iWorthy Podcast - That Time I Had Cancer

Did I ever tell you about that time I had cancer?

No?

I didn't tell you that?

Well,

About 20 years ago,

I was just graduating college,

Ready to take on the world,

And little did I know that I was about to go through one of the most consequential moments of my life.

If you know me,

You fall into one of three buckets when it comes to my cancer story.

You either don't know,

Or you do know,

But I didn't tell you,

Or I did tell you,

One time,

And I rarely,

If ever,

Talk about it again.

Until now.

Welcome to the iWorthy Podcast.

Let's go!

I can't believe he just said that!

Looking at the mirror and what I see,

IWorthy,

IWorthy.

Haters can't stop what is meant to be,

IWorthy,

IWorthy.

I get up every time I fall down,

Cause the world keeps spinning around,

And after everything is said and done,

Best believe,

IWorthy,

IWorthy.

Welcome to the iWorthy Podcast.

I am your host,

Donald Fittsgill,

Jr.

About 20 years ago,

I was just graduating from college,

Ready to take on the world,

And little did I know that I was about to go through one of the most consequential moments of my life.

If you know me,

You fall into one of three buckets when it comes to my cancer story.

You either don't know,

Or you do know,

But I didn't tell you,

Or I did tell you,

One time and I rarely,

If ever,

Talked about it again,

Until now.

But to really get an understanding of this story,

We have to go way back to a time when I was in elementary school.

It was the 90s,

And I recall one day watching TV and seeing a man bend a spoon with his mind.

Now,

This was a clip from the 70s,

And most likely fake,

But in my mind,

It was real.

And since it was real,

At least in my mind,

And I saw him do it,

Then I could do it too.

In my room,

I had a quote on my wall that was attributed to Apius Claudius,

And it said,

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

Again,

That statement stuck in my mind,

And I began to think that whatever it was that I wanted,

I could make happen.

I soon moved to flipping cards,

And by flipping cards,

I mean that I would take a deck of cards and predict the card that was to come,

Like Ace,

7,

7,

4,

Jack,

9,

And so on.

I would do this all day every day during one summer,

And when I thought I was good,

I went to my dad and had him tell me the card that was to come.

Sometimes it would work,

And sometimes it wouldn't,

But it was something that I really,

Really tried to do.

It was sort of a science experiment,

If you will.

Fast forward to college,

I really began to test some of my theories about the mind out.

In fact,

I remember doing a speech in my communications class on the power of the mind,

And I didn't even prepare for it.

The whole thing was freestyled,

Which was,

At best,

Extremely arrogant.

I had several roommates while in college,

And there was a time when a few of them were working tipped jobs,

And I would predict how much money my roommates would make in tips and would be exactly right.

Then there were dominoes.

We would play dominoes all the time in college,

And around this time,

I had a picture of Muhammad Ali on my wall in this iconic photo with him standing over Sonny Liston with a caption that simply said,

I'm the greatest.

And I wondered,

At the time,

If Ali was so good because he just was really good,

Or was he so good because he told people he was good,

And these things had no choice but to be that way.

So I started talking trash when playing dominoes.

I mean,

Like,

A lot,

Like Ali would,

Just to see what would happen.

And whether playing solo or with a teammate,

Any teammate,

It didn't matter if they just learned to play that day,

I would win.

I remember not losing a game for about a month and a half,

Which was pretty impressive considering we played multiple games every single day.

Then in spring of 2002,

I felt a lump on my left testicle while taking a shower.

The internet wasn't nearly as strong then as it is now,

But I searched and searched and convinced myself that it was anything but cancer,

Because if it was cancer,

They were going to have to remove it.

I soon graduated and moved back to Fort Worth.

Things progressively got worse and worse,

And I did nothing about it,

But hoped it would go away.

I got a job at a brokerage in August of 2002 and rocked it.

I had that just-out-of-college-go-getter attitude,

And I wanted to show everyone and myself that I belonged in this finance field and excelled in every metric we were judged by.

And while,

Outwardly,

I was crushing this new job,

Inwardly,

I knew that there was this issue brewing that I did not want to address.

I didn't do anything until April of 2003,

Over a year later.

By then,

It had doubled in size,

It was painful when I walked,

And at this point,

I had to go to the doctor.

I went to the doctor on a Thursday,

And he recommended surgery to be done the following Tuesday.

He told me,

I've been doing this for decades,

And I've never seen a black man with testicular cancer.

You're an anomaly.

I essentially responded,

I don't care.

The first thing I asked was,

Can you give me a prosthetic testicle?

And he was like,

Those things are pretty expensive,

They can take a while to locate,

And they're not covered by insurance.

Let's just remove this one first.

At the time,

I believe I only told my immediate family.

I had surgery,

And was out of work for about a month.

I could barely get out of bed for the first week,

It was horrible.

I had a lot of time to reflect over the course of this month.

Then,

At the end of my recovery time away from work,

I had a scan done on my body to check and see if the cancer had spread.

Here's the thing,

There's a very good chance that many of you listening have either personally been affected by cancer,

Or know someone who has been affected by cancer.

Testicular cancer is one that has a very high survival rate,

Unless you wait a long time to do something about it.

Like I did.

Remember,

I first felt a lump in the spring of 2002,

And didn't go to the doctor until April of 2003.

So I had this scan done on my body on Friday,

And was told I would get the results on Monday.

Over the weekend,

I prayed and prayed and prayed to God to please give me another chance.

And all I could hear over this time was my internal voice just antagonizing me.

I thought you could do anything,

Homie.

Just speak it into existence.

You're the greatest,

Right?

You're so good at making things happen,

Then save yourself.

Save yourself.

And at that moment,

I realized the grave error of my ways.

Not just my physical inaction of not going to the doctor for over a year,

But my spiritual inaction of letting my pride grow so large that I completely ignored the one who gives life.

Unknowingly,

Over the years,

I had internally changed the Bible verse from,

I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me,

To,

I can do all things.

I can do it.

And this is the subtlety of evil.

Friday,

Saturday,

And Sunday,

I was tormented by the potential consequences of my bad decisions.

And I ran back to my Savior,

Jesus Christ.

The test came back negative,

And the cancer hadn't spread.

Hallelujah.

I went back to work,

And inevitably,

People would ask,

Hey,

Where have you been?

And naively,

I would respond assuming no one had a follow-up question.

No one.

Because here's something that you may not know,

At least this was my experience.

When you tell someone that you've had cancer,

99.

99% of the time,

They respond with essentially the same question,

Where?

And now,

I think you can start to see the predicament I was in.

I wanted to tell people that I just went through the most traumatic experience of my life.

I really wanted to talk about it.

But at the same time,

I didn't really want anyone to know about it either.

This was a heck of a headspace to be in.

Because my response when someone would ask where,

Would be simply to say,

I don't want to say.

And now it's weird.

And I pretty much told them by saying,

I don't want to say.

So I stopped telling everyone,

And locked my story in the deepest parts of my mind,

Hoping it would simply fade away.

Soon after,

I did radiation treatment.

This was something that I did,

I believe,

Four days a week,

Every week for about a month and a half.

I was nauseated all the time,

Lost like 10 pounds the first week.

It was not pleasant at all.

But it was hard to feel sorry for myself in that environment.

Going to oncologists,

Radiologists,

Urologists,

And talking with different people in the waiting rooms,

I realized that,

Despite my ego being hurt,

I got off pretty easy.

I just didn't realize it yet.

I was too busy being humbled,

Because every medical professional that I came across all wanted to see my scrotum.

Everybody.

Hey,

I'm Dr.

So-and-so.

Let me see that scrotum.

Hi,

I'm nurse blah-blah-blah.

Let me see that scrotum.

Hi,

I'm radiology tech fill-in-the-blank.

Let me see that scrotum.

After I finished radiation treatment,

I was scanned again for cancer about six months later,

And praise God,

Was still cancer-free.

Over the next few years,

I would randomly tell people,

Then after about 2006,

2007,

I pretty much just stopped telling everybody.

This has led to some pretty awkward conversations,

Because cancer happens,

And people around me are experiencing cancer,

But instead of being able to offer a word of hope because of my direct experience with cancer,

I would remain tight-lipped because I didn't want anyone to hurt me more than I had already been hurt.

But how can I ever confidently relate to people and share the glory of God if I didn't also share the story of my pain?

How?

How can I ever tell people how God,

Our God,

Is an awesome God that we serve if I don't also tell people what he brought me through?

I've been quiet for too long.

It is 2023 and it has been 20 years since I locked this story up in the prison of my mind only to give it occasional daylight here and there.

But I realized that I got cancer for one reason,

And it's all for the glory of God.

This is the I Worthy Podcast.

I worthy because he makes me worthy.

In August of 2021,

I felt compelled to create Christian content and immediately had thoughts of myself not being worthy to make Christian content because I didn't have the theological degrees or I had only read a certain amount of books or simply because I was too sinful to tell anyone about God.

But as these thoughts of unworthiness were going through my mind,

I fixed my lips to say I am not worthy.

But that's not what came out of my mouth.

The only thing that came out of my mouth was I worthy.

The am not was somehow not there.

And I started regularly reading and posting Bible verses on social media.

I did this because the Bible is the word of God,

And I believe that the word of God has power.

And since I am a voice actor by profession,

What better way for me to honor God than to read his word to anyone that is open to hear it?

There are many things in life that can give us the impression that we are somehow not worthy of certain things,

Not worthy of the career we want,

Not worthy of the relationship we want,

The health we want,

The finances we want,

Not worthy of respect,

Not worthy to share the pain of our past,

Not worthy to talk about Christ because we don't have all the theological degrees.

But I'm here to tell you that your life has purpose,

Which is evidenced by the fact that you're still here.

Psalm 139 14 tells us,

I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

God didn't make a mistake when he made you and he loves you even when you don't love yourself.

I don't know about you,

But I worthy because Christ has made me worthy.

This podcast is mainly going to be stories about my faith journey,

The good,

The bad and the ugly.

Some of these podcasts like this one will be uncomfortable for me.

Some of these podcasts will be uncomfortable for you.

This podcast is meant to galvanize,

Inspire,

Motivate and be a reminder to you that God is not done with you yet.

And as long as I have breath in my body,

I will tell my story and sing of the goodness of God.

Till next time.

Thanks for tuning in.

You can find the I Worthy podcast on all major platforms.

For more Christian content,

Visit us on Instagram,

YouTube and TikTok at Meditate Word.

Until next time.

Looking at the mirror and what I see,

I worthy,

I worthy.

Haters can't stop what is meant to be,

I worthy,

I worthy.

I get up every time I fall down,

Cause the world keeps spinning around.

And after everything is said and done,

Best believe I worthy,

I worthy.