October 3, 2024
Hola beloved friends and family!
One week ago at this time I was just getting out of surgery.
Now that I’m feeling up to it I wanted to send an update.
I’ve felt so grateful over the past several weeks for the outpouring of support.
Thank you for coming by to help hang curtains, listening, or just texting to say I was on your mind.
I am reading Lance Armstrong’s book “It’s not about the bike“, and there’s a quote from early in his cancer diagnosis…
I had received an e-mail from a military guy stationed in Asia. He was a fellow cancer patient, and he wanted to tell me something. “You don’t know it yet”, he wrote, “but we’re the lucky ones.”
I believe it’s alluding to the lessons and growth he’ll gain from the experience. I know that I’ll look back on this experience in a similar way, although it’s not fully clear to me yet either.
Some positives that have come of this so far…
1. All the love I’ve received from y’all 🥰
2. Gave me a good excuse to take the sabbatical I’ve been wanting to take for several years now – although looking back I feel like we shouldn’t need to get cancer to do what we REALLY want 👀
3. I’ve found an interest in epigenetics, gene expression, and Joe Dispenza meditations
4. An appreciation for good pain – I had many tough track workouts over the past 6 months, where I pushed myself hard with the thought “I’d much rather endure the pain of this than of chemo, and who knows how my body will perform after treatment.” – not that in my situation at the time a hard workout would cure me, but I think a general lesson is that it’s better to do the hard things up front on our terms, rather than be forced into harder things later because we don’t take care of ourselves.
**I’ll get back to running and pursuing my 5 min mile goal as well as completing a Hyrox. Hopefully it inspires someone to treat themselves better 😊
5. If anyone needs help advocating for themselves in the medical system I could put on a masterclass
6. A badass scar!
How am I doing?
I’m swollen. Looking at the pic 5 days before surgery vs me in the same bathing suit 5 days after surgery is astonishing.
(Happy to share the photo although I assume most don’t want to see my scar just yet. Eventually everyone will see it, I’m just as curious as anyone to know what it’s going to look like a year from now.)
Seeing myself brings up thoughts like…
“I can’t believe I let the surgeon do this to me. I decided to do this. What if this never goes back to normal.”
To… “many guys have fully recovered from this, it’s amazing what the body is able to handle. We’re all like my favorite superhero, Wolverine, it just takes more time.”
The hardest thing is sleeping and getting in/out of bed.
Fortunately my amazing girlfriend is very nurturing and lifts weights. The perfect combo for my situation haha.
I’ve been told I need to walk and keep things functioning but don’t overdo it.
As you know I work better on specifics and just pushing my body to whatever my coach tells me. So doing my best to “feel” into this one.
**If you missed the video of my first 24 hours post surgery it’s here**
And I’m excited. The past several months were tough, so many experts with different opinions and different ways to handle the situation. I was fortunate that we caught this early so it gave me options, but it also meant I needed to make tough decisions and of course I went on an intense fact finding mission.
Now that there are no decisions to be made, it’s a relief and I can start thinking about other things.
Things that are more exciting 🙂
Prognosis:
After the first surgery in March I had a 50% chance of cure
The MRI in July that was “suspicious” put my chance of still being cancer-free at 2-15% depending on which expert I was talking to
After the surgery last week I have a 80-90% chance of being cured. So that’s the highest chance since this started
Chemo has a 97% cure rate, so that is still an option if I were to need it, but both my goal and my doctors’ is that I would only need one more treatment, chemo or surgery, and we felt the chances were high enough with surgery with a fraction of the long-term consequences.
How you can continue to support:
1. Come visit – which is what I like about the meal train. Feel free to bring others. We can play board games, use AI to come up with fun abdomen tattoos for me, whatever else. My new house has two guest rooms so come from out of town too!
2. Even though I’m not able to work right now, Lee and the rest of the Shapiro Group are hard at work serving our clients with the same level of expertise that you can expect from me. Please continue to reach out if you need help with anything real estate related and refer your friends. You can connect them directly with Lee, here is an intro I wrote up that you’re welcome to adapt. See more here: Lee Intro and Contact Info
3. Write us a google review – whatever experience you’ve had with me or the team. Doesn’t have to be long, best to mention Lee or “the team” over me, and of course ChatGPT can be your friend 🙂 Here’s the link to our Google Page
How I can support you:
I have free time, it’s just mostly from a sofa. So if you want to chat about something I can help with please call.
I’m happy to help with real estate questions, a negotiation you’re in the midst of, review spreadsheets or talk about finances. If you think of something I can help you with I’d love to.