For some reason, I’m drawn to keep reflecting back on my five years of involvement in the sport of wrestling. For a period that represents barely more than ten percent of my life and that ended twenty-eight years ago, I find it amazing that it still plays such a prominent role in my mind. In my blogs, I’ve chronicled the positive lessons that have stayed with me over the years and how I have no doubt that they helped prepare me for what the last year has brought. What I haven’t written about is that nearly all of the positives came from my junior year season and that my senior year, by my standards, was a complete failure. And now, nearly three decades later, we get to find out if I’ve learned from my lapses or if history is destined to repeat itself.
Looking back, I can admit that I was a different person in each of those two years. The junior year version was about doing everything the right way. I was the most disciplined I had ever been in my life. Workouts were never skipped. My diet, to manage my weight class, was followed precisely. I made weight for and wrestled every match. The fruits of that hard work involved making it all the way to the New England semi-finals (and having the eventual champion on his back in that match) before a chest cold wiped me out.
My senior year was the opposite. It was about cutting corners and mailing it in. I was complacent. I felt entitled. Among other things, I would use a nagging shoulder injury as an excuse to miss a match and not have to put in the work to make weight. Regarding making weight, I moved up a weight class between seasons, from 130 to 135, even though I had not grown any (still haven’t). I told myself I had put on muscle weight. Truthfully, I was being lazy.
My skill did get me to the 1995 state finals undefeated. Our high school hosted the state tournament that year and I had never lost a match in that gymnasium. But something was missing. I had not got there with the same heart as the year prior. I suffered my only loss in my home gym in the state finals in the last match I would ever wrestle there. On top of that, the next weekend I performed poorly and did not even qualify for the New England tournament. I did attend as a spectator. And watched a kid that I had beaten twice the prior year, still at 130 pounds, win the title in that weight class. My heart was broken as I wondered what could have been. But deep down I know that I only had myself to blame.
My approach since the cancer diagnosis has been a remarkable parallel to the junior year of high school. We’ve experienced success that did not seem to be expected. In both cases, success was not just luck. There were many little things that, when put together, produced extraordinary results. Back then it was disciplined eating, structured workouts, thirst for knowledge, hard work in practice and an iron mindset. Now it is being mindful of what goes into my body, combining traditional treatments with alternative therapies and not allowing a disease to take control of my life.
The current outlook on my condition is good. We had another negative Signatera Test in December. That means they’re not detecting any circulating tumor DNA in my blood. We had a CT scan last month that doesn’t seem to show anything surprising. To be safe and knock out any lingering disease, the oncologist has me back on medication. I receive immunotherapy infusions every other week and am taking an oral chemotherapy drug twice a day at an interval of fourteen days on and seven days off. We will repeat Signatera tests and do a PET scan in March. The goal is for those to come back negative so we can discuss discontinuing medicine.
Saturday February 10th represents the one-year anniversary of receiving the diagnosis. The one where the doctor told us that he couldn’t promise I’d be here in a year. Just like my 11th grade wrestling season, I have done everything that I was supposed to do and more resulting in reaching a place that few doctors thought I would be: Still here.
While that is awesome, it does scare me.
I’m scared of being complacent. I’m scared that I will prematurely declare victory in my mind only to have it snatched away. I’m scared of letting down all of the people that have had our backs over the past year. I’m scared of burdening my family with another loss that they don’t need. I’m scared of doing all of the wrong things that I did in my senior year of high school and ultimately failing myself.
At the same time, I am aware.
I am aware that I could have and should have done more in the past to get what I wanted. I am aware that the stakes now are a million times higher than they ever have been. I am aware that what occurred in high school had to happen exactly the way that it did so that it could motivate me to do what I have to do now.
I have spent my life looking at failure as something to be feared. But the thing is every failure, every mistake, every bit of adversity, was a lesson. I feel like I did a decent job of learning from my disappointments. I’ve claimed in the past that I’m not that smart, I just learn from my mistakes, and I’ve made a lot of them. There is a great quote from Thomas Edison. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Seems like the attitude to strive for.
So here we are heading into Year 2 of life after the diagnosis. The only way Year 1 could have gone better was if the disease had magically disappeared from my body and not required bladder removal surgery. On second thought, I don’t know if I really believe that. There are actually some great benefits to having your water drain into an external bag – like the really big bag you can utilize at night meaning you don’t need to get up to use the restroom. But I digress… Year 1 did go well. And as we take our first steps into year two the goals are simple. Remember what got us through the first phase, continue with the small changes that we have made to our lifestyle and continue moving forward with life while being aware that there is no room for cutting corners and being complacent. Oh, and to be grateful for every day, every opportunity, and every lesson… because it can all be gone in an instant.
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