Cancer attacks people in different parts of the body, at different times in their lives and to varying degrees. But in one way it’s exactly the same for everybody.
It disrupts lives, often at the most inopportune times: a mother with a newborn baby, a businessman at the start of a new career, a world-class athlete preparing for the Olympics.
“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are in your life, cancer doesn’t discriminate,” said Eric Shanteau, a graduate of Parkview High and Auburn who swam in the Beijing Olympics with a tumor in his right testicle. “It doesn’t care.”
At age 24, Shanteau joined legions of cancer patients who know what it feels like to lose control over their daily lives. For an athlete training for an edge in hundredths of seconds, that was the hardest part.
“I’m used to having control over everything I do: how I train, what I eat, where I train, the outcome of my race,” Shanteau said. “With cancer, it’s all taken away.”
Shanteau dives back into the pool today at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center for the USA Swimming Short Course Nationals, competing for the first time since his Aug. 27 surgery. It will be a welcome return to normalcy.
He’ll swim the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke and the 200-meter individual medley. He swam the 200-meter breaststroke in the Olympics, finishing in a personal-best 2:10.10 in the semifinals, although he failed to crack the top eight.
“Most of the Olympians aren’t even back in the water; they took the rest of the year off,” Shanteau said. “But I just needed to get a little more control back in my life and not sit around and think about what I’ve just been through.”
Shanteau is swimming lighter now. He is cancer-free. He swims without the burden he carried in Beijing after deciding to postpone surgery for two months despite risks it could spread.
The decision wasn’t that hard, Shanteau said, but it wasn’t that easy either.
First, there was the swimming side. Shanteau had come as close as it gets to making the Olympics in 2004 and didn’t, finishing third in the 200 and 400 individual medleys. Only the top two qualify, and Michael Phelps took the top spot in each.
Shanteau switched events, focusing on breaststroke, and moved to Austin, Texas, to work with a breaststroke specialist.
He was gearing up for the 2008 Olympic trials when he discovered an abnormality and was diagnosed with testicular cancer June 19. Two weeks later, having told only a few family and friends his diagnosis, he qualified for the Olympics. He finished second in the 200 breaststroke, beating out world record holder and training partner Brendan Hanson.
Days afterward, he announced he had testicular cancer and was putting off surgery to compete.
Doctors had told him the chances it would spread in two months were minimal, given the protein and hormone levels in his blood. What he risked was a longer recovery, not his life. If his numbers got worse, Shanteau vowed he’d pull out and start treatment.
“[I thought] it won’t be that big a deal, I’ll be training, I’ll be in the Olympic environment, I won’t think about it, it’ll be easy,” Shanteau said. “And it was for about half that.”
He had weekly blood tests in July, getting tested on Mondays and finding out results Wednesdays or Thursdays. That left him only a few days to relax before getting tested again. There were constant questions, from reporters to those closest to him, wanting to know how he was doing, and questions creeping up in his own mind.
He found his escape in the pool training two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. The one time his mind was completely clear of cancer was the two minutes he was in the pool in Beijing.
“From the beginning they’re telling you you’re going to be OK, but there’s always that voice in the back of your head that’s, ‘Well, what if you’re not,’ ” Shanteau said. “So by the end of it, it was like, ‘OK, I’ve had enough of it, and I’m ready to just be done with this and not have to worry about it.’ “
His surgery at Emory was a success, and the pathology report came back clean. He didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation. He was back in the water within a month.
Shanteau knows he was lucky. He’s taken criticism from some who think he set a bad example by putting off surgery. But he knows it was an educated risk, and one he did not take lightly.
“I don’t condone putting off surgery,” said Shanteau, who will be monitored with periodic blood tests and CT scans in the coming years. “It’s an aggressive disease. I’m the poster child for early detection.”
That hasn’t been lost on another world-class athlete who survived testicular cancer and also lives in Austin. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong took Shanteau to dinner in September and has put him to work for his LiveStrong Foundation.
Shanteau rode his bike in the 45-mile “Ride for the Roses” fund-raiser. He spoke recently to a group of LiveStrong leaders who counsel children with cancer. He knows that will be part of his future.
“I picked up two identities this summer that I’ll have for the rest of my life: being a cancer survivor and being an Olympian,” he said. “I’m not going to let cancer take away from being recognized as an Olympian. It was something I went through this year, but I’m an Olympian just as much as I’m a survivor.”
So he’s back in the pool with an eye on the World Championships next summer in Rome and maybe the London Olympics in 2012.
“It’s definitely not out of the question,” he said. “We’ll just take it year by year and see how things go.”
If he’s learned anything, it’s predicting outcomes can be futile. But he knows he’s prepared for whatever comes.
“If nothing else, it just gives me a lot of confidence for what I will encounter in my life,” Shanteau said. “I already knew I was a mentally tough person. That was something that you pick up through all the years of swimming, but this was one of those real-world situations that it’s good to know that I can handle, and I did handle.”
Source: ajc.com
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