Monday, January 31, 2011

You Have To Crawl Before You Can Run

       One of the hardest things to do during my recovery was understand that my body had just dealt with an incredible amount of trauma and it would take time to get it back to where I wanted it to be. Before I entered the hospital I weighed roughly 130lbs, at my lowest I was 108 lbs. I had lost every ounce of muscle that I had once had. I suffered extreme muscle atrophy due to the fact I was in a bed for two weeks without getting up, or even really moving. Mix that with two rounds of chemo and I was as weak as ever.
        When the doctors told me I was allowed to get out of bed, I couldn't wait to get up and just walk around. To my surprise, I could barely walk. My legs could not support the weight of my body. Plus, during the week of chemo and the week after chemo, I was lucky if I had the energy to get out of bed at all. It was hard for me to accept that this would be a long road back. My family had to keep reminding me that I had to take baby steps. So during my non-chemo week I would do what I could, going for small walks and gradually longer ones. I did this for several weeks. Finally, after four months, I started back at the gym.
        There was no greater feeling for me then being able to work out again.. Working out is what makes me happy. And not being able to do it for four months was like losing a part of who I was. Me being me, I wanted to jump right back into my old routine, twice a day, everyday. But my sister Danielle and my friend Christina both insisted I take it slow. I think they worried that my body would not be ready for it and wanted to make sure I didn't over-do it. As much as it killed me to only work out one day a week, for the first three weeks I listened to them. Then I was able to work out three days a week.
        As each day passed I could feel and see my body getting stronger. It was incredible! I was able to watch as muscles developed and formed from nothing. I know that Christina and Danielle were only looking out for my best interests. I am sure they will always worry that I am overdoing it and that probably has a lot to do with what went on this past year. I mean they saw scary things first-hand every day. But no one will truely understand what my limits are except for me. I have slowly learned what they are, and I am not going to lie, I push my body to the edge before I back down. I mean I am the guy that after only three weeks out of chemo I went out and played my first round of golf in four months. Granted it wasn't pretty, but it put a smile on my face.
        People may not have understood why I worked out so much before and maybe I couldn't give them a straight answer then, but now its because being in shape is one of the reasons I am still here today. So while it might seem excessive to some, to me it's just living. I may not be crawling now, but I am still far from running. But trust me I'll be running, and once I start there is no stopping me. I can promise that.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Beginning, End, and Beginning

       Where to begin? I was just your normal 27 year old. I worked a full-time job and in my free time I lived for the days I could play golf and go to the gym. I worked out like a crazy person. I took pride in being in shape. Then towards the end of 2009 I started to develop breathing problems. I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden I was having shortness of breath. I always thought I was in good condition and now I was starting to think I was out of shape. It didn't make sense to me but I figured since I didn't run all that much that maybe it was catching up to me. When I finally hit my breaking point I knew it was time to see a doctor.
         I made the decision to go hoping to find out what the problem could be.  All they could come up with was that it must be asthma. Okay, asthma, that explains everything. I would get an inhaler and be good to go. I used the inhaler for a couple of months but it didn't really help. The doctors just kept telling me it was a bad allergy season and that's why the asthma was so bad. Okay, doctors know best, or so I thought.
        That brings us to Memorial Day weekend, 2010. After a hard day of work I came home, took a shower, and as I was getting out of the shower, boom! I hit the floor and out of nowhere I blacked-out. It was pretty scary since that had never happened to me before. I figured it must have had to do with being in the heat and being dehydrated. I thought nothing of it and continued with my regular routines. Over the next three weeks it kept happening more and more, getting worse and worse. I was having an even harder time breathing and was blacking out like three times a week. It got to the point that I was dry-heaving in order to try and breathe better, practically to the point of hyperventilating.
         It was getting scary, and not just for me. My roommate was getting real worried at this point. She kept telling me to go to the doctor, but me being me, I was too stubborn. I thought I was fine and it would pass. I mean come on, I am in great shape, what could it possibly be?  Finally on July 2, 2010, I was on my way to work after a horrible night of passing out due to breathing problems, when I decided I had to go back to the doctor. I spoke with the doctor and she told me it was just asthma (again) and that they would give me some medicine and breathing treatments and in a week I would be back to normal.
         After the breathing treatment and seeing that my breathing had not gotten any better, I knew it was not asthma. I asked for a chest x-ray and they said that it would be a waste, but I kept insisting and finally they agreed. When I went to view the chest x-ray I knew something was wrong. I had seen chest x-rays before and knew what I had just seen was not normal. I then went back in the exam room to wait for the doctor. Finally the doctor came in and told me there was a large mass on my chest. Large mass? I asked, "What does that mean?" She said, "Cancer."
         I was in complete shock. I was then told I need to drive to an ER and have a CT scan of my body to make sure that it wasn't anywhere else. I called my best friend Christina on the car ride to the ER and cried the whole forty min. drive. Just before I got there something came over me and I said to myself, "It's no big deal. I can handle it. I've got this." After my CT scan I was told I had to be transported to another hospital where I could be treated better for what was going on. For the next five days I just sat in the hospital waiting to have a biopsy done. As each day passed by my breathing got worse. I entered the hospital with my oxygen flow being at 95 percent. By July 5th my oxygen flow was about 60 percent, and to make it worse I now had fluid built up around my heart. So great, on top of a massive tumor 9 inches wide, I now had to go for surgery to have the fluid removed.
        On July 7, 2010 I went for what was supposed to be a routine surgery. It was only supposed to take four hours. Just before I entered surgery I wrote on my Facebook status: "God is my Refuge and Strength." I told my mom I would see her in a bit and was brought into the OR. The last thing I remember is getting an IV placed in my arm and looking up at the lights in the ceiling.  When I woke up it was July 16, 2010 and I had this tube down my throat and all sorts of tubes coming out of my body. I was completely lost. What was going on? What happened during those nine days? I couldn't talk and was not really understanding what had happened.
         Unable to ask, but knowing I would need answers as to why I had tubes going in and out of my body and cuts all over, my mom explained to me that during surgery, when I was placed flat on my back, the tumor collapsed my bronchi and caused some problems to my heart. I was without oxygen to my brain for forty minutes when I was on the operating table, and the doctors feared I would have severe brain damage. They then placed me on a respirator/ventilator and a machine that would work as a lung for me, as well as a machine that pumped and circulated my blood for me. For those nine days, the machines kept me alive. During that time I received emergency radiation and chemotherapy treatments to deal with the cancer, which ironically became secondary in my recovery. I also received numerous blood transfusions.
         Well now all the cards were on the table. It was time to face this tumor head on. It had tried to kill me and I wasn't about to let that happen again. At this point I thought, it has to be all down hill right? I mean I just went through the fight of my life. My goal at this point was to do whatever I had to do to beat this. As each day passed I set small goals that I wanted to achieve in order to get out of the hospital quicker. They were anything from having good white counts during my chemo sessions to having the tubes down my throat or in my body taken out. One by one I reached each goal.
         Finally on August 4, 2010 I reached one of my biggest goals; after over thirty days I was released from the hospital. From this point on, I was free from the walls that had been my home for over a month. For the next two months I went through three more rounds of intense chemotherapy. I would come back to the hospital every third week for five days, six hours a day, and recieve my doses of cisplatin and etoposide (two very toxic chemotherapy drugs). Basically the only way to kill this tumor was to sit back while these poisons coursed through my veins, essentially destroying them in the process, and hope they attacked the cancer in the way they were supposed to.
         At the beginning of each chemotherapy week I would get my blood drawn, and then again a week after my treatment was over. My goal was to do what I could to make sure my counts were where they needed to be. Sometimes they weren't and it killed me inside; it was like the cancer was winning. I could not let that happen. But not to worry, I was able to recieve shots that greatly increased my white counts. All was going in the direction I wanted them to.
         As each round of chemo ended I could feel that my body was getting back to being healthy. Granted, I had a long way to go but once again I was moving in the right direction. I finished my last day of my last round of chemo on October 1, 2010. This day will always be a very special day in my life. From that day on I was determined to build my body back up and make it stronger than it had ever been before. Not only was I determined to resculpt my body, I was determined to change the flaws I had witnessed while I was receiving treatment. Welcome to the beginning of that journey; the beginning of the rest of my life.