After cancer scare, pedaling Dolphins Challenge Cancer is my way of paying back | Habib

MIAMI GARDENS — The 14th edition of the Dolphins Challenge Cancer was held Saturday morning, and although I’d written about many of the previous 13 events, No. 14 marked my first as a participant.

There’s a good reason for that.

The best reason, really.

“It’s a matter of paying back.” Those weren’t my words, but the words of a cancer survivor I’d written about in 2016. It wasn’t until six weeks ago that I could fully appreciate what he was saying.

A few days before the Dolphins’ playoff game in frigid Kansas City. I was in the Dolphins’ locker room, waiting to interview players, when my phone rang. Dr. George Elgart, my dermatologist, was calling to tell me two words you never want your doctor to use.

Cancer was one.

Melanoma was the other.

The biopsy he’d done for that annoying spot on my left shoulder tested positive. I was a cancer patient.

I barely had time to feel numb before Dr. Elgart did what the doctors at UHealth and the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center do so remarkably well. In rapid fire, he told me 1) There was an extremely high probability we were going to beat this thing, probably without chemo or radiation; 2) He’d already put the wheels in motion to set me up with Dr. Alyx Cali Rosen Aigen, a surgeon at the University of Miami; and 3) Although he didn’t expressly come out with this, I later learned he’d even set me up with Dr. Lynn Feun, an oncologist at Sylvester, who will steer my longterm care to make certain that if the cancer ever reared its head again, we’d be all over it.

Guess I’d better fast-forward and give away the ending: I’m fine. My cancer is gone, toast, sayonara.

Two weeks after that original phone call, I was back at UHealth having surgery to make sure that if there were remnants of the cancer that Dr. Elgart hadn't removed, the surgery would. A week after surgery, I was given the all-clear.

You're going to do the Dolphins Challenge Cancer this year, aren't you?

Members of the Dolphins’ communications staff, aware I exercise daily, had been on my case to jump into the DCC, either as a runner or cyclist. Could I really turn them down this time? Years ago, the Dolphins made a $75 million pledge to Sylvester, with 100 percent of the money raised at the DCC going to research. So when Renzo Sheppard, football communications manager for the Dolphins, said he’d assigned me a spot on “Team Dolphins” for the 14th DCC, I was happy to shed all objectivity and show up in Dolphins orange.

Nobody cheers for the opponent in this one.

The start of my 13-mile ride was along the lines of that initial phone call from Dr. Elgart: a wreck. I hadn’t gone 5 yards when a woman rode her bike into mine. Not hard, but still. Even more odd, she didn’t regroup, point her bike straight and go around me. No, she figured she’d just go through me.

And we wonder why our insurance rates are ridiculous.

Thankfully, the rest of the ride was uneventful. Forgetting lessons I’d learned from road races I’ve run, I started out at a brisk pace — so brisk, I passed all my fellow riders in Group C (the slow group) and picked off some in Group B. Problem was, after the turnaround, we were largely pedaling north, into a headwind. I’m terrible at combating wind, so let’s just say a good number of Group C riders got their revenge in those last miles. Despite that, when I hit the finish line, my watch read 13.46 miles in 1:08:54.

The question was, what to do next?

I ran into Hall of Famer Zach Thomas, who asked which event I’d done, so I told him.

“Next year you have to do 54,” he said, referring to his jersey number and the inspiration behind his 54-mile ride.

“Uh … ,” I said.

‘You're a cancer survivor'

The immediate question was whether to write about my experience, which is where Joe Schad, my partner on the Dolphins’ beat, said he’d “be floored” if I chose not to.

“You’re biking because you’re a cancer survivor,” he said.

In the strictest definition of the phrase, I suppose I am. But that day I saw Dr. Feun, I looked around the waiting room at Sylvester. I saw patients shuffling when they walked or in wheelchairs, unable to walk at all. Bandages covered their arms but couldn’t conceal the look on their faces. Or in their eyes.

Cancer survivor? My ordeal began and ended in roughly three weeks. My “suffering” consisted of a few occasions when I wondered what would happen if I were in that 3 percent (or whatever it was) whose melanoma was a greater foe than my doctor expected. In many ways, the hardest part was informing people close to me that I had cancer.

So Saturday morning, I looked at the bell they’d set up for cancer survivors to ring, and to remind everyone why they were there. I was tempted to ring it but decided it wasn't my place.

More: Jaelan Phillips provides health update at Dolphins Challenge Cancer

Later, I was reminded of Andy Weisenborn of Royal Palm Beach, the man I’d written about in 2016 who at the time endured seven years of utter hell involving surgeries, chemo and the inability to consume a meal through his mouth all that time. He insisted “I’m nobody special” even though he unquestionably was. Andy had been a longtime DCC participant who that year had to pitch in as a “virtual rider.” He’s the one who said it was his idea of “paying back.”

Saturday morning, to the dedicated men and women at UHealth and Sylvester, came my turn.

Nobody special, though I’d like to think what I did was.

Dolphins reporter Hal Habib can be reached at  hhabib@pbpost.com. Follow him on social media @gunnerhal. Click here to subscribe.

Here's how you can still help

Donations are still accepted to the Dolphins Challenge Cancer, with 100 percent of the funds going to the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Click here to donate.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: After cancer scare, pedaling Dolphins Challenge Cancer is my payback