In April 2011 while in California racing the Sea Otter Classic, I had an unexpected crash racing the Dual Slalom finals that ended up changing my life. Following a minor concussion I was taken to the hospital for further evaluation. A routine blood test revealed that I had leukemia. I was immediately transferred to Stanford Children’s Hospital and after three days of further evaluation I was transferred and admitted to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. At BCCH I had a bone marrow biopsy and more testing and was officially diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia with Ambiguous Lineage.
Immediately following diagnosis I began Chemotherapy. The chemo was the first stage of my treatment then later became preparation for the second stage. On August 9th, 2011, after months of chemotherapy and six sessions of total body irradiation I was ready for a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). The marrow was a 6/6 match from an anonymous 24-year-old male donor as no one in my family was a tissue match. The procedure itself was rather anti-climactic. A small bag containing the bone marrow was transfused through a central venous catheter implanted in my chest over the course of just an hour. It was going to take a long time for my body to engraft the donor’s bone marrow, and in the meantime I would need hemoglobin and platelet transfusions, plus numerous other drugs and painkillers just to keep my body alive and my vital signs stable. One of the side-effects of the transplant was that I developed large soars throughout my mouth and throat, it felt like I had been chewing on glass for hours. This in conjunction with nausea, weakness and other flue like symptoms took a toll mentally and physically. I was put on an IV for all of my nutritional needs since eating was going to be impossible. On top of two IV lines for nutrition there were anti-nausea, pain meds, anti fungal, and anti bacterial drugs all running into my catheter. For the first couple weeks I was so drugged up that I don't really remember what went on.
Slowly I started to become more lucid and aware as the days dragged on and I was gradually weaned from some of the meds. Going into isolation for such a long time was incapacitating for someone like myself who is used to being outdoors all day, everyday. There wasn’t much I could do in my room other than watch television, use the Internet and sleep. By Day 20 of isolation I was gaining a little bit of energy and started to use the spin bike that I had in my room. After 26 days of isolation I was finally able to leave my 8’x10’ specially ventilated and pressurized room. The next 5 days were the worst because I was starting to feel a bit better and doctors were starting to talk about when I would get out. The worst part about this was that the doctors never were able to give an exact date, only a vague guess. Finally after much anticipation on Day 31 I was sent home.
My first day out and rolling on my dirt jumperI got home on the September 9th and nothing felt better than being able to get a full night sleep without being poked and prodded. As soon as I got home almost instantly I felt revived and refreshed. I was starting to eat more and more, every few days at home I seemed to be improving little by little. Although I haven’t been strong enough yet to get out and ride my bike or exercise much, it is enough to be at home resting, trying to eat normally, having an occasional visitor, surfing the net until gradually I can resume more normal activities. In the next few months, I hope to get back to the gym so I can begin to rebuild all that I’ve lost over the treatment. My goals for the spring and beyond really depend on how far I come over the winter months. Ideally I’d like to be back racing at top form by mid-April, but realistically it will be longer than that until I am in peak form again. The most important thing for me in my recovery will be the just get back on my bike and ride this winter and spring.
The latest installment on my recovery path just happened last week. Feeling more energetic, healthy and slowly gaining my strength back I made a trip out to Norco Headquarters. While I know I have a long way to go before I will be back on the racetrack the first step is getting back on a bike. The newest addition to my quiver of bikes is an all-new team spec Phaser. While the snow is starting to fall in my home of Whistler, I will be riding as much as I can in the Squamish trails this winter.
I want to thank the guys at Norco, friends, family, and my parents for all their support throughout the treatment period.
Cheers,
Nick.
Props go out to the guy that donated his bone-marrow! He helped a fellow biker get back on two wheels!
Compassion....some have it, some DON'T !!! These articles are not to suck anyone in or market anything to anyone, mainly an update on a good guy with a bad struggle. One of OUR peeps, a brother of the wheels ! If the readers of this site, saw the article and clicked on it, it was because they were curious or concerned, not because they sought after something to gain. Being from Belgium, the most bike friendly place on the planet, I would of thought that its inhabitants may have been a little more open minded and caring of feelings when a guy who may or may not be dying from a sh*t disease reads what you have written. And since I am an American and pay plenty of my paycheck in taxes to have my government send "compassion" money to needy countries and agencies around the world to help the sick, hungry, disease ridden, and disaster stricken, I certainly hope that you never ever have to need a cent of my "average annoying dramatic sensitive American" money, food, or assistance. Because personally, I'd much rather beat your a$$...,,either on, or off of my bike !! **** Nick...sorry you had to read this, glad you are getting better and back on the bike !!! Best wishes bro !
Get a grip and keep your comments to yourself, and I love how you wrote back on your already rediculous comments, with even more retarded points.
Bite me!!!
Nick - your an inspiration, keep strong man.
I appreciate what you are saying Robby but there is no need to impose a viewpoint on others. You have made your point now drop it.
Anything that promotes awareness of a disease, aids fundraising, acts as a source of inspiration or acheives anything positive for the benefit of others should be appreciated.
Take it easy Nick and don't rush anything! Appreciate the small things and come back stronger (as you no doubt are)! Can't wait to see the vids of your smooth DH style again
Anywho, i hope you get back up to full strength soon man. See you on the trails someday
all the best from Scotland x
but yeah, RobbyBriers, go crawl in a hole and be quiet.
baskinginoblivion.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/karma.jpg?w=500&h=375
Also I see that a lot of people wish me to get cancer since they talk about karma. Others want me dead!? Oh and I stopped counting the insults. If that is all most members can come up with, and if incite insulting by supporting the posters of such pointless replies by clicking on the green square, then perhaps PB should consider your proposition about banning me, but also remove all my knowledge.
I have no reason to try anymore since most of you just ridiculise my vision of our contemporary civilisation, although civilisation isn't quite correct anymore.
If yes. Then give your head a shake ass clown!!
If no. Go spend some time in a cancer ward or with a family how has someone who is in the fight! You will truly understand the pain and suffering by those who are in the fight. Every goal reached while sick is MONUMENTAL and should be celebrated!
Your comment sickens me to the core. I hope you NEVER have to live through what Nick & his family are going through! Shame on you!
You see, it's easy. I get negative props for talking about viewer rates when someone just survived cancer. The thing they don't see is that writing an article is as unsensitive towards the patient as me talking jibberish. It is really impersonal, and even less on the internet. Why write an article in the first place? So people can read it and blank space is filled with reading material. A few years ago, this would perhaps see the light in newspapers and people would talk about it, personnaly. Here on Pinkbike, placing a comment that shows compassion and sensitivity is placing a big propmagnet in the middle of the server.
That said, I understand that I deserve negative props in this generation where online life sucks up a lot of time of our lives and is considered the same as real life for many aspects since it has become so important. Which means I am probably old fashioned in this sense.
here come the props again, knock yourself out (that will take some anger away)
I appreciate your reasoning on your comments. So you know, this article is not a ploy for attention, advertising or sympathy. Nick has a history with the Pinkbike community and this article is a means of telling the people and friends on pinkbike that he is getting better and he appreciates the support. If you would like to know more about Nick and his battle please have a look at the following articles.
www.pinkbike.com/news/A-Bumpy-Road-Ahead-For-Nick-Geddes-Get-Well-Nick.html
www.pinkbike.com/news/Nick-Geddes-Race-for-Life-2011.html
www.pinkbike.com/news/Nick-Geddes-Fck-Cancer-Ride-Bikes-video-2011.html
www.pinkbike.com/news/World-Cup-Racers-pull-together-for-a-fellow-Racer-2011.html
Being sensitive isn't showing compassion by uploading bits and bytes.
EDIT: this is ofc not meant for the Norco team nor any of his friends, because they already know the status of Nick's health without this article.
So glad for you Nick, despite not knowing you. Hope you recover fully, and thanks for inspiring me!
I am not responding here anymore...
It just sickens me to see how many people are blinded. I am glad you have open eyes.
I also wanted to encourage people to go out and register on their local bone marrow registry. I cannot explain how grateful I am of the complete stranger who took time out of his own life to save mine.
Now why do you have such a hard time with this article? Nicks dream came long before he got cancer, this is just a bump in the road. Never in this article did he try and make it a sob story or suck up to anyone, he has no reason to.
A KID in the mountain bike community means you have some affiliation to him whether you decide to see it or not. Everyone that rides is affiliated to you in one way. Your reasoning dumbfounds me, why does it matter if you have never met him? By this logic no one should wear poppies next week for remembrance day since we weren't born when the soldiers lost their lives in the war. How much sense does that make?
You're one of the most ignorant posters I have ever read on this site.
It's just that doing it this way is impersonal and so many people suddenly start careing about what happened to you and say that you motivated them, but there are so many other patients who need help and no one here would think of helping them. Yet they say that they will help now. Your story is an eye opener, but I cannot bear the fact that those people (not all of them, surely) act like they really care just by stating they do on a website. If you didn't post this, not 9 out of 10 people here would go and donate. But suddenly they all have to. That is unsensitive, as much as sharing my opinion here. It's kind of all those people celebrating days like "day of the left handed" or "day against breast cancer", because all the other 364 days of the year, they don't care...
Fullbug understands me, you do understand me and Norco understands me. Others swear and throw insults and bash the neg prop button or call me ignorant.
I do appologize (if it means anything to you since I am a stranger) for being as unsensitive as most. You may remove all of this, since it will most likely not open as many eyes as your article did.
Perhaps feeling good because you are a good person as you pity someone and then feeling satisfaction that there is someone worse than you, not as compassionate? Creating positive emotions is often accompanied by negative ones, c'mon Robby gave you a great favor - you can take a negative dump on him. Scapegoating is so human...
But this discussion triggered by Robbies unfortunate post, shows very well how opposite strong emotions such topics create in people. That is exactly what politicians and marketing departments of i.e. pharmaceutical companies feed on when selling sht. Fear of death and sickness and extreme feelings of love and hate accompanied by it. Best thing to do? Control these emotions when you are not a sick person or he/she's relative. Very few can truly symphatize with such person, because they simply can't - it's someone you haven't met in person. You read about him on a bike site, it's a completely different thing to read about someone and meeting that person. I'm no psychiatrist but there must be something with "real life experience" vs "online". I can read as much as I can about someone's misery and it will never trigger so much emotions as seeing a bald girl on chemo in a hospital and her family around putting extreme effort to put smile on their faces.
If you overreact it you will generate lots of negative stuff and it does not bring anything good to anyone. Chill out everyone