Enter the Purple Menace

My Sister Marisa, Me and My Dad Gary, the night before Ironman Florida 2010

It was obvious something was bothering my old man, as I commonly refer to him, when I hugged him. I hadn't seen him in quite a few months and he and my sister Marisa had flown out to see me compete in my first Ironman. When I went to hug him he kept a little space in between us and didn't give me that big squeeze I had become accustom too. He had been to the doctor and the doc had informed him that he had pulled a small part of the muscle on his chest away from the bone. It had left a small bump on his chest he said and it hurt to the touch. I left it at that. I mean, he had been to the doctor and even got it checked out.

For my old man going to the doctor is un-heard of. "He actually went to the doctor", I thought to myself, "Man that must hurt like hell if the he went to the doc". 

Dad to me, is as tough as they get. They don't make men like him anymore. 

When I was about 13, he and Marisa went to the store. When he got out of the van, he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut. The van door locked into place with his middle finger on his right hand squarely in the door jam. On the drive home his finger was swelling considerably and his finger nail was full of blood. The pressure under the finger nail was building. When he entered the house, I heard a very calm, "Cale, I need you to come down here for a second." When I got to the kitchen he had a blow torch, a box of matches, a needle and a pair of locking pliers. He was also un-intentionally giving me the bird with his black finger nail. I didn't have the story of what had happened and I was a little confused. He lit the blow torch with the matches and explained that he had slammed his finger in the car door. He said his finger was really hurting him and he needed my help. He then locked the needle into the pliers and started heating it over the blow torches flame. He then handed me the plier needle combo and asked me to please stick it through his black finger nail. His hand was shaking a little. Mine was shaking a lot. I froze, I couldn't do it. It hurt just thinking about it. Next thing I knew he took the pliers himself and shoved the needle through. A big sigh of relief came with the blood and pressure running out the top of his finger. No tears. Never went to the doctor.

Most of the time he doesn't say much. He isn't a talker. Unlike my mother, my sister and I, he very rarely speaks unless he has something to say that is important to him. That might be because one of us is usually talking, but none the less he is one of the few people on the planet that do more listening to others than they do listening to themselves.

With all that said, he rarely complains, has a tolerance for pain and thus rarely has no need in his eyes to go to the doctor. In fact looking back, while I am sure that he went at some point, I can't recall him going to the doctor at all the entire time I was growing up.

On a Sunday in September, I got a call from my Mom. She had to take Dad to the emergency room the night before. He was having splitting headaches that left him laid out on the floor. By the end of the week he knew from what the doctors had told him that he had cancer. He had two large masses in his torso and one was in between his heart and his lungs and was growing quickly. I flew in the following Monday and drove them both to the first appointment with the Oncologist. They informed him that he had Aggressive B-cell Lymphoma. The "pulled chest muscle" turned out to be one of the masses that had worked it's way to the surface. The mass was growing so fast that in the weekend that I was there he went from talking normally to sounding horse because the tumor was pushing on his vocal cords.

He started chemo therapy the following week. 

My parents don't cuss. My Dad doesn't drink or gamble. He is very old school on that type of stuff. I don't cuss around my parents, but when I left in, order to get my point across, I told them and my sister to get ready for a fight and kick that Cancers ASS! 

The pressure from the tumors subsided along with the pain and by his second cycle of chemo, about 60 days after his diagnosis his voice returned to normal. He was sick and couldn't eat very much. He lost weight and his hair, but not his sense of humor or his laugh. He has one more chemo cycle before he gets evaluated to start radiation treatments. So far so good, he is doing as I said and kicking Cancers Ass!

It has been a long road for him, my Mom and my sister as they all live out in Oklahoma. My sister just a few minutes away from them. I live way out here in Florida. Short of making some phone calls and being married to an awesome Oncology nurse (who was a ton of help to my parents), I was really helpless to do very much. 

ENTER THE PURPLE MENACE!

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has a program called Team in Training. In short, Team in Training runs all sorts of athletic endurance events as fundraisers for the Society. They gather volunteers willing to raise money and use the events to draw awareness. A good portion of the time the volunteer that will be competing in the event has never done the event before and is usually pretty new to the sport.

As most of you know I run triathlons. I have done quite a few now as I am in my fifth year of competing. A few years back I was racing with a friend of mine when we saw several members of the Team in Training team getting ready prior to a race. They were all wearing the purple and green Team in Training gear and were stretching and talking with each other. My friend commented jokingly, "Ahhh, The Purple Menace is in force today." At the time the comment struck me as funny. I didn't really see what was in front of me. All I saw was a bunch of people who were obviously new to the sport with really ugly jerseys on and as my friend so eloquently pointed out would probably be in my way. What I didn't realize at the time was that most if not all of those people were directly impacted by Cancer, either themselves or a loved one had suffered from this horrible disease and they were there to make a difference by putting their bodies to the ultimate test, a triathlon. Why? To help raise money for an organization that had helped them or their family when they needed it most. 

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society was the only organization that helped my parents with the medical bills it takes to fight the disease. Not to mention they did it happily and without a lot of resistance. 

On April 29th, I will proudly put on my Purple Menace outfit and jump in amongest them. I will be competing in the St. Anthony's Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Florida. It's an Olympic distance race consisting of a 1500 meter swim, 40 kilometer bike and a 10 kilometer run. That's about a mile swim, 26 plus mile bike and a little over 6 miles on the run for all my english measurement friends. I am trying to raise $2900 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by that time. Every little bit helps! Any and all donations are welcome! Make a donation and I promise you that I will be giving this one everything I have. I will not quit. I will finish strong. After all I will be in purple and racing for my Dad!

You can make a donation here: My Leukemia & Lymphoma Donation page 

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cale