The Fight for My Life: Boxing Through Chemo: Boxing Through Chemo: Boxing Through Chemo

By Kelly Motley

This book is about developing a stronger mind, body and soul for facing your worst enemy. This book offers a belief, a hope and a plan showing that people don't always have to just adapt to a tough situation, they can make the situation adapt to them. Whether it's cancer, divorce, bankruptcy, or something else, this book is fo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Motley
• Release date: Oct 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578251417

Book preview

Praise for The Fight for My Life

‘Life is a fight, it’s a matter of what you are fighting for.’ Kelly Motley was fighting for more than her survival, it was to continue to exist, to have her soul. Conquer or be conquered, humanity’s Call to Arms since our beginning. Take a ringside seat, and see how a battle plan for life is devised and executed. You’ll be waiting for each bell to ring.

—TEDDY ATLAS

Hall of Fame commentator, boxing trainer to 18 world champion fighters, apprentice to the late Cus D’Amato and one of the most important voices in boxing.

Kelly is not a breast cancer survivor. This girl is a breast cancer thriver.

—REBECCA WELLS

Author of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, #1 on The New York Times bestsellers list for 35 weeks and selling six million copies.

Kelly Motley’s book is about spiritual hope and power and courageously getting into the ring when facing your worst enemy. In her case it is a formidable cancer opponent. This is one of the best written books I have read and there is an important lesson for everyone who reads it. She does not gloss over her raw feelings or her struggles as she has to deal with each new stage, disappointment, and complication. She faced her worst fears head on–including near death–and came out the other side stronger than ever. Whenever I have to face my worst fear or greatest enemy, I intend to read this book again to remind me how to do it.

—STORMIE OMARTIAN

Stormie Omartian is the bestselling author of The Power of a Praying Series and many other books. (Her books have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Her bestselling book, The Power of a Praying Wife, has sold 9 million copies.)

The Fight for My Life: Boxing Through Chemo is about developing a stronger mind, body and soul for facing your worst enemy. Whether it’s cancer, divorce, bankruptcy, or something else, this book is for anyone who feels desperate, lonely, or terrified by an unexpected circumstance.

Kelly Motley understands firsthand how an unexpected circumstance can take a toll. She was blindsided by a cancer diagnosis and pushed to the brink, where her life felt threatened by defeat. Ultimately, she was dragged into a fight she wasn’t prepared for.

But instead of surrendering, she put together a plan to continue her business and keep a strong mental and physical wellbeing.

Kelly has written the book she wished she had when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

About the author:

Kelly Motley is the author of The Fight for My Life: Boxing Through Chemo, which chronicles how training and boxing helped her to navigate a breast cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy. She is a former public relations and marketing professional who landed stories in America’s top news sources for healthcare and technology companies and CEOs. Kelly and her husband of close to 30 years live in Nashville, Tennessee, and they have two sons.

www.kellymotley.com

www.thefightformylife.com

Kelly is available for select speaking engagements. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact [e-mail]

For hope and planning during your fight, scan the QR code.

The

Fight

For My

LifE

Boxing through Chemo

Kelly Motley

Copyright © 2021 by Kelly Motley

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-578-25141-7

Cover image by Annette McNamara

Design by Chris Amato and Michael Catalano

www.thefightformylife.com

To loves of my life:

John,

Will and Alex

Contents

Prologue Dressing Room

Round One Alex’s Wrestling Shoes

Round Two Merry Street Gym

Round Three The African Assassin

Round Four Boxing Gloves

Round Five Diagnosis

Round Six It’s All Good

Round Seven Pre-Fight

Round Eight The Fight

Round Nine Chemo

Round Ten Hair

Round Eleven Seen and Unseen

Round Twelve Sucker Punch

Round Thirteen Post Fight Conference

Appendix A: Seasonal Healing Food

Appendix B: Here is What I Ate

Prologue

Dressing Room

There’s a strange thing about being on the wrong side of an ambush and not having time to process things in an ordinary manner. The unsuspecting, the element of surprise from concealed positions, this is what ambushes are built on. Advancing before anyone really knows what’s taking place. We watched, hoped and waited.

It was a total of twelve hours, a full day and another half-day, sitting with a calm anxiousness, my husband John and I together, in the oncologist’s waiting room for what was to be my first round of chemo through my new port on October 25. In life you don’t see things playing out like this. We had met with the doctor the day before, been given our script for the production; it was direct and simple. We knew our lines, the important sequences of the day, had memorized details and each moment of action, and we could regurgitate the new order composed of check-ins, long waits, standing up after hearing my name called by a lab tech, checking my blood count to ensure proper functioning of my kidneys and liver, then we’d go off to the infusion area where pre-meds are given 30 to 60 minutes prior to the chemo to reduce nausea and allergic reactions.

I had spent three months visualizing this very day, sketching out each detail. Today’s appointment was scheduled at least a month before, yet now I had a bad feeling. None of what we anticipated occurred. Everything about the expected experience would be all wrong. Instead of getting the chemo treatment with its sinister side effects, it all felt harmless. The day of waiting was unremarkable, unexpectedly delightful, ending with John and I leaving the doctor’s office to go on a late afternoon date, to vote in an early election at the Belle Meade City Hall, enjoy an early vegan dinner and work out together at the Y. What I didn’t know was there was a scheming vested interest and methodical manipulation at play, that was part of an obnoxious 12-hour wait for chemo, that would test my pride and will. The best way to tire out an opponent is to apply pressure. Waiting became the pressure fighting technique to tire me out.

However, the new reality could not be denied, only delayed, and I returned for my first chemo treatment. After a half-day of waiting, a door flew open and a nurse called my name, announcing my new destination. It would be difficult to move. My legs would feel heavy as if in a nightmare, struggling to trudge forward. We wandered down a long corridor to a place where the new geography seemed far from home, but was only three miles away.

All this time I had tried so hard to devise my own story, and here is where I recognized it all as a delusion. It was now I realized what I lacked: a fundamental grasp of the disastrous situation. You don’t have to be hit in the face to be taken to that dangerous place where you are tested emotionally, to tap your will and character. I paused to see for the first time what human beings had contrived: a large, free-standing rectangular room filled with rows of buttery leather recliners called clinical infusion chairs. Each chair came with its own IV pole. I entered a precarious reality, a packed, big-box, institutionalized supercenter of chemo. A place where I saw no favoritism. On the face of it, I might have looked like a newcomer to an AA meeting or someone watching a parade with the mishmash of ordinary people from all walks of life. We’d all be ordinary, condemned to recline together in the same strange posture, our feet pointed in the same direction, arms dangling or stretched out, empty handed, all of us bruised in the same spot, grown old before our time, with maybe an unavailable future. Exposed slaves to the lasting damage, docile, crossing a shadow line, so full of tears and sadness—the elderly holding onto walkers, the too young, the expectant mothers, some close to dying and exhausted, some with full heads of hair, some with bald heads wearing hats, others with wigs, some calm, deflated bodies, some weeping, smiling, the destitute, the rich, the crippled, active, heavy and thin, all together for a common cause, while eating pizzas and candy, drinking cans of soda, reading books. Some were subdued, others making conversation with friends or family.

Each person when going home would stare into a mirror and say: No this is not me, I can’t recognize myself. I now was experiencing the October 8 message of the day I had read for years in my great-grandmother Opal’s AA 1971 book: "God or a spirit of the universe drawing all the people, us all together, to get closer to him through our common difficulties, dangers, and sorrows." Or it was a shared enemy uniting us all.

There were people moving swiftly between those who were stuck to poles and tubes, living their lives in parallel. At first sight, everything that happened was designed around a steady stream of young African-American women briskly walking from behind a counter. The counter resembled a trendy chef’s counter restaurant designed to create a relationship, a dialogue with its customers where we get a front row seat to see the hum of swamped cooks on the line, always on display, watching them prepare our meal. These young aides exposed their patients and, in a roundabout way, themselves, through the administration of dangerous, strong, toxic potions, while also wrapping them in folded perfect squares of white, heated blankets and passing around enormous baskets of candy. Oncologists walked down a spacious polished and shiny corridor, looking away in a different direction, where no one is dying, avoiding eye contact with the reclining crowd in the spacious room that represented the horrors of the battle, seeing us only in their designated private offices, away from the day’s effects of the deadly drugs.

Holy shit was my feeling; this is what my universe was now reduced to. Everything I felt I knew was now distorted. I’d never seen this as my reality. I was joining this new mortal team where just about everyone looked frumpy, wearing sweatpants. I found the place of aborted dreams and swallowed up hopes unbearable, reeking of decay, and I hated It even more now—It being this cancer thing and the bad situation I couldn’t get out of, the wickedness and poor timing intended to wound each person’s life. I grasped the simple truth in this space: We are all going to die and all be forgotten. It was here that I saw the exact opposite of paradise.

I had an impulse to turn back and run fast but I shuffled my feet forward with a forced smile at times, not meeting anyone’s eyes, as if no one here existed. I struggled to breathe easily and could not think. I was tough on myself for having taken time to purchase expensive clothes and Alexander Wang boots to empower myself—boots I saw as jungle boots to help me march through these twelve rounds of chemo. I’d had a naive notion that if I dressed well, I’d be mentally stronger and be treated with more respect, which might equate to fewer medical errors. Or maybe I didn’t want to dress for the part; maybe I wanted to impress others or be perceived as someone important.

All of a sudden, I shrank, feeling careless in my planning, and I was thrown off balance. I reflected back on a simple sentence 20-something year-old Sena Agbeko, who had knowledge beyond most men and had trained to be the next world champion of boxing from Ghana, told me matter-of-factly and frequently: If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. I strived to understand how my opponent would work, with the goal to keep my opponent in an uncomfortable place, to make opportunities to control the fight. Every day was about breaking down the forensics of the fight. Until now, I thought I devised a well thought out fight plan. Now I experienced hesitation: It’s one thing to make a plan and it’s another to actually execute it.

I had tried my best—eating clean, getting physically and mentally stronger, and surrounding myself with the best of trainers to make a difference. The night before my first infusion, I’d followed strict instructions to eat salmon, medicinal foods and other protein that my nutritionist Virginia said, would serve as a buffer along with Nishime, shitake mushrooms, Kinpira composed of a Japanese sea vegetable called kombu, along with burdock root, lotus root and a long, oblong white radish called daikon along with a side of black mahogany rice to settle the stomach. She had told me, Breast cancer is from doing too much for others and giving too much out. Learn to have downtime and de-stress and you are going to feel your body shifting. I worked on all these things. Somehow, I had overlooked details like selecting an accessible doctor willing to meet with me through the treatments and mentally preparing for the appalling near-nakedness of lying back in what felt like the ultimate open floor plan while taking chemical infusions meant to heal.

My world was getting ready to be turned upside down as I was caught cold. I had tried to be rational. No amount of mental preparation would have made me ready for this. Once I found my chair there would be an apparatus used to bring me down or as an agent of distraction when I thought things had finally fallen into place. It was a simple IV pole with its plastic tube that was attached to the vein near my heart through a soft catheter. Then there would be a calculated perpetual wait, us watching nurses go by, keeping us in suspense. We froze when we saw them coming. In a civilized word, women aren’t supposed to make these kinds of decisions about their life while a crowd of nurses, a business office administrator with paperwork and pens insist on a much more sinister type of treatment dictated by an insurance company. The day and a half in the waiting room and this ambush felt engineered to suit the desires of a few. Everything was so arranged.

It was here I was pushed to the brink, where I felt threatened with defeat. I was dragged into a fight I wouldn’t be prepared for. I might have experienced this thing called panic fighting. Now I knew what my coaches meant by the phrase calculated chaos.

***

Everything that happened, led me to where I am meant to be. Sometimes you have to go through very difficult things, tortuous times, to get to a better place in life. This is my story about getting into the boxing ring with discomfort and chaos. It’s a story about how I thought I knew how to play the system. I thought I had all the answers. I had a vision of the kind of person I wanted to be. But I was blindsided by a devastating blow. And then I got knocked down hard by a series