Day 148: The Passing of Stuart Scott
After taking time to read before falling asleep I was able to get 7.75 hours of sleep last night. If it wasn’t for a few nights ago I would likely be up to a 10-day streak by now.
When I woke up I learned that Stuart Scott from ESPN had passed away at 49 years old from his battle with cancer.
Usually when celebrities pass away it doesn’t affect me but Stuart Scott’s death was like a punch in the gut for me.
For the last 23 years Stuart Scott was one of the most well-known faces of sports journalism. I remember waking up before grade school to watch Stuart Scott on SportsCenter.
I knew that he had been diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and that it had come back a couple of times.
His passionate and moving speech at the ESPYs brought me to tears earlier this year. If you’ve never watched it, take the 7 minutes to watch it. Your life will be better for it.
And then our entire life changed when I had my first seizure 5 months ago today. We began my own fight.
A fight to rehabilitate my shoulders, heal from brain surgery and face the fact that I have brain cancer.
This is the first time that I have acknowledged publicly or privately, with the exception of Laura, that I have brain cancer.
It would be the only reason why we are starting a year of chemo or have a neuro-oncologist.
Our doctors have never acknowledged it to us even when I have asked them directly. Our hope is that we’re proven wrong but the writing is on the wall. It is something that we don’t talk about.
Throughout our journey I turned to Stuart Scott as inspiration. He was determined to not let cancer rob him of enjoying his life.
He continually worked to ensure his body was in the best shape it could be to handle his medical treatments.
He continued to enrich the lives of those around him instead of letting them feel sorry for him.
These are the ways that I have tried to live my life even through the hardest of times over the last 5 months.
So, when I woke up today and saw this tribute to Stuart Scott my heart hurt:
After watching the video tribute I went next door to our community’s gym with a deeper sense of motivation.
I wanted to incorporate back exercises into today’s session so I decided to perform rounds of chest, back and shoulders exercises in sets of 3. The workout that I performed was:
- Seated Press - 3 sets: 15 (50 lbs), 12 (50 lbs), 10 (60 lbs)
- Seated Row - 3 sets: 15 (40 lb dumbbells), 12 (50 lb dumbbells), 10 (60 lb dumbbells)
- Dumbbell Front Raises - 3 X 15 reps (10 lb dumbbells)
- Exercise Ball Dumbbell Press - 3 sets: 15 (22.5 lb dumbbells), 12 (25 lb dumbbells), 10 (25 lb dumbbells)
- Lat Pulldown - 3 sets: 15 (40 lbs), 12 (50 lbs), 10 (60 lbs)
- Dumbbell Side Raises - 3 X 15 reps (5 lb dumbbells)
- Dumbbell Shrugs - 3 sets: 10 (22.5 lb dumbbells), 10 (25 lb dumbbells), 10 (27.5 lb dumbbells)
2 rounds:
- Alternating Leg Lifts - 25 reps
- Side Twists - 25 reps per side
In every exercise I was able to either increase weights or reps. I continued to have that deep muscle soreness in my left shoulder but pushed through for a strong workout.
Laura had a lot of trouble sleeping last night so while she rested this morning I spent time reading to keep the house as quiet as possible.
We then ran a number of errands that had to get done before coming home to tackle taking down the Christmas tree.
While it has been fun having really tall Christmas trees the last 3 years, it is not a fun experience to take them down. It takes a couple of hours once the decorations are taken off. First you have to remove all of the branches then saw the tree into sections.
With that monumental task accomplished we decided to use the zoodler that we had received for Christmas from my sister-in-law. We had made zoodles in the past using a mandolin attachment but this worked much better.
Dinner was sautéed chicken, scalded grape tomatoes, zoodles and a homemade basil pesto sauce. Delicious, healthy and fun to make.
With the holidays over and the work kicking back in to overdrive tomorrow, we’re looking forward to enjoying a bit of downtime tonight after a fun and productive weekend.