The Patriot Post® · Always Persevere

There have been so many times when I have used, in my own life, the marvelous lessons and the great truths from sports that I uncovered in the 40-plus years I have written about the people who play them. So imagine the joy I found the other day when I was reading about an old baseball player and got caught up this paragraph.

“There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from baseball. Baseball nuances in many ways recapitulate life. That’s because most of the time you fail. Hitting .300 gets you into the Hall of Fame, but that means seven times out of 10, you stink. Baseball teaches you how to deal with failure, that it’s normal and you can still make a good thing of it. Success comes from perseverance.”

The guy who said that once played semi-pro ball on Chicago’s Southside but what gives it such great kick, aside from its obvious truth, is … well, because I adore the guy who said it. Herb Schwartz, who played for the Midlothian White Sox while going through medical school way back when, is today one of the premier orthopedic oncologists in the country.

He is often called “The Limb Saver” in medical circles because he’ll try just about anything to avoid amputating an arm or a leg due to bone cancer. But sometimes he fails to stop the tragic spread of a disease and, despite his glowing success rate, he will be the first to tell you he’s also failed many times. I know because he failed on me.

I got to know Dr. Schwartz at the lowest point of my life in 2008. I’d already had 28 surgeries on my arm that year and I was just as big a miserable mess as the infected arm had become. I just had begged two surgeons to cut my arm off but, because of my excellent hand ability, they (wisely) refused and urged me to “persevere.”

When I heard about Dr. Schwartz I immediately spent about five hours with him in his Vanderbilt office. I then cried all the way back to Chattanooga because, during the visit, he put one of his gifted fingers on my nose and promised, “You won’t suffer any more.”

So the day after Christmas, he and another great guy put four long rods in the center of the bones in my arm, extending from my lower forearm to almost my shoulder. They also took a big wad of cement and put it where my elbow had once been, in essence gluing those banging bones together with the rods adding much-needed stability.

Well, the thing didn’t work. The now-brittle bones broke inside the casts twice within three months, the cement crumbled up into sharp rocks, and all four “unbreakable” stainless rods broke. What resulted was a six-month nightmare and I was soon driving the Nashville surgeons crazy with an almost weekly calamity. When a cruel nurse finally sent me packing, I went back to Mayo Clinic like a prodigal or something.

The Mayo people, of course, knew all that had happened. We then “persevered” through seven more surgeries and infections and seemingly endless drainage but today’s tale is this: Herb Schwartz, who gave me hope when mine had run out, taught me that, yes, “failure is normal and you can still make a good thing out of it.”

This year hasn’t exactly been picnic but, thus far in 2010, I have avoided the operating table. Last year I changed soggy bandages every day from January 1 through October 3. This year I haven’t drained a speck. How’s that for success or “answered prayer,” as the case may be.

And while I’ll admit my attempt to turn my medical trips into two-hour drives instead of all-day flights was a big disappointment, the lesson is just like Dr. Schwartz said recently, “Success comes from perseverance.”

His wonderful philosophy was recently revealed in a fabulous article written by Leslie Hast for the Vanderbilt Medical Center’s weekly newspaper. At one point Dr. Schwartz told Leslie, “If there is a rule that I live by, it is that things can always get worse and we are very lucky for everything we have. ”

“Abiding by the rule helps level out the rollercoaster of emotions we all go through. You don’t get too excited when it’s good and you don’t get too sad when things aren’t going your way. Kind of like baseball. People don’t get it, but it’s true. Everything comes back to baseball,” he said gently.

Last year Dr. Schwartz was made chairman of Vanderbilt’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation. He deserves it and far more. That Herb Schwartz tried and failed on me means nothing when compared to the fact that he once tried and try mightily he did.

What matters is that he tried something new, a different approach. It wasn’t his fault it didn’t work. Every doctor that has seen my arm has never seen another case like it. The only failure can come will be from me and me alone. And it will only come if I fail to keep trying. You have to embrace every “at bat” you get in life.

So I’ll always adore Herb Schwartz . The infectious disease people at Vanderbilt helped save my life when I was there. Am I mad or bitter that things didn’t work out? Absolutely not. But I have to wonder what might have been if Herb could have ever really hit the ball, back when he was playing with the Midlothian White Sox.

He might have made it to “the bigs” but then where would the rest of us have wound up? I thank God Dr. Schwartz’s greatest innings are just now being played, and that he himself perseveres when faced with what would otherwise be a failure.