Before and after: Athlete learned to live — while dying of cancer

Dear friends; Just an update on David. . . . Let's get this out of the way. Yes, David is terminal. I hope I am not shocking anyone with this news because the writing has been on the wall for a few years. — e-mail from Carol Draney to friends

Cancer is the politically correct disease. It likes those who ingest cigarettes, alcohol and almost anything else in excess, but it strikes elsewhere randomly and indiscriminately. It has no bias. It attacks the healthy and unhealthy, the young and old, the strong and weak.

It doesn't care if you're 6-foot-4, 195 pounds, or that you're sculpted like Adonis. It doesn't care that you've abstained from smoking, drinking, drugs, even pop or candy. It doesn't care if you're only 37.

It doesn't care if you're David Draney, and you're all of the above, plus a former national-class decathlete from Brigham Young University, a schoolteacher, a father of two, a husband to Carol.

Where does a story about Draney start — the beginning or the end? With the living or the dying? The before or the after?

Here's what people who knew Draney say: that he believed he really didn't learn to live until he was dying. After surgeons removed his leg, while they were chipping away at parts of that body he had worked so hard to perfect, he hit his stride.

"Dad, I can't begin to explain to you how valuable this experience has been to me," he told his father, Terryl, on more than one occasion. "It's been some of the best and worst times of my life, but I wish there were a way I could pass on to everybody all the things I've learned. More than ever I know that what's really going to count is what I do to serve other people. If someone told me I didn't have to go through this, and I wouldn't learn what I've learned, I wouldn't do it."

Right now David isn't doing too well. He had another bowel obstruction due to his cancer. . . . So Saturday he had surgery (number 20) to place a tube into his stomach. The tube comes out of his front left side just below the ribs. Since he won't be getting any nutrients from eating, he is getting his nutrition through his (IV). We are hoping he will make it through the holidays. — Carol

It is a quirk of life that a man who can bench press 300 pounds can be undone by something so small — something at the cellular level — that it can't be seen. Chondroblastic osteosarcoma is the official name. Bone cancer.

Draney was standing in front of the mirror one day, checking his physique, as his wife had seen him do so many times, when he noticed a lump on his hip. It was 1997.

"I told him to go to a doctor," says Carol.