A fit and young Dave Shogren is a survivor up for the challenge
By Kristin Tabor
Last summer, I was watching my son’s baseball game and found myself up against a fence with my husband and a couple of other fathers.
One dad started talking about a young father we all knew named Dave Shogren.
Dave had been recently diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer in June of 2009.
There I stood, listening to these dads saying that Dave was “too fit and he was far too young at age 41 to get this disease. “
Diet & Exercise: Limit Processed Foods
Growing up, Dave was very active. He played basketball in college. Later, he focused on his career, became less active, and started gaining weight.
He determined that if he wanted to function well on a daily basis, he needed to exercise. So in his mid-twenties, he began to run on a regular basis and play team sports like basketball and hockey.
He was so active, he ate most of what he wanted, but always tried to make the healthier choice. If he was eating red meat, for example, he usually selected a filet because it had less fat.
When Dave started a family, his healthy choices stayed in tact and remain standard operating procedure in the Shogren household today.
Processed foods are kept to a minimum, healthy foods are emphasized.
“The kids know that sugary cereals and snacks are not the best choice.”
“A Percentage Guy”: Stacking the Odds with an Anti-Cancer Lifestyle
In October 2008, Dave injured his leg and had to limit activity. By June of 2009, when he was diagnosed with cancer, his knee had heeled and he started running and lifting weights.
He wanted to be in the best possible condition to be ready for surgery and treatment.
Dave is a percentage guy and felt his strive for a healthy lifestyle allowed him to be at 85% two months later while undergoing radiation.
Since being diagnosed, Dave has changed his diet significantly to avoid things such as MSG, aspartame, Splenda, sugar and red meat.
He has added more fish and chicken and greatly increased leafy greens and vegetables.
Diagnosis: “It’s Time to Figure Out How to Beat This”
In touch with his body, Dave thought something was wrong when he started to see blood in his stool for two to three days. It wasn’t constant. It wasn’t dramatic.
He questioned the severity because there was nothing heavy and then the blood went away. He determined it was a fluke and maybe something in his diet causing the issue.
When the blood reoccurred 3-4 days later, he knew he had to make a call and find out if he needed a colonoscopy. He was not going to wait months to get the answer. He knew that it might be nothing, but he also knew it could be something.
With a history of colorectal cancer on both his mother and father’s side of the family (grandmother, grandfather and two great uncles) in their late 60’s and 70’s, Dave had extra reason in his mind to get the answer. At his last physical, he’d talked with his doctor about when to have a colonoscopy and the doctor recommended the standard age of 50.
Dave went in for his first colonoscopy thinking he’d know soon if it was just hemorrhoids or cancer. His father joined him in the surgery room where Dr. Stone immediately found a cancer growth and was going to order a biopsy.
Dave was still under sedation which made him relaxed, thankfully, but he was still aware of the situation. Panic didn’t set in.
Instead, he thought to himself, “If this is what it is, it is time to figure out how to beat it.”
Dave is always up for a challenge.
Treatment: Perseverance. Steadfast Mindset.
After the biopsy came back confirming he had cancer, Dave had a handful of exams including CT scans and a rectal ultrasound. The cancer had spread to six lymph nodes which were close to the tumor.
When he went to the staging room to meet with the first surgeon, it was the same staging room section of the hospital where his wife Melissa’s mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer 15 years earlier, from which she died at age 44. “It was not a very pleasant experience for my wife, to be in that same place. She had always thought she would be the one to get cancer.” And now she was sitting there watching her husband.
Dave could see the fear in both his wife and his parents when it was determined he had stage III rectal cancer.
But, he felt blessed because it was stage III and not stage IV.
Dave had five weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, starting that first week of July. The second staging session identified surgery to remove part of the rectum as well as all of the infected lymph nodes, which he had on October 22. His doctor was very pleased with the results.
Dave will have a temporary ileostomy, to be reversed in mid-July of 2010, and 6 months of follow-up chemo. After the ileostomy is he is looking forward to a normal lifestyle after battling this awful disease for 14 months.
On Monday, November 16, after eight days in the hospital, Dave was released after a set-back with a blockage in his bowel He told me he still wanted to attend a fundraiser as a speaker two days later benefiting the Colon Cancer Coalition.
But, Dave’s mind over matter attitude didn’t win this time. He still wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday. He had to decline our invitation to attend the fundraiser so he can reach his goal: to finish and survive his cancer marathon.
“What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.”
Dave’s perseverance over these last six months is proof that he has been up for the challenge he spoke of on the first day he knew he had cancer. His mindset has not changed.
In fact, it is more steadfast.
Dave speaks openly about his rectum cancer in circles where conversations are usually centered on hockey. He is a role model to hundreds of parents.
He truly believes that what does not kill him will make him stronger!
Survivor Dave Shogren Talks Healing Foods, Focus, and the Joy of Dogs
by Get Your Rear in Gear Staff Writer
“I’m thinking of getting a dog!”
Its Sunday morning and a tall, athletic guy in a ball cap just bumped into friend and GYRIG founder Kristin Tabor at a busy neighborhood coffee house.
“Maybe a Border Terrier ,” he says.
“Something big enough that can go running with me and can go up north, that’s not going to get carried off by an eagle.”
The two launch into conversation about their latest doings, work and kids.
Abrubtly, Kristin turns mid-sentence, face animated, and says, “OMG this is Dave Shogren!”, adding in the thought-bubble above her head, “You know, Dave Shogren the cancer survivor you’re
doing a follow-up piece on!”
There was a moment of disconnect while processing the fact that the fit, clear-eyed guy standing in front of us was also the guy who’d just completed gruelling treatment for Stage III colon cancer less than a year ago.
If instead he’d been introduced as the guy preparing for his fifth consecutive Iditarod or Grandma’s half-marathon, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
He was diagnosed suddenly at age 41, as Kristin discusses in her profile of Dave in December, 2009, without major warning signs or ill health.
Today since completing treatment in July 2010, he’s living cancer free, active, doing work he loves, and from the sound of it, planning spring break outings and a surprise puppy for his kids.
Take Charge of Your Own Health
When Dave sits down to talk a few days later, dressed in an orange top and black fleece vest, he leans into the table and speaks with passion about his family, cancer prevention, and what inspires him.
From his words, it’s clear he shares similar convictions as his friend Kristin: Live life with meaning, and take charge of your own health.
In part one of our interview, he discusses his experience, attitude and the steps he’s taken in his quest to live cancer-free.
GYRIG: I’d heard you’d always been considered “the healthy one” by your friends. Were you surprised when you were diagnosed with stage three colon cancer at age 41?
DS: Yeah it was kind of a shock because I’d been somebody who’d always kept myself in good shape. During my lunch hour I rode my bike and trained for triathlons, made my own sandwiches with cucumbers and sprouts on top while a lot of the other guys were heading out to Burger King and McDonalds.
I even ate high-fiber cereals because I knew my grandfather had had colon cancer. I did what I thought I should be doing . . . but sometimes it’s out of our control. I mean I’m sure people were like, “Oh if Shogren can get diagnosed . . . . ”
So to suddenly be in a life and death struggle, major surgery for the first time in my life, twenty days in the hospital—only time before was when I had my tonsils out—it’s a little surprising.
I never thought I’d go through something like that.
But you know, from the absolute first moment I was told I had cancer, I never doubted that I would not be here.
I will do everything in my power to defeat this and watch my kids grow up.
GYRIG: How much do you feel that attitude has helped you in being cancer-free?
DS: I don’t know. I think it all helps. Everything I did revolved around defeating this disease.
Juicing fruits and vegetables, eliminating all sugar, eating whole grains and vegetables, no more crappie food of any kind.
No pop, no MSG, no artificial chemical sweeteners like Splenda and Aspartame that’s in everything from sugar-free gum, diet coke, anything low-calorie.
I went online and researched.
And before surgery, I was in the best shape I’d been in for a decade. I’d be down lifting while my son was outside shooting pucks. I didn’t lose my hair during chemo, and I didn’t look that different than I do now, maybe just a little piqued.
I also spent a lot of time visualizing the death and destruction of cancer cells in my body.
I told myself a thousand times, “I will defeat cancer.”
GYRIG: Are you doing anything differently than before in terms of cancer-prevention?
DS: I’ve always been healthy, that’s the scary thing. But yeah I’ve really stepped-up my eating. It’s the only thing I got. There are tests and periodic colonoscopies to detect cancer.
But really the only thing I’ve got going for me is to try and give my body everything it needs to fend cancer off.
I’ve read books on detoxing the body, and on juicing.
There’s a great one called How to Defeat Cancer with Nutrition that I got at Barnes and Noble, which I think everyone should read whether they’ve gone through cancer or not. It changes the way it looks at what you eat.
There are a couple cool things that stick out from that.
Like in order to provide your body with enough vitamins, nutrients and trace minerals it really needs, you couldn’t stalk all that food in your kitchen cupboards. You just can’t get everything you need from food today for a variety of reasons.
Which is why supplements in powder and liquid form (not pill forms) are recommended.
The second thing—and I still do have occasional hamburgers—but cows aren’t genetically built to be corn eaters. Cows eat grass. But they’re being fed corn-based feeds.
So what used to be beef one-hundred-fifty years ago is different than what it is now. Grasses have long roots systems that pull up trace nutrients . . . so our entire food chain, what we eat in this country is radically different than what it used to be a hundred years ago.
GYRIG: What’s your diet like now?
DS: I take a fiber mix and two different types of powdered greens every day, grind up organic flax seeds, and take a liquid forms of all-natural multivitamins to get a variety of different kinds of nutrients.
I eat a lot of vegetables, whole grains, fish and chicken, and drink filtered water from home that I take around with me, eat very small quantities of red meat, limit alcohol to some red wine, have the periodic coffee . . . and avoid sugar and the artificial stuff I mentioned earlier.
I spent a lot of time looking for these things, trying to find the best stuff available but also stuff that won’t make you bankrupt. What I take costs me per day about the same as a designer cup of fancy-spancy coffee—four bucks.
My whole family eats differently now too. The only thing that kills more kids than cancer is accidents. Just because it happened to me doesn’t mean the rest of my family is off the hook.
So they get kids-size portions of what I do . . . a little extra boost of vitamins and minerals. And I don’t feed my kids bad food. If they get French fries, it’s a treat.
I don’t ever want to revisit what I’ve been through ever again. And if that keeps cancer at bay . . . .
All I try to do is give myself extra good nutrition on top of eating healthy, and try not to turn into a freak about it. Just raise my kids, do my job.
I firmly believe you control what you can control, and the rest you just have to deal with it.
Every day you roll the dice, and I’m just trying to do things that put the odds in my favor.
In part two of our conversation, GYRIG talks with Dave about what inspires him, how his priorities have changed, and giving back.
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Dave is actively involved in the community and says he’s happy to talk with groups or anyone who might be interested in more information about his experience, nutritional program, etc. Contact Dave.
Survivor Dave Shogren: On Inspiration and Living with Meaning
by GYRIG Staff Writer »
Disciplined. Motivated. Living life with meaning.
And taking his health into his own hands.
That’s what comes across when talking with Dave Shogren, a friend of Get Your Rear in Gear and inspiration for all.
In the first part of our interview, he shares his experience on being a cancer-survivor at 43 and the steps he’s taken to live cancer-free.
In the second part of our talk, he discusses how his life has changed and what motivates him, from caring for his family, dogs, and giving back.
GYRIG: Lance Armstrong was once famously asked if he saw himself first as a cancer-survivor or or the winner of The Tour de France.
“Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father,”
he said. Does this have resonance for you, and do you take inspiration from him?
DS: I read his book It’s Not About the Bike and what he went through. His cancer was much more vicious. And the physical toll he went through, chemo that would have killed most people. The cancer was in his brain . . . not good chances. And then he went on to become a world class athlete.
So yeah, he’s inspiring. But then every cancer survivor should be looked at as an inspiration to us all, because 60% of folks are survivors, and 40% aren’t.
I still have neuropathy in my feet from chemo. I can’t feel my them and it’s uncomfortable to run, but I’ll get back to that bit by bit. My goal is to run Get Your Rear in Gear this year as opposed to walking it.
GYRIG: And your priorities have changed as well?
DS: Yeah, if you or someone close to you experience cancer battle, it changes you and your perspective. Your priorities change. It’s always in the back of my mind, “I may have a finite amount of time.”
And what used to be a situation where my kids would say, “Dad will you come and play shoots and ladders with me?”, what years ago might have been, “Hold on a sec,” now unless what I’m doing is crucial, I’ll try to drop what I’m doing and go join them. But because of my financial situation after going through a cancer battle, I have some catching up to do. I wish I didn’t have to spend time away from them.
One night my daughter had already gone to bed after I got home from work, so I made a deal with her. We’d play bouncy-basketball and she’ll show me what’s she’s learning in gym class some morning later that week, which I can do because of how my work hours are structured.
And I’m going on spring break with my family because, who knows how much longer I might have—or my wife, because she has a history of cancer in her family too.
And we have a little cabin in Wisconsin that I cherish where there’s no phone, no outside activities, where we can just be together as a family.
My main goal is to provide for my children and family, and raise two kids in a manner so that they can be successful in life. And I mean that in broad terms, because by success I mean being responsible, having good work ethics, being confident. I don’t want them to have the attitude that they can get by with the bare minimum. And I want to be around to provide for them.
GYRIG: Do you feel there are still misconceptions about cancer?
DS: People don’t know how lucky they are until they have to deal with something like this.
And I think they have this conception that it’s not going to happen to me, that it happens to somebody else, or to old people. Young people especially think that. But when I was going through chemo,
I sat next to a guy in the waiting room whose girlfriend died of colon cancer at 24, another person who was 19. I talk to people who’ve been devastated by health issues, and until you’re in that position, you under-appreciate what you have.
Generally I think people aren’t aware or are complacent about preventing cancer. Statistics from the American Cancer Society say that 75% of families are affected by cancer. Today the odds are that 50% of men will get it, and 33% of women.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I think it would be fair to say, most people who’ve had it are pleased to be alive and to have weathered the storm.
I think about it every time I step into the cold and feel my hands and the neuropathy, or when I order something to eat, what’s the healthiest things my kids can order, or what to buy at the grocery store. It enters into many decisions over the course of the day.
But you know, there are always people out there who’ve overcome these things.
And I believe ultimately it’s about how disciplined you are. I wish I were more disciplined. But you know, now I’m taking it one day at a time, and doing the best I can with cards I’ve been dealt.
GYRIG: You’re inspired by people who are disciplined?
DS: Yeah I’m a huge sports person. And most successful sports people have been extremely disciplined in their work ethic. And I’m definitely inspired by that.
People who are disciplined generally are healthier, happier, and more successful.
So I try to set concrete goals for myself.
My goals are very short term, going out and working every day and staying healthy . . . because without my health I have nothing. My kids don’t have a father; my wife doesn’t have a husband. It’s a fine line, discipline but also balance.
GYRIG: Where do you want to be in 20 years?
DS: I want the ability to get my kids through college. And at 63—about eight years before that, I’d like to be retired at 55 and still have my health and do things. I climbed a couple mountains before, Mount Adams and Mount Hood in Oregon and Washington . . . not huge mountains but still mountains.
GYRIG: You want to climb more mountains?
DS: Well, I don’t know about that . . . well, who knows!
I like to travel around and do physical things. Like when my wife and I had gone on vacation in Hawaii hiking through jungles, finding waterfalls.
I don’t want to be old and decrepit and can’t do that, you need your health.
I want to be able to do whatever I decide to attempt. Keep myself cancer-free, and get myself in shape. I may never lose neuropathy issues, but if that’s what I have to deal with, then that’s what I have to deal with.
GYRIG: And you’re thinking of getting a dog?
DS: Yeah, the loyalty and love that a dog has for you is unlike anything else. They go a long ways to adding joy and good karma, having a dog.
When I was going through cancer, a little dog came to stay with me who belonged to friend who was also going through cancer at the time.
It was so cool to have dog around. I gave him a bath because he stank a little. But the funny thing is,this dog had the ability to understand that something was not quite right, and he stayed glued to me.
You know, you leave the house, and a half-hour later you come home and the dog’s like, “OMG you’re home!” If we could all be a little more like our dogs. They just add a lot of joy.
As we wind up Dave hands over a pamphlet for a non-profit that offers an affordable cabin retreat in the Wisconsin woods for cancer patients, survivors and their families to go and get away.
“It’s a place where people can go to relax a bit and tune-out. The woman who started it wanted to do something after her husband died of cancer. Actually I just met her a few days before talking with you . . . and it’s one of those things, if it can help someone, I just wanted to pass it on,” he says. “A few of us have offered to help her get this off the ground, provide a little sweat equity,” he says smiling.
“We’re all in this together.”
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Dave is actively involved in the community and says he’s happy to talk to groups or anyone who might be interested in more information about his experience, nutritional program, etc. Contact Dave.