Feist returns to links after battle with cancer

By Caitlin Cress

March 8, 2011 1 Comment

Shane Feist is a senior accounting major at Western. He has been playing golf for Western since his freshman year, and has loved the sport since he was seven years old.

“It’s just such a hard sport that you can’t ever perfect it,” Feist said. “I mean, you can go undefeated in basketball for a season, but you’ll never win every single tournament you play. Tiger’s probably the best that’s ever lived and he wins maybe 50 percent of the tournaments he plays in. It’s just something that you’ll never perfect. You’re always faced with really tough shots on the course. The reward is to actually hitting the shot how you’re trying to hit it and the result ending up good.”

Last summer, after being diagnosed with testicular cancer, Feist had to take a nine-month break from golf. He’s now preparing for his first season back, after receiving a medical red shirt last season. The NCAA allows players with injuries and illnesses to sit out a season with the red shirt distinction.

“I took a lot of time off,” Feist said. “I stopped playing at the beginning of August for the first surgery and I didn’t really play until the following May. I’d never taken that much time off from golf. Ever.”
In June 2009, Feist began to suffer from unexplained back pain.

“I went to the chiropractor like five different times in two weeks and it didn’t help at all,” Feist said. “It was really bad pain; the worst I’ve ever had before. Other than that, I completely felt fine.”

Feist knew that the back pain was linked to something more serious; a couple of weeks earlier, he had found a lump in one of his testicles.

“I had kind of looked up on the internet after I found the lump, and was like ‘uh-oh,’” Feist said. “But at the same time, I’m like ‘No, that can’t be it.’ Being 21, you don’t really think you’re going to have cancer.”
Feist knew, however, what his eventual diagnosis would be. All of his internet research pointed him to cancer.
“It was kind of a surprised to think that that’s what it could be,” he said.

After being diagnosed on July 22, 2009, Feist went through months of treatment. His first surgery, on Aug. 3, removed the effected testicle. This operation is called an orchiectomy. After the surgery, he went through 12 weeks of chemotherapy. Following the chemotherapy, effected lymph nodes were still found in his belly and aorta. His doctors were not sure how to handle his treatment.

“I was not a by-the-book case,” Feist said. “They originally sent us home, thinking I was going to start another two cycles of chemotherapy.”
Feist’s doctors contacted Lawrence Einhorn of the University of Indiana, a prominent specialist in the testicular cancer field.

“He is one of the doctors that treated Lance Armstrong,” Feist said. “He’s like the specialist in the United States about this cancer.”

Einhorn suggested that Feist’s doctors wait before performing any surgery. The wait might allow the lymph nodes to die off on their own. Feist’s doctors waited two weeks before operating. During eight hours of surgery, they removed 40 lymph nodes from Feist’s abdomen. They were all dead. The lymph node in the aorta was left.

“The lymph node in my aorta is in such a tricky place to get to, that they didn’t take it out,” Feist said.

At Feist’s most recent check-up, his doctor labeled him as “cured.” This is obviously great news to the golfer, who is more than ready to start the new season. He has been playing as much as possible since treatment, and feels he is now in the same shape he was before the cancer. Feist has worked hard to redevelop his skills.

“I lost a lot of weight: a little bit through chemo and most of it through my second surgery,” he said. “Just the effects from that and rebuilding your muscles. It was weird to swing a golf club; you almost lost muscle memory. It took a while to get it back. But now there’s not any difference than what it used to be.”

While he is physically the same as he was before treatment, he does feel that some things have changed.
“Nothing like this had ever hit my family; never really had any disease or anything like that,” Feist said. “No heart attacks, nothing. I’d never dealt with it before. I guess I’m kind of more aware of things like that. I think I’m better prepared to handle it.”

Feist also has a different outlook on life off the golf course.

“You kind of realize you have to take your opportunities when you can get them,” he said. “If you have an opportunity to go on a trip that’s kind of once in a lifetime, you better figure out a way to do it. If I have the opportunity to do something that’s not ‘everyday,’ then I try to do it.”

Testicular cancer is most prevalent in males between the ages of 18 and 34. Feist wishes to spread the education that he does not feel he had on the topic.
“I was kind of mad because I wasn’t really educated,” he said. “Even though you have physicals every two years for sports, like in high school, I was never really told. I didn’t know what they were looking for, you know?”