The Initiation

September 9, 2010

Scott Capozza is a husband, an athlete, a physical therapist, an advocate, and many other wonderful things. He is also a cancer survivor. He has been a longtime friend to the Connecticut Challenge. Indeed, he rode in his sixth consecutive Connecticut Challenge Bike Ride this year. Scott has been a contributor to ctchallenge.org in the past, and going forward, he will contribute on a more regular basis. Scott's blogs will incorporate both his personal and professional experiences with cancer survivors. - Christian McEvoy, MPH, Director, CT Challenge Survivorship Center

“I can’t deal with this right now, I have finals on Monday and Tuesday!”

That was my response when those three words were spoken to me, the three words that nobody ever wants to hear, the ones that strike fear, anger, and disbelief deep into a person’s very being:

You have cancer.

It was Friday, October 30th, 1998. I had been experiencing a swollen right testicle since I went cliff jumping with my friends in Ithaca, NY on Labor Day. I was in graduate school, my 5th year of Ithaca College’s masters degree program for physical therapy. And we were on trimesters. So I really did have finals on the following Monday and Tuesday; then, after a few days off, I was supposed to start a 6 week internship at a sports medicine clinic in Rochester. Not a good time to be diagnosed with cancer. Well, really, there never is a good time to be diagnosed with cancer. There is always something going on: a wedding, a birth, a new job. Being diagnosed with cancer just flat-out gets in the way of life.

At 22 years old, a graduate student, and a runner, cancer was definitely not on my radar. I ran cross country and track all four years in high school and college. At Ithaca, I was the designated driver; I never drank, smoked, or did drugs. To the best of my knowledge, my family had no history whatsoever of cancer. So there was no way I could ever get cancer, right?

Ironically, I vividly remember a lecture we had that fall about cancer. The nurse who gave the lecture talked about the ‘tell-tale’ signs of cancer: fatigue, rapid weight loss, night sweats, pain that won’t go away. I mentally went through and checked ‘ no’ in my head alongside each symptom that she listed. Well, it can’t be cancer, I thought to myself. So, like any other healthy, stubborn 22 year old guy, I ignored the symptoms. I kept going to class. I kept running. I kept going out with my friends. I didn’t go to the doctor.

When I finally did go to the student health center (almost 2 months after cliff jumping), I was sent immediately to the ER at the hospital. From there, I was sent upstairs for chest X-rays, bloodwork, and an ultrasound of my scrotum (not a fun thing to do on a Friday night). By the end of the evening those three words were directed at me.

And I wanted nothing to do with cancer.

When I told the doctor I had finals and an internship and can we do this over my winter break, he looked at me and very sternly said, ‘this is cancer. If you don’t take care of it, it will kill you.’

He had my attention after that.

I will admit that I was not the best patient. The doctors told me not to run for six weeks after the first surgery to remove the cancerous testicle (I started running after four). When I was confined to a hospital bed for four weeks following my second surgery, with a chest tube sticking out of my right side, I distinctly remember asking my doctors that, if they let me out so I could go back to class, I could carry the other end of the chest tube like a suitcase (it made sense in my head). They, of course, said no.

I missed over 4 weeks of my second trimester of graduate school. It was a lot of information and labs that I missed. At that point, I would have given anything to be sitting in class, taking notes, taking tests, and moving forward on my degree. Sitting in the hospital for four weeks, with tubes in your chest and having your blood drawn every four hours, makes you appreciate the mundane.

My desire to get back to class to finish my masters was one of my primary motivating factors in getting out of the hospital and to keep moving forward. My parents wanted me to leave school to go home to Connecticut to get better, but I needed the goal to finish. If I left school, I would have been admitting defeat to cancer. I was not going to lose to cancer.

During my last trimester, I made up all the work I missed in the second trimester (plus did all my current work). Although I had to put off my last summer internship because of chemotherapy, I finished all my academics on time, and I was able to walk with my classmates at our graduation ceremony.

Turns out, I received more than my degree...I received my initiation into cancer survivorship.