After a blood cancer diagnosis, one Arkansas endurance cyclist is back on his bike \u2014 just 13 months after treatment, he’s returned to the sport he loves.<\/p>\n
LITTLE ROCK, Ark \u2014 After an avid endurance cyclist was met with a blood cancer diagnosis, \u00a0he’s now back to doing what he loves \u2014 cycling.<\/p>\n
Before Gary Beck received some unexpected news, he was feeling fit, active, and ready for his next bike race.<\/p>\n
Then, a simple blood test changed everything.<\/p>\n
“The doctor told me that I had multiple myeloma, that it was incurable,” Beck described.<\/p>\n
He explained that he was left feeling stunned and confused because his doctor also told him he was lucky to have been diagnosed in Arkansas.<\/p>\n
“Everybody thinks of Arkansas as backwoods country!,” He said. “No. People come from all over the world to get this treated here, because that’s all they do. They’re on the cutting edge.”<\/p>\n
Soon after, Beck met with Dr. Sharmilan Thanendrarajan, who is an oncologist at the UAMS Myeloma Center and an expert in blood cancers.<\/p>\n
“Multiple myeloma” is the second most common blood cancer. \u00a0This type of blood cancer consists of plasma cells or tumor cells growing in the bone marrow, leading to a growth of antibodies in the blood. \u00a0And this can lead to significant problems,” explained Dr. Thanendrarajan.<\/p>\n
By the time they met, Beck was exhausted, anemic, and showing early signs of bone damage.<\/p>\n
His medical team treated him with intensive chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant, and an ongoing antibody therapy.<\/p>\n
“He’s currently off treatment, and he’s still in stringent remission, which is the best response you can have with myeloma. \u00a0And we’re very happy about that,” added Thanendrarajan.<\/p>\n
As an endurance cyclist, Beck has one goal \u2014 to get back on his bike.<\/p>\n
Now, 13 months after treatment, he was at a race in Missouri, wondering if he could even finish.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To his surprise, he did much more than that!<\/p>\n
“It was tough, but I did manage to do it, and I managed to win my age group. \u00a0I was over the moon! \u00a0It was beyond my comprehension that I could actually do that!,” he described.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a blood cancer diagnosis, one Arkansas endurance cyclist is back on his bike \u2014 just 13 months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-365957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}