Barnes left the family's Los Angeles home when he was 15 after winning a scholarship to attend high school in Appleton, Wis. He later moved on to law school at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and ironically was working as a Twin Cities attorney when the Vikings selected Udeze in the first round of the 2004 draft.
Now 30, Barnes said his legal training left him struggling to handle Udeze's diagnosis.
"I have taken it worse than he has," Barnes said. "The whole thing has been so unbelievable. I'm a lawyer, and a lawyer is trained to think of the worst-case scenario. I've had some pretty dark thoughts about what might happen. But he's been upbeat throughout this thing."
Indeed, Udeze learned in April that he was in remission and has spent the past two months undergoing chemotherapy to prepare for this week's procedure. He said he has never doubted whether he would recover.
"I just don't let things bother me when I know that they're going to work out OK," Udeze said. "I know this is going to work out OK. I'm not nervous about this at all. If anything, I can say I'm just looking forward to doing this so I can get a clean bill of health. That's all I want."
Treatment thus far has been tolerable, Udeze said, with the exception of a sick taste in his mouth from chemotherapy. He has dealt with it by eating salty foods, which, combined with a lack of exercise (doctors' orders), has left him with chubby cheeks and at least 10 pounds heavier than his listed playing weight of 281.
Otherwise, Udeze looks and feels the same as he did during four seasons with the Vikings. He also has maintained his sense of humor, teasing a Vikings teammate who was a bit confused about the nature of bone-marrow transplants.
"I won't say his name because he would never hear the end of it," Udeze said. "But I had a guy come up to me and say, 'So they are going to give you a whole new set of bones?'
"I was on the floor, laughing hysterically. I told him there was no such thing as a dumb question until that one. I had to ask him, 'How do you think a bone transplant would work? Would they take each rib out, one by one, or just rip them all out together?'"
In fact, doctors will harvest healthy bone marrow from inside Barnes' hip and transfer it to Udeze. If successful, the multi-part procedure will help Udeze's body replace the blood cells damaged by leukemia and chemotherapy.
Click to expand...