It started with a mean-spirited kidney stone a few weeks after covering San Diego State’s thrilling run in the NCAA Tournament. Throbbing lower-back pain spiked when it damn well felt like it, causing sleep to pinball from fitful to near impossible.
I was covering the Kentucky Derby when a urologist called to tell me he saw something sinister on a hazy X-ray. A dizzying battery of tests and procedures followed. On July 11, the day of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, a biopsy revealed muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
Instead of tagging along with the Padres in Seattle, Philadelphia and Toronto, I sprinted to understand what was gnawing at me from the inside, while untangling a bird’s nest of travel arrangements.
San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller writes in the press box before Tuesday’s game between the Padres and Orioles.
(K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Quickly, it hit me. Do a job like this long enough and you’ll find yourself asking people to share the most intimate and profound moments of their lives with a relative stranger. Drug overdoses. Suicide. Heart disease. Gun violence. Cancer.
Chargers all-pro defensive back Kenny Graham walked me through the fog in his brain, brought on by an unending drum beat of jarring collisions in the old American Football League — finding smiles along the way. Horse trainers Martine Bellocq and Joe Herrick detailed the horrifying snapshots of being burned when a wildfire engulfed San Luis Rey Downs outside of Bonsall. Eyes cannot unsee what they experienced.
A high school basketball team that received the highest percentage of free and reduced lunches in Iowa, my home state, included one player who slept on a bridge for three nights during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, five whose fathers served time in prison, and at least four who had been homeless.
They shared it all, the agony and the ache, feelings of being overwhelmed and fearful, so that others might connect or relate. It’s an incredible human experience, receiving trust in those delicate encounters.
I’ve decided that it’s my turn.
In less than a month, I underwent three outpatient surgeries that included the installation of two stents connecting the bladder and kidneys. A four-day trip to the emergency room for something called bladder irrigation ratcheted up the chaos.
Doctors chuckled when I nicknamed the internal organ The Costco Parking Lot, based on the amount of medical traffic. A hospital resident good-naturedly suggested I create a punch card for discounts. Your eyes bug out, after all, when you see one chapter was billed at more than $44,000 before insurance stepped in.
I also learned that situations like these provide powerfully emotional doorways to the kindness of others, taken for granted much too often in our stubbornly divided times.
The heart warmed when the ER angels at Kaiser Zion, Cassie, D.J. and Todd chief among them, showed every concern for me as details slowly trickled out about the challenges in their own lives. You’re reminded, it’s not just you. It’s never just you.
Life rafts flooded in. My younger brother, Brian, came to San Diego on a one-way flight. Neighborhood friends bombarded me with casseroles. The mailbox bulged with funny T-shirts and handwritten cards. Buoying text messages landed by the dozens, moistening eyes.
The everyday blurred and grayed. Things that seemed maddening became unimportant in the time it takes to snap your fingers. Rush-hour gridlock that used to infuriate hardly mattered. Everyday annoyances earned shrugs.
Cancer is the party crasher who refuses to leave. Interview a baseball player. Fill out a medical form. Research sports statistics. Hustle to a CT scan. Make a lab appointment. File a column. Juggling skyrockets up the list of critical skills.
Chemotherapy began Wednesday, one day after I made a trip to Petco Park to check on the Padres. There are 11 laps to come, spread across 15 weeks. Bladder-removal surgery awaits on the other end.
One world suddenly and irreversibly became linked to another. Thoughts drifted to former San Diegan Meb Keflezighi, who became the only person on the planet to win the Boston and New York City marathons along with a medal at the Olympics.
Obstacles? In 2017, Keflezighi showed me the spot where two brothers were slashed red while hiding in cacti to dodge Ethiopian soldiers in the village of Adi Gombolo, Eritrea. Nearby, a childhood friend was shredded by an explosive.
“You never think you’re going to leave this place,” Keflezighi told me.
Bryce Miller reports from Adi Gombolo, Eritrea, the childhood village of distance runner Meb Keflezighi.
(Courtesy photo)
Lessons like those, unpeeled by spending time with those who are exceptional, resonate in myriad ways. Stick to it. Focus on today. Don’t quit. On to the next. Words like those, just words in some ways at the time, have gained significant heft.
It’s one thing to write about those who dig to find something remarkable in the wake of lives losing traction. It’s another to begin to experience it yourself.
So, the digging begins.
I’ll keep tapping on the keyboard. Can the Padres buck logic and pen a stirring finish? Can the San Diego State basketball team prove 2023 was the beginning of something bigger?
Now, it comes with fresh and far-reaching perspective.
