Chapter 9: Nothing To Lose
With love on their side, our leading couple retaliates!
When I was fourteen, I learned a lesson that forever altered the trajectory of my life. To this very day my aspirations and subsequent actions are still influenced by what I can only describe as the transformative experience of my adolescence.
It was our tradition at Lawrence Free State High School to approach the stadium hand in hand. I was the starting free safety for the varsity Firebird football team. I rocked the #35 in HS and college.
I still remember walking up to my 8th grade head football coach’s office, which happened to be located in the men’s locker room. God the smell. One certainly doesn’t forget that!
But I also recall, before giving the door a knock, re-reading the depth chart. It was taped to the office window and written in black and blue sharpie upon a manilla file. Blue was the starting lineup. Black was the 2nd team. My name was nowhere to be found on either string.
As Coach beckoned me to enter, he did me the honor of putting away his playbook to recline in his chair and greet me. I shook as I spoke, I’m sure of it. This would be the first conversation I had with this idol. The influence this man had on a teenage boy’s place in the social hierarchy for years to come was something to behold.
After what I thought was an appropriate amount of small talk, I went in for the close.
“Coach, I want to be on the Blue Team. I’m confident that I can compete at that level and I’m willing to do whatever it takes. So what do I have to do to make that happen?”
He could have said “Grow 3 inches and gain 20 pounds,” and he wouldn’t have been wrong. I was small for my age. But he didn’t. Instead he smiled and assured me that I would get my chance to prove myself. And he was a man of his word.
The following practice I heard “Smith! Take some reps at corner with the Blue Team!”
On the very first snap, I shed my blocker and de-cleated the ball carrier.
De-cleated (verb, past tense): To remove one’s feet from the Earth upon which they once stood.
His head hit the ground, followed by his body, and lastly his legs. To sweeten the pot, the victim..er…running back had bullied me earlier in practice (for having too much hair of all things; a denigration I’d welcome today).
Everyone, and I mean EH-VER-REE-ONE went absolutely off their rocker, nuts over this play. It was the talk of practice. Thereafter, I was a starter in football at every level, all the way till I earned a college athletic scholarship in the sport. Equally relevant, that kid never bullied me again.
Wayne Gretzky, one of the most prolific scorers of all time, once said,
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Sage advice. And really hard for young and old people alike to follow. Missing doesn’t feel very comfortable.
But 25 years later I can say that I have never stopped taking my shots in life. And I took one again this week that may save my life.
Jamie recently befriended a woman whose husband also has ALS. He was young for the disease as well. But this couple had gotten him into a stem cell trial at one of the top neurology centers. For eight months he has shown NO PROGRESSION.
My wife received this news while we were out for dinner. When she shared this miracle with me I promptly asked for the check and we hightailed it home. Actually, if I’m being truly honest, we put in a to-go order for dessert first and then jetted. Priorities.
“We HAVE to get in,” I said to her as we sprinted through our front door, dropping our belongings to the floor, and proceeding to devour that cheesecake. With faces full we simultaneously flung open our laptops and initiated the hustle.
Jamie had a friend on the inside, a doctor at that very hospital. So we notified her that we were really gunning for this study.
While that message was marinading we decided to follow up with the research coordinator whom we spoke with months earlier. We had already established myself as a patient there and wanted to capitalize on that. The coordinator during our first visit basically told us we had no shot of getting in.
“We’re only enrolling one patient every month,” was her initial management of expectations.
Jamie fired off the email anyway, making her case again while I decided to throw out another line and went fishing on Facebook (more like stalking).
I found out who the principal investigator for the trial was. He was a neurologist. Better yet he was my age. Next, I did what any dying man would do; I Facebook friended him and slid into his DM.
Feeling like the fourteen-year-old boy who just wanted his chance, I gave him my passionate plea and apologized only for my methods.
Jamie and I then collapsed into the bed knowing that we did all we could on that particular night.
We awoke to an email. The coordinator. She was interested in a phone screening. Shortly after the appointment was scheduled, a message from my new Facebook friend appeared in my inbox. We were put at the top of the list but he couldn’t guarantee us anything. He was rooting for us though.
This week, not long after that rough patch I alluded to in the previous chapter, Jamie and I turned the tides and fired off our best shot, nailing the phone screening. We awoke the next morning to another heaven sent email saying that …
WE GOT IN!