CANCER, MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY pt.3
RULE TWO: FITNESS
When I went into the hospital, I was fit. For several years, I peddled between Wallace and Harrison twice a month doing the 100 mile round trip in six hours. When I was not headed to Harrison, I was climbing Dobson Pass or mountain biking up some mountain. My personal battle cry was, “They can not bury you if you’re vertical!” During my three hospital stays, I got up and walked behind a wheelchair putting a paper bucket on the seat for vomit. Part of the reasoning for pushing my body during my treatments was, I figured, if the chemo was to enter my body, I wanted to get it in fast by making my blood move so it could do more with the poison. Then I could get it out of my system sooner so I could feel better. I cannot tell you if that was medically correct, but it seemed logical. At the same time I read Lance Armstrong’s book about his battle with testicular and brain cancers. I figured what one man can do so can another.
After I was finished with the February treatments, Debi pinned my feeding tube to my bike jersey and I began to ride again under the shelter of the freeway bridge. When the weather got better and my distance increased, people on the trail would slow down and stare at me as I pulled the tube out from my jersey and poured water into it by holding my water bottle up in the air.
The disintegration of my jaw caused by radiation resulted its own set of problems. Doctors took the small bone out of my leg to fashion the new jaw. In fact, the only original part of the bottom of my face is my chin. I am held together with fused bone, titanium and screws. After leaving Seattle, I got up one morning to discover a large hole in my face. Debi had to act as my nurse packing my face with iodine string so that it could heal from the inside out. Then I found a Philips screw poking out of my face. That resulted in an additional surgery to cut out a section of titanium to remove the screw. Later on, when I was working with my head tilted up for a long time, I tore my radiated flesh. After four years it still has problems closing up.
The removal of the bone from my leg caused more challenges. Doctors asked me to get out of bed and exercise. So I asked them how much exercise did they want me to do? They did not give me a target but told me if I did not move I would get drop foot. Drop foot is a condition that causes you to lose the use of your foot. Another problem was that the bone they took out has an arch that gives you balance as you move. After meeting with the physical therapist (PT), I started moving around with a contraption that looked like a speaker’s lectern. When I asked the PT how I was going to be dismissed from the hospital, he told me that they would wheel me out to the car. I told him that was totally unacceptable. I walked four times a day, logging 5 hours a day, with my longest workout at night when people were asleep and floors were empty. When I was finished walking, I jumped into wheelchairs and worked on my upper body despite having all these tubes draining blood in my face.
After getting home, I decided if they wanted me to walk one mile a day, I would do six. We bought a shoe that would fit my swollen foot and off I went with my cane. Mornings, I walked by myself. In the afternoons, I walked with my friend Don Hoffman and his dogs. Then I would come home and dance with Ellen. Evenings, I smoked pot to dull the pain and went out again. Prior to my jaw removal, I had filed as a candidate for Shoshone County Commissioner. I had the option of quitting because of the jaw replacement or I could continue the race even though the deck was vastly stacked against me. I decided to walk the county in my off hours from my easy construction jobs. The problem was, not only did I have trouble talking, but every house had stairs. After tumbling down a couple of staircases, I figured that if I walked like a crab, sideways down the steps, I could knock on doors. I lost the election even with my wife delivering my speeches, but the 4,000 sets of stairs saved my leg and gave me assurance.
The summer following the jaw surgery I started to concentrate all my efforts on climbing Dobson Pass on my bicycle and surpassing my previous seasonal climb of 92 summits. The first time up the Pass I found out the scar tissue in my face squeezed off the blood vessels to my brain when I put my hands in the drops of my road bike. (Drops are the bottom part of the handle bars that curl). If I wanted to pull the brake levers, I would pass out from restricting blood flow to the brain. I tumbled to a stop and walked most of the way down the mountain. I did not give up! I simply changed bikes. I started the climbs using my much heavier mountain bike that kept me more upright. I found out I could not drink water while I peddled so I trained myself not to drink until I got to the six mile top. On Sundays I did both sides of the pass. I rode the six to eight percent climb followed by the 12 percent climb, all without water. By November, I submitted Dobson 103 times. With my other climbs that year, I had peddled over 200,000 vertical feet or the equivalent of seven summits up Mt. Everest from sea level on a bicycle.
Ruggle’s Rule: Stay Away From Rectangles and Squares. By this I mean that everything in life that holds you back from being fit is either a rectangle or square. Nature does not have these geometric forms. Your TV, computer, house, desk and even your car are those shapes. So if you want to save your life, you have to shun these objects. If you choose not to exercise you will suffer the three Ds: disease, diabetes and death.
Disclaimer: While I admit to using cannabis in this discussion as I dealt with pain, this is not a reflection on my wife who has not used this substance in over 32 years. My belief is that it ought to be legal particularly for medical use.
RULE THREE: FOOD
The statement, “You are what you eat” is absolutely true and built on the ancient Greek medical advice that you should “let food be your medicine.” Simply put, if you eat trash you are going to be a pile of physical rubbish filled with illness.
Many Americans have developed diabetes, most of which is preventable. We have grown lazy and pile on the pounds, then wonder why we are dying. Some folks think that God is not giving them more than they can bear. This is self-deluding rubbish because God does not give illness. This idea is often used as an excuse for bad eating habits and a lack of willingness to change, to step into the fight. If you want to know what faith says about food, I think the Seventh Day Adventists have it nailed. Those folks are vegetarians and they have very long active lives compared to the rest of the general population.
I think the biggest mistake that people make when fighting cancer is with food. If you got cancer eating the wrong foods—stop. There is a school of thought that says your body is allergic to certain foods. You need to eat the right foods for your blood type otherwise your body spends its resources fighting allergic reactions to food rather than fighting the cancer. Probably the greatest failure I have had with people I mentored is getting them to change the food they eat. I mentored both Joe and RoseMary Peak. The first thing I told them was to stop eating their restaurant’s food. When RoseMary had a healing service at the Catholic church she came up to me and said, “You set the example. I’m just not strong enough.” Two weeks later she died. Joe was a bike buddy. There is a photo of me hugging him in a wheelchair at the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot which was printed in this newspaper twice. I hugged him, telling him it was all right. Two days later, he died. Then my friend Jamie told me, “If I would have listened to you when I was in remission, I would not be in the jam I am today. I should have changed my diet.” He, too, is gone. I consider these among the greatest failures in my life. I was unable to convince them to change their diets.
Just before I was diagnosed with cancer, I was shifting my diet toward vegetarian and after I got the feeding tube I started to blend all kinds of foods. I took very good vitamins as part of my routine. When I asked my oncologist what would he do if he got cancer, he told me he would be ingesting lots of vitamin C. So that’s what I did as part of my battle. I also got into reading food labels. My rule is if you cannot pronounce it, don’t eat it. Furthermore, medical establishments like to give supplements such as Boost or Ensure. The main ingredient in those supplements is sugar. It is true that your body needs sugar to survive but there are far better products at your local health food store that do not have empty calories. In fact, when I went to have my jaw replaced, I brought my own food into the hospital to heal faster.
Because I lost my bottom jaw due to radiation, I am not able to eat solid foods. I live on smoothies which I blend up three times a day. I eat with my shirt off over my kitchen sink because sometimes I bring my food up when it hits my wind pipe. It is just easier to clean up my chest rather than do laundry. Still I make sure to take in a minimum of 2,000 calories and 40 grams of protein every day. If I am bicycling up Dobson four times a week, I try to double that amount. All of that food is vegetarian/vegan and as organic as I can make it with my limited budget. I use nut milk (which is cheaper if you make it yourself), fruits, oils, vegetable soups, nut butters, hemp and pea protein and lots of peanut butter for protein because it’s cheap. This diet has enabled me to work in construction, pounding nails eight hours a day at a high rate of speed even in the winter cold. It has also helped me bike hard up mountain passes.
If you seem to be unwilling to do the homework or confused, start with small steps. Watch the documentary “Forks over Knifes” and build on that movie.