Great Strides
My Comeback From Cancer
When I look back at my life three years ago, I can’t believe all that I’ve achieved. At 50 years old, my future looked grim. Years of poor lifestyle choices had finally caught up with me. Death didn’t seem so far off. I was obese, weighing 340 lb. I had high blood pressure and cholesterol, chronic gout, sleep apnea and my blood sugar was also creeping up. Doctors warned me that the weight needed to come off. I saw the positive effects of the pills they prescribed, but they were a band-aid solution.
At the beginning of 2015, though, one final diagnosis changed everything: I had esophageal cancer. The survival rate was low.
I was about to begin my fight with cancer and I needed to get in better shape to handle chemo radiation and surgery. In the dead of January, I got on the treadmill and I started to walk. It took me 30 minutes to walk one kilometre, and I would finish absolutely spent. It was humbling. At 340 lb., running is a very hard thing to get into, but that was my goal. I stuck to my walks on the treadmill and lost 40 pounds. I gradually bumped up the distance. By June, my fitness was slowly getting somewhere: I could cover three kilometres with sporadic 30-second jogs. It was a milestone for me.
Although I was making progress, I had to put everything on hold as I underwent chemo radiation and surgery, during which my esophagus was removed. It was a long recovery, and several months later, in October, I started back into my fitness routine. There I was again, getting on the treadmill, determined to get back on track. The fatigue during treatment was something I’d never experienced before. Just getting off the couch was so hard. That feeling was always there right from the morning when
I’d wake up. I’d maybe get one hour of feeling good before I’d just crash again. I started getting my walks in during that window. I was at square one again.
The light at the end of the tunnel came in spring. My walks with slight jogging intervals helped me get my strength back so, in May, I signed up for a couch-to-5k program. This was going to be a huge accomplishment if I could finish 5k.
Although I’d accumulated a long list of health issues by my 50th birthday, they didn’t happen all at once. Over the years, I was in denial. I’m prone to being heavy, and in my late teens and early 20s, I’d been active, usually lifting weights for exercise. But I needed to be more cardiovascular. It wasn’t like I always turned a blind eye. Over the years, I’d tried many times to lose weight, but I did it on my own, without telling anyone, primarily because I was embarrassed.
When I signed up for the 12-week 5k training program, I decided I needed to tell people about it. I started with my wife and two children. Once I could run for a half-hour non-stop, I realized I enjoyed it. Since I told people about my running, I also had to stick to it. I had this structure to keep me on track and I set a goal: a 5k Terry Fox run in September, 2016. What was different about my attempt to lose weight this time around was committing to races and to the running community. When I looked at the running scene, I was encouraged. I started reading stories about normal people like me who just get out and do these things. That motivated me.
I ran my race and, like many others, I set another goal to work toward: the Tely 10-Mile Road Race. I worked towards this goal for all of 2017. I’ve diligently kept up with my runs for my health and to prove to my kids that it doesn’t matter where you start, it’s about where you finish. Since then, I’ve also run a half-marathon.
Walking one kilometre used to be a workout. Now, I can run more than 21.
I’m still not a good runner, but I’m the best I’ve ever been. I have 75 per cent of the lung capacity I should have. There have been temporary setbacks – when even a 5k was really hard again. Some of these days I have to convince myself to go running and funnily enough, on one of those, I even ran a 10k PB. I learned that no matter how hard it is, you just have to get started.
I learned to run and it’s saving my life. I’m now just under 170 lb., losing half of my body weight in nearly three years. I have normal blood pressure and cholesterol. My blood sugar is normal. I no longer have gout. And most importantly, I’m cancer-free. I joke with my family that my medicine is Asics now, because running is the only thing I take every morning.
In the dead of January, I got on the treadmill and I started to walk. It took me 30 minutes to walk one kilometre and I would finish absolutely spent. It was humbling.