I am proud to be participating again this year in the Pedal the Cause event to fight against cancer. Pedal is the region's top cycling event, fueled by the passion of many to end this dreaded disease. I hope you'll help me and the other riders use our cancer-curing bikes in this fight.
My own cancer story begins around 2012 or so when my wife started noticing that I was losing muscle mass. I didn't do anything about it until about 2016 when even I had to admit there were changes going on. I eventually had lost about 40 pounds and started to experience a large number of other seemingly unrelated symptoms such as sores that would not heal, strange rashes all over my body, food that burned my mouth even though it wasn't hot, nails that bent the wrong way, and loss of feeling in my fingers and toes.
I started seeing many kinds of doctors to try to figure out what was going on - allergists, immunologists, gastroenterologists, hemotologists, functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, etc. No one could diagnose me. During a visit to my dermatologist in 2017, he made a comment that my rash was not like the psoriasis he usually sees. He wanted to run some tests on me and possibly send me to a special panel of doctors. It never came to that, though, because one particular test he ran - a long shot he remembered from his boards over 30 years before - turned out to be the answer.
It showed my level of glucagon (the counterpart to insulin) was extremely high. Normal is around 100, and mine was 3000. Scans verified his conclusion: I had a tumor on my pancreas that was cranking out glucagon to beat the band. That made my system think my blood sugar level needed to increase, and that excess sugar was destroying cells all over my body.
The hematologist I had consulted is also an oncologist and happened to know exactly the right surgeon at Siteman Cancer Center (Dr. William Hawkins - one of the doctors that Pedal the Cause supports). He is one of few in the country who have experience with glucagonoma - the disease I now knew I had - which apparently affects only one in every twenty million people. No wonder no one knew what it was. I guess I'm just lucky. I like to say that if I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all..
Honestly, though, I do feel pretty lucky. After the diagnosis, everything lined up pretty quickly. They removed sixty percent of my pancreas along with several lymph nodes (some of which had been attacked by the cancer). I'm also lucky to have the support of a wonderful wife (who also has ridden with me) and family, as well as faith in God whom I trusted regardless of the outcome.
Now I get regular glucagon checks and scans. It's a good thing, too, since they recently showed that the cancer has metastasized. Hopefully, they caught it soon enough that recently-developed treatments I'm getting at Siteman will do some good. It looks like I'll benefit again from the work we support with Pedal !
So, I have a history with this disease. Besides my own story, though, cancer also runs in my family. I have relatives who have battled Paget's Disease, skin cancer, and colon cancer. Needless to say, I'm passionate about getting a cure for this disease.
You know, it takes world-class research to create a world without cancer. That is exactly what they are doing at Siteman Cancer Center and St. Louis Children's Hospital. They are on the cutting edge of cancer research, and your donation really does do a lot. We get reports of the ground-breaking work they are doing all the time.
Please help me in this journey by donating to my ride, and give with confidence knowing that 100% of your donation will go directly to accelerating cancer research. Even a small amount is much appreciated. Thank you!
