RAIN SAND. since 1997.
SHOP. IN PANAMA. - NEXT. ALBROOK. MALL. NOVEMBER.
RAIN . SAND. TWO OCEANS. ONE SHOP. BODYBOARDING PANAMA. T.H.E.
RAIN SAND . de costa a costa.
PANAMA. RAIN SAND. CULTURE.
Hello everyone
This is Eddie Solomon
I wanted to write to all my friends, family, customers, co-workers, employees, sales reps, vendors, partners and all wave riders in general to let you know about my current experience.
I have been diagnosed with Hi Grade T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma.
I figured since we have pretty good reach between bodyboarders it would be a good idea to raise awareness about Cancer so even if one person gets themselves checked early, it may save their life.
My cancer is very aggressive and came on very very quick. I am going to post throughout this battle on this site and below is a full time line of how quick this has happened to me out of nowhere.
Around the week of July 20th we had descent sized Wedge Swells.
This is me at the Wedge then, my doctor said the tumor only started to grow around this time. f. ross fletcher
The waves were fun, but I did initially notice at this time I was getting tired a little quicker than normal. f. Kast
The waves went down, so I was not active at all and everything seemed normal. About 3-4 weeks later I think around August 20th we had some more descent wedge swells. The evening session was quite solid and I thought it would be good to get out there with the fish eye camera to shoot my friends Rusty Friesen, Anthony Savoji, Sean & Evan Deverian, Seabass, The Wedge guys and whoever else is out there.
Wedge Times!
Good times at my favorite spot in California
Rusty on a cool one, he got a couple epic ones, one really good one which will be a two page spread in the next Bodyboarder Mag.
Savoji was going for it, good little facial here.
Sean Deverian, almost insane if the I caught the curl a little better. Maybe 1/2 second later?
Check this cool Japanese kamikaze guy going for it. Over the falls he went! He was cool and charging all the biggest sets. I wish I knew his name! Overall fish eye did not do this session justice. It was quite solid and too big for fisheye, but I loved getting out there and I love telling guys to charge waves, hooting and getting them excited for the great bodyboarding times to be had while at the same time trying to be there for them! During this session, there was some sets which had 10 waves or so at 10-15 faces. Normally, the Wedge is really minor for me as I am always really calm in the water in any conditions, but during one of these long sets where I was trying to get in the zone. I got super tired with heavy chest pain and started to have a tough time breathing. I actually asked Sean or Evan (don't remember which one) to stay close to me during these sets and let me grab his board if I need to. I did grab the board while a set wave or two passed and then shook it off. I thought to myself. "shit, maybe I am getting old or shooting water is much harder than bodyboarding, because you are swimming the whole time, compared to laying on your board." when I came in I told Shea Sevilla and the boys, shit kinda hectic out there for me today, I was getting really tired! Anyhow this was just super out of the normal for me and the shortness of breath and chest pain was high. I went home, took a pass out and just forgot about it. Had to get back to my hectic work times.
September 7th comes. For the past three weeks after The Wedge, I was traveling a lot domestically for business. Chicago, Boston and other places, different return trips from California. I developed extreme neck pain which was going toward my collar bone and upper left neck. I thought it was flying, but it was not. The neck pain was starting near the top of the spinal cord on the back, so because of that position I was quite concerned. On the night of the 7th I was flying to my East Coast warehouse in Jacksonville, Florida I have never seen to check it out and get our Ally Sporting Goods trade show booth ready for Surf Expo in Orlando. My flight was at 9PM. I went to Urgent Care at 4PM. I was expecting to be there 1 hour max with most that time being waiting time. I mainly told them about neck pain, but mentioned I have also been having some chest pain pressure and shortness of breath. They decided to take X-rays and do other tests. The Dr. tells me he sees something and that I should maybe not go to Florida. I tell him, I will be back on Sunday night, we will make an appointment for Monday September 13th.
I can not miss this show, I sacrificed everything for my family business and this show cost me over 2X as much by itself than what I started this business with.
The show was a huge success. I felt fine the whole time!
Orlando had crazy weather, rainy, then sunny, then rainy at 100 degrees.
Lucky for me, I was 100% great during the show.
September 13th
I am home
Things go down hill big time.
I go to the doctor.
Below is my initial x-ray from the 7th.
The insert photo on the left I wish was me. Unfortunately mine is the one with the big blob (tumor) in the chest by the spinal cord.
Shortness of breath and pains in chest increasing.
It is only Monday.
Now its the hard part. Finding out what this is.
Tests and more tests, lots of blood.
Next up is CT scan Wednesday.
The CT Scan tells us it is a officially a tumor.
Then I need to go back Thursday for PET/CT Scan to get better scanning.
The same machine does both PET and CT, I wish they did the PET Scan the 1st time.
I was having a real hard time breathing on Thursday for 30 minutes in this machine. This machine cost 2.5 million USD so it is quite tech!
PET/CT SCAN RESULTS!
These results just tell me I have a tumor, but not what it is exactly.
The Tumor is shockingly huge. It is that huge white thing above my heart going up near my neck.
8" tall, 6" wide and 5" thick!
This has grown inside of me in only 6-8 weeks the Dr. says!
I cant believe this is happening! You never think it is going to happen to you! You just think it cant be possible! I just turned 32 years old and I never ever ever get sick! I won't surf for many months and go out to good size Chopes, Wedge or Pipe and am 100% fine surfing for 8-10 hours a day. "this can not be happening to me" But it has! Now I must deal with it! Face this, Power through this! Handle this!
The best thing about the above photo is that my face kinda looks like Andre's dad, Dr. Botha. He is the man!
Friday AM
I cant handle anymore waiting for doctors to tell me what to do and nothing getting done, breathing is getting way to difficult.
I put myself in Emergency room in Mission Viejo, St. Joseph Hospital.
The lady in the emergency room drops all paper work after she gets my heart rate.
It is 270. It was a scene like out of ER where she was running me to the Emergency room. I didn't realize it was THAT bad. I was like "Whoa, you are going pretty quick!"
She didn't respond to me.
Pretty freaking crazy and hard to believe I must say.
The tumor is so big it smashing numerous things in my chest .
Veins, trachea, bronchial tube. Affecting me huge right now is the massive amount of fluid going into my heart sack and lungs.
My heart sack is full of fluid caused by the tumor making it hard to do its job.
They perform surgery immediately to drain the fluid from around the heart sack.
They take out 650ml
Within 12 hours it fills back up.
This is where they cut into my heart sack.
My new home for a few days.
Must feel nothing and shake it off!
They perform surgery the next day putting a permanent hole in my heart sack and they also cut my chest open to take out a chunk of this horrible beast of a tumor inside me. They can then do tests to see exactly what type of cancer it is.
Now I have more cool scars. Only these ones are not bodyboarding related. When my hair is gone soon from Chemo, I will have good head shot staples and stitches scars to show from Pipe, Chopes and Indo
Tough breathing times. This machine they brought in a few times a day was great.
My heart rate calmed down to an average of 131-134. Still going up to 151!
average is 65-85 they tell me
One of my doctors comes back to me with what they think it is.
Hi Grade T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma
T-Cell is for sure not a cool one to get.
They must test my bone marrow and pray it is not in there!
If it is there I am in Stage 4 of 4!
If it is not there, I am in a "Massive Stage 1" as the Doctor told me because of the size of this beastmaster tumor.
I must get very aggressive chemo where I will do 7 days in hospital, 3 weeks off to power back up and if I don't get sick and 7 days back in. This will continue for many months.
This is going to be hard times, but I will power through this!
The scariest part is that I am the leader of a new young family, who depend 100% on me. I cant imagine leaving my long time fiancee and new 10 month year old Baby Eddie by themselves. It is devastating to think about.
Wednesday, September 22. I am released from Mission Hospital. Tamara and baby Eddie take me home. This hospital can do nothing for me. I am waiting to get into CITY OF HOPE CANCER HOSPITAL as soon as a bed becomes open for me.
Waiting to fight sucks, but I will get in there soon!
Leaving the hospital with my perfect family, I know life will never be the same again.
Home from the hospital for hopefully as short as possible. One of the last pics where I will have hair on my head. It may be hard to notice, but my right forearm and bicep is HUGE for me 3X, It is like MEZ's . I am a pretty skinny guy normally. 6'2" 165lb. The tumor has already caused Blood Clotting which sucks.
Thank you soooo soooo much to my employees, family and friends for your support. While I have been sick they have remolded our Dana Point store! It looks so much nicer! Please check it out and let me know how it looks, I will not be able to see it for a couple of weeks! But this pic looks really good! Sooo exciting!
We have also launched a new FREE IPhone, IPod and ITouch app for this website and magazine. ANDROID version is coming soon as well! You can view ALL the past issues of the magazine for FREE! Communicate in the forum, get the latest bodyboarding news, direct message other bodyboaders and lots more. This has actually been live for a couple weeks, but have not be able to announce it yet. I will try to announce it properly soon if I am not so sick. Any contributions to news will be greatly welcome, simply post NEWSWORTHY articles in the MAIN FORUM section with images and/or videos and we can UPGRADE the post to the front page of the APP and WEBSITE in the NEWS SECTION.
Go here to download
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bodyb...388217880?mt=8
Share that link with all of your friends!
I sincerely want to thank all my friends, family, employees, sales reps, and bodyboarders worldwide. Ally Sporting Goods, 662 and Bodyboarder will all continue business as normal. We have a strong organization and team that I am very thankful for. I want to thank all my loyal team riders during these times who have all been doing an amazing job. All you guys are the best. so much love.
I want to thank my Mom for her support who has triple negative breasts cancer.
Sorry you have to deal with me now too!
Dad, you have been amazing!
And to my Fiancee Tamara, it would be impossible for anyone else to do a better job than you! Love you forever!
The most important thing about me posting is that if I can even help even one person get detected early, I will be so happy. If anything is wrong with you, just ask your Dr. for the extra test or x-ray, hopefully you have insurance, it only cost a couple dollars if so! Seriously, you never think it can happen to you, but you never know!
To my past friends who lost their life to cancer, Jason Bogle whose memorial is September 29 and to brother Brian Pearson. You guys were the very best, it all happened so quick for both of you! Pearson was at my house on North Shore complaining about his stomach, he had to fly home. within 90 days or less I was at his funeral
I hope you are both in Peace now.Thank you for your time
I will post updates when I can
Eddie Solomon
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