A FIGHTING CHANCE
Swimming is Rutemiller’s medicine in cancer battle
As publisher of Swimming World for more than 31⁄2 decades, Brent Rutemiller recognizes an inspirational story when he sees one.
In an Olympic year, though, he didn’t expect to become one of the sport’s most inspiring stories.
In late May, Rutemiller discovered what he believed to be a kidney stone issue was instead a rare plasma cell leukemia or multiple myeloma. The 65-yearold Arizonan’s life changed faster than a 50-meter freestyle flip turn.
Close to kidney/renal failure, he started almost immediately on chemotherapy during a 16-day hospital stay, and that has given him a fighting chance of progressing to stem cell replacement, required to stop production of cancer cells, in early 2022.
“They’ll harvest my own stem cells then basically pull out all my marrow and replace it with my original stem cells,” Rutemiller says. “Pretty much take me back to factory settings. I just told them leave the hard drive. They say there’s no cure, you can just put it into long term (remission). I’m very optimistic.”
Rutemiller outwardly, and as much as realistic inwardly, is at the Michael Phelps-level of determination and positivity. His only emotional breakdown occurred in the first 24 hours following his diagnosis, after informing his staff at now-merged Swimming World and the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which he has led as president/CEO for four years.
“Then I realized it’s all self pity so why do that?” he says. “I made the decision almost immediately that the only thing I could control was my attitude and my exercise.”
“To show that age
is relative to the state of mind. To show that one can thrive in the
middle of a pandemic. To set
an example to those younger as to what old is not. I
did it for my newborn grandson, so that someday he may be inspired to challenge himself
with high goals. I did it for my wife who just survived a stage two cancer
scare. I did it because I can.”
Brent Rutemiller
Arizonan on his battle with multiple myeloma
Rutemiller has the workout part down pat, going back to his college swimming days at Eastern Kentucky in the 1970s. In March, to celebrate his milestone birthday, he swam 6,500 yards (3.6 miles) non-stop for a multitude of reasons he enumerated in a Swimming World essay:
“To show that age is relative to the state of mind. To show that one can thrive in the middle of a pandemic. To set an example to those younger as to what old is not. I did it for my newborn grandson, so that someday he may be inspired to challenge himself with high goals. I did it for my wife who just survived a stage two cancer scare. I did it because I can.”
Nothing that’s transpired since has caused Rutemiller to say “I can’t.”
He’s only missed three weeks of work in spite of his weekly chemo infusion and antibody injection at Mayo Clinic, and a pill regimen of between 13 to 28, depending on the day.
“They’re pumping me with drugs, and I’m spending the rest of the day flushing them out either through exercise or drinking volumes of water,” says Rutemiller, now back to swimming 20 miles per month and hiking twice a week in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve.
Rutemiller’s frequent hiking companion is Glenn Mills, a 1980 U.S. Olympian who stayed in swimming all of his life and founded Go Swim, an online video training website.
“I’ve been in the sport for 50-some years,” Mills says.
“It doesn’t matter where I go, everybody knows we do these hikes together. So it’s like. ‘Tell Brent I said hi, I’m thinking about him.’ He’s known worldwide.
“Sometimes people are afraid to ask or say the wrong thing so they’ll approach me before they approach Brent. I say he’s doing great, give him a call, drop him a note. It is very bad, but we can’t ignore it so tell the man you love him.”
Some of swimming’s elite and others touched by Rutemiller’s story are doing their part to support him, part of the reason he went public with his disease in the first place. “There’s too much energy out there I needed,” he says.
Two-time U.S. Olympic men’s coach Eddie Reese provided a connection to a pioneer in stem cell research.
Rob Butcher, CEO of Swim Across America, provided a pathway to the Mayo Clinic. Jon Urbanchek, on U.S. Olympic swim staffs from 1992-2012, is “talking coach to me,” trying to convince Rutemiller to keep his workouts in the pink and not red zone.
Be it modern or traditional, medical or mental, Rutemiller is getting healthier. Two of the key markers — kappa/ lambda light chain and of monoclonal protein in the bone marrow — are down from wildly high to within sight of normal.
None of which is a guarantee that Rutemiller will beat the odds and live to see completion in 2025 of a planned $90million reimagining of the International Swimming Hall of Fame that still is awaiting city approval in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell also had multiple myeloma, weakening his immune system which in part led to his death from COVID-19 on Oct. 18.
“That was a hard day for me, the reality of it,” says Rutemiller, who chose not to travel for the ISHOF induction ceremony Oct. 9 rather than put himself at further health risk.
Instead, he and Mills put together a charming video with Rutemiller taking off the suit he would have worn that night in favor of swim attire for a workout complete with a plug for an ISHOF towel available at the gift shop.
Finding humor in life, no matter how dark is might seem, is working to Rutemiller’s advantage, this Thanksgiving especially.
So too is the discipline that swimming demands, from an age group level to lifetime fitness.
A long-time coach and delegation head with Special Olympics Arizona, Rutemiller relates even more now to those athletes.
“They have autism, Down syndrome, fragile X, mentally challenged,” he says. “Every day they struggle with that. If I don’t project a good attitude, my family sees it immediately, and I can’t ruin their day. You learn that from being a coach, working with kids with disabilities and watching other people overcome things.
“I’m just finding the good things in every moment. The sport of swimming has been my medicine.”