An Amazing Journey

As a coach of Collegiate distance runners since the late ‘70’s, I’ve always taught athletes to train and race with purpose, respect terrain, weather, and opponents but never fear them, and run through, not just to, the finish. If someone beats you across the line, I’ve said many times, make sure it’s because that competitor is faster, not tougher or better prepared.

 

I’ve always tried to convey, also, that team achievement, not individual accolades, is paramount and that teammates share the sacred responsibility to make each other better.

 

Cliché as it might sound, sports truly is a metaphor for life, but the real meaning of that adage never fully hit home until I was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis in early 2010 and began a grueling race the likes of which I could never have imagined.

 

PSC is a rare autoimmune liver disease which attacks the bile ducts. Its cause is unknown. There is no cure. Doctors can treat only the symptoms, most of which are unpleasant, with medications, many of which create equally unpleasant side effects.

 

Best case scenario, the disease progresses slowly, and you outlive it. Worst case, it progresses to a stage where you need a liver transplant. Very worst case, no donor liver is available.

 

My PSC moved slowly at first but picked up steam in the spring of 2011. By the summer of 2012, I knew it was “game-on.”

 

That’s when my competitive instincts, already very much in play, kicked in full force.

 

In early November, I checked in to the intensive care unit at the VCU Medical Center with lab numbers – the bad kind – raging off the charts. Without a transplant, my doctor told me, I had a week, at most, to live.

 

My response was, “I’m not gonna die in this hospital.” That wasn’t arrogance, denial, entitlement, or defiance. It was just a very sick guy competing with every fiber of his being, knowing full well that I had a technically skilled and compassionate medical team competing with all their collective heart to save my life and an incredible support system -- including the Collegiate Family -- providing strength, encouragement, and many prayers.

 

Then, as the hours ticked away, I began to tell anyone who came into my room that PSC might beat me across the finish line, but no way would it ever beat me. When the medical folks heard that, they glanced at the monitors, considered my highly jaundiced appearance, smiled politely, and went about their business of keeping me comfortable. I’m pretty sure they thought I was confused or even delirious – hepatic encephalopathy, they call it –but I knew exactly what I was saying. So would any kid whom I’d ever coached.

 

As the action swirled about me, I felt very much at peace despite the long odds, for one of the great lessons I’d already learned during this lyrical passage was that being at peace and fighting with passion are not contradictory concepts.

I knew I’d done all I could do, and I’d be just fine regardless of the outcome. I couldn’t control the variables, among them the virulence of the disease or the availability of a donor liver. I could only control my heart and mind, stay in the moment, rely on my faith, and approach the future, however long that might be, with no regrets.

 

Over the years, I’d given much advice to my students, athletes, children, and grandchildren. Now, I was well aware that I must follow my own advice. If I’d reached the end, I told myself, I would not leave this world as a hypocrite or quitter.

 

On Day 6, I was blessed with a life-saving transplant. My donor was an 84-year-old female stroke victim from Wilmington, NC, who left, amazing as it may seem, a pristine liver.

 

Today marks seven years: seven years of gratitude, wonderment, discovery, and recovery, which for all transplant survivors is an ongoing process.

 

It’s been a journey, to be sure: an awe-inspiring, empowering, meaningful, humbling, and intensely spiritual journey. The journey continues.

   -- Weldon Bradshaw