I say "Men" because women usually have more sense about their bodies than we do.  I had some spotting that I just figured was a hemorrhoid - not so! 

By the time I had gone through two small "desert-town" doctors who couldn't find their own rear ends with both hands, I went to Tucson Medical Center to have a third opinion.  Well, low and behold, a Dukes stage 3-B tumor, the size of a golf-ball, was discovered in my rectum.  According to the "big town" doctor "...anyone with half a brain should have seen this thing..."

While en route from Yuma to Tucson the morning of my colonoscopy, I told her in the car that I was sure that what I had was cancer.  In my mind I had accepted it.  She disagreed but later, after my test showed the tumor, it really brought the reality home.  Since the "staging" of the tumor had to be determined before they could proceed, biopsies were taken and we waited... When the news came - it wasn't good.  The tumor had progressed to a point where the lymph system was compromised and the staging was teetering between stage 3 and stage 4.  Basically, it was a toss-up.  Enough so that my odds were less than 25% to survive the next five years.  The news hit us all hard.  My friend Mark had driven back to Yuma to pick up our oldest son and return him to Tucson and I'll never forget the hole he punched in his wall when he got the news.  Together, with my family, we decided to fight it as aggressively as technology and medicine would allow at the time.

What followed was a year or chemo and radiation therapy.  Those were not good times and I'll tell you, depression caught me in it's grip.  Although I wasn't taking anti-depressants, I was remiss in not doing so.  Honestly, I can't tell you how despondent I was - how alone I felt and thoughts of suicide crossed my mind.  The pain, at times, was incredible and the sickness from the chemo almost non-stop.  Eventually, however, things began to get a little better - the chemo and radiation was staged to alternate so I didn't have it all at once.  By the end, I felt much better and was already thinking about riding my motorcycles again - As I said earlier - they are a kind of mental well-being compass for me and knowing that - I knew I was getting better.

God bless my wife - she also knew how important they were for me and she decided to get me a present for my birthday that would take my mind off of the treatments.  Since the surgery had wrecked havoc on me physically and the resulting neuropathy from chemo related nerve damage made it uncomfortable to ride the BMW any longer, she bought me a new 1993 Honda Gold Wing Interstate.  That, along with my family's love, my faith in God and support of a lot of people was what I attribute to beating the odds.  What I needed was a ride.  A long, hard ride that would allow me to cleanse all of the bad juju out of my system.  It was something I would have to do alone.

Read about the CANCER RIDE here!