Wow - I thought this page had been shut down, but since it is still up I will keep writing. I guess the best thing for now is to update everyone on my latest adventure. Right about the time that I finished the Shamrock Half-marathon I had become part of a group of wounded veterans intent on climbing Denali and I was going to go along to do some pre-training with them, provide support for base camp and get ready for an attempt next year. Shortly after that a member or two dropped out and all of a sudden I was listed on the summit team. It kind of surprised me but I figured - Hey, I have four months to train for climbing the highest mountain in North America with only half normal lung capacity, not even having gained back all the weight I lost from the transplant and it will be freezing. SURE - Why Not?? That sounds like a great idea.

So anyway, there I was at about 11,600 feet on Denali about a month ago and as I came out of the tent in the morning I really couldn't breathe too well when I tried to tie my shoes. Then I went potty and that sucked the air out of me and it took me 5 minutes to recover. It was about this point that I decided it was good time to turn around and head back down the glacier. The several times that I flat out collapsed on the way up the hill from pure exhaustion weren't really enough to discourage me. Having to giving up weight from my sled and my pack every day just so I could keep up on flat ground wasn't a detractor. I just didn't like getting out of breath to wipe.

In all seriousness, I never expected to get close to the summit. The whole point was to just get out there and have the courage to try. To just go out on that glacier and put one foot in front of the other and see what happens. It really is about the journey, not the destination.

I really surprised the hell out of all the guides and the high-altitude docs as well. Not too many people thought I would get out of the base camp at 7,000 feet. But another 4.5k vertical feet and over 12 miles of glacier travel later - there I was. Standing with my feet firmly planted on the mountain looking down at the top of the clouds. Absolutely gorgeous!! Unlike Sarah Palin's view from her home (I actually got to drive by it) I COULD see Russia. I could see for probably 75-100 miles in almost every direction. And the AlpenGlow was amazing. It is the early morning glow on the mountains as the sun rises from it's 1 hour below the horizon and every thing gets colored by a rose shaded hue that looks as though the entire sun were wrapped in stained glass. Beautiful! I'm not much of a believer in the theory of creation/intelligent design, but the views I saw up on that mountain definitely make the strongest argument I have ever encountered. I can't wait to go back. The climb was worth all the pain. Hopefully it will show others that ANYTHING can be done. Only 11 months before I made the climb I was 60 lbs lighter, unable to walk without a walker and going everywhere on oxygen. I even needed oxygen to sit on the couch.- and I about to get brand new lungs. Now I own the record for the first and only double lung transplantee to climb Denali and I also got higher up the mountain than any other lung transplantee.

Anything can be done!! The picture of me below is me rocking the TNT shirt at about 9,500 feet up. GO TEAM!!

OK - it's time for a love story. I promised at the beginning of this project that I would tell everyone the story of how I met the girl of my dreams (literally), and I have yet to do so. So here it goes,

Once upon a time in a land far, far away .... (no, not where Shrek lives!!), there was a tadpole going through the mostest funnest (sic) training in the world and all the little tadpole wanted to do was become a frogman. He dreamt day and night about being a frogman and he kept chasing down that dream every day being cold and wet with sand in his pants, until one night the beautiful princess came to visit him in a dream. And in this dream the princess was standing next to a table and the little tadpole swam up to her and plopped right down on the stool next to her. She was a beautiful princess with long black hair, brown eyes, and a sultry little cajun accent. And in his dream the nice princess had a wonderful conversation with the little tadpole and everything looked great for the tadpole until.... he woke up.

The little tadpole had to pee! So he went to the bathroom and then got a snack out of the kitchen and finally returned to bed and drifted off into sleep wondering if he would ever see la hermosa princessa again. And guess what??? He did see her - he fell asleep and went right back into the same dream walking, uh... I mean, swimming right back to the princess and having a wonderful conversation with her. He got lost in her eyes and drowned in her words. Eventually, he woke up having still remembered the dream - he couldn't remember exactly what it was they were talking about but he knew it was good, he knew it meant something. That morning he told the two big hairless apes (Lively and Pace for you Class 234 fans) that he was living with about his dream and how if he ever met this princess in real life that he would have to marry her.

Well, a few months later, the little tadpole had finally finished all of his froggy training and grew up to be a big hairy-chested frogman and he wore his Trident proudly upon his chest. And he took a trip with some of his new froggy friends to the real magical land of far, far away, also called New Orleans. And he was in New Orleans with his buddies when they all decided to go to an even more magical place where they serve a secret potion that makes princesses think ugly little frogs look like princes. And when they went there all of his friends wanted have some of that magic potion as it has also been known to turn many a maiden into a princess as well. So the little froggy decided to be the designated pumpkin carriage driver so he didn't have any potion. It's a good thing too because sometimes the potion can make you talk funny and fall on the floor. Luckily our little froggy was thinking most clearly when another maiden of the land said that she wanted to introduce the froggy to the nicest, prettiest girl in the castle. Only a few minutes earlier this maiden was in the nose-powdering room where she was in need of mysterious cotton cigar that goes in the land of down under to vanquish the evil red monster. Well, none of the other maidens wanted to give up their mystical cotton thingees that frogs know nothing about, but the princess was there and she gave this fair maiden one of her cotton red-monster killers. And what a nice thing that was for her to do. So the maiden repaid the princess with some of the fine potion being served at the castle inn and they chatted for a few minutes before parting ways.

Shortly after she chatted with the princess, the maiden came to sir new-frog and told him about this wonderful priincess and said she was going to introduce them. When our little froggy spotted the princess he wasted no time in rushing right over to meet her. Immediately the princess was taken with froggy's debonaire charm and good looks (remember, this was almost 10 years ago) and as she drank more potion the frog slowly started to be revealed for his true self as a prince. In a fleeting moment the frog prince turned around to see that his friends were none-too-happy with some knights from the kingdom of assholia. So the prince sauntered over to pass the potiion around and settle the differences, then he turned around and proceeded back to the princess when - BAM!!! KAPOW!!! ZOINK!!! Batman hit him in the head and he remembered his dream about the princess that he had months ago. Everything was the same. Those same beautiful eyes and long dark hair, that curvy set of...... ahem! Anyway, our frog prince gathered himself coolly and calmly and walked back over to finalize the magic spell he had began casting on the princess. Just as he almost sealedd the deal and had the digits, guess what happened???

Froggy's idiot friends almot ruined his night by causing a ruckus with the assholian knights and froggy being the DPCD (deisgnated pumpkiin carriage driver for those of you who forgot) he had to go and settle the mayhem. But not before he asked the beautiful princess for her phone number, quickly memorized it (without writing it down) and then went to lying thy holy smackdown on the evil knights. He accidentally knocked over 1 of the king's constabulary as he and 15 other constabularymen proceeded to intervene in the melee. (Some jester called the king's emergency service and said that there were 5 Navy SEALs in a fight - so they sent 16 constabulary in 8 carriages bearing lighting and fire on top - now that's respect!!) To bring this fairy tale to a close, Prince Froggy piled his friends into the pumpkin and sped off to safety. He messaged the princess and requested the pleasure of seeing her again - and so he did - and it was great - and (in the spirit of Monty Python) there was much rejoicing. And so, after a week of meeting and courting, Prince Froggy returned to the realm of the amphibious warrior (also called San Diego) and he and the princess lived happily ever after, long distance, through two deployments, hurricane katrina, leukemia, a bone marrow transplant and a double lung transplant with a whole bunch of other crap a la carte - but it was happy & forever shall it be happy now - no matter what life brings. Of the magic that brought the Princess and the Frog together, a bond was made that no thing, no sickness, nor scourge can bring to demise. This shall be happily ever after......

THE END

What Victory Looks Like

I just wanted to make a quick addition to the blog and I think it will be my shortest post by far. First I want to say thank you again to everyone and especially to those of you who have written me encouraging me to continue posting and keeping a blog for everyone. I plan on doing that, but the support and the kindness is incredible. Thank you so much.

Also, I just have to say how good it feels to have finished that half marathon and be walking around work where hardly anyone knows. It's a nice quiet pride I get to carry around. You know why, because I am not limping and no one can tell that I did a marathon. My boss knows, but he's cool about keeping it quiet, he just said, "Hey, how's it going American Badass?" That rocked!!

Just wanted to share those two things and these two things: The first photo is of Suzanne and I crossing the finish line together holding hands. Notice there is no one else around - it was perfect. We may not have finished first but it sure was a Victory!! The second picture is of me taking a dunk in the ocean that was about 50-55 degrees so it would cool my legs and soothe those sore muscles. Water at that temp works just as good as an ice bath. Excuse the shortie-shorts and the appearance of a gut. Those were special magical “thunderwear” and the medicine makes me retain water, plus the camera adds like 85 pounds or something like that.

The journey of a 1,000 miles begins with 1 step or sometimes 13.1 miles. WE DID IT!!! Suzanne and I walked the whole half marathon together amd we kept almost a 15:00 pace the whole way. I believe our total time was about 3 hours 21 minutes. That's if you don't count the 5 or so minutes for when I had to stop at the port-o-john and there was no TP. Boy was that a planning mistake - not bringing wipes, BUTT we crossed the finish line together holding hands and having mustered up enough energy to even jog the last hundred yards or so. And... we made it the whole with smiles on our faces. It was quite an amazing experience. The people we saw along the way and the stories we heard were inpsiring. We saw all types of people of all ages, heights, shapes, and sizes. Some people were obviously in agony, others were going so fast I thought they sat on a motor. Really gave me strength to watch this man who had to have been 80 years old running alongside of us for about 5 miles. Hell if he could do then we all could do it. And I was surprised how many people told me I inspired them.

It turns out that Suzanne and I were the top fund-raisers for all Team in Training participants for the Marathon. I also think we got top billing of any individual raising money for any cause. So I must say thank you to everyone for supporting the LLS and donating on my behalf on this webpage. You are all awesome and everyone of you came together to do something amazing for so many other people out there. In light of the getting the top-fundraiser status I was asked to say a few words at the Inspiration dinner for all TNT participants the night before the race. I spoke to everyone about some of my story and experiences that I shared on this website and thanked everyone for their efforts and contributions to put funds towarcd research. It was short and sweet but it seemed to go pretty well. It went way better than I thought because before, during, after the race, a lot of people told me how muh inspired them to make it through the race when things were getting rough. And a lot of people who ran by me read the 3 survivor tages on shirt. I had one each for leukemia, bone marrow transplant, and double lung transplant. The people who read the shirt said it was awesome and I thought that was so cool. Just for once I do have to brag a little and say that I am proud of myself that I have survived these conditiions and not let them rob me of my dignity and drive to succeed and help other people. I am proud I maintained my spirit and kept fighting to stay as strong as possible. Seeing for the first time the mass effect that my story can really have on so many people through the response on this web-page and the reactions I got on race day has been wonderful. It has been great for my soul and strengthened my faith that even though I think the world has too many assholes, that we good people can overcome the disadvantage of numbers to make this life better for those on earth today and make the lives of those to come all the more free of harm and hurt.

In that vein, I have desided to keep going with fundraisers to help others with similar diseases. I want to keep running races and hopefully get into triathlons, cycling, swimming, mountain climbing, trekking, whatever I can do. And Suzanne would like to join me in these endeavors. Hopefully someday we may become some type of wonder fundraising team. To do that, we are going to raise the goal of this fundraiser to $50,000. It was originally $5,000, and with the overwhelming response helping us meet our goal in less than a day, we raised it to $25,000, which I believe that we met in 13 days. In the following 6 weeks or so until the race, the pot grew to over $35,650. Here is the reason I want to raise the goal to $50,000 - if we attain it within the next month I believe. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Soceity will give us the opportunity to name a research project anything we want to. We can name it the pickles and peanut butter researh project if we want to. We can name it anything. Maybe even whatever the best suggestion we get on the blog. In any event, this would be the first time that anyone from Virginia would get to name a reserah project and that would be a big deal. IT might be a big enough deal to spark on a lot more people to go nuts trying to raise money to battle blood cancers and that would be truly outstanding.

So while finishing the race was a big deal, it was only the first step in what I hope becomes a long and fruitful journey. I hope this journey becomes one during which I and my wife can grow together as people, help others grow themselves, and help others survive these awful diseases to continue growing. Maybe someday this journey can help lead to the complete and total prevention of blood cancers in all forms. Ambitious and maybe beyond my life-span but irrelevant. Galileo had drawn schematics for flying machines about 400 years before the Wright brothers flew. If it takes 400 years to end cancer then we had better get started now.

Well, the big day approaches in less than a week now. Training for the past two weeks has not been the best for me. It has been quite haphazard and I missed the last two big weekend walks. My puppies have been a bit much at times and we have been getting up way too early and staying up too late so things have been thrown off. No big deal, we’ll just walk and walk and keep on walkin’ until all 13.1 miles are done. Suzanne is in pretty good walking shape and like I said in my last post, I can push through the pain if it arises. And I know that at the end of the 13.1 miles the pain will subside, or at least it won’t be as bad. Like I talked about in my last post, the pain will end. And I still believe it will, although that is unfortunately sometimes in death. But, in an interesting twist that this journey has carried me along, I had to be politely reminded of that fact that not all of us get to make choices about that pain.

When I was writing I think I lost sight of a few things and didn’t really address all the issues I should have. I got an e-mail from someone who was slightly hurt and offended by my last post. It was a woman whose daughter suffers from a chronic condition that leaves her in pain constantly. And from what I gather it’s nothing simple like a bruise or a pulled muscle, or even a little neuropathy. Apparently her daughter has been in pain as long as she can remember, she always will be her whole life, and it’s the kind that makes her throw up random meals on a regular basis and need pain medicines just to function well enough to attend school. She doesn’t have a choice to deal with pain. What this young gal has to do every day is what I choose to do some days. I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have that choice. I have gone through times where I was in pain for several months and there was even a stretch for about 2 ½ to 3 years where I was in pain every day. While I was coming back from my bone marrow transplant to get in shape to be a SEAL Platoon Commander I hurt every day. Aside from the problems from chemo, radiation and graft versus host disease, I also have 3 broken vertebrae in my upper back and two ruptured discs in my lower back. They caused pain throughout my body, not to mention the burning skin sensation every time I started to sweat for about 9 months, or the lesions on my tongue and inside my cheeks that never heal. Yes those days sucked. Most days I put the pain aside and did what I had to do, to get myself where I wanted to be. But, I did have a handful of days, especially at night, where I just laid next to my wife, when I couldn’t sleep because I was in so much discomfort… and cried. Yep, big tough Navy SEAL cried to his wife and complained that life wasn’t fair. And Suzanne said that I just had to keep going because quitting wasn’t an option for me. I told her many times that it wasn’t and she reminded me of that during the darkest days. She helped me to stop my whining and suck it up. But she also asked sometimes if I did, in fact, want to quit. She asked if I wanted to stop taking all the pills and stop busting my own ass every day. She said it was my choice. And she was right. She is still right. It was my choice. That is something I left out when I talked about pain.

Sometimes we don’t have a choice when we feel pain or not. There are medicines we can take to deal with pain, but often times they only mitigate the pain, not control it. We don’t choose how intense it is or what it affects. We don’t choose if it hits us while we are driving, sitting in class, trying to be intimate, or exercising. Any way it appears, it’s never the right time or the right place, but what we can choose is how we deal it with. Pain and sickness can take away a lot of things but they can’t take away one’s ability to choose to deal with pain in a dignified manner. This is the point I think I was building to, but failed to make. Maybe I got a little wrapped up in telling everyone how tough I think I am and trying to inspire through being tough. But, in doing so I think I may have oversimplified ideas about enduring and not giving in to pain. I write this blog purporting to teach people a little about what it’s like to deal with chronic disease and how to overcome. But, what good does that do if I inadvertently knock someone’s spirit down a bit in doing so. I am not perfect (don’t let my wife read that – I’ll deny it). I don’t know everything (that too), but one thing that I do know for sure is that we are all learning, no matter where in life we are. I am still learning and should I ever feel like I don’t need to learn anymore, well that is the day that I just unlearned everything I’ve ever been taught. I have all kinds of things to talk about and teach people, but I had to be reminded that I did miss something by the caregiver of someone else in a situation tougher than my own.

Like I talked about in one of my early posts, fighting chronic diseases and pain is like fighting a guerilla war. You give and take and put up your shields when things are rough and fight like hell when you are feeling good. Fighting pain is the same way in that we do what we can, whenever we can, to win. When it feels like it gets too much, we can turn to someone or something we trust in. Some people turn to a spouse or family member, some do yoga, others turn to humor, some hit a punching bag, and sometimes we need to take meds. We use whatever we have at our disposal to win, just like in war. Cheat if you must, but if you find something that gives you an edge when dealing with a deadly opponent, use it to win. Guerilla wars are often fought as revolutions based on ideals. Wars like these often last a long time – with the guerilla side already having it’s mind set on winning no matter what the cost. This is what I have my mind set on and I believe what the young girl fighting her battle every day, whose situation precipitated this post, has her mind on. Life isn’t roses all the time. Sometimes I paint a rosy picture of my plight. I do it for several reasons: I do have a slightly warped view of life, I have a “special” sense of humor, I feel I have a lot of beneficial information to share, I don’t want anyone’s pity, but most of all I want to inspire. I want to inspire others to help find cures for these diseases and I want to inspire those who are afflicted to fight the diseases directly. And for those still fighting, I want to inspire you to fight the pain with dignity. It can’t take away your choice to decide how you want to handle it. I hope by stepping up to apologize to those I may have offended, and admitting that even Navy SEALs who think they are tough, cry when they need to, that I have shown any situation can be handled with dignity. Physical pain is fairly easy for me to deal with, but admitting that I had an emotional situation or two that made me cry, BECAUSE I had to fight the pain every single day; that was a tough one. That’s something that I learned through meeting others dealing with diseases and situations far worse than mine. They dealt with their pain and disability even though they were less physically capable than I was. That taught me humility and it taught me that if any of them could handle their pain with dignity and do what they needed to do, then anyone can handle pain with dignity. As I said last time, “Pain be not be proud!!” Pain cannot take our dignity. And because it cannot do that it becomes powerless. Once powerless - it can be overcome. Pain thou shalt die and the human spirit shall win.

P.S. Anyone that is thinking of making a joke about me crying, remember that the government did spend millions of dollars to ensure I can track down the worst men on the planet, anytime, anywhere, in any environment, and kill them ... and still remember to bring back chocolate and bunnies for my nieces!!

See you at the finish line - your friendly, huggable Navy SEAL.