Fighting To A Draw An Update On Cort's Cancer

I’m cancer free again! I couldn’t be happier or more grateful to get to hang out on this great planet with so many fantastic people and with so many awesome things to do. If you get a chance please come join us on September 22nd to honor those we lost in the fight and those that are still fighting and to celebrate life, food, and help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.(Cort and his sons Cortland, Maclean, and Ian)

We are going to have races and loads of great prizes and auction items both silent and live. My good friends Chef Tom Sixsmith of Cakebread Cellars and Chef Jennifer Sixsmith of Trinchero Family Farms are in charge so get ready to enjoy some great food. If you can’t make it and you would still like to help out and donate than click this link.

My back story. This month marks nine years from when I was first diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma, my first oncologist told me I had a 50% chance of survival, but than I went home and googled MCL and read that I had a 10 % chance of surviving 5 years, mostly likely dying at about 18 months.

I was devastated, luckily I called our family doctor Mark Siegler and he told me to drop the mouse and step away from the keyboard, he said that I was reading old statistics and I wasn’t getting the true picture. Mark read up all night on MCL and called me in morning and told me that UCSF ( 10 minutes from my home) had just completed an 8 year clinical study where after the patient got into remission and than went through a nine-month protocol called Ultra Chemotherapy with Stem Cell Support, that 60% of those people that went through the treatment didn’t have reoccurrence for 5 years.

Well I went through the treatment and it bought me 6 ½ years of being cancer free.

Unfortunately about two years ago my cancer came back. When I went through my initial treatment the doctors said MCL was currently incurable and when it did come back they had a new drug called Valcade that I could use to prolong my life. However in those 6 plus years the medical community had developed 3 new treatments for the reoccurrence of MCL, all of them with better results than Valcade. Consequently I began taking a chemotherapy drug called Imbruvica, it wasn’t that bad, I took one pill before bed and initially the side effects were minor, but over time the side effects began to take a toll.

I met with my oncologist Dr. Babis Andreadis (pictured above middle) six weeks ago and we decided to take a break from Imbruvica and to see where I was with my cancer, so I had a PET scan to see where I was and low and behold I am currently cancer free.

I don’t know how long I have until the cancer returns but I’m enjoying the time away from treatment and letting my body heal up which it is doing rapidly. Recently I’ve lost way too many friends to all kinds of cancer and I’ve had many more recently diagnosed. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been touched by cancer, it’s heartbreaking, but we can all do our part in combating this terrible disease. Raise money, raise awareness and be there for the people that are fighting for their lives.

I’m so grateful to be alive and overjoyed to be cancer free again after taking chemo everyday for 21 months. My life is spectacular. I just got back from visiting Italy for two weeks with my three amazing sons which was a trip of a lifetime, and my ex-wife Liz is still a wonderful presence in my life. I’m eternally grateful to my brilliant partner David Wells and all of our wonderful employees at 101 Surf Sports, together we have built a robust and loving community of water people.

You’ll never hear me say that I beat cancer, I have too much respect for the beast. Instead I say we fought to a draw and I’m ready for the next round, if or when the bell rings again. I’m more than optimistic that with the help of the brilliant minds of my doctor, scientists, and all the committed people worldwide that are working tirelessly on the cure that I’ll be able to manage my cancer much like others are managing heart disease and diabetes. Ultimately they may find a cure, but in the meantime I’m not a cancer survivor, I’m a cancer thriver…Thanks for your time.

Why donate? Because it makes all the difference in so many lives. Prognosis and outcomes are radically better because of all the developments that have been made through research and clinical trials…so please help out and donate.