Endless Pain, Five Seizures, and 26.2 Miles of Never Giving Up
The headaches—they never really pass. And the words don’t flow like they used to, don’t flow like they should. They’re up there, no doubt. Clear as day. But they’re jammed. They roll out slow or not at all. Sometimes his wife speaks for him. Sometimes his right arm goes numb. Sometimes his vision blurs and sometimes he has seizures and sometimes he’s just damn tired.
But on the morning of Monday, April 17, at the starting line of the 2017 Boston Marathon, the sights and sounds of a new city all around him, Nikes laced, #6992 pinned to his chest, his whole family there to cheer him forward, 30-year-old Nathan Sexton, tall and lanky and undergoing clinical trials at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for the Stage 4 brain cancer the chemo couldn’t fry, feels “pretty good.”
Not that he’d say much if he didn’t. The only way to find out if he’s sick, his sister said, is to ask him point blank: “Are you sick?” He’s stubborn that way.
