Topic: News: Accident helped Zach Schluender detect cancer

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Accident helped Zach Schluender detect cancer
By Brian Gomez

A novice weightlifter, Zach Schluender knew nothing about proper technique.

He stacked the bar with weights, grabbed it, lifted it and dropped it. Then he rested a few minutes and did it again.
One day, he lifted too many weights too fast. His groin took most of the blow.

"It hurt really bad, so I kind of felt down there," Schluender said. "Something didn't feel right. I felt a little hard spot."

Schluender had testicular cancer.

More than six years after the rookie mistake that might have saved his life, Schluender, 25, possesses the poise of a veteran weightlifter, hungry for a trip to the Summer Olympics in Beijing in August.

[attachimg=1]
Olympic Training Center resident Zach Schluender
is on the U.S. team competing this week in Callao,
Peruworks out Monday, March 10, 2008 in the
weightlifting room of the Olympic Training Center.
Schluender was diagnosed with testicular cancer in Aug

The Olympic Training Center resident, coming off a 19th-place finish at the 2007 world championships, will compete Sunday at the Pan American Weightlifting Championships in Callao, Peru.

Two other Colorado Springs weightlifters - Pan American Games silver medalist Casey Burgener and Zach Krych - anchor the eight-person U.S. team in the final Olympic qualifying tournament that begins today.

A first- or second-place team finish among nonqualified countries would enable the U.S. to send two men's weightlifters to Beijing. It can send one if it finishes third, fourth or fifth.

Schluender is the second-ranked 231.5-pound U.S. lifter behind Burgener, although he's 14th in the national rankings, determined by the percentage of a lifter's body weight compared to how much he has lifted. That makes him a long shot for the U.S. Olympic trials May 16-17 in Atlanta.

Getting to this point was a struggle for Schluender, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs graduate student whose weightlifting career almost ended after his cancer diagnosis.

In August 2001, Schluender had his high school diploma in hand, ready to study exercise science, throw the shot put and lift weights at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo.

Days after the pain from the weightlifting mishap subsided, Schluender noticed the lump on his testicle was still there.

Within a month, it doubled in size.

Doctors diagnosed Schluender with testicular cancer, a rare but treatable form of the disease. There's a 90-plus percent cure rate for the estimated 8,500 Americans diagnosed annually, with surgery often negating the need for chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

Schluender couldn't rest easy, thinking about Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner who nearly died in 1996 after cancer spread from his testicles to his brain and lungs.

"It was a rough time," Schluender said. "There were times I would become depressed and think, ‘What if? What if? What if?' But I had that optimistic attitude that things would be OK, that I'm a fighter."

Successful removal of one of Schluender's testicles a month before his freshman year at Truman prevented him from having to undergo chemotherapy, and doctors determined the cancer didn't spread.

He had checkups - chest X-rays, CT scans and blood tests - every month for a year. He now has annual checkups.

"Ninety percent of the population would probably quit," Burgener said of Schluender's weightlifting. "It's really rare to find someone that can push through something that serious. It's his passion for weightlifting. He loves it so much, he would never let anything get in the way.

"It puts things into perspective when you feel like you're having a bad day or when things aren't going well. You see a guy who has overcome cancer, and he's still working his butt off and he's still doing great things."

Schluender called the cancer a blessing in disguise.

"If I hadn't been lifting weights and hit myself, I could have never known it was there, and it could have progressed," he said. "It has definitely made me stronger. If you can make it through something like cancer, if you can kick that to the curb, I feel like I can get through anything."