A Sitting Duck (Part 2) - by Jude Meche

Before delving into my recovery from cancer, I think it’s important to spend a little while
thinking about how I got cancer in the first place. What I wasn’t doing before my
diagnosis is directly related to what I had to start doing afterward.

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Having learned how to sit and stay, I put those skills into practice after high school. I
enrolled in college and majored in English—a major that involved incredible amounts of
sitting and reading. I excelled in college, largely because I didn’t do very much other than read. It’s a super-power in college. It’s even necessary. But I could have—should have—balanced that
time with more active pursuits. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. At the time, I loved academia. The intellectual stimulation was a rush, and it was something that I was truly good at. As a result, I decided that I wanted to make this a permanent part of my life. I applied to graduate school for a Master’s degree and then, after that, a Ph.D. All in all, that added up to about 15 years of parsing books, all while sitting.
Through my 20’s, the repercussions of all this sitting were light—at least seemingly so. I
had the benefit of a rip-roaring metabolism that kept me thin. I had no apparent health
problems. So, I still didn’t recognize the problems with my sedentary profession or
lifestyle. I had moved in a direction diametrically opposed to the one that those high school
coaches made clear was wrong for me, and I was doing very well as a budding scholar.

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The first inkling of trouble occurred after I landed my first academic job. During one of those
increasingly rare corporate gestures of goodwill toward employees, my university put on
a health fair with various screenings. It was free. It was during work hours. Everyone
was doing it, so even though I thought of myself as perfectly healthy, I went along with
my colleagues.

There were bone density tests, which I rocked. Balance tests which I also passed
easily. But then there was the bloodwork. Those numbers were ugly. And they were
just the beginning.

Now firmly in my 30’s, I was also starting to put on weight, especially in my midsection.
For a while, I wore my extra weight well. I had a muscular build, and that disguised how
much fat was gathering around my middle.

Eventually, though, there was no disguising the fact that I was overweight. In fact, I was
nudging toward a BMI of 30—the official marker of obesity. My doctor didn’t mince words. I needed to lose weight. He gave me a few recommendations—low-fat meals, portion control, nothing to eat after 7 pm. I began the hard work of losing weight, but I didn’t do a good job of it. I focused solely on the
number on the scale. I starved myself and started to see the number on the scale
steadily drop.

It felt like I had struck gold, but it was fool’s gold. I wasn’t exercising, save for some
light walking that I added to my day. So, the numbers on the scale were dropping faster
than the circumference of my waist. I was becoming skinny fat. Sadly, I received plaudits for my erroneous ways. My doctor’s office had only a simple scale, and the number went down, so the assumption was that I was heading in the
right direction.

The truth was that I was losing more muscle than fat. I could have used that muscle.
Increasing numbers of studies show that muscle mass is directly correlated to health.
Individuals with higher grip strength tend to benefit from added years—not only that, but
added healthy years. More importantly for me in my middle age, muscle serves as a buffer against insulin resistance, which explained why my middle remained substantial while my weight was
dropping. These were also stressful times: a new baby, the death of my father, and then a divorce
all marked my 30’s. Not only was I bathing in a pool of poorly-used insulin; I was also
drowning in a swimming pool of cortisol.

After a few years of this, I started having strange physical symptoms. The smallest sip
of alcohol would result in agonizing pain in my chest, neck, and shoulders.
A referral and trip to the cardiologist showed nothing of note. My heart was healthy and
there was no sign of arrythmias that could lead to a heart attack or stroke.
The advice I received sounded like the old vaudeville joke where the patient says,
“Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this,” and the doctor replies “Then, don’t move
your arm like that.” In my case, the reply was don’t drink. No investigation into why even the smallest sip of alcohol set my upper body on fire. About a year later, I developed a cough. My GP sent me for an x-ray. The results were concerning. There was a strange mass in my mediastinum, close to my heart.

In rapid sequence, I was sent for a CT scan which showed the same mass, and then an
excruciating biopsy, where a needle was threaded underneath my sternum to draw a
sample from the mass. I can still remember watching the needle sticking out of my
chest and seeing it twitch with every beat of my heart.

The biopsy told the tale: Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The alcohol intolerance was a rare side
effect of the cancer. Only 10% of sufferers have that symptom. It would have been a
useful early warning sign if anyone had been able to recognize it.
But by the time we discovered the cause of my alcohol-induced pains and cough, a
substantial mass had grown in my chest. While no one knows the exact cause of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I groomed myself for 46 years for this. I got what I was asking for: cancer.

Jude has a PhD in English and decades as a college professor.

His personal training credentials are:

• Certified Personal Trainer, American Council on Exercise, Certification Number: N1286288.  1 September 2022.
• Adult and Pediatric CPR and AED Certification, ResusciTech, Certificate Number RT062424A972A.  Expires 24 June 2026.
• Kettlebell Advanced Specialist, Living.Fit, Certification Number: 2289274630.  17 October 2022.
• MMA Conditioning Specialist, National Academy of Sports Medicine, Certification Number: 1231119038.  21 October 2023.

Jude's training business is called Two Fitness Nerds, and his email  is: [email protected].