The 'overhaul' of his life

Carlos Morales started running only a few years ago; It toughened him up for the fight of his life

Carlos Morales likes to joke that he came to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in 2007 for a complete overhaul.

He considered himself an athlete, a half-marathon finisher, with many more miles yet to run. Morales didn't want to get beaten by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So, as he likes to say, the 'overhaul' under the care of experts at the SCCA gave him many more miles to run.

"I guess you could say I'm an optimist," he said recently. "I have read a lot about the healing power of the mind and the body, and I always maintained a good attitude. I wanted to get healthy again. I wanted to keep running."

Morales, who turns 68 on May 1, started running only six years ago, thanks to his daughter, also a runner. She got him interested in the sport, and he loved it from the get go; he even won a couple of races in his age group.

And then mysterious pains and aches that he knew were not from running started bothering him. After a couple of misdiagnoses, doctors finally told him he was suffering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But the initial treatment that he received in Idaho didn't work. So in 2007, the Morales family traveled to the SCCA, where doctors told them they would attack Carlos' lymphoma with the same vigor he ran his half-marathons.

"I was treated so well at the SCCA, even though I wasn't very pleasant sometimes," he said, adding that everyone, from doctors to nurses and other workers, treated him with kindness.

He remembers one SCCA employee who brought a stationary bicycle to his room after hearing of his running exploits. On most days during his four-month stay, Morales pedaled eight miles a day, even as his hair fell out because of the treatment.

And he takes great pride in telling friends that a nurse, an expert in extracting bone marrow, couldn't get the needle into his dense, running-conditioned bones, despite trying several times.

"My doctor told me I had the heart of a teenager. 'You're Charles Atlas,' he said. Thanks to all that running, I was in very good shape."

Last August, Morales traveled to San Francisco for his first half-marathon post-treatment. "I think I did pretty well, considering it was my first since my treatment," he said. His time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.

He came back to the SCCA for a one-year follow up in December. "The doctor took one look at me and he said, 'I'm sure I'm not going to be seeing you around here again.'"

Charles Atlas, indeed.

	2005 Patient Reunion Photo Gallery