Joe Cowley article

[Queen Prawn]

Life takes on new meaning this Thanksgiving

 

Life takes on new meaning this Thanksgiving

 

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

 

I never got it.

 

I didn't understand the whole fascination with cyclist Lance Armstrong.

 

"Dude rode a bike and rode it better than a bunch of Euros … big deal."

 

How wrong I was.

 

Never has one athlete captured my focus as Armstrong has these days. But not just because of what he does on a bike. Armstrong fought the very battle I am just beginning to fight. More important, he won.

 

After I had some vomiting bouts over the course of six months, my wife, Molle, finally talked me into going to the doctors. Physically, I felt fine. The White Sox season had ended, I was playing basketball almost every day, there were no signs of sickness beside a few nights of nausea since May.

 

I brushed it off as just viruses picked up on airplanes or simply the fact that covering the Sox can do that to a man every so often.

 

I was sent for a series of tests, the first being a CAT scan on my abdomen area.

 

"We found an abnormality in the small intestine," the doctor would tell me a day later. "I'd like to send you to a surgeon."

 

Within a week of thinking I was suffering from some sort of food allergy or something minor that a pill could fix, I was sitting with the surgeon and talking about the chance that I had lymphoma.

 

"Can't be," I kept thinking. "I'm 36 years old, work out five days a week … just can't be."

 

Because of where the obstruction was in my small intestine, the only way it could be reached was surgery. They would open me up, see what it is and remove it. And Sox general manager Ken Williams thought he had a bad start to his offseason.

 

On Nov. 5, I underwent a two-plus-hour surgery in Minneapolis in which almost a foot of my small intestine was removed. As the doctors had guessed, it was lymphoma, which is a cancer that attacks the lymph tissues scattered throughout the body.

 

It is almost impossible to describe the range of emotions that overwhelm you when told you have cancer. In an instant, life changed. I changed.

 

A bad day for me in the past was delayed flights, a hotel room not ready, traffic, getting beat on a story, a rain delay. Laughable now.

 

Now a tough day is praying that you can live long enough so that your 3-year-old son has vivid memories of you or hoping that no matter what happens your wife can still have a happy life.

 

The thing I'm finding out about cancer is it doesn't care how old you are or how old your only child is. It doesn't care that you tried to eat right or that you tried to take care of yourself. It doesn't care if you have a positive outlook or a negative one.

 

It's emotionless. And in my case it has not only been emotionless but stoic. Like a silent assassin it has been infiltrating my body, making sure to leave as little evidence as possible. Besides a few vomiting episodes, I have had no symptoms. None.

 

My mother asked one of my doctors if Molle wouldn't have talked me into seeing a physician, how long would I have had.

 

"Months," was his reply.

 

That's why Thanksgiving has a whole new meaning for me this year. It's not just a day to sit back, watch football and feed my face all day anymore. It's a day to live and a day to be thankful that I have the opportunity to fight the opponent that is trying to kill me.

 

It's not like a stray bullet or an out-of-control car that snatches life in the blink of an eye. I know what's trying to take me out.

 

One problem — cancer picked the wrong person. Not walking away from a fight has always been a weakness of mine. I could never do it. Now it's my strength. I have no problem sitting down at the table across from cancer and saying, "Here we go, bro, me and you."

 

The one thing I am most proud of throughout this is not once have I said, "Why me?"

 

But now I will ask: Why me? Because I can beat this. Reading about the "dude who rode the bike" the last few days has further convinced me of that.

 

Last week, I did get some bad news when slight traces of cancer were found in my bone marrow. There was only a 10 percent chance it would be there, but sure enough there was cancer once again showing that it also doesn't care about statistics.

 

That news automatically moved me to a Stage IV lymphoma — the worst stage.

 

In one phone call my rate of curability went from 85 percent to just under 50 percent.

 

That's basically a flip of the coin.

 

That's fine. I still like my odds.

 

********************************************************************

 

out for a full recovery for Joe.

[bmags]

oi...he will definately be in my thoughts and prayers...