PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Derek Fitzgerald of Doylestown used to live a sedentary life. Now, he is in the best shape he’s ever been in, and he’s staging a 24-hour bike-a-thon to raise money and awareness for the thing that changed his life around: cancer.
At 30 years old and 200 pounds, Fitzgerald went to the hospital for what he thought was a routine gastrointestinal issue.
“The gastroenterologist comes up and says, ‘Derek, I’ve got some bad news,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘We found a tumor we weren’t expecting. It was completely asymptomatic, but it’s been causing the symptoms that you’ve been experiencing. We had a biopsy — you have cancer.’ ”
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, to be exact. Doctors found a tumor the size of a grapefruit.
“They had removed 2 feet of intestine on either side of that, just to make sure that they got all the cancerous tissue,” he said.
After the surgery, Fitzgerald started precautionary chemotherapy, a cocktail that includes a drug with a 2% risk of causing heart issues. Three months later, a doctor was at Fitzgerald’s bedside.
“He says, ‘Derek, I know you’ve had a rough year, but I’m afraid you’ve got some more baggage. You're in heart failure.’
“ ‘There is no cure for the heart failure that you’re in, other than potentially a heart transplant, and we’ll see if you get to that point. But whatever you had expected for your life, it’s time to reevaluate,’ ” he remembered the doctor saying.
Fitzgerald was practically bedridden for seven years.
“I spent seven years wondering if every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep out of pure exhaustion if I would wake up again. It was not life. Everything that I had once been able to do was taken away and I was relegated to my bed.”
Fortunately, in 2011, doctors found a donor for the heart transplant.
“For years, I would see movie trailers for movies that were coming soon, and I would start crying — I’ll never get to see that. I’ll never experience that. And then all of a sudden, everything changed. So this person, on the last day of their life and on the worst day of their life, chose to save the life of the stranger.”
The transplant was successful.
“I had this complete stranger’s heart beating in my chest,” said Fitzgerald. “It’s an overwhelming feeling. I’ve had this gratitude to this hero ever since, something that I can never pay somebody. I can never, never repay that family and that person, but I try.”
Eight months after his heart transplant, Fitzgerald ran his first 5K. Since then, he’s completed six Ironman Triathlons — and counting.
Beating death twice made Fitzgerald take a hard look at his lifestyle.
“I had neglected so much of my health. I neglected so much of life. And I didn’t even know what was being taken away from me until it was ripped from me. ... This [donor], they didn’t just bring me back to health. They brought me to health, and then into the shape of an athlete. I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”
During his years-long journey to health, Fitzgerald looked at the numbers. Roughly 11 million people died from either cancer or heart disease within that timeframe.
Now, he wants to give back.
He’s riding a solo bike-a-thon to raise awareness of blood cancers and money for patients who need it. He hopes to raise $50,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
“There I was — alive. And not just alive, but doing Ironman Triathlons,” he said. “That gift of waking up every day and being given the gift of a future that you can see yourself in is one of the most powerful gifts that I’ve been given.”
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