here," she told Max Effort, adding, "[God] chose to keep me here, and I'm super thankful that he did."

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