When I was 44, I was in a relationship with a woman who I loved but who sadly had a terrible drug problem that I was unable to help her through. She stole my truck and my money in the end, leaving me and my kids homeless, broke, and without a way to get around. She shut down our corporate account and emptied all the money out of it.
…and that was probably the easiest part of what was to come in the next three weeks.
After being forcibly removed from my home, too weak to combat the court or even her 140-pound brother, I moved into an apartment with no credit and with only money loaned from my mother and a friend.
3 weeks later, my ex-wife, Dawn, and son, Hunter, came to my empty apartment and told me that I needed to go to the hospital because they were concerned about how I looked and how weak I had become. They stayed with me until 3 a.m. and left thinking I was not going to be leaving the hospital alive.
When I got to the emergency room, they quickly got me admitted, which is scary all on its own, as everyone knows, you can usually sit there for hours. The doctor who first talked to us told us that I likely had pancreatic cancer.
I was 130 pounds (down from a high of 235) and too weak to walk on my own, in and out of consciousness, and dependent on a wheelchair to get to and from doctor’s appointments.
I get asked a lot why I let it get so bad, but I did go to other doctors over the course of the year, as I knew the massive weight loss, pain, and fatigue wasn’t normal, but they all missed it. Most other people, including close friends, confused my condition with drug use (although I’ve never used any drug other than marijuana my whole life) or stressed from the breakup. When I told my parents I was not ok, they told me I needed a psychiatrist and I was just crazy and overstressed.
I was.
I was also dying.
11 days later in the hospital, I left with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
Leading up to my diagnosis I was admittedly losing my zest for life and was underperforming at work and home over the course of about 18 months. I looked terrible and felt even worse. I was in severe pain every day and unable to stay awake during daytime hours. At night, I had teeth-chattering chills, fevers, and night sweats that would soak the bed. I was screamed at and physically attacked for being lazy, and being on my phone (her insecurity about other women was incredible given that sex with her or anyone else was the furthest thing from my mind). While I was still earning 3x what she was, she felt I wasn’t doing enough and told anyone who would listen that I was using her. I begged her family to simply look at her bank records. Being locked out of the account was not something I could show them. To this day, I wonder if they ever even called her on that or just took the opportunity as a reason to steal from me (I believe the latter). She wasn’t entirely wrong about me being lazy, I was just very sick. Neither of us knew at the time, how sick.
While out of the house and still trying to get things from my ex she was contacted by my parents and ex-wife and told of my diagnosis in hopes that she would talk to me or at the very least stop stealing my clothes, my children’s toys, tools, and other valuable items until we could pick them up. She coldly told her friend and anyone else who questioned her actions, that I was making it all up, and that I didn’t have cancer. I sent her friend my insurance bills from the chemo. Imagine having to send cancer receipts! She called the police on me and ironically told them that I was on drugs and while I certainly looked that way, I never touched them in my life.
In any other world, this alone would be devastating, but with my body, now full of cancer, crying over some silly girl didn’t seem very reasonable. Not that I didn’t still fall asleep that way most nights anyway.
Those first 11 days in the hospital have got to be close to the darkest most humans can imagine.
I was heartbroken and dying, and at this point, the doctors were still uncertain about what I had and they and I were both hopeless. Without any answers or direction, you are on a general admission floor with drug addicts trying to game the system and insane people. The noise never stops, the beeping, the cell phones, the screaming, and the crying goes on all night. It was the closest thing to hell I have experienced. Even if you do manage to sleep they wake you up to take vitals, and while you would like to think that it was all in your best interest, it seemed a lot more like the attitude was “Just don’t die on my shift”. Even with everything going on around you, you are completely alone. I can certainly see why people would choose to give up there. I was close.
People say they “lost everything” all the time, but rarely do they lose literally everything. Health, money, car, love, home. Imagine that all in a period of 21 days!
As of this writing, I have still not heard from her and I am sure that comes with some shame and sadness for what she has done. At the very least she should have gotten me to the doctor, then she wouldn’t have had to guess what my problem was, and she would have known. I’m not entirely sure that would have stopped her as she was reeling from her addiction, but at the very least, it might have made it less likely that other people would help her do what she did.
While you might think that I hate her for all this, I do not.
I feel bad that drugs have made an otherwise wonderful person so sad and dependent and I pray that she is able to recover half as well as I have.
My guess is that my transformation has reached her by now, and I am sure that makes it no easier on her. I sometimes like to think that she is happy for me, or at the very least relieved that her actions didn’t cause my death.
From that point, I went on a 2-year journey of some of the harshest chemo available. Hodgkins Lymphoma is considered the “good cancer” and most people with it can be cured after 4-6 months of chemotherapy. However, when it is widespread and doesn’t fully respond to chemo, then you are in for the long haul and the statistics become dire.
The next course of action would be a stem cell transplant.
Thank God for the doctors and the city we live in (Rochester, NY) to be so well equipped to do this, but make no mistake, the stem cell transplant is how they keep you alive when they have to give you so much chemo that it would otherwise kill you. People think the stem cell transplant is the cure, but in reality, the chemo kills anything and everything and the stem cells are the technology that keeps you from dying as a result of the chemo and rebuilds your immune system. 10 years ago this would haven’t have even been an option and I would certainly already be dead.
There wasn’t any other chemo they could give me that could possibly do any worse. To even get this treatment they give you extensive nuclear heart stress tests and lung capacity tests to make sure you can even survive it. Given the state of malnutrition, I was in at the hospital, it was a blessing to even qualify.
One thing to note is that before cancer I was always very active and in pretty good shape. I worked out hard and was way stronger than anyone needs to be. Fighting was something I had done my whole life and I am proud to say that I most often came out on top. This, however, was something I did not see coming or expected. Cancer kills you from the inside out and it was a hard fall to go from successful, strong, and handsome to broke, frail, rejected, and sickly. I literally had to begin from less than 0 and rebuild to where I am today. One regret I do have is that I didnt document the entire journey and only have limited photos of me at this spot. When you think you are dying, you aren’t exactly occupied with making a “comeback reel”. Had I known that life would turn around so wildly, I certainly would have had more “tik-tok content”, but when you avoid mirrors like the plague, you are not really interested in having your picture taken, much less video of you struggling to move about.
I admit this is all a bit dark, but I bring you to this place with me to show you how bad it really was and most importantly, that if I can do this, you can do it 100X easier and better than me!
So many fitness people are young or have been in shape their whole lives. Their advice may be interesting and even valid, but what I can offer you is a path from ground 0 to the top 2% of individuals in the US.
Anyone can get in shape at 25, but can they do it at 47 after cancer and chemotherapy?
If I can do it after all this, you most certainly can.
They say cancer is a horrible way to make wonderful friends, and I think that is true. I was able to meet with a lot of people who were less fortunate than me, and it really put into perspective quickly what is important and what is not. It also established a small circle of people who were there for me in my darkest hour and also identified those who were not. Both were a blessing. Some people with very little donated very much and others with very much donated nothing at all. I wouldn’t trade this knowledge for anything, nor would I trade my small circle for the field. If anything it has made me love fewer people, more!
My priorities have changed drastically, and at this stage, I can tell you that good health and longevity is the single best gift you can give yourselves and your loved ones. Your time is second only to your health. Most people do not get to learn this lesson until it is too late. I was lucky to learn it relatively young with time to be able to do something about it. Now I can share it with you in hopes that, for now, you will take my word for it.
This might be my biggest challenge yet…to convince people to strive for intrinsic riches and not material ones. 10 years ago, I know I wouldn’t have listened to me either, but that is what makes challenges challenging, and if nothing else, I am here for it. I pray that God allows me to use fitness (because it is an obvious and clear sign of recovery) to motivate others to reevaluate their own priorities. Physical results are the obvious results…I hope you come with me on a deeper journey.
I can tell you as I went through all this, there was not one day I wished I had more money. I prayed only for health and time. In the meantime, I challenge you to talk to people who are sick (they would love the opportunity as I can tell you it gets quite lonely). If not sick maybe elderly people. Ask them what is important to them. Ask them what they would do differently if they could. Do this while you still are alive and well to make the changes. Please.
Until then I will do my best to show the world that there is a better way.
Getting in shape helped me physically, should cancer or any other health problem return, it has also made me mentally healthier and happier. The benefits of exercise and training far outweigh any of the benefits of therapy. If you are struggling with depression or anxiety of any sort, I invite you to try to get through just 2 phases of my program and let me know how your headspace changed. I know your body will. I’m interested in how it fixes your mind.
🏋️ Fitness Fact: On average, a person has 3.4 poor mental health days per month. But among those who exercise, the number of poor mental health days dropped by more than 40 percent.
I do not share this for sympathy.
What Heather and cancer did to me might be the two biggest blessings of my life. I write to give you a picture of my mental and physical state from a mere 3 years ago. I was scared, alone, and a shell of the 235-pound, 400-pound bench-pressing monster I used to be. I am not sure that 3 years ago one could be in much worse shape physically or mentally than I was. There were so many reasons to give up and I dont think anyone would have blamed me. I had no money, no car, and no romantic interest, and now it looked like I wasn’t going to have much longer to live. Any one of these things could be enough to get anyone to give up and rest. I spent most of the nights in the hospital and throughout treatment and stem cell transplant alone (while there were people who wanted to be with me, Covid made that impossible). There were nights when the pain and desperation of my situation made me think, that I might not wake up the next time I went to sleep, and there were nights I would have been ok with that.
Still, I can assure you that I was not entirely alone. Someone else was with me the entire time telling me that it was time to get up. “You are not going to die here”. “We aren’t going to let this be the end”. It might be hard to believe, but I knew I was going to beat this before I even had an official diagnosis.
I had nothing to give my children if I were to die in that hospital, so instead, I was blessed to give them the only thing I had left. That was to show them that no matter what, no matter how bad life gets, put one foot in front of the other, pray, and never give up. No matter what happens the rest of my life, I am proud to have shown my 3 boys what resilience and prayer can do. I hope they live with the knowledge that my blood is their blood and if I can do this, and continue to grow and achieve in spite of it all, then there is nothing they can’t do. Imagine the power of knowing how quickly you can turn your life around. They got to witness it firsthand. When problems come into their life, I hope they are able to say “Yeah this is tough, but it isn’t Stage 4 cancer and homelessness tough”. Life does come at you fast. The good news is that it can become beautiful just as fast as it became devastating.
All of these things really happened to me. Eventually, I will write more about exactly how this tragedy ended up being one of my life’s biggest blessings, but for now, I just wanted you to understand my physical weakness so that you feel confident that what I am sharing with you can be done by anyone in any condition.
I don’t care where you are right now, I am 100% certain you can achieve what I have and more!
