In three weeks, Len Cyr will find out if it worked.
"It" has been nearly a year of wholesome eating, daily walks, taking supplements, practising yoga and meditation, chiropractic work, acupuncture, ingesting medicinal cannabis oil and other alternative therapies.
In March, when he went in for his last CT scan, the Port Moody resident got good results. In fact, Cyr got what he and his doctors call a miracle, which he attributes in part to his lifestyle turnaround.
Now, the Centennial secondary grad is praying for a full recovery and is anxious to hear the words "cancer free" from his oncologists later this month, at his next CT scan appointment.
Cyr's journey started in February 2016 when the 44-year-old was doing a plank challenge — a type of core exercise — with a friend. He held it for three-and-a-half minutes but, the next day, he sustained pain in his lower back.
Cyr brushed it off, thinking it was a muscle pull.
Two weeks on, though, the pain persisted. He had trouble sitting properly in the car while taking his mom to her cancer clinic and handling other errands. He asked his family doctor for help and tests were ordered.
The next month, Cyr checked himself into Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody to find relief and answers. More tests were ordered but nothing concrete came up.
At a follow-up, Cyr underwent a CT scan that showed he had a mass in the lower left side of his back. And, that week, he coughed up blood three days in a row.
By then, Cyr had had enough suffering and admitted himself to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. There, more tests were inconclusive so he was held overnight for observation.
After a series of inquiries by student doctors — who asked if he had visited any First Nations reserves as part of his employment as a fire safety specialist (which he had) — Cyr was placed in quarantine for a week, suspected of having tuberculosis.
It wasn't until the end — after a further battery of tests were done — that a doctor blurted out: "It's cancer."
"You feel this rush going over your body," Cyr said of his reaction to the diagnosis. "You go to a very dark place very quickly. I saw my life pass by my eyes. I thought about my two boys."
The doctor, however, reassured him the disease wasn't a life sentence.
Still, they didn't know what type of cancer had invaded his body, and so started another round of questions.
At the BC Cancer Agency, where he was placed on urgent care, oncologists determined he had testicular cancer — a malignant tumour that starts in the cells of a testicle — at a Stage 3 level.
The following week, 20 rounds of chemotherapy began: For three months, he was an in-patient for five days to receive treatment then off for two weeks to recover at home. During that time, his sense of smell was heightened, his eating diminished and he became very emotional.
The mother of his former wife, who is a nurse, suggested he get outside to heal.
The daily walks with his dog became part of his therapy. He signed up with a naturopathic oncologist, who prescribed him a host of supplements, and he began taking medical cannabis oil.
The latter did wonders, he said, easing the pain in his lower abdomen and allowing him to sleep through the night.
Still, the chemo didn't catch all the cancer and Cyr decided he needed to have a testicle surgically removed.
After the operation, his urologist recommended he also have some lymph nodes cut out and, after monitoring them for some time, Cyr went under the knife a second time, in October 2016. The five-hour operation resulted in 26 lymph nodes removed from his rectal perineum — plus an unknown body rash for two months.
Surgery for the seven spots on his lungs was also recommended but, on Jan. 9, when doctors told him the CT scan showed his spots were shrinking, Cyr credited his near-recovery to the medical advice he had received and from his new-found knowledge on proper nutrition and fitness especially from The Cancer Killers, a book by Dr. Charles Majors.
But while driving home that day from Vancouver General Hospital to share the good news with his mom, Cyr got the biggest shock of his life: His mother, a breast cancer and MS patient, had died the night before from a heart attack. She was 61. "I remember her saying a week before my appointment, 'It's going to be good. You will get better.'"
This spring, a CT scan showed five of the lung spots had gone and two were shrinking. In May, he returned to work part-time and, the next month, full time. And, later this month, he'll find out if the lung spots are gone for good.
Recently, Cyr spoke about his health scare to 30 people at Sun Life Financial and, on behalf of the Terry Fox Foundation, to 150 people at a women's golf tournament in Vancouver. He's also been invited to be the keynote speaker at the Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows Terry Fox Run on Sept. 17.
He finds talking about his cancer experience healing; it's also his way of giving back to the medical community that supported him, he said. "I think I had a better chance to live because of Terry Fox," Cyr said. "I think that the more people I can touch with my story, the more hope I can give them."
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TRI-CITY FOX RUNS
• Port Coquitlam: 10 a.m., Hyde Creek recreation centre (1379 Laurier St.)
• Coquitlam: 10 a.m., Mundy Park field house (629 Hillcrest St.)
• Port Moody: 10 a.m., Rocky Point Park (2800 Murray St.)
• Anmore: 1 p.m., Spirit Park (2697 Sunnyside Rd.)
