It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2 page)

him how much it was, it’s too disgusting. What was left didn’t look like very much.

Rick was used to hearing me complain about my sinuses and allergies. Austin has a lot of ragweed and pollen, and no matter how tortured I am, I can’t take medication because of the

strict doping regulations in cycling. I have to suffer through it.

“You could be bleeding from your sinuses,” Rick said. “You may have cracked one.”

“Great,” I said. “So it’s no big deal.”

I was so relieved, I jumped at the first suggestion that it wasn’t serious, and left it at that. Rick clicked off his flashlight, and on his way out the door he invited me to have dinner with him and

his wife, Jenny, the following week.

A few nights later, I cruised down the hill to the Parkers’ on a motor scooter. I have a thing for motorized toys, and the scooter was one of my favorites. But that night, I was so sore in my

right testicle that it killed me to sit on the scooter. I couldn’t get comfortable at the dinner table, either. I had to situate myself just right, and I didn’t dare move, it was so painful.

I almost told Rick how I felt, but I was too self-conscious. It hardly seemed like something to bring up over dinner, and I had already bothered him once about the blood. This guy is going to

think I’m some kind of complainer, I thought. I kept it to myself.

When I woke up the next morning, my testicle was horrendously swollen, almost to the size of an orange. I pulled on my clothes, got my bike from the rack in the garage, and started off on my

usual training ride, but I found I couldn’t even sit on the seat. I rode the whole way standing up on the pedals. When I got back home in the early afternoon, I reluctantly dialed the Parkers

again.

“Rick, I’ve got something wrong with my testicle,” I said. “It’s real swollen and I had to stand up on the ride.”

Rick said, sternly, “You need to get that checked out right away.”

He insisted that he would get me in to see a specialist that afternoon. We hung up, and he called Dr. Jim Reeves, a prominent Austin urologist. As soon as Rick explained my symptoms, Reeves

said I should come in immediately. He would hold an appointment open. Rick told me that Reeves suspected I merely had a torsion of the testicle, but that I should go in and get checked.

If I ignored it, I could lose the testicle.

I showered and dressed, and grabbed my keys and got into my Porsche, and it’s funny, but I can remember exactly what I wore: khaki pants and a green dress shirt. Reeves’ office was in the

heart of downtown, near the University of Texas campus in a plain-looking brown brick medical building.

Reeves turned out to be an older gentleman with a deep, resonating voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a well, and a doctorly way of making everything seem routine–despite

the fact that he was seriously alarmed by what he found as he examined me.

My testicle was enlarged to three times its normal size, and it was hard and painful to the touch.

Reeves made some notes, and then he said, “This looks a little suspicious. Just to be safe, I’m going to send you across the street for an ultrasound.”

I got my clothes back on and walked to my car. The lab was across an avenue in another institutional-looking brown brick building, and I decided to drive over. Inside was a small

warren of offices and rooms filled with complicated medical equipment. I lay down on another examining table.

A female technician came in and went over me with the ultrasound equipment, a wand-like instrument that fed an image onto a screen. I figured I’d be out of there in a few minutes. Just a

routine check so the doctor could be on the safe side.

An hour later, I was still on the table.

The technician seemed to be surveying every inch of me. I lay there, wordlessly, trying not to be self-conscious. Why was this taking so long? Had she found something?

Finally, she laid down the wand. Without a word, she left the room.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hey.”

I thought, It’s supposed to be a lousy formality. After a while, she returned with a man I had seen in the office earlier. He was the chief radiologist. He picked up the wand and began to

examine my parts himself. I lay there silently as he went over me for another 15 minutes. Why is this taking so long?

“Okay, you can get dressed and come back out,” he said.

I hustled into my clothes and met him in the hallway.

“We need to take a chest X ray,” he said.

I stared at him. “Why?” I said.

“Dr. Reeves asked for one,” he said.

Why would they look at my chest? Nothing hurt there. I went into another examining room and took off my clothes again, and a new technician went through the X-ray process.

I was getting angry now, and scared. I dressed again, and stalked back into the main office. Down the hallway, I saw the chief radiologist.

“Hey,” I said, cornering the guy. “What’s going on here? This isn’t normal.”

“Dr. Reeves should talk to you,” he said.

“No. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Well I don’t want to step on Dr. Reeves’ toes, but it looks like perhaps he’s checking you for some cancer-related activity.”

I stood perfectly still.

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

“You need to take the X rays back to Dr. Reeves; he’s waiting for you in his office.”

There was an icy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it was growing. I took out my cell phone and dialed Rick’s number.

“Rick, something’s going on here, and they aren’t telling me every-thing.”

“Lance, I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but I’d like to go with you to see Dr. Reeves. Why don’t I meet you there?”

I said, “Okay.”

I waited in radiology while they prepared my X rays, and the radiologist finally came out and handed me a large brown envelope. He told me Reeves would see me in his office. I stared at

the envelope. My chest was in there, I realized.

This is bad. I climbed into my car and glanced down at the envelope containing my chest X rays. Reeves’ office was just 200 yards away, but it felt longer than that. It felt like two miles. Or

20.

I drove the short distance and parked. By now it was dark and well past normal office hours. If Dr. Reeves had waited for me all this time, there must be a good reason, I thought. And the

reason is that the shit is about to hit the fan.

As I walked into Dr. Reeves’ office, I noticed that the building was empty. Everyone was gone. It was dark outside.

Rick arrived, looking grim. I hunched down in a chair while Dr. Reeves opened the envelope and pulled out my X rays. An X ray is something like a photo negative: abnormalities come out

white. A black image is actually good, because it means your organs are clear. Black is good. White is bad.

Dr. Reeves snapped my X rays onto a light tray in the wall.

My chest looked like a snowstorm.

“Well, this is a serious situation,” Dr. Reeves said. “It looks like tes-ticular cancer with large metastasis to the lungs.”

I have cancer.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“I’m fairly sure,” Dr. Reeves said.

I’m 25. Wliy would I have cancer?

“Shouldn’t I get a second opinion?” I said.

“Of course,” Dr. Reeves said. “You have every right to do that. But I should tell you I’m confident of the diagnosis. I’ve scheduled you for surgery tomorrow morning at 7 A.M., to

remove the testicle.”

I have cancer and it’s in my lungs.

Dr. Reeves elaborated on his diagnosis: testicular cancer was a rare disease–only about 7,000 cases occur annually in the U.S. It tended to strike men between the ages of 18 and 25 and was

considered very treatable as cancers go, thanks to advances in chemotherapy, but early diagnosis and intervention were key. Dr. Reeves was certain I had the cancer. The question was, exactly

how far had it spread? He recommended that I see Dr. Dudley Youman, a renowned Austin-based oncologist. Speed was essential; every day would count. Finally, Dr. Reeves

finished.

I didn’t say anything.

“Why don’t I leave the two of you together for a minute,” Dr. Reeves said.

Alone with Rick, I laid my head down on the desk. “I just can’t believe this,” I said.

But I had to admit it, I was sick. The headaches, the coughing blood, the septic throat, passing out on the couch and sleeping forever. I’d had a real sick feeling, and I’d had it for a while.

“Lance, listen to me, there’s been so much improvement in the treatment of cancer. It’s curable. Whatever it takes, we’ll get it whipped. We’ll get it done.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

Rick called Dr. Reeves back in.

“What do I have to do?” I asked. “Let’s get on with it. Let’s kill this stuff. Whatever it takes, let’s do it.”

I wanted to cure it instantly. Right away. I would have undergone surgery that night. I would have used a radiation gun on myself, if it would help. But Reeves patiently explained the

procedure for the next morning: I would have to report to the hospital early tor a batter}7 of tests and blood work so the oncologist could determine the extent of the cancer, and then I

would have surgery to remove my testicle.

I got up to leave. I had a lot of calls to make, and one of them was to my mother; somehow, I’d have to tell her that her only child had cancer.

I climbed into my car and made my way along the winding, tree-lined streets toward my home on the riverbank, and for the first time in my life, I drove slowly. I was in shock. Oh, my God,

I’ll never be able to race again. Not, Oh, my God, I’ll die. Not, Oh, my God, I’ll never have a family. Those thoughts were buried somewhere down in the confusion. But the first thing was,

Oh, my God, I’ll never race again. I picked up my car phone and called Bill Stapleton.

“Bill, I have some really bad news,” I said.

“What?” he said, preoccupied.

“I’m sick. My career’s over.”

“What?”

“It’s all over. I’m sick, I’m never going to race again, and I’m going to lose everything.”

I hung up.

I drifted through the streets in first gear, without even the energy to press the gas pedal. As I puttered along, I questioned everything: my world, my profession, my self. I had left the house

an indestructible 25-year-old, bulletproof. Cancer would change everything for me, I realized; it wouldn’t just derail my career, it would deprive me of my entire definition of who I was. I had

started with nothing. My mother was a secretary in Piano, Texas, but on my bike, I had become something. When other kids were swimming at the country club, I was biking for miles after

school, because it was my chance. There were gallons of sweat all over every trophy and dollar I had ever earned, and now what would I do? Who would I be if I wasn’t Lance Armstrong,

world-class cyclist?

A sick person.

I pulled into the driveway of my house. Inside, the phone was ringing. I walked through the door and tossed my keys on the counter. The phone kept ringing. I picked it up. It was my friend

Scott MacEach-ern, a representative from Nike assigned to work with me.

“Hey, Lance, what’s going on?”

“Well, a lot,” I said, angrily. “A lot is going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I, uh . . .”

I hadn’t said it aloud yet.

“What?” Scott said.

I opened my mouth, and closed it, and opened it again. “I have cancer,” I said.

I started to cry.

And then, in that moment, it occurred to me: I might lose my life, too. Not just my sport.

I could lose my life.

THE START LINE

PAST FORMS YOU, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT or not. Each encounter and experience has its own effect, and you’re shaped the way the wind shapes a mesquite tree on a plain.

The main thing you need to know about my childhood is that I never had a real father, but I never sat around wishing for one, either. My mother was 17 when she had me, and from day one

everyone told her we wouldn’t amount to anything, but she believed differently, and she raised me with an unbending rule: “Make every obstacle an opportunity.” And that’s what we did.

I was a lot of kid, especially for one small woman. My mother’s maiden name was Linda Mooneyham. She is 5-foot-3 and weighs about 105 pounds, and I don’t know how somebody so

tiny delivered me, because I weighed in at 9 pounds, 12 ounces. Her labor was so difficult that she lay in a fever for an entire day afterward. Her temperature was so high that the nurses

wouldn’t let her hold me.

I never knew my so-called father. He was a non-factor–unless you count his absence as a factor. Just because he provided the DNA that made me doesn’t make him my father, and as far as I’m

concerned, there is nothing between us, absolutely no connection. I have no idea who he is, what he likes or dislikes. Before last year, I never knew where he lived or worked.

I never asked. I’ve never had a single conversation with my mother about him. Not once. In 28 years, she’s never brought him up, and I’ve never brought him up. It may seem strange, but it’s

true. The thing is, I don’t care, and my mother doesn’t either. She says she would have told me about him if I had asked, but frankly, it would have been like asking a trivia question; he was

that insignificant to me. I was completely loved by my mother, and I loved her back the same way, and that felt like enough to both of us.

Since I sat down to write about my life, though, I figured I might as well find out a few things about myself. Unfortunately, last year a Texas newspaper traced my biological father and printed

a story about him, and this is what they reported: his name is Gunderson, and he’s a route manager for the Dallas Morning News. He lives in Cedar Creek Lake, Texas, and is the father of

two other children. My mother was married to him during her pregnancy, but they split up before I was two. He was actually quoted in the paper claiming to be a proud father, and he said

that his kids consider me their brother, but those remarks struck me as opportunistic, and I have no interest in meeting him.

My mother was alone. Her parents were divorced, and at the time her father, Paul Mooneyham, my grandfather, was a heavy-drinking Vietnam vet who worked in the post office and lived in a

mobile home. Her mother, Elizabeth, struggled to support three kids. Nobody in the family had much help to give my mother–but they tried. On the day

I was born my grandfather quit drinking, and he’s been sober ever since, for 28 years, exactly as long as I’ve been alive. My mother’s younger brother, Al, would baby-sit for me. He later joined

the Army, the traditional way out for men in our family, and he made a career of it, rising all the way to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He has a lot of decorations on his chest, and he and his

wife have a son named Jesse who I’m crazy about. We’re proud of each other as a family.

I was wanted. My mother was so determined to have me that she hid her pregnancy by wearing baby-doll shirts so that no one would interfere or try to argue her out of it. After I was born,

sometimes my mother and her sister would go grocery shopping together, and one afternoon my aunt held me while the checkout girls made cooing noises. “What a cute baby,” one of them

said. My mother stepped forward. “That’s my baby,” she said.

We lived in a dreary one-bedroom apartment in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, while my mother worked part-time and finished school. It was one of those neighborhoods with shirts flapping on

clotheslines and a Kentucky Fried on the corner. My mother worked at the Kentucky Fried, taking orders in her pink-striped uniform, and she also punched the cash register at the Kroger’s

grocery store across the street. Later she got a temporary job at the post office sorting dead letters, and another one as a file clerk, and she did all of this while she was trying to study and to

take care of me. She made $400 a month, and her rent was $200, and my day-care was $25 a week. But she gave me everything I needed, and a few things more. She had a way of creating

small luxuries.

When I was small, she would take me to the local 7-Eleven and buy a Slurpee, and feed it to me through the straw. She would pull some up in the straw, and I would tilt my head back, and she

would let the cool sweet icy drink stream into my mouth. She tried to spoil me with a 50-cent drink.

Every night she read a book to me. Even though I was just an infant, too young to understand a

word, she would hold me and read. She was never too tired for that. “I can’t wait until you can read to me,” she would say. No wonder I was reciting verses by the age of two. I did everything

fast. I walked at nine months.

Eventually, my mother got a job as a secretary for $12,000 a year, which allowed her to move us into a nicer apartment north of Dallas in a suburb called Richardson. She later got a job at a

telecommunications company, Ericsson, and she has worked her way up the ladder. She’s no longer a secretary, she’s an account manager, and what’s more, she got her real-estate license on

the side. That right there tells you everything you need to know about her. She’s sharp as a tack, and she’ll outwork anybody. She also happens to look young enough to be my sister.

After Oak Cliff, the suburbs seemed like heaven to her. North Dallas stretches out practically to the Oklahoma border in an unbroken chain of suburban communities, each one exactly like the

last. Tract homes and malls overrun miles of flat brown Texas landscape. But there are good schools and lots of open fields for kids to play in.

Across the street from our apartment there was a little store called the Richardson Bike Mart at one end of a strip mall. The owner was a small, well-built guy with overly bright eyes named Jim

Hoyt. Jim liked to sponsor bike racers out of his store, and he was always looking to get kids started in the sport. One morning a week my mother would take me to a local shop for fresh, hot

doughnuts and we would pass by the bike store. Jim knew she struggled to get by, but he noticed that she was always well turned out, and I was neat and well cared for. He took an

interest in us, and gave her a deal on my first serious bike. It was a Schwinn Mag Scrambler, which I got when I was about seven. It was an ugly brown, with yellow wheels, but I loved it.

Why does any kid love a bike? It’s liberation and independence, your first set of wheels. A bike is freedom to roam, without rules and without adults.

There was one thing my mother gave me that I didn’t particularly want–a stepfather. When I was three, my mother remarried, to a guy named Terry Armstrong. Terry was a small man with a

large mustache and a habit of acting more successful than he really was. He sold food to grocery stores and he was every cliche ot a traveling salesman, but he brought home a second paycheck

and helped with the bills. Meanwhile, my mother was getting raises at her job, and she bought us a home in Piano, one of the more upscale suburbs.

I was a small boy when Terry legally adopted me and made my name Armstrong, and I don’t remember being happy or unhappy about it, either way. All I know is that the DNA donor,

Gunderson, gave up his legal rights to me. In order for the adoption to go through, Gunderson had to allow it, to agree to it. He picked up a pen and signed the papers.

Terry Armstrong was a Christian, and he came from a family who had a tendency to tell my mother how to raise me. But, for all of his proselytizing, Terry had a bad temper, and he used to

whip me, for silly things. Kid things, like being messy.

Once, I left a drawer open in my bedroom, with a sock hanging out. Terry got out his old fraternity paddle. It was a thick, solid wood paddle, and frankly, in my opinion nothing like that

should be used on a small boy. He turned me over and spanked me with it.

The paddle was his preferred method of discipline. If I came home late, out would come the paddle. Whack. If I smarted off, I got the paddle. Whack. It didn’t hurt just physically, but also

emotionally. So I didn’t like Terry Armstrong. I thought he was an angry testosterone geek, and as a result, my early impression of organized religion was that it was for hypocrites.

Athletes don’t have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because introspection doesn’t get you anywhere in a race. You don’t want to think about your adolescent resentments

when you’re trying to make a 6,500-foot climb with a cadre of Italians and Spaniards on your wheel. You need a dumb focus. But that said, it’s all stoked down in there, fuel for the fire.

“Make every negative into a positive,” as my mother says. Nothing goes to waste, you put it all

to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy. But back then I was just a kid with about four chips on his shoulder, thinking, Maybe if I ride my bike on

this road long enough it will take me out of here.

Piano had its effect on me, too. It was the quintessential American suburb, with strip malls, perfect grid streets, and faux-antebellum country clubs in between empty brown wasted fields. It

was populated by guys in golf shirts and Sansabelt pants, and women in bright fake gold jewelry, and alienated teenagers. Nothing there was old, nothing real. To me, there was

something soul-deadened about the place, which may be why it had one of the worst heroin problems in the country, as well as an unusually large number of teen suicides. It’s home to

Piano East High School, one of the largest and most football-crazed high schools in the state, a modern structure that looks more like a government agency, with a set of doors the size of

loading docks. That’s where I went to school.

In Piano, Texas, if you weren’t a football player you didn’t exist, and if you weren’t upper middle class, you might as well not exist either. My mother was a secretary, so I tried to play football.

But I had no coordination. When it came to anything that involved moving from side to side, or hand-eye coordination–when it came to anything involving a ball, in fact–I was no good.

I was determined to find something I could succeed at. When I was in fifth grade, my elementary school held a distance-running race. I told my mother the night before the race, “I’m

going to be a champ.” She just looked at me, and then she went into her things and dug out a 1972 silver dollar. “This is a good-luck coin,” she said. “Now remember, all you have to do is

beat that clock.” I won the race.

A few months later, I joined the local swim club. At first it was another way to seek acceptance with the other kids in the suburbs, who all swam laps at Los Rios Country Club, where their

parents were members. On the first day of swim practice, I was so inept that I was put with the seven-year-olds. I looked around, and saw the younger sister of one of my friends. It was

embarrassing. I went from not being any good at football to not being any good at swimming.

But I tried. If I had to swim with the little kids to learn technique, then that’s what I was willing to do. My mother gets emotional to this day when she remembers how I leaped headfirst into

the water and flailed up and down the length of the pool, as if I was trying to splash all the water out of it. “You tried so hard,” she says. I didn’t swim in the worst group for long.

Swimming is a demanding sport for a 12-year-old, and the City of Piano Swim Club was particularly intense. I swam for a man named Chris MacCurdy, who remains one of the best

coaches I ever worked with. Within a year, Chris transformed me; I was fourth in the state in the 1,500-meter freestyle. He trained our team seriously: we had workouts every morning from 5:30

to 7. Once I got a little older I began to ride my bike to practice, ten miles through the semi-dark early-morning streets. I would swim 4,000 meters of laps before school and go back for another

two-hour workout in the afternoon–another 6,000 meters. That was six miles a day in the water, plus a 20-mile bike ride. My mother let me do it for two reasons: she didn’t have the option of

driving me herself because she worked, and she knew that I needed to channel my temperament.

One afternoon when I was about 13 and hanging around the Richardson Bike Mart, I saw a flyer for a competition called IronKids.

It was a junior triathlon, an event that combined biking, swimming, and running. I had never heard of a triathlon before–but it was all of the things I was good at, so I signed up. My mother

took me to a shop and bought me a triathlon outfit, which basically consisted of cross-training shorts and a shirt made out of a hybrid fast-drying material, so I could wear it through each

phase of the event, without changing. We got my first racing bike then, too. It was a Mercier, a slim, elegant road bike.

I won, and I won by a lot, without even training for it. Not long afterward, there was another triathlon, in Houston. I won that, too. When I came back from Houston, I was full of

self-confidence. I was a top junior at swimming, but I had never been the absolute best at it. I was better at triathlons than any kid in Piano, and any kid in the whole state, for that matter. I

liked the feeling.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not

caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn’t seem to matter what the sport was–in a straight-ahead, long-distance race, I could beat anybody.