Prologue: A Little Background

It seems fitting to me that I am sitting here writing this with the sound of the Olympics on the TV in the background. My dad loved the Olympic Games, more than anyone else I know. He especially loved the events in the Summer Games, but he loved the Winter Games too. He always did his research well before the Games started, reading the personal stories of many of the athletes and deciding ahead of time which ones he wanted to “pull for,” as he put it. 

I don’t know why he didn’t ever try out for the Senior Olympics.  I feel sure he would have qualified; maybe he always thought there would still be time to do that on down the road.  He used to half-joke that if he ever became disabled he wanted to compete in the Paralympic Games; whenever he talked about the possibility of incurring a life-altering injury, though, it was always with the subtext that if something incapacitating actually happened it would be an injury he sustained from an accident that occurred while he was running or biking.

I need to give a little background to this: my dad, an avid runner since before I was born, was involved in lots of accidents over the years related to his workout regiment. So many that my family had become somewhat desensitized to it after so many near-misses and even a few "hits." My dad was hit by a car while running twice and three times while biking, not to mention the many emergencies like falls, sports injuries, and other things like heat exhaustion he'd had. Like a cat with nine lives, though, somehow Dad always ended up ok after something happened to him, although a few times he'd ended up with broken bones and needing stitches or at least debris picked out of his skin as a result.

It always seemed odd to me that Dad never saw his own toughness, his resilience, his extraordinariness, especially in the midst of his athletic endeavors. I remember once when I was about eight years old, I was playing in the front yard of our house when an unfamiliar vehicle pulled up in our driveway.  Dad got out of the car, thanked the driver, and turned around to face me.  He had blood dripping profusely down the side of his head.  

"What happened?" I asked.

"I was running across a 2-lane bridge and an RV that didn't have enough room to get over side-swiped me," he said casually. I didn't even know what side-swiped meant, but I figured it wasn't anything good based on the blood that kept coming and coming.  

"I was going to keep running, but I knew your mom would be upset if I didn't come straight home to get this cleaned up," he said, as he casually headed into the house.  

When I was in the seventh grade, my dad was running a marathon and, in third place 18 miles into the race, he was hit by an old lady driving a car who hadn't seen him because the sun was shining in her eyes. Her car hit him from behind, and he flew up over her windshield and landed in the road. She was screaming so much that he, while lying in the street with his bone sticking through the skin of his leg, had to try to calm her down until the police got there a few minutes later.

He was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where we met him after the police found us on the course, waiting at the 20-mile mark, where Dad had told us to wait to cheer for him.  When we got to the hospital, he wasn't at all focused on the pain from the two compound fractures in his leg but instead was concerned because the force of being hit by the car had knocked off one of his running shoes, which he wanted back, and because he wouldn't be able to finish the race.  

The orthopedic surgeon told him that he would be in a cast for several months and would not be able to run again for at least six months.  Four weeks later, Dad used a kitchen knife to cut the cast off his leg and was out on the road again, training for his next race.

And then there was the Big Bike Wreck that happened a few years before he got sick. Dad was on a long training ride, probably 75 miles or more, and was riding by himself on country roads in Missouri.  He usually didn't take his cell phone with him on bike rides, but for some reason he had brought it along on this one, even using it to call Mom right before he left to tell her he would be gone for a few hours.

At some point on the ride, a guy driving a pick-up truck wasn't paying attention and didn't see Dad on his bike in the road in front of him. The driver hit Dad from behind, and, again, Dad flew over the top of the vehicle and landed in the road, this time with his feet still clipped into the pedals of the bike.  He landed very hard on his back and immediately found that he couldn't move his arms or legs at all.  The driver had stopped but hadn't gotten out of the truck yet; Dad told us later that all he could do was lie in the road and yell for the guy to call 9-1-1.

Here's the really crazy part of the story: apparently, when Dad was thrown to the ground by the impact, his cell phone got bumped and the redial button was hit. Mom thought it was odd when she saw on her phone's Caller I.D. that Dad was calling back so soon after he'd started his bike ride, and when she answered, all she could hear was Dad screaming for someone to call 9-1-1 and saying that he couldn't move his arms or legs. She kept him on the line and then used another phone to call 9-1-1. She made it to the scene of the accident just as Dad was being loaded into the ambulance, and, by the time they made it to the hospital, Dad was moving his extremities again, although he had a major case of Road Rash and was understandably sore. He didn't even spend the night in the hospital that night, and - predictably - he was back on the bike within a couple of weeks.  Time and time again, he toughed it out, picking himself up and heading right back out on the road.

“I hope that when I go, I go out running,” I heard him say many times over the years, and, like everyone else who ever heard those words come out of his mouth, I knew he was serious. The strange thing is that that’s pretty much what ended up happening, although not at all even close to the way that anyone who knew my dad would have ever thought things would go down.

Go, Dodger!

Here's an inspiring story about a professional athlete showing kindness to a fan with terminal cancer:

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY

I doubt Matt has any idea of the impact of his act, quite remarkable in my opinion especially considering it seems like he didn't intend for what happened to be publicized.  

Now that's what I call a Random Act of Kindness.

Ironwoman

I recently read an article about a woman that I find to be very inspiring.  Her name is Kristin McQueen, and here's her story:

Ten years ago Kristin was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer.  Since then, she has had fifteen major surgeries and has undergone various cancer treatments including radiation on her brain.  To date, she has finished seventeen marathons and nine full Ironman competitions.  She has continued to train during her fight with cancer, she says, because when she's out there on the road she is in control, not cancer.  I think that's pretty badass. 

“Ironman is so much more than an endurance race," she says. "It is not about simply propelling myself 140.6 miles for kicks, it’s about challenging my limits and seeing what’s possible. It’s about reclaiming my body after five neck surgeries, two rounds of radiation, ten brain surgeries, and a slew of acquired physical challenges. It’s about not giving into all the limitations that cancer and its buddies have imposed on me, but viewing them as challenges that ultimately make the race even sweeter by overcoming them. It’s about going from not being able to open my eyes without getting sick, having difficulty sitting upright and being too weak to stand by myself to completing one of the ultimate tests of human endurance. It’s about raising money so that nobody else has to go through what I have. It’s about remembering those who have passed and honoring those who fight every day to live a 'normal' life despite a disease that tries to tear them down.”

As anyone who follows Ironman competitions knows, the Ironman Championship is held in October each year in Kona, Hawaii, and participants in the race have to qualify to enter.  It's "the big one," the granddaddy of all triathlons and one of the most rigorous events in sporting.

This year, the World Triathlon Corporation is giving seven athletes the opportunity to race at Kona though a program called Kona Inspired.  Each entrant in the contest has uploaded a 90-second video showing how their story relates to the theme of the contest, which is "Anything is Possible," and those who get the most votes will get to enter the race.  Kristin wants one of those slots.

If you are also inspired by this Ironwoman, here's how you can help, in three quick and easy steps:

1. Watch this video.
2. Vote for Kristin every day between now and May 7, 2013.
3. Share the info on Facebook and Twitter and any other social media feeds you have - and email the link out to others who may not be into social media.  Ask everyone you know to vote for Kristin!

Kristin, sporting a "SUCK IT, CANCER" message during a race

For at least a dozen years before he got sick, my dad always called or emailed me ahead of time to alert me to whenever an Ironman triathlon was coming on TV so I could watch, and many times he called me on the phone during the race so we could talk about it.  Every single time I have watched an Ironman on TV, I have cried.  I don't mind admitting it; I find not only the talent but also (and probably especially) the dedication and just the raw guts that it takes to go the distance so awe-inspiring, but it's the stories of the back-of-the-packers that get me going every time.  Even if you're not an Ironman fan (an Ironfan?), you know the storyline: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I'm not sure which trumps which: the tears of the competitors who realize they will not be able to finish - or the tears of those who are crossing the finish line.  Either way, I can't imagine watching the race without being affected by those stories.

My dad wanted so badly to finish an Ironman competition; just a few days before he got sick - which was just a couple of weeks before his debut Ironman - he said he hoped to finish the event in less than twelve hours but that he would be happy just to finish at all.  After months of training and miles and miles on the road and in the pool, his chance to compete in the Ironman-North Carolina in 2010 was stolen from him by cancer, so unbelievably sad and so damn unfair.  As Kristin says, "Cancer is bullshit!"

Kristin has succeeded in finishing an Ironman - in fact, nine of them!  Most people feel they are giving their all when they finish a 5K, even if they are 100% healthy; Kristin has far surpassed that, while battling cancer. By any standard, she is already an Ironwoman, worthy of great respect and admiration for her athletic accomplishments.  The championship race in Kona, though, is within her reach, and I can't think of anyone who better embodies the idea that anything is possible.  With our help, she can make it there.

Good luck, Kristin; cancer can indeed SUCK IT!  I look forward to watching you amongst the other participants in the race on TV in October.  I can guarantee that I'll be watching - and crying.

The Writing on the Wall

One of the things I am asked most often about my dad’s illness is if he had any symptoms prior to the day of his fateful run.

As I’ve written in previous entries and as anyone who knew him was aware, Dad was a long-time competitive athlete who thrived on pushing himself to the limit (and sometimes beyond).  He had a very high threshold for pain, which sometimes did not serve him well as he did not always know when to call it quits.  

Dad, getting medical attention after running his fastest-ever time in a marathon

One thing about him I haven’t mentioned, though, and something about himself that he readily admitted was that he was fairly uncoordinated, a fact that was especially surprising considering he was such a talented athlete.  Maybe it was because of this clumsiness or because he was often in a hurry to get somewhere (he hated to be late!), or maybe it was because the amount of time he spent on the road on his bike or running upped his odds statistically of having accidents and mishaps, but either way it wasn’t that unusual for him to have a scraped-up knee or a bloody elbow from a spill that he had taken. 

Dad did have a wreck on his bicycle about a week before he was diagnosed that resulted in some pretty impressive Road Rash on his left knee, shoulder, and arm.  He had taken a spill with the bike tipping to the left side, which frustrated him so much that he had taken his bicycle to the shop the next day to get them to check it to see if it was out of balance.  As we found out a short while later, it was actually Dad who was out of balance; he had left-sided weakness due to the tumor in his brain.  However, at the time, he chalked up the wreck to something being wrong with his bike or to the usual stuff with him, not paying attention to what he was doing, being in a rush, being a bit of a klutz, and/or heat and fatigue due to a very intense training regiment.

Dad, taking an ice-pack break during an ultra-marathon (Note the supplies on the table.)

 Dad had entered three shorter distance triathlons last summer as part of his preparation for the Ironman Triathlon for which he was registered in November, and in all three he did not feel well at the finish, which a doctor who checked him out in between races attributed to heat exhaustion and dehydration.

 

He finished the last tune-up race in mid-August by staggering over the last mile of the run portion and then falling across the finish line, at which point Mom took him over to the first aid tent where he got some fluids and a stern lecture from the medics there about the dangers of dehydration.  They told him he absolutely had to drink at least 10 cups of water daily in the days leading up to a big race when the temperature and humidity were as high as they had been.  Apparently, after drinking some Gatorade in the tent, Dad perked up enough to jokingly ask one of the medics if beer counts as a fluid, which they did not find funny.  And, as was typical for him, despite the finish line drama, he won his age division in this race, too, which he felt was a good indicator that he was right on target in his training program to get ready for the Ironman.

Dad, after again pushing himself to the limit

 Even though Dad was bald-headed for decades, in personality he oftentimes functioned like a Dizzy Blond.  He had been known to pull up in a parking lot or driveway, put the car in park, get out, and come into the house or his office, all without noticing that he hadn’t turned off the engine of the car!  So, if he was doing things like entering the house without closing the front door behind him or losing his wallet, it wasn’t really something we noticed as a Red Flag because of his past actions.

In late August, my dad went to visit his mother, who was ill and living in a nursing home near my parents’ house.  Not long after he got back home, the telephone rang, and it was one of the nurses at the nursing home letting him know that he had left one of his shoes there.  Evidently, he walked out of it in the hallway of the nursing home and, without noticing, walked to his car in the parking lot and drove home.  Again, we chalked it up to Dad just being Dad, not paying attention and being in a hurry to get somewhere.

A few weeks later, Dad drove my mom and one of my sisters to a restaurant near my parents’ house.  It was pouring down rain, and so, after Dad parked the car in the parking lot, they ran from the car to the door of the restaurant.  Once they got inside, Mom noticed that Dad didn’t have a shoe on his left foot.  She pointed it out to him, and he ran back to the car and found his shoe there.  Again, something that might have been alarming for someone else, but not that out of character for Dad. 

According to the resources we were given on brain tumors, the first symptoms are usually things like headaches, blurred vision, memory loss, behavioral changes, or seizures, all of which can be attributed to increased pressure within the brain.  Other symptoms (depending on the location and size of the tumor) can be nausea, drowsiness, weakness or impairment in sensation on one side of the body, or language impairment.

Even with the 20/20 hindsight that we had once the diagnosis was made, of these, the only symptom that Dad had before the day his tumor was diagnosed was impaired sensation on the left side of his body.

Out on his run that day, he got disoriented and had trouble finding the words he needed to respond to questions he was being asked by people around him.  He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where a CT scan revealed a “large mass in his brain.”  He was then transferred by ambulance to a large teaching medical center with a Neuro-ICU, and, en route, he had his first seizure.  The paramedics stabilized him and got him to the second hospital, where the medical staff quickly took him to get an MRI; however, during the test he suffered a second seizure, stopped breathing, and had to be resuscitated and put on a ventilator to help him breathe.

Even once the diagnosis had been made and we had read all about the Warning Signs, we still weren’t able to see The Writing on the Wall; even looking back with 20/20 hindsight, we still couldn’t identify what went wrong and when it had begun. 

No headaches, vision changes, etc.  He was still functioning at his 100%, which was equivalent to most other people's 150%.  We later found a To-Do List in his home office and noticed a slight difference in the legibility of his handwriting, which might have been related to the tumor since he was left-handed.  His typical writing style was of the Chicken Scratch variety, though, and so, as much as the falls and forgetting of the shoe were hard to definitively identify as a symptom, it was even harder to connect those dots, even given what we knew.  Literally, there really was no discernible Writing on the Wall.

We were told by several of Dad’s doctors that the type of brain cancer he had is extremely fast-growing; in fact, this type of tumor usually doubles in size about every three weeks.  The doctors said that the tumor very likely started to grow just a few months before the diagnosis.

And, while it seems like it would be somewhat comforting for us to know that there was no chance for prophecy, there wasn’t something there that we missed, and there was essentially no opportunity for early detection, it really isn’t comforting, because nothing is.  The only thing I see written on the wall is that it sucks and it isn’t right or fair, and I want my dad back!