Show Notes

•  The decision to compete in an Ironman
• 2.4 / 112 / 26.2
• The day life everything changed
• The road to recovery, and The Road to Ironman
• Another speed bump
• The power of a positive attitude
• “You can beat anything. I’m proof that it can be okay.”

The Road To Ironman

Documentary – https://vimeo.com/245183593

Summary

In 2009, Mike Orris and six friends were training for the Ironman Triathlon, which was to take place in August of that year in Louisville, Kentucky. But during the Memorial Day weekend in 2009, their lives would take a horrific turn that nearly derailed all their dreams.

Full Transcript

Brian:

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques, and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Hi everyone, my guest today is Michael Orris. If Mike’s name isn’t familiar, I assure you after today’s show, you’ll never forget him. Mike grew up in Southeastern Michigan, where he was raised with a strong, Midwestern value-based family, a drive to succeed and the gift of appreciating humor in everyday life. Mike was awarded a scholarship to swim for his beloved Michigan State University Spartan swim team. He succeeded both in the pool and in the classroom and graduated in 1998 with a degree in packaging engineering. His education at MSU launched him into a rising career as a business developer and entrepreneur. Mike married his wife, Jennifer, in 2001 and they began raising a family that would include three children. But during the Memorial Day weekend in 2009, their lives would take a horrific turn-one that nearly derailed all their dreams. Thanks so much for being on the show, Mike.

Mike:

Thanks, Brian. I appreciate you having me on.

Brian:

Mike, you and six others were training in 2009 for the Ironman Triathlon, which was to take place in August of that year in Louisville, Kentucky. You’re obviously a strong swimmer having competed in a D1 swim program at Michigan State University, so you had the swimming part down. But I’m just curious, what inspired you to sign up for a triathlon and who was this group that you’re training with?

Mike:

Like you said, I swam all through my life growing up and going on to Michigan State and swimming there-really enjoyed it. And as soon as it was over, I enjoyed not doing anything like that. It was nice, just kick back and relax and got married, started having kids and noticed that I was kind of blah-lethargic and wanted to get back into some kind of competition and training. So, I have an older brother that was in triathlons and had done an Ironman and I drove out to watch him. In the middle of the night I got up to drive. He was doing Ironman Wisconsin, and I was super excited for him. I went to bed and I was going to get up in the morning and drive most of the day to get there, to watch him and I just couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. So got in my car, drove all night, got to Madison and watched my brother compete. And I thought, man, this is phenomenal. I mean, the energy in these Ironman competitions is just off the charts. You can’t even believe the power that comes from all the fans, and the athletes, and everything that goes along with it. So after that, after watching him, I had that as a bucket list thing that, man, I think I would really love to experience that. You’re watching guys that-it goes swim, bike, run-and you see the guys come out of the lake for the swim and you think there is no way this guy is going to make it the rest of the day. And you look nine hours later and you see the guy running down with a smile on his face and you think, Oh my gosh! And it’s really just hours and hours and hours of training. But the energy that you pull from the fans and the crowd there is just remarkable. I try to get anybody that has the opportunity to go watch one of those races, just go and watch it. You will not be disappointed. It’s fantastic.

So anyway, I was discussing it with some other friends that had done one or two Ironmans, and I said, you know what? I really think I would like to do that. And they said, really? And I said, yeah, you know, I think so. I want to give it a whirl. So I got online and you can sign up 365 days in advance. As soon as the race is over, the following day at noon, you can sign up. And they sell out super fast because a lot of people try to get in there. So basically I signed up and then I talked to everyone in the group to go and do it with me. So there was a group of six of us that were going to train together and go through the trials and tribulations of training for an Ironman and still being a father and still being a husband and having a successful career and just trying to blend it all together in the perfect mix. And that’s what we tried to do to get started.

Brian:

Well the way you’re describing the crowd, I can sort of relate to. I’ve run a marathon, I’ve run several half marathons and so I understand that. A triathlon, and especially an Ironman triathlon, is a whole different thing. And just in case people don’t realize it…you start out, as you mentioned, Mike, with the swim-the 2.4 mile swim-which maybe for you is easy because you were a swimmer, but not necessarily. There are sprinters who don’t run four forties, even let alone a mile or a half marathon or a marathon. But then after you come out of the water, you jump on a bike and you ride 112 miles. And if all of that isn’t enough-if that’s not enough excitement for you, enough energy or electric energy from the crowd, then you get out and you run a marathon, right? A full marathon, 26.2 miles.

Mike:

Yeah. It’s a heck of a day.

Brian:

It’s amazing. And I have to tell you, it’s just…it strikes me as just a little crazy. But it’s interesting to me how life is sometimes. And I told you before we started the interview that about 45 minutes ago, I was driving and I was held up, traffic got backed up. And I had plenty of time to arrive to the interview on time. And so I wasn’t super concerned, but then it started taking a little bit longer, a little bit longer. And I started to hear sirens and saw an ambulance and then a fire truck and then a police car. And when I got up to what was causing this backup, I realized that it was a single car accident and a car had bounced off the concrete median barrier. And the car was pretty wrecked. And thankfully that person is okay, but what it caused me to think about Mike-and we’ll talk about the irony and our listeners will understand the irony in just a minute-but what I thought about was not only you and our interview and your story, but I thought about how quickly life can change. And so you can be going along, driving along, riding along, running along, one moment and everything in life is going great. And then it changes. Mike, take us back to that sunny day in May of 2009. It’s Memorial Day weekend, you’re basically about three months out from race day. Everything’s going well, presumably your training is going fine. You jump on your bike and you want to get some additional miles in and what happened next?

Mike:

So that’s a great lead up to it. So you have this race and you have this training schedule. You really can’t call in, you can’t dial in an Ironman. You’ve got to do all the miles to get ready for it. So we had-my wife and I, Jen-we had a good friends of ours from college that we hadn’t seen in probably close to a year. And they reached out to us and said, hey, do you guys want to come out? And we’ll barbecue. We’ll watch the Tigers game and just catch up, it’s been a while, bring the kids. They have kids the same age as my kids. So Jen said, you know what? It would be great. She came to me and said, hey, what do you think, Mike, can we go out there? You think we can do it? And I said, we can do it, but I’ve got to get these miles in. I’ve got a ride so many miles this weekend. And she said, is there any chance that you might be able to ride out there? And I went, Oh, I think, yeah, I think I could probably come up with a route. So did a route, knew that I just needed to get into downtown Pontiac there and then one of the roads coming out of Pontiac turned right into 24 out there-Lapeer Road. So got on my bike, told them leave about an hour, hour and 15 minutes after me. And we’d get there just about the same time. And we would barbecue and watch the Tigers and maybe have a beer or two. Maybe I would ride the bike home, or maybe just throw it in the back of the Expedition and take the easy way home. So I was out and I remember most of the route all the way until I get into downtown Pontiac, right at Wide Track there. And I pulled my phone out of the back of my jersey and I was looking at the map because I wasn’t sure exactly what road I needed to take that would blend me into 24. So as I’m sitting there, these guys are driving by in these beautiful cars. They’re just decked out to the nines and they’re shouting out the window at me because I’m dressed like a biker, right? I’ve got the whole kit on and they’re shouting at me to get off…get outta here, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not on the road. And I’m thinking my gosh, if anybody knew what this stupid carbon fiber bike was worth, I probably…I’d be lucky…I need to get out of Pontiac now. So I remember putting my phone back in the back of my jersey and that is the last memory I have. So I continued on riding. I made it about three miles more up the road on 24. I was hit from behind by a 69 year old gentleman driving a van 55 miles an hour. He hit me from behind from the left-hand side. Obviously I sustained a lot of injuries from that. The worst part of this entire story, Brian, is my family is getting off of I-75, they’re at the Palace. And my kids are young-they’re six, four and two years old. And they’re looking for…Jen says, hey, keep your eyes peeled, guys, this is the road daddy’s going to be on. We’re gonna see daddy. We’ll probably see him. We’re driving by. So they’re looking, they’re looking and it’s all backed up-similar to your story today. And the kids are like, Oh, what’s going on? And Jen says, Oh, it’s a traffic accident. I can see, it’s a traffic accident up the road, we’ll get along, we’ll get around it and we’ll be on our way. So they got within about 300 yards from me and my oldest daughter, who’s six at the time says, that’s not a car accident, mom, that’s a bike accident, that’s dad. So I’ve got my six, four, and two year old and my wife seeing me laying in the road, my bike is who knows where, a bunch of people pulled over, they’re at my side, they’re trying to make sure I’m okay. I say sometimes worse luck kicks in. Two cars back from the guy who hit me was a doctor, he was right at my side, stabilizing my head, making sure I’m all right. They’re calling 911. My wife pulls over, jumps out of the car. There’s a woman standing there and she says, that’s my husband, please stay with my kids. So Jen came up to my side and I had just kind of come to, and I was very, very combative, which I guess is very common with a traumatic brain injury, eyes were closed. The gentle way to say it was very combative to the people around me that were trying to hold me down. And Jen got to my side and she put her hand on my shoulder and she said, Mike, it’s Jen, you were in an accident. You’re okay. And I just, right then, just relaxed. And that started my quest to try to recover from this thing.

Brian:

That’s an unbelievable story. And the fact that your family ended up actually seeing you, I mean, from a timing standpoint, what’s the chance of that? What’s the likelihood of that?

Mike:

Right? Brian, I wonder if that was the first step of extra strength for me, who knows what would have happened? I was…the left side of my body was destroyed. My brain lobes were sheered from each other. I had shattered collarbone, shattered shoulder blade, scapula, ribs. My ear was just about sliced off, like, I was in a bad place. And I wonder if it wasn’t my wife’s hand on my shoulder telling me, hey, we’re here, you’re going to be okay, that again, what I say, worse luck kicked in and kind of helped me along the way.

Brian:

Well if that’s the case, then it’s a great thing that she was there, obviously. Let’s talk a little more about your injuries and about your rehabilitation. So you mentioned your broken clavicle, ear damage, shattered sinus cavity, broken ribs, and probably most significantly, your traumatic brain injury. And you spent the next six months in recovery and rehabilitation that involved really an unimaginable struggle to do simple things like recognize your family members, learn to read again, and really just literally trying to put your life back together. What was that like for you and what was that like for your family?

Mike:

Well, it was…it was tough. It was tough for everybody involved. I was…I basically was a clean slate. I was in Pontiac for, I think, nine days. I was in a coma for eight days. They brought me out of the coma and stabilized me. And then I went to St. Joe’s in Ann Arbor for recovery. I was in the hospital there for a couple of months. I didn’t have any idea, really, who I was, that I was married, that I had kids. That was one of the strongest kind of punches to the gut-I remember the nurses they would come in-and there is a term for the tests that they come in and ask you every single day, the same questions to see what you’re able to answer correctly. And I remember the nurse coming in and she said, Oh, hey Mike, good morning. And Jen was sitting next to me and I was holding her hand and she’s just a doll. And I’m sitting there holding her hand, talking to her and the nurse comes in and she says, Hey, good morning, Mike, are you married? And I go, uh, and I looked at Jen and I go, I hope so. Yeah, I think so.

Brian:

Jen’s saying he better get this one right.

Mike:

Yeah, then the next question was, do you have any kids? And I didn’t know. And Jen, said, Oh yeah, Mike, you know, Cullen, Lilly, and Charlotte. And I…Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have kids. Yeah. So it was this struggle to relearn. It was all there, but I just had to connect the dots still. So it took what I felt like was forever. What the doctors were telling me and my family, and Jen and the kids, is this recovery is miraculous. This guy, he is pulling stuff together super, super fast, way faster than we expected. I mean, this is years down the road, not months down the road. So one of the things that was really challenging for me, Brian, was I had this miraculous recovery. And everybody’s like, this is phenomenal. The hard part for me with it was I could remember how I used to be. So every time I would get challenged in a test and fail at it, it would drive me crazy in my head because I knew I should be able to…I know I can do this. Let’s do it again. Well, that’s not how the test works. Come on, let’s do it, give me the…I can do it. And it was, I mean, Brian, we were talking about repeat after me:  three. Three. Three nine. Three nine. Three nine seven…and it started there and just grew and grew fast. I was very, very fortunate that I was able to recover so quickly. I was in the hospital for a couple of months and they came in and discussed with Jen what the next steps were. They said, you have three little kids, you basically got a fourth little kid here. We would suggest that you go to a live-in therapy center. Mike will live there. He’ll first live in a group home. And he will have counselors there and therapists there that will help. And they’ll get him to the point where he’s remembering to shower on his own, he’s able to feed himself. And then from there, we’ll get him into an apartment and he’ll be either on his own or with a partner in the apartment. And Jen reached out to the doctors and the staff at the hospital and said, we’re all new to this obviously, but we think Mike’s solid. I don’t think he’s going to do well in a group home just with outside stimulation. And just some of the things that I was dealing with, that would cause me grief. So they met about it and they agreed. And I was in the, I don’t know how many, like 24 years in service, I was the first patient that they allowed to start alone in an apartment. And they just basically saw my recovery and said, okay, we’ll give it a whirl. If it doesn’t work out though, he’s got to be able to go back. And they said that that’s fine, that’s great. So I went in and started rehab and I was there for two and a half months. And it was just grueling processes every day. They had physical therapy that I was doing and a lot of cognitive therapy. And it’s basically like brain teasers-all day. I mean, just hanging you up and having you work your way through it, which is not a lot of fun.

I mean, you want to recover, you want to get through it and that was the only way through it. And it was wonderful. I still keep in touch with the therapists there. I actually reached out to the gentleman that hit me. I had received all of the 911 calls and all the contact information of the people that called in 911. So I looked up all these people and I called them all. And this was a year and a half, I think, after the accident, I was driving out 275 and I pulled over in a rest stop. And I got out the list of numbers and I just went down the list, started with the guy who hit me and got his voicemail and just said, Hey, I want to apologize. It’s Mike, you know, the guy that was in the accident with you here a year and a half ago, I’m really sorry that happened. There’s no hard feelings. There’s no lawsuits. There’s nothing. I just want to let you know I’m okay. I made it. I’m good. So call me back if you’d like to, but just wanted to let you know that I survived. So I went through the list and there were maybe three people that I was able to talk with that picked up the phone. And I felt like I made a huge difference. They said, Mike, we thought about you. We thought of you, about you, every single day since that accident. And we’re so glad to hear you’re doing well. So I was really happy that I was able to bring some positivity into their lives after, to no fault of my own, really bringing such negativity into their world. So it was really kind of an exciting, enlightening experience to be able to reach back out to them. And like I said, I still am friends with my therapist from Willowbrook now, just great people.

Brian:

I’m sure that was wonderful for the people you able to connect with, not just in terms of sending a positive message and giving them relief, but also giving them closure. Because I’m guessing there were a lot of prayers, there were a lot of thoughts. And so to be able to hear from you, especially the person who hit you-and we’ll talk a little bit about the documentary in a minute-but I listened to the 911 call and put myself in that place as people who listened to calls like that do, and you can’t possibly imagine what that feeling is like, but it was very clear from that gentleman’s voice that he was obviously distraught and concerned. And so, again, to be able to come back around, first of all, that you were okay, and that you were in a position to be able to do that, but secondly, that you reached out and were able to give him some closure, I’m sure was a tremendous relief for him.

Mike:

I hope it was. Yeah, I’m sure it was.

Brian:

Let’s go back to the actual race. So the Ironman in Louisville, in August 2009, your accident occurred about three months before that. And you had been training with six other people. So they hear about your accident and they’re friends and obviously were concerned and I’m sure visited you and thought about you and prayed for you and supported Jen and your family however they could. And on the other hand, they were 90 days from an Ironman triathlon. And I, again, have some sense of what it’s like when you’re at that point in the training and they had to keep going. So they had to train the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, maybe literally the day they heard about you, but if not, they didn’t have the luxury of taking a week or a couple of weeks or a month off. They had to train, right? What was that like for them?

Mike:

What a great question. They…it’s just a great group of people. We were friends before we did business together. And then we obviously became a lot closer just from training. We would train together, we’d get off work and call each other-are you riding? You want to go for a ride? And we would swing by each other’s houses and pick up and go and ride, or go for a run, or go for a swim together. So one of the crew being in the hospital, and they weren’t sure I was going to live, they really didn’t know. I was in the coma-they didn’t know. They said, we’re keeping him exactly the way he needs to be and we monitor his brain pressure. And all these guys, these friends of mine that I was training with, are hearing this. Jen would give updates on Care Pages every day or two to let people know, but they decided, listen, we’re going to keep training. Mike would not want us to not do this race because he can’t do it. As a matter of fact, Mike would be pissed if we did not do this race because Mike can’t do this race. So they continued on and did the training. And I’m sure a little bit more careful on the bike, and got through to race day. And it was really actually pretty cool in the documentary. You can see, they took…when you’re doing a triathlon, they write on your back calf, your age. So when you’re out on the bike and you’re out on the run, you can see people and you see they’re in your age bracket. So like, you want to beat them, right? Or if you’re like me, I can’t run like you, Brian, so when I’m running and a woman runs by and I look at her calf and she’s 73 years old, I’m like, aw, man, I don’t need to see that! Anyway, they write ages. And on the other calf, they put a big capital M and an O to kind of signify that I was with them on that race, so, really cool. All of them did the race, they all completed it. And they basically said all the pain that this thing…and you talked about the distances, there is a fair amount of pain that goes into your body that day. And they said, listen, if for all the pain that Mike is going through right now, we can get through this pain in the day and they all did it and they all finished it. And it’s not an easy task. There are a lot of people that start in Ironman and just don’t finish it. Their body breaks down, mentally they break down, they can’t get through it and they stop. And it was fantastic. These guys continued through and finished the race when I couldn’t, and it was fantastic. I love to hear that.

It’s funny-to fall back a little bit-when I was in the hospital, I kept telling Jen, I have something…I have something I’m supposed to be doing. And she’s like, Oh my God, he’s going to remember that he’s supposed to do this Ironman. And I was very firm in my belief that I had to do it. Like, I’m doing this and there’s nobody who’s going to stop me. And I was very, very stubborn. So eventually I came around to the Ironman and somebody, I think…the people that I was training with came to visit me and they tell me-they were out in the hospital hallway-they were terrified to go in because they didn’t know who they were going to see. Would I even know who they were? What would they even talk to me about? They had to watch what they said because they didn’t want me to get concerned or worried, or like, I need to do this race, what’s going on? I already paid for this race, I’m doing it, type of deal. And when they came in, it was just immediate. I would, Hey Jim, Hey Tom, how are you guys doing? Like, everything was there, it just took a while for it to come back. So Jen probably said “Jim and Tom” 35 times, right before they got there to program it into my head that like, Hey, you got friends coming over. It was a horrible experience and it was a fantastic experience climbing out of it. And I use that. I try to use that going forward to help people as they’re diving into hard times in their lives.

Brian:

Let’s talk about the movie, your story. And I didn’t realize-I knew about the documentary-what I didn’t realize is that the filming of that actually started as you were deciding to do it. And then from the very beginning of the training, and then it obviously took a turn at some point in the film. Talk about how The Road To Ironman came about.

Mike:

There was a gentleman I was training with, Tom Chaney, and he’s a filmmaker, has a number of films under his belt already. And when we had all signed up and I talked all these guys into doing it, Tom had already done one the year before, and I got him to do this one with me. And he said, Hey, you know what, I’m going to make a movie. And it’s going to be something that you can show your kids or your grandkids someday-Hey, dad’s an Ironman, here’s a movie of us training and ragging each other. It’s a bunch of friends. You’re constantly telling the other guy that you’re working harder and going faster than he is, you’re kind of busting their chops through the entire thing. So it was a lot of that. Then our training and our injuries and with work and with family and everything else and then obviously the accident happened. The movie was going to be called The Road To Ironman, and it was going to be the story of us on our road to become Ironmen. And then obviously, May 30th, 2009 my accident happened and the whole outlook on that road to Ironman changed-where there was a fork in the road. The rest of the team went on to train and become Ironman-that was their road to Ironman. And my road to Ironman was really survival. I needed to survive. I had a wife, I had three kids. I was not the type of person that was going to accept that this is what happened and I’m just going to be the guy at the house anymore. I have to get better. I need to…my road to Ironman is, I have to get back to normal. So that’s what I did. I never stopped. I continued on and I completed my fork in the road as far as the road to Ironman goes, to get back to a full recovery. And it took years. It wasn’t something that took a year or six months and I was good to go. There were a lot of parts of my life that I really had to realign, from work-I owned a business that I lost with the accident. I had a career that I was trying to build and everything got knocked back to zero. So I had to live, I had to get back to a successful career. I had to be a good father, be a good son, be a good friend, be a good brother. It was a tough, tough struggle to get back but I was able to do it.

People ask me, I remember, like therapists asked me and even doctors and neurologists, what do you think it is that allowed you to get here and get here so quickly? What is your strength? And I used to have a swim coach that would tell me to pace myself. And he was Dave Seagraves-phenomenal, phenomenal, man-that I swam with from when I was six years old until I went to college. And he would tell me, Michael, pace yourself, pace yourself. And it wasn’t rationing my energy. It was an acronym for Positive Attitudes Change Everything.

And I think that this entire ordeal that I went through, my positive attitude really just helped me get through it. It’s amazing to me, how much a positive attitude can change everything-your outlook, everybody around you’s outlook. And it spreads like weeds. If you are positive, you bring other people along with you in that positive light. And I really think that that’s what it was. I would be in therapies and they would tell me things that, well you won’t be able to do that yet, that will take some time. And I can remember-I don’t know if it was the competitiveness or what inside-but I remember thinking it’s not going to take me time, I can do that. I would hammer through and learn it and get these things down in days. I would ask them for homework. I would go back to my apartment and sit at my table and do all these homework things, just trying to get my brain back because I wanted to get home. I didn’t belong in therapy. I had three kids and a wife at home and I wanted to get home. So I would just keep a positive attitude and keep working at it. And it got me to where I am now.

Brian:

The positive attitude obviously had an impact. And for whatever reason, you made progress at a rate that maybe it was unprecedented, but that wasn’t going to be your final challenge health-wise. About a year after that, you discovered that you had bladder cancer. And I’m just going to say right off the bat that it’s in remission now. And I know you’re okay. And I’m thankful for that, but you were thrown for a loop yet again in your life. Talk about that. And how did your family manage through that obstacle?

Mike:

That was a bit of a speed bump, which is kind of a nickname for myself I use on occasion, rightfully so. I was going out to Grand Rapids and I’d used the restroom and it just looked like Coca-Cola. And I was like, Oh, no, like that’s blood, that’s blood in my urine. So after the accident, everything raises alarm flags, like, ah, what is giving up on me now? Right? I had to get out to Grand Rapids. I had a meeting I couldn’t miss, it was a big meeting-pounding water like crazy the whole drive there and thinking maybe it’s an infection or something like that. Call my doctor, got an appointment for that afternoon. So I went out to Grand Rapids, have my meeting, came back in, they checked my urine said there’s blood in your urine so here’s the steps, this is what you have to do. So I kind of went through the steps. I go in for a CT, which I had been through many, many of those previously and they found a mass in my bladder. So they said, well, the next step for this is we’re going to do a cystoscope. We’re going to go in, we’re going to look at it. It might just be something that was there. It might be nothing. It might’ve been a shadow. It might’ve been some you don’t even have to worry about-cystoscope will tell us.

A cystoscope is really a unique experience where you get to look at the inside of your body on a 24 inch high-def monitor right next to you. So they basically put a camera in my bladder and they look around at all the different corners and everything of the bladder and they spin it around, they’re just looking-for lack of a better term-like a cauliflower, just swinging around in my bladder. And the doctor goes, Yep, that’s cancer. And I’m like, you could have Nerf tossed that one into me a little bit, doc, you know? So he says, listen, aside from skin cancer, this is like the best cancer you can have-like skin cancer, you take it off. We catch it early, we take it off. You’re fine. Bladder cancer is the same way. And this is very early. This is probably a year and a half worth of growth. Right back to my accident, kind of doing some research on it-this bladder cancer is for men in their seventies that have been chain smokers for 30 years, 40 years. Not me. What they figure triggered it was the prolonged catheterization for when I was in the hospital after the accident that that created an inflammation in there that grew.

So diagnosed with cancer. And they said, if you want to have a second opinion, no problem. This is extremely slow growing. I said, I’m the second opinion, I saw it. I was looking at the monitor-let’s call it. Both of us saw it, let’s get this out. So they said, well you don’t have to book an appointment right now, it’s surgery, have it taken out. And I said, can you do it right now? Like, this is…we’re all here. Let’s just get this thing out. So the doctor was able to, at the end of the week, get me in for surgery, remove it. And then I went in for checks for 10 years to make sure that it didn’t come back. And a couple of years ago I got the ten-year clearance that I’m cured. So no need to go back in. I’m certainly welcome to go back in if I want to have anything checked and they will do that, but I’m in the clear. I didn’t tell my kids, which was tough, but they were young and I did not want them to have to deal with dad and his issue again. And that’s a horrible way to put it. I didn’t want them to worry-at all. Jen knew, my family knew-my parents, my brother. After it was out and I would go in for checks and everything was clear, I still…I never told them. And then the way that my oldest daughter and my son found out was they had asked me to watch The Road To Ironman, the documentary about the race. And I never really wanted to show it to them because there’s videos of me in the hospital in really rough shape. And at the very end of it, Tom has up in text-and I don’t recall the exact text-but basically that year and a half, two years later, Mike Orris was diagnosed with cancer and he beat that too. And then it fades out. And I can remember when I was watching it with my kids, my youngest one didn’t see it, I was trying to stop it. And I had it up and I was streaming and I’m trying to stop it. And they’re like, dad, it’s not done yet. And I’m like, well, it’s time. So they saw it and they read it. And they gave me the wide open, like, Oh my God. And I said, yeah, but watch. And then it fades in, after it says Mike was diagnosed with cancer, then the letters fade in, and it said and he beat that too. And that was like fantastic to be able to show the kids that you can do it. Listen guys, you can beat anything. And I tell them life isn’t easy, there are things that happen and it is tough. You have to be tough and you can be tough and you can do and overcome anything you need to. I just proved it twice. I hope I’m done. I’m kind of tapping out, like, I think two times is good. Maybe the third is a charm, I don’t know, but again, I try to use it as a learning experience, to teach them…in a teachable moment to show the kids that you can overcome crippling weight on your shoulders with things that occur and come through it and come through it better. That’s what I’ve done with this. I’ve really tried to use my accident to help people. When people reach out to me and things are going tough, or I hear through the grapevine that somebody was diagnosed with cancer or they’re fighting cancer, or their kid was just in a bad car accident, I try to go and meet with them if I can, or just write them a nice long heartfelt letter that says, this will be okay. It can be okay. I’m proof that it can be okay, trust me, this will be good. So I’ve kind of used it the best I can.

Brian:

Well it’s a wonderful story and the film is a terrific film, The Road To Ironman. I encourage everybody who’s watching or listening to this podcast to try and find that, it’s a great, inspirational story. It’s a very emotional story, but it has a great, happy ending. And Mike, you’re here to talk about it today and I appreciate that. Your story though, one of hardship and adversity, is also incredibly inspiring and I’m grateful for your time today. And it’s been wonderful getting to know you.

Mike:

Thank you very much, Brian. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed it.

Brian:

Thanks for listening to Life Excellence. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with others, post it on social media and leave a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.