265 likes for a fart

265 likes for a fart

This is a blog post to help explain the series of events that has occurred in the course of the last week.  It’s hard to believe that just 10 days ago my biggest problem was forgetting to bring my readers to a restaurant and having to long arm the menu.  It’s also a way for me to not continuously tell the same story 200 times.  Finally, it’s an easy way for someone who cares or is just curious to know what all happened but can’t bring themselves or find the words to ask the question when we’re face to face.  This is the story of how I went from wondering if I was drinking the wrong protein shake to stage four colon cancer, surgery, and a long road of chemotherapy in front of me. It got away from me so it might turn into three or four blogs for ease of digestion, no pun intended…okay yes it was.

The beginning.

I’ve bounced around on different diets over the years with some working better than others over the last 20 years.  The Atkins worked best for me, but was not practical with young children or an Italian wife.  Plus on business travel it was pretty limiting.  You can always avoid fast food, fried food, etc. But grains and starches are sneaky and who doesn’t enjoy a cupcake once in a while?  Then a friend invited me to read a book called the 4 hour body.  In it he calls for no sugar, but most importantly to get your metabolism moving correctly, within one hour of waking up you need 30 grams of protein.  Well that is great if you are a Billionaire and your chef can have your two chicken breasts and spinach salad ready when you finish your morning dump.  But for guys with kids and wives and jobs, protein shakes are really the only answer.   So for a while I found one I liked and would work out every morning.

As luck would have it my financial advisor gave me a treadmill when he moved and then a buddy found me a free home gym.  I’d do 30 or so minutes of cardio then about 20 minutes of strength training before work.  Combined with the morning shakes, the pounds came off and I was feeling good.  Then two things happened.  I left Dell and went to a small company.  That impacted me in two ways.  First, now instead of 120,000 people not caring where I was as long as my job got done I had 20 people who all of a sudden cared where I was at all times and were watching me like an hourly employee.  I guess it was harder for them to understand that the complexities of the role were not time bound, nor were they location specific, but that didn’t matter.  So my work at night, before work and on weekends went ignored if I wasn’t at my desk by 8:30 AM or if God forbid I left at 4pm to work from home for the rest of the afternoon.  That impacted my ability to continue my workouts in the mornings.  Plus Connor started kindergarten last year and he was a full hour ahead of Josie and my job was to get him to school at 8.  So my choices were wake up at 4:30, work out, S.S.S., dress, get him to school, then go to work.  Or wake up at 7.  Get him to school, come home and work out, and get to work by 10:15.  The latter was not an option.

The second major factor was during this period I had a minor hand injury while playing golf and it morphed into a herniated disk.  Possibly the continuous changing of my swing to guard my hand and still get the big boy yardage, in any case I lost my swing, my confidence, and enjoyment of the game.  My back also hurt so bad I could hardly walk at times much less do any cardio and strength training was limited to lifting kids into car seats and grocery baskets.  So the net result was I stopped the shakes, ate bad food, quit working out, stopped golfing every week and essentially watched sports, drank bourbon all night and read.  This led to gaining about 25 pounds, feeling bad about myself and just general lethargy.

 

Before the beginning. 

 

Backing up a few years/decades I was quite an athlete.  I played year-round sports including soccer, basketball, ran track, gymnastics, volleyball, etc.  In HS I wrestled in to a high level and won state honors, played football and won district honors in baseball. I also played baseball through college, and even into my late 20s still played competitive baseball.  Wrestling probably had the biggest impact on me because it was a team of guys who could take anything our coach dished out.  Many on that team went on to become Special Forces guys and we all had a similar mentality that nothing could defeat us.  Now when I check back in with those guys they are still the ones who thrive, are mentally tough, and can overcome trivial issues.  The point of this resume section is I’m pretty coordinated, have been a decent athlete, and have an athlete’s mind of sacrifice, determination, and grinding through to the win.  I don’t expect things to fall in my lap, I don’t ask “why me,” and I don’t think of things in terms of what is fair and unfair.  Things just are, you adapt, make your plan and execute.  There is no time for second guessing.  You learn from your defeats and are humble in your victories.  It’s just how I was brought up to respect the game(s).

Further, because of this wrestler’s mentality I don’t know if it was by luck or God’s will, but most of my time at Dell was spent with the DoD/Intelligence community teams and I’ve met many SF guys throughout my years. There is a documentary I watched once with a SEAL buddy. It was a Discovery thing you can find on You Tube called BUDS class 234. There are six 45 minute segments of what it is like to overcome the first six weeks of Basic Under Water Demolition School (BUDS) training. In it you watch these 20 somethings being tortured and pushed and most of them ring the bell to stop the pain. He told me then the secret was controlling your mind.

When my buddy found out about my cancer he called me and said, "The true secret is to find one thing, anything, but always find a reason to keep going. Never let go of it, you hang on and keep going."