It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (15 page)

ONE DAY I NOTICED STRANGE MARKS ON MY SKIN, AL-

most like faint brown stains. They were chemo burns.

The drugs were scorching my tissues from the inside out, leaving patches of discoloration on my flesh. By now I was well into the third cycle, and I didn’t look like the same person. My

physique was shot, compared to the one I entered the hospital with. I took hobbling walks around the floor to get a little exercise, pushing my IV pole, and I remember looking down at

myself in my gown. It was as though my body was being steadily diminished: my muscles were smaller, and flaccid. This is the real McCoy, I thought. This is what it means to be sick.

“I need to stay in shape,” I’d murmur. “I need to stay in shape.”

I kept losing weight, no matter how hard I tried not to. I didn’t have much to lose to begin with–I had a very low percent of body fat, and the toxins ate away at me like a school offish,

nibbling. “LaTrice, I’m losing weight,” I’d lament. “What can I do? Look at my muscles! Look what’s happening to me. I need to ride. I’ve got to get toned back up.”

“Lance, it’s chemo,” LaTrice would say, in that supremely tolerant way. “You’re going to lose, it’s automatic. Chemo patients lose weight.”

I couldn’t bear to stay in bed, dormant. As I lay in the sheets, doing nothing, I felt like something that had washed up on a beach.

“Can I exercise, LaTrice?”

“Do you have a gym here, LaTrice?”

“Lance, this is a hospital,” she’d say, with that great sighing forbearance of hers. “However, for patients who have to stay with us for a long time, and for people like you, we do have stationary

bikes.” “Can I do that?” I shot back.

LaTrice asked Nichols for an okay to let me use the gym, but Nichols was reluctant. My immune system was almost nonexistent, and I wasn’t in any condition to work out.

For all of her mocking exasperation with me, LaTrice seemed to sympathize with my restless urge to move. One afternoon I was scheduled for an MRI scan to check my brain, but the

machines were fully booked, so LaTrice sent me over to the nearby children’s hospital, Riley. An

underground tunnel of about a mile attached the two facilities, and the usual way to transport patients between them was either in an ambulance, or in a wheelchair via the tunnel.

But I was determined to walk to Riley, not ride. I informed the nurse who showed up with a wheelchair, “No way I’m getting in that thing.” I told her we would be taking the tunnel to Riley

on foot, even if it meant walking all night. LaTrice didn’t say a word. She just shook her head as I set off. The nurse dragged my IV cart behind me.

I shuffled slowly through the tunnel, there and back. I looked like a stooped, limping old man. The round-trip took over an hour. By the time I got back to my bed, I was exhausted and damp

with sweat, but I was triumphant.

“You just had to do it different,” LaTrice said, and smiled. It became the biggest fight of all just to move. By the fifth straight day of my third cycle of chemo, I was no longer able to take my

walks around the ward. I had to lie in bed for a full day until I regained enough strength to go home. An attendant turned up Sunday morning with a wheelchair and offered me a ride to the

lobby to check out. But I refused to give in to it. I turned it down, angrily. “No way,” I said. “I’m walking out of here.”

THE FRENCHMAN HOVERED OVER MY HOSPITAL BED, attempting to present me

with a $500 bottle of red wine as a token of his esteem. I stared at him from the depths of my narcotic haze, half-conscious and too nauseated to respond. I did have the presence of mind to

\vonder why anyone would waste an expensive Bordeaux on a cancer patient.

Alain Bondue was the director of the Cofidis racing organization, and he had come to pay what appeared to be a social call. But I was in no shape to make polite conversation; I was in the late

throes of my third cycle of chemo, and I was deathly pale with dark circles under my eyes. I had no hair or eyebrows. Bondue spent a couple of awkward minutes pledging the support of the

team, and then took his leave.

“Lance, we love you,” he said. “We’re going to take care of you, I promise.”

With that, he said goodbye, and I squeezed his hand. But as he left my bedside, Bondue gestured to Bill Stapleton–he wanted him to come outside for a conversation. Bill followed

Bondue into the hallway, and abruptly, Bondue told Bill he had come to discuss some business matters, and they needed to go someplace private for a meeting.

Stapleton and Bondue and a third man, a friend named Paul Sher-wen who spoke French and offered to help interpret, gathered in a small, dimly lit conference room in the hotel across the

street from the hospital. Bondue began to chain-smoke as he explained to Bill in French that, regrettably, Cofidis would be forced to renegotiate my contract because of my illness. My

agreement with the team was for $2.5 million over two years–but that would no longer be possible.

Bill shook his head in confusion. “I’m sorry?” he said. Cofidis had CHEMO publicly pledged to stand by me while I fought the illness, he said. Surely this wasn’t the time to

discuss contracts, not in the middle of my chemotherapy.

“We love Lance; we want to take care of Lance,” Bondue said in French. “But you have to understand this is a cultural thing, and people in France don’t understand how somebody can get

paid when they’re not working.”

Bill was stunned. He said, “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.” Bondue pointed out that my contract had a clause stating I was required to pass a medical examination. Obviously, I was in

no condition to do that. Therefore Cofidis had the right to cancel the contract. They were offering to renegotiate, which they felt was generous under the circumstances. They wanted to

honor part of it, but not all. If I didn’t accept the new terms they offered, they would force me to undergo the medical exam, and terminate the contract in its entirety. Bill stood up, looked

across the table, and said, “Fuck you.” Bondue was startled.

Bill said it again. “Fuck you. I cannot believe you came all the way here at a time like this, and you want me to go back in there and tell him that now.”

Bill was beside himself–not so much that Cofidis would try to extricate themselves from the contract, which they had the right to do, but at the timing, and the backhandedness of it. Cofidis

had made a statement to the world that they would stick with me, and they had reaped the favorable press for it, but behind closed doors was another matter. Bill was fiercely protective of

me, and he flatly refused to raise the subject with me while I was in the midst of chemo.

“I’m not doing it,” Bill said. “I’m not interested in talking about this, not right now. Do whatever you guys want to do, and let it play out in the court of public opinion.”

Bondue was unmoved. Legally, he intoned, surely Bill knew that we

didn’t have a leg to stand on. Cofidis had the right to terminate that very day. Instantly.

“You understand it’s subject to the medical exam,” Bondue said again.

Bill said, “Are you going to send a doctor over here? Are you going to send a doctor over here to do an exam?”

“Well, we might have to,” Bondue said.

“Great,” Bill said. “I’ll have all the television cameras there, and you guys knock yourselves out.”

Bondue continued to insist that Cofidis was willing to keep me under some kind of contract–but

only if a set of conditions was imposed. Bill calmed down and tried to persuade Bondue that, despite my appearance, I was getting better. Surely they could work something out? But

Bondue was firm, and after two more hours, they had gotten nowhere. Finally, Bill stood up to leave. If Cofidis was pulling the rug out from under me while I was in the hospital, fine, he said,

“I’ll let the whole world know you abandoned him.” Abruptly, Bill ended the meeting.

“Do whatever you have to do,” he said.

Shaken, Bill came back to my hospital room. He had been gone for over three hours by now, so I knew something was wrong. As soon as the door to my room opened, I said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Bill said. “Don’t worry about it.”

But I could see by the look on his face that he was upset, and I suspected I knew the reason why.

“What?”

“I don’t know what to say,” Bill said. “They want to renegotiate this thing, and they’ll make you take a medical exam if they have to.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“I’ve already told them to fuck off.”

I thought about it. “Maybe we should just let it go,” I said, tiredly.

I couldn’t help wondering if the real reason for Bondue’s trip was to appraise my health. I thought then, and I still think, that he came to the hospital with a choice to make: if I looked

healthy, then he would take a positive attitude and let the deal stand, and if I looked very ill, he would take the hard-line approach and renegotiate or terminate. We felt that it was nothing

more than a spy mission: see if Armstrong is dying. Apparently Bondue had taken one look at me and decided I was on my deathbed.

Bill was crushed, and apologetic. “I’m sorry to give you one more piece of bad news.”

But I had more important things to dwell on than Cofidis. Don’t get me wrong, I was worried about the money, and I was hurt by their timing, and by their halfhearted words of support. But

on the other hand, I had a more immediate problem to concentrate on–not puking.

Bill said, “We’ll stall. We’ll keep negotiating.” He thought if he could put them off until February, I might just be healthy enough to pass the medical exam. “We’ll just see how this

plays out,” he said. I just grunted, too nauseated to really care. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Over the next three or four weeks, Cofidis pressed the issue and made it clear they weren’t bluffing, they would have no problem subjecting me to a medical test. They would fly their own

doctor over from France and cancel the entire contract. I continued to resist talking to Bill about it, because I was at my sickest point in the chemo cycles. But Bill sat down in my room one day

and said, “Lance, they’re serious.” We had no choice but to accept whatever terms they gave me.

he said.

In the end, Cofidis paid less than a third of the original two-year contract and required an out clause for themselves for 1998.

It felt like a vote of no confidence. It felt like they thought I was dying. I got the message Cofidis was sending: I was a dead man.

THE IRONY WAS, THE WORSE I FELT, THE BETTER I GOT.

That was the chemo for you.

By now I was so sick there were times I couldn’t talk. So sick I couldn’t eat, couldn’t watch TV, couldn’t read my mail, couldn’t even speak to my mother on the phone. One afternoon she called

me from work. I whispered, “Mom, I’m going to have to talk to you another time.”

On the really bad days, I would lie on my side in bed, wrapped in blankets, fighting the noxious roiling in my stomach and the fever raging under my skin. I’d peek out from under the blankets

and just grunt.

The chemo left me so foggy that my memory of that time is sketchy, but what I do know for sure is that at my sickest, I started to beat the thing. The doctors would come in every morning

with the results of my latest blood-draw, and I began to get improved results. One thing unique to the disease is that the marker levels are extremely telling. We tracked every little fluctuation

in my blood count; a slight rise or downturn in an HCG or AFP marker was cause for either concern or celebration.

The numbers had incredible import for my doctors and me. For instance, from October 2, when I was diagnosed, to October 14, when the brain lesions were discovered, my HCG count had

risen from 49,600 to 92,380. In the early days of my treatment, the doctors were sober when they came into my room–I could tell they were suspending judgment.

But gradually they became more cheerful: the tumor markers began to drop. Then they began to dive. Soon they were in a beautiful free fall. In fact, the numbers were dropping so fast that the

doctors were a little taken aback. On a manila file folder, I kept a chart of my blood

markers. In just one three-week period in November, they fell from 92,000 to around 9,000.

“You’re a responder,” Nichols told me.

I had opened up a gap on the field. I knew that if I was going to be cured, that was the way it would go, with a big surging attack, just like in a race. Nichols said, “You’re ahead of schedule.”

Those numbers became the highlight of each day; they were my motivator, my yellow jersey. The yellow jersey is the garment worn by the leader of the Tour de France to distinguish him

from the rest of the field.

I began to think of my recovery like a time trial in the Tour. I was getting feedback from my team right behind me, and at every checkpoint the team director would come over the radio and

say, “You’re thirty seconds up.” It made me want to go even faster. I began to set goals with my blood, and I would get psyched up when I met them. Nichols would tell me what they hoped to

see in the next blood test, say a 50 percent drop. I would concentrate on that number, as if I could make the counts by mentally willing it. “They’ve split in half,” Nichols would say, and I

would feel like I had won something. Then one day he said, “They’re a fourth of what they were.”

I began to feel like I was winning the battle against the disease, and it made my cycling instincts kick in again. I wanted to tear the legs off cancer, the way I tore the legs off other riders on a

hill. I was in a breakaway. “Cancer picked the wrong guy,” I bragged to Kevin Livingston. “When it looked around for a body to hang out in, it made a big mistake when it chose mine.

Big mistake.”

One afternoon Dr. Nichols came into my room and read me a new number: my HCG was just 96. It was a slam-dunk. From now on it was just a matter of getting through the last and most