Eve Samples: From rodeos to chemo suites, a bullfighter keeps battling martin county | eve samples ALEX SLITZ/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS Bullfighter Stephen Bruner, of Indiantown, prepares to participate in a bull riding class during Rodeo Bible Camp at Gethsemane Ranch in Indiantown Wednesday. ALEX SLITZ HIDE CAPTION “I’ve taken bigger bulls by the horn than this,” Stephen Bruner said. He was 26 years old. He was walking into his first chemotherapy appointment. If he had the swagger of a bullfighter, it was understandable. The South Fork High School graduate was one. Bruner had been on the rodeo scene since 2007, when he left college to chase his dream of working with professional bull riders — not as a rider, but as a “fighter.” Fighters are the adrenaline-seekers who put themselves in front of a bull so the rider can escape safely. Getting tossed into the air is a hazard of the job. It’s not the rodeo clown you might have in mind. Bruner had torn his ACL and broken his leg doing it. He still loved it. “OK, cowboy,” one of the nurses fired back at him that first day of chemo, in late 2011. The months that followed were the most physically difficult of Bruner’s life. He had Stage 3 testicular cancer, and the intense treatment took a heavy toll. Bruner’s 6-foot-2, 215-pound frame withered to 169 pounds over the course of eight months. His five-days-a-week chemo regimen left him so nauseous he struggled to hold up his head. In June 2012, surgeons removed one of his testes and multiple tumors around his back and spine during 8½ hours of surgery at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. After the surgery, Bruner struggled to walk. He had pain shooting down his legs. His balance was terrible. His feet were numb from chemo-related neuropathy. Bruner’s doctors told him he had no chance of having children — devastating news for him and his wife, Victoria. He thought his rodeo career was over. “I couldn’t carry a 50-pound bag of horse feed to the barn,” Bruner, now 29, recalled. How could he possibly outmaneuver an 1,800-pound bull? He turned to his faith for guidance. “I had been preaching these messages that ‘God restores. God heals,’ ” said Bruner, an ordained minister who leads Sunday services at Gethsemane Ranch in western Martin County. He had to believe that message himself. His wife did, too. “I heard God saying, ‘Don’t fear it,’ ” Bruner said. “So we didn’t.” With time, the feeling returned to his legs. He regained muscle. He weaned himself off pain medication. By late last year, Bruner was strong enough to fight bulls at high-school rodeos. Unlike before his cancer diagnosis, he wasn’t aggressively chasing down his dream. His new mantra became: “As it comes.” And it did come. In January, Bruner became a card-carrying member of the Professional Bull Riders association, allowing him to work pro events. Saturday night, he will be bullfighting during a PBR competition in Orlando. His mother, Becky Bruner, will be in the crowd watching him. She’s proud of him, even when she’s terrified he will get injured. This month, Stephen Bruner is celebrating two years of cancer remission. As physically devastating as the disease has been, it has allowed him to tap into strength he didn’t know he had. “I feel like it did something to my character that I don’t think anything else could have done,” Bruner told me this week. It has made him more grateful for the small triumphs of daily life. “When you look at death so close,” he said, “ ... it really makes you cherish things a lot more.” Bruner is spending part of his summer working at a Christian youth camp at Gethsemane Ranch, where he puts his bullfighting skills to work. The children watching him might not realize it, but he’s fought far bigger beasts than those. He plans to keep fighting. TY Eve Samples and TCPALM -you and Stephen are great people!!!
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:29:15 +0000
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