When Freehold Raceway kiced off its Fall meet on August 24, fans heard the familiar voice and colourful race calls of Larry Lederman guiding them throughout the card.

The longtime voice of Freehold Raceway has been battling cancer since 2011 and had to take an indefinite leave from his full-time job after a tumour was found close to his brain.

"I'd never been sick before. I guess we all could at one time say that," Lederman told the USTA's Michael Carter. "In 2011, I took my daughter's car to get the oil changed. I went there, and all of a sudden I just started falling back. I'd never felt anything like it. And really, only by the grace of God I was very lucky because I was between two schools went it happened and all of a sudden I started falling backwards...and a voice was saying to me 'Larry, let go. It's okay' and I saw a bright light and I said this is the end of the show, I must be having a heart attack.

"To make a long story short they got me, they took me to the hospital. Everyone thought it was a heart thing. They brought me back as I was gone at the time. They brought me to the hospital and one doctor said there's something wrong, it's not his heart. And that's when they gave me an MRI for my brain and they found the brain tumour."

Lederman was placed on disability and started treatment with a combination of therapies, including radiation and medication that made him sick "every single day" he was on it. For six and a half years, the tumour remained malignant and inoperable.

"It's in a terrible place -- it runs everything in your body, it's called the motor strip. If it was over [a centimetre] they could have operated on it but they couldn't because you'd become paralyzed."

Every six months, Lederman would check in for MRIs and for more than six years the tumour didn't change. This past December, it grew and "went wild" forcing Lederman's oncologist into action.

"Within a week I was having brain surgery. And he tried to take out as much as he [could] but he couldn't. I said, whatever you do I don't want to be paralyzed...because if he touches the wrong thing I'll be paralyzed forever and that's no way to live. That's existing, that's not living.

"They told me in March I'd probably have a year, year and a half to go. Because it was going to grow no matter how much they took out, because it had started spreading again."

Lederman received ten sessions of proton therapy from New Jersey's ProCure Proton Therapy. According to ProCure, proton therapy can more precisely target a tumor, reducing damage to healthy tissue near the tumor and potentially allowing patients to receive higher, more effective doses of radiation. Proton therapy not only effectively targets a tumor, but it can also be used in combination with chemotherapy, as a follow-up treatment to surgery, and in combination with standard X-ray radiation treatment.

"They gave me ten shots of proton therapy and right now, it's made it disappear. However, is it likely to come back? Yes, it's like a 50/50 shot so every three months I have to go for MRIs. The surgery itself knocked the heck out of me. I'm always tired, all the time. I'm good until like 3 o'clock. I'm showing :55 halfs on the program and the race went in 2:11 and I'm getting distanced by the time the night rolls around."

For Lederman, the hardest part of this battle is that he's doing it alone and has lost some of those closest to him along the way. His wife, Jodi passed away from sepsis in 2014. His daughter Leslie fought "an insidious opioid addiction" before passing in April.

"That was all going on but we've gotta fight the fight, you don't give up.

"I've always said it's better to have 16 in a blackjack game than a 22. Because once you're out of the game, that's it. You've got to stay in it."

Lederman is staying in it this weekend by calling the races on both Friday and Saturday at Freehold. These cards will mark the first time Lederman has called races in over a year, but he doesn't see a full-time return to the booth,

"Do I think I'm going to call again? I would say it's less than 50/50, because I just don't have the strength to do it anymore. I see me filling in.

"I hope the mouth and the brain get together and make some sense of it all."