August 24, 2015 at 3:34 p.m.
'Just keep going': Speaker inspires large crowd at Celebration of Life
'Just keep going': Speaker inspires large crowd at Celebration of Life
By Kayla Thomason-
The crowd came to hear the guest speaker, Mark Bryan, who gave an inspirational and humorous speech.
When he approached the podium, Bryan put on a pink, fuzzy headband with multi-colored flashing lights.
He said he once wore the headband to the James Beck Cancer Center and noticed that it made people dealing with the very serious business of battling cancer smile and laugh. He said it was worth the $2.95 he paid for the accessory.
Bryan then removed the headpiece and shared his battle with cancer.
For 33 years Bryan was a dairy farmer, but after two major surgeries to fight cancer he and his wife decided to sell the cows in 2011.
"We were doing a CAT scan on my lungs, because I had several spots and they wanted to check those out, and they quite by accident found the tumor on my kidney, which was about the size of a baseball, and they said that normally that is cancerous and they recommended taking the whole kidney out," Bryan said.
His first surgery was in 2008. In 2010, after he was cured of kidney cancer, doctors discovered he had prostate cancer, which runs in his family. He had a second surgery to treat that cancer.
"I really don't remember that first time (I was told I had cancer)," he said. "It is a shock. I think I was prepared because they did tell me when they saw the tumor that most of the time - 99 percent of the time - that is cancerous so I was kind of prepared for that."
When someone receives the news that they have cancer it can make them realize what is precious and all the things they want to do that they have been putting off, he said.
"I think it's a wake-up call when you get that diagnosis, a lot of people - I think - say 'I didn't get a chance to do this or that or whatever' and it may be a wake-up call to do some of the things on your bucket list, per se," Bryan said.
In 2014 he received more bad new - the prostate cancer had returned. He underwent radiation treatment and had another CAT scan of his lungs.
The results showed larger spots. A biopsy showed he had renal carcinoma - kidney cancer - that had metastasized.
"My first question to the doctor was 'Is that from residual cancer cells from the first tumor I had or do I have a problem with my only remaining kidney?'" he told the audience.
The doctors performed another CAT scan and discovered a baseball-sized tumor on his kidney.
"That was one bad piece of news after another as the summer went along," he said.
He had radiation and chemotherapy to battle the kidney cancer and the lung cancer.
"It is in my bloodstream, it is not curable but we are keeping it suppressed and hopefully we can continue to do that," Bryan said.
At the end of March he underwent a cryoablation. Doctors went in with a needle through his back to freeze approximately 95 percent of the tumor on his kidney and destroy it, he said.
Bryan said he tries not to spend too much time thinking about his disease.
"I don't and never have thought too much about (my cancer) because it is what it is," he said. "I can't change it. Whatever I have it's there and hopefully the doctors and technology will help me keep going."
Bryan then told a little story. About 41 years ago he and some friends backpacked through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India to Nepal to hike to the base camp of Mount Everest.
He used this story of climbing mountains and doing things others said were impossible as a metaphor for dealing with cancer.
The trip was 150 miles, ascending and descending ridges and hills that were twice the size of Mount Everest.
"The part that made it impossible - we didn't know this until we came back - was that it was during the monsoon season," he said.
He said the reason it was supposed to be impossible was because it would rain hard, get hot and rain some more, causing the clay soil to become slippery.
In one stretch of their travels they had to walk up 3,725 steps and had to go down the other side.
They encountered heat-sensing leeches the size of pencil lead and an inch long.
"If you stopped to rest, if you watched the grass just a little bit, you could see them coming at you like an inch worm, and tricky as they were they also dropped from the trees," he said.
He and his friends also acquired bed bugs and dealt with mudslides.
They stayed at a village and were supposed to take an airplane out - which hadn't come for two months and didn't arrive while they were there.
"So we had to walk back out, which was the worst depression I've ever had," he said. "There's nothing now that could even come close to that, knowing that we had to walk back out where we just walked in and what we had gone through."
During the journey they lived with the villagers, rats, dogs that were fighting, had sheep jump over them one morning and slept above chickens.
Although it was supposed to be impossible to travel that area in the monsoon season, Bryan and his friends eventually made it home.
"(Cancer) might seem insurmountable at the beginning, but one step after another, one foot in front of the other and hopefully you will conquer it," he said. "It doesn't always happen, just as in mountain climbing, we don't always make it to the top, but that's what you have to do, just keep going."
Bryan recommends people go to support groups and contact others who have been treated for cancer.
Before he started radiation he talked to last year's guest speaker and said the support helped him.
He advised people not to worry about their cancer because, as the Chinese say, "If you worry you suffer twice."
Bryan had high praise for the doctors and staff at the James Beck Cancer Center.
"I just felt really at ease the first day I walked in (the James Beck Cancer Center), even over the phone when I first talked to them," he said.
He remains upbeat and positive and continues to enjoy wildlife, birds, the weather, clouds, sunsets, helping friends and neighbors, and being able to still do those things.
"Just keep doing what you've been doing," he said. "Enjoy every day."
Bryan is hopeful for the future of cancer research.
"They have such new technologies and treatments coming down the road in the works that I'm hopeful," he said. "They said with my type of cancer normally we live four to five years. I said, well for one thing I said 'I'm not normal,' and I said 'they're working on things that probably in two to three years - I said - they'll have something new that will cure me or help me along.'"
After the speech it was announced that two groups had made donations to the James Beck Cancer Center. Julie Bronson, representing Rhinelander Country Club, donated $3,357, and The Ladies of the Blugrass donated $9,300 for gas cards, various items, even a weekend vacation that cancer patients can use.
To wrap up the ceremony everyone gathered on the lawn by the pond to watch a butterfly release.
John Schiek was attending the Celebration of Life for the first time.
"I thought it was a very nice ceremony and we loved the butterflies," he said.
He said he knows someone who has cancer and found the event to be uplifting.
"Survivors have a lot of courage and perseverance, it was inspiring," he said.
The purpose of Celebration of Life is to celebrate the lives of those who currently have cancer, those who have lost the fight, and the caregivers.
"Every year we get a few more people and we have the followers that have been here since the beginning and as soon as someone comes they see what a wonderful event it is and they love the butterflies so they come back every year," said Kim Hetland, director of radiation oncology at the James Beck Cancer Center.
The butterfly release is symbolic.
"For the survivors it is a sign of strength and a new beginning," she said. "For the family members that have had maybe a loved one pass on it's the butterflies flying up to heaven, so it is very symbolic to people."
Hetland was pleased with the turnout.
"I think it's very important to have presence in our community and raise awareness of the cancer services that we have here right in the Northwoods," Hetland said. "We have technology that people have in larger cities, that they can be treated right in this location."
Kayla Breese may be reached at [email protected].
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