Great news, it’s lymphoma! I’ll never forget that call from my oncologist. That was the day my world changed in a good way… well not right away.
Are you familiar with the Tim McGraw song “Live Like you are Dying”?
“I was in my early 40’s with a lot of life before me,
When a moment came and stopped me on a dime.
I spent most of the next days, looking at the x-rays,
Talkin’ bout the options, and talking about sweet time…”
I lived that song. One moment I was living a normal life, the next my life was filled with treatment plans, survival rates, chemo side effects, and I wondered how everything changed so fast.
Moments after the call from the Doc something inside me clicked and I went into fight mode. I knew with a 100% certainty I was going to beat this! I thought to myself, I’m going to have to push my body to the limit, like when I was running the 400 meters on the college track team. Coming off that final turn of the race, my body was totally spent. I’d have to call on the will and determination to find the 2nd wind. A second wind is when you feel you’ve reached your limit. Then the pain and misery transform into a euphoric meditative state, you’re floating. The training instincts kick in to find the next gear, to propel yourself to the win. I can do that, I have trained to do that. I will use it again, but this time to survive.
A few months into my treatment I was really sick. I weighed 140 lbs, I lost my hair. I started to realize that my seven year old daughter was struggling to cope with my illness. She was getting distant, and very sad.
One day I asked her, “Zoe, what’s wrong?”
“Daddy, I don’t want you to die!" she said.
Fighting back a tear, I emphatically said, “I am not going to die.”
From that day forward I made it a point to get out of bed every day at 3 p.m., no matter how bad I felt, to be standing by the front door to greet Zoe coming home from school. I would muster up all of the strength, like it was the last 50 meters of the race, to chat with her about her day, to tell jokes, to laugh and goof around, before I would excuse myself to crawl upstairs and collapse back in bed without her ever knowing that she was my second wind. To this day, those few moments we spent together are some of the most special moments of my life.
The good news, as you can probably tell, I kicked my cancer into remission. I won! Later in his song, McGraw goes onto say:
“I was finally the husband, that most the time I wasn’t
I took a good hard long look
At what I’d do if I could do it all again
I’d live like I was dying”
Now my relationship with my wife and kids is stronger than ever. I make it a point to live in the moment. I truly feel like I’ve been given a new lease on life.
Before I was diagnosed, I didn’t even know what Blood Cancer United was. Now I know that they have been on the cutting edge of cancer breakthroughs for 77 years.
In 2004, Blood Cancer United funded researchers began to investigate the origins of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the type of cancer I had. And in 2006 the FDA approved the drugs that saved my life. 2 years! It took just two years for Blood Cancer United donations to turn into the drugs that saved my life.
I will make it my purpose in life to ensure that the patients of today can become the survivors of tomorrow. I’m sure there are more fighters that can use a 2nd wind.
My name is Andrew, and I beg you to, "Live Like You are Dying"!
Andrew
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL)
