Fit for Any Battle (eBook)

Montezuma’s revenge saved my life. That is where my journey writing this book began. My family and I had traveled with some friends to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, to relax and enjoy some time in the sun.

One afternoon, our group stopped at a local restaurant to enjoy some fresh Mexican papaya. What we did not know at the time was that these papayas contained a small protozoon called Cyclospora cayetanensis. It is still hard to believe something so small could wreak such havoc. When the discomfort persisted, even after we returned home, I knew I had to call my doctor. Almost immediately, my doctor referred me to a gastroenterologist to determine whether something more than Montezuma’s revenge was going on.

The gastroenterologist at Austin Gastroenterology performed a colonoscopy to identify any contributing factors to my intestinal woes. Initially, everything seemed positive. We even laughed together about the small note my wife had written for him on my backside that read, “Be gentle!” He reassured me that everything looked clean. There were no polyps or other signs of colon cancer. He did find some minor inflammation on the walls of my intestines and had taken a few biopsies to double-check it with the lab, but he did not seem worried about it, so I left believing it was all good news.

About three weeks later, the doctor called me to deliver the news. I was still under the impression that everything was fine, but I knew something was off when he started the conversation with, “Sit down.” I had just returned home from picking up our youngest son from preschool when he told me, “You have pulled the golden lottery ticket. You have lymphoma!”

I have been in the healthcare industry for over fifteen years. Never once did I associate a cancer diagnosis in the lymphatic system with good news. My previous company was the largest transcription vendor providing services to US Oncology in the state of Texas. I had been around oncologists far too long to think any cancer diagnosis was a good thing.

My personal health journey has been focused on weightlifting since I was fourteen years old. In my late teens, I became a bodybuilder, and that passion for strength and conditioning continued all the way into my forties. I have been a bodybuilder, a runner, and a cyclist, having completed my first Olympic-distance triathlon at thirty years old. At the time of the cancer diagnosis, I had been a vegetarian for several years, given up alcohol, and never smoked a cigarette in my life. I was doing all the right things with diet and exercise.

This was why this diagnosis was good news. Little did I know I had been preparing for cancer my whole life. The strength and conditioning regimen I had been using in my forties, coupled with catching the cancer before it tore through my body, allowed me to survive treatment. My mindset was not just surviving but thriving, and I used the FitFAB Workout regimen to do just that.

Hearing the diagnosis was scary and shocking, but the most terrifying part was breaking the news to my wife, Tina. I knew I had to tell her right away, so I hung up the phone and walked to her office.

I knocked on the door, sat down, and explained to her that her husband of nine years had cancer. The look on her face was what one would expect, a combination of fear and pain. Almost immediately, Tina sprang into action, Googling everything she could on mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

Do not Google “mantle cell lymphoma” until after you have read this chapter. Everything you read online will be very morbid, but it is simply old data. Things in oncology change so fast that medical journals should be considered history books rather than relevant articles on the latest in medical science.

The data available on Google do not represent what is possible for MCL patients. Today, most patients do not die from MCL. Research and treatments funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot program have made the disease highly treatable. MCL was, at the time of my diagnosis, commonly brought into remission with a series of chemotherapy, radiation, and medications. But this was all information we learned much later.

The day we found out about my diagnosis, Tina and I Googled ourselves into hysteria. We started circulating the news to our close friends and family. Having been in healthcare technology for close to two decades, I had built many friendships with other healthcare folks. The goal was to figure out how we could get me help right away. We decided to wait until after we knew more about the situation before sharing the news with our two boys, Alec and Sky, who were six and three years old, respectively. Thankfully, we did not have to wait long.

My wife’s mother, Peggy, had a friend, Jerry, who had MCL and was seen by a doctor at MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. I have always known MD Anderson as “the” place to go for US cancer care. Jerry agreed to talk to me, and after our initial phone call, he provided me with the name and email address for his oncologist at MD Anderson.

I then crafted an email that would ultimately have a role in saving my life. It read as follows.

Dear Dr. Wang,

Good afternoon and please forgive the unannounced email. My name is Richard Bagdonas. It was recommended that I contact you by one of your former patients because I was diagnosed yesterday with early-stage mantle cell lymphoma.

Some demographics on me: forty-five-year-old male who does not drink, smoke, or eat meat. I work out six days a week and feel that I am in good health.

It came as a shock during a colonoscopy that they found cells in my intestine that tested positive for mantle cell lymphoma.

Jerry told me that you specialize in this type of cancer, and I would like to know if you would be willing to meet with me. I live in Austin, Texas, and my in-laws live in Houston, so I can camp out there for a bit if needed. I have an appointment on Monday with Texas Oncology in Austin.

Kindly let me know if you would be willing to meet. My cell phone is ###-###-#### in case you want to call me. Thank you, sir.

I received a response from Dr. Wang the very next morning, and he indicated he would indeed like to see me. Unbeknownst to me, and at the same time that I was writing that email, Tina was on the phone with her business partner. They were trying to figure out how to get me into MD Anderson. By way of her business partner’s contacts, I was put in touch with someone in the administration of MD Anderson who asked me to call the next day to get an appointment to see Dr. Wang.

A call into the MD Anderson administration office on the morning of Thursday, September 27, 2018, led me to an 8:00 a.m. appointment in Houston just four days later. Getting into MD Anderson in a timely manner is unheard of, and I am thankful and lucky to be surrounded by a network of wonderful folks in healthcare.

My first instinct was to let the people I work with know I was going to be out of the office the following Monday and explain why. The rush of support and understanding was wonderful to see. My work family had my back as I went into what felt like the black box of cancer care.

Entering the Black Box of Cancer Care

Dr. Wang had a calming effect. As soon as he entered the exam room, he took my arm, smiled, and said, “You don’t look sick, so why are you here?” This bit of levity was just what I needed to feel safe. He knew what I was thinking, and this was his way of assuring me that everything would be okay.

I asked him if it would be okay to record our exam session on my phone because I wanted Tina to hear the same words that I did and not relay secondhand information to her. He agreed, and I began recording our conversation.

We discussed the initial results of my colonoscopy, and Dr. Wang agreed to be my doctor. He admitted me as his patient and immediately scheduled a variety of tests. For the next twenty-four hours, I submitted to every test imaginable. While it was not a fun experience, I was grateful that the universe put me in the right place and with the right person.

My friend Nick Adkins had started handing out pink socks with black mustaches on them many years ago at healthcare conferences nationwide. His grassroots Twitter movement called #pinksocks celebrates the good that people are doing in the world. I had been given my first pair in 2015 and had gifted many pairs of them myself. I personalize #pinksocks to showcase the providers who treat patients foremost as someone’s son, daughter, mom, or dad. I decided at that very first appointment with Dr. Wang that he would be the recipient of the next pair of pink socks, so I reached into my backpack and presented a pair to him with tears in my eyes. This man wanted to save my life, and the socks were my way of recognizing him for what he was doing for my family.

Dr. Wang treated me as a brother rather than a patient. His eyes showed the determination and grit he had in taking on a cancer that had killed or severely weakened everyone it had come across. When Dr. Wang said we would get through this and I would be back to my normal life, I had to believe him, as I had nothing else to clutch to besides the possibility of not making it. I sat in the treatment room at MD Anderson telling myself, I will follow this man wherever he needs to take me. He loved me and wanted the best for me, and that type of bedside manner helped me get through the emotional ordeal.

The twenty-four hours of tests started with a simple blood draw at MD Anderson’s massive “needle farm,” where countless...