Just because Sybil and I are out frolicking in the South Pacific, couldn't leave you guys hanging. So while I'm gone let's do what the syndicated radio shows do. Yeah, a little "best of ..."
I'll post some of my favorite stories from the past and before you know it I'll be back live and in living color with tales from abroad.
Thanks again for your patronage, your patience and your understanding of my honeymoon sabbatical.
THAT DAMM SPOT
By Richie Whitt
Dallas Observer
December 11, 2008
He always loved running. Helped him clear his head.
If only Steve Damm could turn that trick now.
Unfortunately, a pair of New Balance shoes and 15 miles
per week can't combat inoperable brain cancer. Though a two-time ('01 and '02)
finisher of the Dallas White Rock Marathon, chances are Steve will never run
again.
"Of the things I miss, running is at the top of the
list," Steve says from his family's Frisco home
last Wednesday, just hours after doctors revealed that the tumor at the base of
his brain is again growing. "I used to go four miles, just to alleviate
stress. Now there are days when I can't walk more than four feet."
With his condition deteriorating and a desperate round of
chemotherapy coinciding with the one-year anniversary of his courageous fight,
Steve's body won't be able to complete Sunday's Dallas White Rock Marathon. His
spirit, however, will proudly cross the finish line, lifted, carried and
joyfully, if not painfully, delivered by 22 family and friends who will run for
him.
"I'm a very unnatural runner, but it's to honor
him," says Steve's wife, Tyra. "It's not really something we ever
shared. But I'm finding it therapeutic. I picked up his iPod and
went three miles by myself the other day. I was bawling at a Coldplay song,
a U2 song,
and then I heard The Beastie Boys, and I started laughing. I could
just hear him running along, trying to rap."
It started with a headache.
(continued from page 1)
"At first I thought it was just a sinus thing,"
Steve says of his original symptom in November 2007. "It was at the base
of my neck, and it didn't go away with ibuprofen like normal. It was a low
grade but always there."
Then came persistent hiccups. Trouble swallowing Tyra's
homemade soup. And noticeable slurring in his speech.
By early December—one year ago this Thursday, in fact—an
MRI at Baylor Medical Center-Frisco confirmed a
"spot." A tiny, yet horrifying Damm spot.
"It was like looking at an alien," Tyra says.
"Something was in Steve's body that wasn't supposed to be there."
Doctors said the inch-wide lesion attached to the right
side of Steve's brain stem could be MS, lymphoma or, worst of all, a glioblastoma
tumor. Steve's reaction? A four-mile run, of course.
"That day I really needed to clear my head," he
says. "I had a lot to process."
His motor skills quickly diminished. His right eye quit
tracking with his left, producing double vision. His left side significantly
weakened, leaving him unable to button his shirts, apply deodorant or walk
without a wobble.
Two days after Christmas the spot was confirmed as a
tumor, and on January 17 the tumor was confirmed at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in
Houston as a Grade IV astrocytoma, or glioblastoma. The nastiest, most
aggressive strain of brain cancer. Inoperable because of its super-sensitive
location. Treatable only via chemotherapy and radiation and prayer.
Just like that, a 39-year-old father of two, devout
Methodist and avid runner who didn't smoke or drink and who finished four miles
just a month ago was down to his final four to six months. The rare, radical
cancer affects only 2 in 100,000 Americans and is sporadic. There is no medical
consensus about its genesis—like smoking or heredity. Only one in 20
glioblastoma patients survives three years; just one in 5,000 makes it a
decade.
One doctor recommended Steve immediately check into a
hospice.
Says Tyra, "I was inconsolable."
But instead of dying, Steve kept living.
(continued from page 2)
Kept getting driven to work for his job as an
administrator for Children's Medical Center of Dallas. Kept defying his
non-responsive left side, eventually learning to type one-handed. Kept making
trips to UT Southwestern Medical Center for steroids, five weeks of radiation
and seven cycles of chemotherapy.
Kept improving. Kept refusing to wallow in "why
me?"
"It happened to me, and I can't change that,"
Steve says, his voice ravaged by fatigue and medication. "It's a weird,
random thing. Why? I don't know. The doctors don't know. It's not one of those
things where you can say, 'Oh yeah, I ate mayonnaise on a Tuesday at 2:15 so I
got cancer.' I'd rather focus on the positives. Before, I was a stubborn person
who would get caught up in road rage and all that. My perspective has totally
changed. Life is precious. And my support system has been overwhelming."
By June an MRI revealed a momentary miracle: A dormant
tumor.
"It was shrinking," Tyra says. "There was
no new activity."
But the truth is you don't beat brain cancer, you only
delay it. A glioblastoma may sleep, but it never dies.
After nine months of relatively good health, Steve's
recurring symptoms suddenly, drastically worsened last month. Exaggerated
weakness in his left side. Slurring. Hiccups. The works. Sure enough, the Damm
spot was growing. Test results last week showed live, active tumor cells.
Ominous news.
"We knew we'd get to this point," Tyra says.
"We just hoped it would be two years down the road."
Since it wasn't, Steve immediately had a port surgically
inserted into his chest to ease the administering of medications. He began a
new cycle of chemotherapy and a round of new biological therapy.
Hopefully it will slow, or ideally halt, the mass'
growth.
"I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought about my
own mortality," Steve says. "I hope this is just a bump in the road.
But I know my odds, and they're pretty grim. Some people get hit by a car out
of nowhere. I may very well know the thing that's going to kill me. That's why
I don't take a second for granted. I'm milking as much out of life as
possible."
Says Tyra, "We're realistic, but we're also praying
for a miracle, a magic cure. He keeps being positive and talking with our kids
about future milestones like holidays and birthdays and graduations we're all
going to celebrate together. But we didn't think Steve would even make it to
his 40th birthday [in November]. He's made it a year already. Every day we have
him, we feel blessed."
Steve's next MRI is scheduled for January 8.
(continued from page 3)
The Damms' outlook and attitude is truly inspiring.
Unfathomable, really. Makes the rest of us self-absorbed schmucks feel entirely
silly for obsessing about trivial things like the virtues of Rent on
high-school drama stages or getting all indignant over Sean Avery's "sloppy seconds." Tyra is a columnist for The Dallas
Morning News' Briefing—normally, within our Dallas Observer walls,
considered a branch of the evil empire —but today her husband's transcendent
tale supersedes petty rivalries.
Steve Damm won't be running The Rock on Sunday, or next
year, or ever again.
But given his persistence and his family's positivism,
don't bet against him being among the 12,000 runners, 100,000 spectators and
2,500 volunteers at the American Airlines Center finish line
Sunday afternoon to hand out 130 yellow "See Spot Run" T-shirts and
cheer on his runners.
"It's humbling. It tickles me that they're running
in my name," Steve says. "But mostly I'm jealous. I wish I was
running with them."
He still loves running.
Even when others have to do it for him.
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