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After a series of misdiagnosis, I was eventually re-diagnosed with osteosarcoma. As my doctors in Pittsburgh did not see surgery as a feasible undertaking and recommended a hospice team, it was time to seek a second opinion. Ryan lives! There was no room for messing around this time; I needed the best. Thinking back to Lance Armstrong’s book, It’s Not About the Bike, I remembered MD Anderson Cancer Hospital being his go-to when his situation became drastically urgent. Eventually, after weighing options and advice, we caught a plane to Houston, Texas.
Honestly, I was in rough shape after travels there. It was as if I was hanging on by one final thread that broke right at the front doors, as I vomited all over the concrete right out front. While there was some frustration, getting an IV and hospital bed was much needed. Going into that initial appointment, I expected them to be ready for us with a prepared treatment option. However, upon arrival, it became apparent that I was badly misunderstanding how things would go. They didn’t have much of a clue what we wanted from them, as they hadn’t even seen my recent MRI which led to my diagnosis. The total lack of individualized treatment and priority disappointed me. I was just the next guy in line, and they didn’t know much of anything about me. I guess there is a compromise to be made for accessing that cutting edge technology. After getting an MRI board and discussions among doctors, surgery still seemed quite difficult. Chemo seemed like the best option to get things stunted for surgery. With that, I returned home to do some chemo with the local oncologist.
There was a point prior to going to Houston when I was ready to accept living with cancer. I remember the lady working at the hospital in Seneca talking with my mother and sharing that she had to switch to a lower hour job because she has cancer. With this I did a second take of this lady, older, but not nimble or weak in demeanor or stature, seeming to be doing just fine. This older woman’s natural hair intact, working a job seemed to imply a life with cancer as being reasonable. Certain drugs can halt the growth and activity of some tumors so that a patient can have a reasonable life with the cancer still there.
I handled this second encounter with chemotherapy incredibly well in comparison to the last one. It’s hard to tell why this is so; for one, I was receiving a different chemo drug than than the three received in 2010-2011. Additionally, I was able to receive this chemo as an outpatient treatment. Having the comforts of home (i.e. my own bed, home cooked meals, privacy, peace, thc, etc.) do great benefit to my physical and mental well-being in comparison to the nauseating stench of staying in a hospital, as I did in my first bout. As my sickness was minimal and feeling good, I had reason to be optimistic about my body’s reaction to this treatment. It also helped that my hometown oncologist noticed a decrease in the protrusion of the infected area. Although my pain greatly decreased after starting chemotherapy, an MRI taken before leaving for Houston showed that chemo didn’t work, at all. As a matter of fact, my hometown, secondary oncologist said that it looked as if the tumor had actually grown.
As this was a great disappointment, surgery still remained scheduled. At the end of the day, I’m in preparation for brain surgery. What could go wrong? Death? Brain damage? Permanent personality alteration? Who knows? But what I did know was there no point in me affording thought to this subject. I was on my way marching head on into a dark storm with a lot of clarity and truth to be found on the way, a getting-my-affairs in-order of sorts.
“The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There’s enough creative ideas. There’s more than enough power. There’s more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature.” - Michael Bernard Beckwith Qtd. From pg 147 of The Secret to the World by Rhonda Byrne.
Furthering my own openness to this plenitude has been one of my biggest challenges. One of the most remarkable comments ever communicated to me was when my friend Antonia—regarding the departure of our dear friends—asked, “Are you experiencing overwhelming sentiments?”
My response was, “I don’t have much of an appetite, let’s just say that.”
“I asked you about sentiments, not whether you are hungry or not.”
My days are filled with all sorts of ideas, smiles, expression that are generated from all these people who impress their expressions of love to me, and I just hope they all know at the end of the day that they enrich the color of my world. I felt a personal balance and inner peace leading up to the return to Houston, in the middle of chemotherapy that I’ve never felt before. Even physically, having relieved myself from all the strains of training for baseball, so with a focus on maintaining a healthy and appropriate physical condition, I cultivated an intuitive feel on how to maintain a steady equilibrium.
Trust in the divine process of life.
It is this preferable, ideal human state I need to maintain with consistency in order to keep my passport to the kingdom of health valid. All this leads to thinking about and integrating things which contribute and promote “the good life.” A life completely rid of hatred, jealousy, shame, selfishness is the healthy state, for these things are poisonous.
In his book Anticancer, David Servan-Schreiber gives expresses this notion beautifully:
Positive attention is a force that does good to anything it touches. Children, dogs, cats often know about it than we do. They come to us for no particular purpose, to show us a picture they’ve made, a bone they’ve found, or a mouse they’ve caught in the garden. Or sometimes just for a hug or a scratch under the chin. We know how important this is to them and off it willingly. But when do we show the benevolent attention to ourselves?
….
Kabat-Zinn always insists that spending time every day alone with oneself is “a radical act of love.” Like the great tradition of shamans, who always prescribe a ritual of purification to be performed alone, the reflective solitude is the essential precondition to harmonizing the inner healing forces of the body. (164)
How exciting; what a challenge.
Not only do you owe yourself “the good life” you owe it to those who love you. Only when we are at this state of full engagement through self-love, can we offer our best to our loved ones. This echoes back to what my beautiful and wise friend from Thiel, Shea, told me one day while we were riding in my truck, “gotta love yourself before someone can love you.”
While I can feel the nourishing effects of self-love and harmonized inner healing forces, I also acknowledge and respect energy from beyond me—energy and vibes from “the other.” It’s so amazing to see how much of this poured in throughout my battle. The amount of mail received was unbelievable.
There have been countless gestures to help raise my spirits through cancer. The home roots really flexed this time, phenomenal. Baseball is such an esthetically pleasing game, and it provided a vehicle for a lot of support. The historians would have loved that Alumni Game, 10/19/13 at Franklin High School. Clayton organized a benefit fundraiser alumni game for his grad project, raising funds to help me in my second bout with cancer. There were some great ball players on that alumni team Clayton assembled, and they played a crisp, clean game to polish off the pipsqueaks 7-3. Some cold drizzle moved in in the 6th, but spirits held strong, all in a subtle, intent understood atmosphere of support, what a beautiful thing. Before the game, Clayton came up to me with a ball in a glass case and gives it to me. Turns out, the ball is signed by Pete Rose, Charlie Hustle!! All you can say to a windfall like that is, “Wow.” And smile.
Along with that baseball, there has been a Clint Hurdle autographed Pirates home jersey, a Hines Ward autographed football. There has been so many gestures that I can’t possibly properly display my gratitude to them all. I’m going to imagine that my survival is what they all want to see; I can handle that. Also I hope this book can serve as a gigantic thank you note. Those who care about me and show support are a huge part of my story, so it’s my hope that I can give people some enjoyment by sharing my side of the story.
It is always special when I receive love from people I’ve never met through cards or whatnot. Less than two weeks before surgery, on my way from lunch to class, I checked my mail and received possibly the most wonderful letter I’ve ever read. What resonated most was: “Stay true, stay you.” The love seemed so pure, so genuine; I really want to meet this anonymous “student who cares.”
Not long after receiving that, a note came in from our campus pastor, requesting to meet with me. I emailed her last minute as I had a gut feeling I should chat with her before I left for Houston, boy was I right. While I was aware I had so much I still have yet to do before I die, my discussion with PJ made me realize the importance of writing them all down and making steps toward living my dream. Even as we sat there talking, I struggled to bring forward much of a list. Little did I know it: this was HUGE! If you step up and declare a thing, you will find ways to make it happen, eventually.
Learn to surf
Find her
Get a dog
Study abroad (see section __)
Write a book^
Sky dive
Additionally, she told me about a woman who held a viewpoint toward her cancer based on the notion that she is one with the world, and since the world has cancer, she shares that disease. Thinking about my cancer this way evokes serious environmental concern. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always wanted to do something to turn things around in a messy world, but I have always felt so helpless. Now that wish I buried deep down because of what’s reasonable has been ignited into a burning desire to be the change we need. What are we doing here? From the disregard for the earth’s well-being in favor for a dollar, the world is surely ill. Our behavior which includes burning fuels, mountain-top coal mining, radioactive releases, tobacco, etc. has left a cancerous mark on the world which can be observed through the increased number of people getting cancer as time goes by. As a little wave in the ocean, it seems I’ve shouldered the burden of some of the cancer that has infested the world as a result of our irresponsibility. However, I’m committed to a response that isn’t based in that anger. I’m learning to channel that energy into a loving response.
This type of surrender resonates with this verse: “Place all your understand to the Lord, and He will set your path straight.” This is about trust that even if a blueprint from beyond includes an early death from cancer, there is more at play than our rational capacities can handle.
But it is paradoxical, because while I surrender to the process, I am doing a lot to survive. I appreciate the way Chris Lee puts it in his powerful book,Ten Principles to Transform Your Life: Surrender is not resigning. Surrender is flow. It’s letting go of self-criticism and judgement. It’s trusting that life is as it should be and everything is a blessing.” (p. 96) Or to share an analogy a coach of mine came up with: It’s like eating at the restaurant: while you made the decision to get to the restaurant and pick your meal, you aren’t standing in the kitchen looking over the chef’s shoulder—yet you’re still super pumped when your server brings that food.
