An inspirational guy

I know that for most of us Lance Armstrong is the cycling dude who beat metastatic cancer and has retooled his life in very inspirational ways. He has not been a central figure in my life, but the guy is impressive, a super athlete, and a successful human being on many levels.

But I recently started to look at his story more closely given my personal cancer situation and I have to say, besides seeing a parallel or two between us and our health, the guy is really an amazing survivor. His testicular cancer spread to his lungs, his brain, and his lymph nodes. In selfish ways, I read about his metastases and compared notes. We both had it in the same places (minus the nodes for me) and so his story became much more interesting for me.

So after his treatment and his personal battle, he was declared NED (No Evidence of Disease) and has been so for over a decade. While our cancers differ, its nice and selfish of me to side with this survivor who had multiple metastatic sites and who beat them all. I just bought his book through Ebay and will devour it quickly and try to sum up how he handled his spirit and his mind throughout his ordeal.

Oh, plus, we are the same age and obviously in the same physical shape. More things to crow about and bond over. I do love long distance biking however. And like after last year’s round with cancer, gettig on my road bike and getting into mental and physical shape was was got me through the entire summer of recovery. I got up to 20 miles  a  ride through the Seacoast of NH and loved every minute of it. It is my favorite thing to do and one of the things I am focused on once I get stronger this spring.