Photo By Terrance Bell | Spc. Luis Rios was assigned to Tango Company, 266th Quartermaster Battalion, while...... read more read more
Subscribe
FORT LEE, Va. - Spc. Luis Rios is all about “that next big thing” – his vernacular for aggressively seeking challenges that feed his insatiable ambitions. In this case, he was leaving his job as a fine restaurant chef to join the Army as a food service specialist.
“I was in Louisville (Kentucky) for four years and learned a lot, but I was ready to go somewhere else,” said the self-described “go getter” from Aurora, Mo. “I felt it would take longer if I had stayed in the (civilian) food industry. It was the perfect time to join the military.”
That was 2013. The 24-year-old arrived here in May of that year and graduated Friday as a member of Tango Company, 266th Quartermaster Battalion.
What took so long?
The young Soldier was diagnosed with a rare cancer just a few days after his arrival, an ordeal that made tatters of his temperament, jeopardized his career plans and rattled his Christian faith.
“The next big thing” for Rios was ridding his body of a baseball-sized mass of cancerous cells on his kidney and getting healthy. Facing the prospect of a complicated six-hour surgery, the Soldier held steadfast to his faith.
“Sometimes God puts things in your life just so you can grow in faith,” said the Soldier reared in a Catholic family originally from Mexico. “Even though my faith was stronger before this, it just made it grow even stronger.”
He would need a mountain of conviction to withstand what he was about to endure. Rios was diagnosed with a stage one Wilms’ tumor, a cancer that typically strikes children. Even though the July 12, 2013, surgery at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center was successful, doctors said he would have to undergo lung surgery for exploratory reasons and 18 weeks of chemotherapy as a preventative measure.
“I really didn’t’ have an option,” said Rios, who was reassigned from the 23rd QM Brigade’s reception unit to the Warrior Transition Unit at Joint Base Langley-Eustis following 30 days of convalescence leave.
Rios’ family and friends, who had traveled here to comfort him for the first surgery, had the post-surgery impression that it took care of everything. In an act of sensitivity, he spared them the bad news of the second surgery that was scheduled for Aug. 29.
“I just didn’t want to add any stress for them,” said Rios, explaining why he didn’t tell his parents until after the surgery took place. “I avoided that whole conversation with them.”
Chemotherapy was the next foe Rios had to battle. Although he developed some patience – “OK, this could take a while” – he hoped to get on with his life and return to MOS training here. He clearly didn’t have an inkling of how formidable the opposition could be.
“The first ones I didn’t really feel,” he said of the first of eight rounds of chemotherapy. “I was eating and sleeping fine, and I was still riding (an exercise bike). I couldn’t do PT, but I was active. I said ‘This is not going to be bad. I can do this.’”
On the third or fourth treatment, the beast of chemotherapy unleashed on Rios’ the full weight of its trademark array of debilitating side effects. “My hair starting falling out, my legs started hurting and I started feeling nauseous in the morning,” he said.
Rios compared the nauseousness with having a bad hangover all the time. Brief relief came only with “puking,” he said, but shortly thereafter “I would feel nauseous again.”
By the fifth treatment, Rios had lost all of his head and body hair, lost weight and wore a look of despair like the latest fashion.
“Just the little things,” said Rios with a trembling lip, his distressed face recalling the excruciation. “Not being able to put on your combat boots. That stuff hit me hard. It’s just simple stuff that you never think about, and then one day, you just can’t do it for yourself. I don’t like people doing stuff for me.”
In a matter of weeks, Rios had descended from a healthy young man – brimming with the confidence and ambition to venture far beyond the boundaries of tiny Aurora to the big city of Louisville to study the culinary arts at Sullivan University – to someone who had nearly lost the use of his hands; who was dependent on others for the simplest tasks.
“It was devastating because I couldn’t even open a water bottle,” said Rios in reference to the effects of Vincristine, an inhibitor that causes numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. “It was really hard because my parents couldn’t come and help me.”
To help him cope, Rios was put on a very restrictive profile and allowed to wear the Army physical training uniform. He also received help from a volunteer, Army retiree and cancer survivor, Hug Riley, who helped with many of the “little things.” Another cancer survivor, WTU cadre member Sgt. 1st Class Loretta Daniels, assisted him as well.
“They were the only two people who I could go to and talk about how I was feeling,” he said, inferring chemotherapy – much like war – could only be understood by those who have experienced it. “If I went to somebody who hadn’t gone through chemotherapy, they wouldn’t understand. The only thing they could say is, ‘Can I get you something?’ I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to them.”
Having a couple of cancer battle buddies was comforting, but uncertainty lurked about the walls of his psyche like a menacing, shadowy figure. Questions surfaced and lingered – “Why me, Lord? I didn’t do anything to cause this,” recalled Rios.
He searched for answers. During church services, congregants would tell him “Sometimes God gives some of his toughest battles to his toughest warriors.” It wasn’t an answer, but it lightened the unsettling burden he had come to know since the earlier treatments. “God gave it to me,” reasoned Rios, “because he knew I could handle it.”
Rios fought the chemo battle until January of 2014, underwent physical and occupational therapy and miraculously re-emerged at Fort Lee in June following a near-perfect PT test – the punctuation mark on a fit-for-duty declaration, not the medical discharge that he feared and loathed.
“I went to hell and back, and I just wasn’t going to give up like that,” Rios said. Giving up meant leaving the Army and the blank canvas of opportunity it presented, not so much taking on another occupation more suitable for a sick man. To Rios, that sounded more like descent and defeat.
“I told a lot of the Soldiers I met (at the WTU), ‘I haven’t done anything for the Army,’” he recalled. “They would say, ‘Yes you have.’ I would say, ‘No, I haven’t.’ The only thing I’ve done was basic training … I felt that I hadn’t fulfilled my obligation. What am I going to tell my grand kids? – that I went to basic training?”
Armed with a sense of obligation, Rios was determined to get things back to normal. He started the eight-week food service course, completed another stellar PT test and graduated Aug. 27. Just before graduation, Rios said he felt “100 percent, even with the missing kidney.”
His AIT company commander, Capt. Constance Marable, was amazed at the PT performance but was even more impressed with the person who performed it.
“Humility, gratitude, appreciation,” said Marable of the qualities apparent upon meeting Rios. “It was refreshing.”
Rios’ WTU commander was even more struck by the young man. Just about a week before graduation, he and a platoon sergeant traveled to Fort Lee to present him with an Army Achievement Medal for resiliency. Rios said he intends to use his battle with cancer to change lives.
“It was a hard struggle, but I’m happy, and I’m just going to use my experiences to help other people; help inspire them,” he said.
Rios’ prognosis is positive. The latest tests show no signs of the cancer. He is now headed to Fort Bragg, N.C. where he has plans to continue to render broad strokes across the canvas of opportunity that is the Army.
“I want to go airborne and air assault,” he said. Considering what’s he’s been through, Rios is truly about “the next big thing.”
| Date Taken: | 09.04.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.04.2014 09:00 |
| Story ID: | 141103 |
| Location: | FORT LEE, VA, US |
| Hometown: | AURORA, MO, US |
| Web Views: | 99 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fighter, survivor: Soldier battles cancer, moves on to 'next big thing', by Terrance Bell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT