Whats on my mind, Facebook asks me. Screw cancer, thats whats on my mind. I didnt realize it when I woke up this morning but today marks the fifth year since my last chemotherapy session and the last Neulesta injection to rebuild my white blood cell count. 5 1/2 years since I was first diagnosed with Stage III testicular cancer (there is no Stage IV). In January they removed the tumor and announced me free of cancer. Or so they thought. In April the scans showed again that I was clear and cancer free, however in May those same scans showed I had 17 tumors in my lungs alone. Not a good way to start the summer. When you deal with cancer this aggressive you need to counter with chemo that is equally nasty, so I received 21 sessions of the maximum amount of chemo. I absolutely hate to admit it but that stuff broke me. I lost 70lbs of muscle, my strength, my energy, my capacity to think straight and to this day it sometimes takes every fiber of my being just to get through the day. It cost me my career, my savings , my marriage and worse of all, I lost precocious, precocious time with my oldest son, Vincent Van Hoek. It took many months before I was able to get back to a normal job and I suffered quite a bit of humiliation along the way. When so much gets taken from you, you often retreat to where you feel most safe. For me thats the gym, its my home away from home, my sanctuary. Its the only place, away from my sons, where I am truly happy. When I returned to the gym I did so bloated, weak as a kitten, with nerve damage in my hands and feet, constant headaches and with a hormonal profile that puts me very much in touch with me feminine side, hot flashes and all. It increased the sympathy I had for my mother is all I can say. With the help of my brother-from-another-mother Lance Kennedy I started lifting again. Lance constantly encouraged me and with his wicked sense of humor helped me graduate from the pink dumbbells to some real weight. However, I never was able to return to the shape I was in before I got sick and I never seemed to be able to regain my strength. That is, until today. Today my son was with me at the gym, today I felt strong and though my program didnt call for it, I decided to try and max out on my favorite exercise, the dead-lift. I had already done more than an hour of very heavy lifting and I shouldnt have but something told me to do it anyway. I ended up lifting 500lbs. Its not that much really, theres kids half my size who can lift more but it meant the world to me. It meant that I am on my way back. According to PET scans I have been cancer free for a long time but today, for the first time in 5 years, I actually FEEL I am cancer free.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 06:40:06 +0000
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