<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" I GUESS IT ALL STARTED WITH THE NUT, the right one. It kept getting bigger and bigger--it was huge. I mean, we&amp;#039;re talking kiwi, man. But it didn&amp;#039;t really hurt. I figured maybe I&amp;#039;d been out riding or something and I&amp;#039;d sat on it wrong, or I&amp;#039;d twisted it, or I don&amp;#039;t know what I was thinking. I was twenty-two. I was on top of the world, I was indestructible, you know? I didn&amp;#039;t want to know that there was a problem, I guess. It&amp;#039;s crazy to look back on it.  I kept ignoring it for a while, for a long time, really. And then one day, I was sitting in this chair, talking to my agent on the phone, and I had to cough. It was just a simple little cough, and some stuff came up, and it was in my mouth and I thought, Damn, this doesn&amp;#039;t taste right, so I went to the bathroom and spit it out. And it just went splat, into the sink. This big glob of blood as red as, well, it was just so red, tomato-red. And I said to my agent, &amp;quot;Lemme call you back.&amp;quot;  The doctor didn&amp;#039;t mess around. He told me immediately: testicular cancer. I just couldn&amp;#039;t believe it. I said, &amp;quot;Are you sure? Should I get a second opinion?&amp;quot; And he said, &amp;quot;Sure, you can get a second opinion. But I&amp;#039;ve scheduled surgery for seven tomorrow morning.&amp;quot; I got back in my car. I had this Porsche 911 turbo. It was an awesome car--so special, a real beast, six-speed, full-time-four-wheel drive, zero to sixty in like 3.6 seconds--but I drove real slow.By the time I got home, I was distraught. I was so depressed. I was just crying like a baby. October 2, 1996. I&amp;#039;ll never forget that date. The problem was that I was clueless. I had no clue what the illness was about, how I was gonna treat it, nothing. It was six in the evening, and I started making phone calls, surfing the Net, looking for information, asking a few of my friends to help. My mind was racing big-time. I cried more that night than I&amp;#039;ve ever cried. The next day, before surgery, they did a CAT scan. They saw the cancer in the lungs, in the abdomen, in the testicle. And then they found two new spots in the brain. That upset people a lot. My mom, my girlfriend. But I was really sort of relieved. At that point, I knew that it was as bad as it could get; it wasn&amp;#039;t getting any worse, you know what I mean? The life expectancy was either complete cure or, if it went the other way, I might have lived a year, but it wouldn&amp;#039;t have been a pleasant year, believe me. If this had been fifty years ago, I wouldn&amp;#039;t have lived three months. The kind of testicular cancer I had--choriocarcinoma--is the most aggressive form there is.I took the attitude that, look, I&amp;#039;m gonna give it my best. I&amp;#039;m gonna find the best doctors and I&amp;#039;m gonna turn it over to them, and if I live, that&amp;#039;s great; if I don&amp;#039;t, well, it&amp;#039;s just like a big race or a big competition--you have to go in with everything and try to win. If it doesn&amp;#039;t work out, at least you can say you did everything you could.  I didn&amp;#039;t care too much about staying in shape. But I did start riding again as soon as I could, because that&amp;#039;s what I like to do, that&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;ve always done, just going out with friends and being outdoors and riding my bike. Basically, besides doing chemo, I just focused on my illness. I learned to read a chest X ray as well as any doctor. I learned to read the blood work. I knew what they were looking for. I knew what they wanted to see to be assured I was getting better. I followed everything. My eyes were on the prize. The prize was my own future. It was the toughest battle of my life, and I knew it, but I&amp;#039;d been trained well for just sort of digging in and going for it. With racing, it&amp;#039;s a grind. The races are long, the days are long, some of the events are long, the season is long. To be in Europe and to do races, especially in the springtime when it&amp;#039;s snowing and it&amp;#039;s 33 degrees and you&amp;#039;re out there for six hours, going 160 miles--that&amp;#039;s tough, that&amp;#039;s hard. It&amp;#039;s a hard sport, racing. You have to give it all you&amp;#039;re worth if you&amp;#039;re gonna win. So I was prepared in that sense, though this was much harder. Fighting cancer was different from racing. It was just miserable. I&amp;#039;ve felt misery before, but this was a different misery, the kind of misery you can never imagine unless you&amp;#039;re there, fighting for your life. I started training again in January 1997. I don&amp;#039;t think anybody thought I could come back. They just said, &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s done--we&amp;#039;ll move on without him.&amp;quot; My old team, Cofidif, was under contract to pay me a lot of money, $1.2 million, and they really didn&amp;#039;t want to pay, so they got out of that. Suddenly, I was unemployed. One minute, you&amp;#039;re one of the top riders in the world. The next minute, you&amp;#039;re nothing. At first I was real surprised. I&amp;#039;d thought there would be some value in just giving the kid a shot. I almost thought there would be a sort of bidding war. I thought people would be jostling for the chance to be the good guys, to help with the comeback. But there were no good guys. Nobody wanted me. Nobody. I was so surprised. I don&amp;#039;t know why, though. Cycling is so much chew-&amp;#039;em-up-spit-&amp;#039;em-out, rider du jour--anybody can be replaced. Anybody. They do it all the time. The best of all time--LeMond, Indurain--all of them get replaced. Overnight. So nobody was really out to give the cancer kid a break. When I went to the U. S. Postal Service team, man, I signed for $200,000. It was a real pay cut. I called it my &amp;quot;million-dollar cancer tax.&amp;quot; I just accepted it. I said, Okay, this is the way these guys are gonna play, huh? I&amp;#039;ll just start back at the bottom. I&amp;#039;ll do it for a while. I&amp;#039;ll see. I sold my big-ass expensive car. The only thing I really kept was the house. I had enough money if I was smart and conservative. I was more worried about getting a shot. I wanted to prove it could be done. I wanted to prove that I wasn&amp;#039;t washed up. In my mind, 1999 was going to be my year. I guess you can say it was. Things went pretty smooth in the Tour de France. Despite all the pressure from the media, the blood-doping stuff, the pressure from some opponents, I was riding well. I felt good. When you&amp;#039;re on top of your game, things just kind of click. It was smooth. Incredibly smooth. From the beginning of the race, it was clear: I was going to be the winner. Everything was perfect.I was riding great, the team was riding great, we were motivated, we had a great staff. I was never in crisis mode. It was an unbelievable feeling. Almost like it was preordained. I never said &amp;quot;I told you so&amp;quot; out loud. I said it privately. I said it to myself. But I didn&amp;#039;t go out there trying to jam it in anyone&amp;#039;s face. And during the tour, I had a press conference every day. I didn&amp;#039;t get up there and rip on people and say, &amp;quot;Look at these idiots.&amp;quot; Everybody in the pressroom knew who it was. I didn&amp;#039;t need to name any names. But I don&amp;#039;t think these guys give a shit. I swear to God. They don&amp;#039;t care. I don&amp;#039;t think they ever looked at the situation and said, &amp;quot;Damn, we shoulda kept that kid on.&amp;quot; I think they still feel like they did the right thing. But they&amp;#039;re not the brightest candles on the cake, either. They&amp;#039;re Euro corporations. They&amp;#039;re Euro: It&amp;#039;s just different over there. If you want to know the real truth, I firmly believe that I&amp;#039;ll be better in 2000 than I was this year. I firmly believe that. I mean, with the illness and all the stuff with it, the chemotherapy, just the anesthesia from surgery alone--it takes twelve to eighteen months to fully get over that. Serious anesthesia will knock you back for a year. So if I continue this curve of recovery and rebuilding and restrengthening, next year is bound to be killer. I still have to work hard. I still have to want to do well. But, shit--I like that part. I love training, I love going out there and riding my bike. That&amp;#039;s the genesis of everything, man, going out there and riding my bike. For the rest of list, make sure to read Esquire&amp;#039;s 175 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4734/175-cheat-death-1299/>