OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. (AFPN) -- In Dec. 9, 1999, doctors diagnosed Maj. Michael Moyles with oligoastrocytoma, a type brain cancer, and gave him six years to live.
Today, the major, a commercial satellite communications operational manager at U.S. Strategic Command here, is alive -- and beating cancer one step at a time.
“You never know what tomorrow is going to hold,” Major Moyles said. “I was in the lowest risk group on the planet and at the age of 27 I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.”
Before cancer, life for Major Moyles couldn’t have been better. He had just proposed to his girlfriend of four years, was going be to be a flight commander and was selected for reassignment.
“Every thing was perfect,” he said. “Life was set.”
Then, by accident, he discovered his life would never be the same.
“I was knocked out during a basketball game,” Major Moyles said. “It was just a fluke accident -- two guys running into each other -- and I lost consciousness.”
The Air Force requires any person who loses consciousness to receive a computed tomography, or CT, scan. While checking for hemorrhaging, the doctors found what looked like a golf ball-sized tumor on the major’s right frontal lobe.
After a year of observation, doctors determined the tumor was life-threatening and elected to perform surgery.
“I was probably less affected by it than my family,” Major Moyles said. “You hear the term brain cancer and you think it’s a death sentence. But I was pretty determined to not let that be the case.”
The news of his cancer was the beginning of a battle to beat the disease and not become a statistic.
“To me, it was just another challenge to overcome -- like anything else,” he said. “For oligoastrocytoma patients, the average survival rate is six to eight years. I’m at year six. So statistics would tell you I have one to two years left.”
But Major Moyles is beating the statistics across the board.
After a successfully completing surgery and overcoming the associated fatigue, he went before an Air Force medical board to determine if he was fit to return to duty.
“After the first surgery, the work was to prove to them that this condition was not chronic or debilitating,” the major said. “Those were the two words that would have pretty much been a career killer.”
Major Moyles’ condition was neither. After a green light from the board, he set out to ensure there would be no further questioning of his abilities.
“After I fully recovered from surgery, it became a matter of putting myself in the position where I am best equipped to beat what is, for most people, a death sentence,” the major said. “I changed my diet, the number of days I worked out and how I worked out.”
It was then that Major Moyles was approached by coworker, Maj. Steve Barriger, a global broadcast service satellite operational manager. The Marine invited Major Moyles to participate in a triathlon as his partner.
“We did that event, and did pretty well,” Major Barriger said.
From there on out, Major Moyles was hooked. The event was just what he needed to keep in peak shape. He and Major Barriger continued to compete in triathlons and dualatholons until the winter of 2004.
“We’d already been talking about running a marathon and what dualathlons and triathlons we wanted to do that summer,” Major Barriger said. “Then he found out his brain tumor was back.”
The major had been in remission for four years with no sign of any cancer.
“Then, in January of 2005, it came back and it came back very aggressively,” Major Moyles said.
He went back into surgery April 28, 2005 and had another more aggressive, faster growing, larger tumor removed. This time, docs also elected to perform 12 rounds of chemotherapy.
When Lance Armstrong announced he would be riding his seventh and final Tour de France to benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Major Moyles was still in the hospital recovering from surgery.
“There was a lot of inspiration there, seeing what he was doing and I thought there’s no reason why I can’t do something similar,” he said. “I can’t ride a Tour de France, but … I can do a marathon and pledge every mile of the 26.2 miles to raising money for brain cancer research and brain cancer awareness.”
He began taking pledges -- while still in the hospital -- from nurses, doctors, friends and family.
“I couldn’t even walk yet and I was already planning to run a marathon,” he said.
Major Moyles was released after spending only two days in the hospital. Less than six weeks later, he and Major Barriger were competing together in dualathalon.
“I told him before he went to his surgery that if he wanted to do it to let me know and I’d run side by side with him,” Major Barriger said. “We did the event and he was running 8-minute miles.”
Back on track and ready to go, Major Moyles began a rigorous 18-week training schedule to prepare for a marathon in Spokane, Wash.
“That’s where my parents retired with my family,” Major Moyles said. “That’s where I would get the family support -- where they would be able to be a part of it -- and meet me at the finish line.”
On the morning of Oct. 16, Major Moyles and two of his training partners, a master sergeant and a high school friend, set out with 96 others to complete in the Spokane Marathon. His wife, Angela, met him at the halfway point. She paced him through the second half of the marathon.
“He was feeling pretty good through miles 13 to 23, so he kept trying to speed up,” she said. “I knew toward the end it was going to be rougher on him, so I had to keep slowing him down a bit.”
Those last miles were tough to finish.
“For those last three miles, it wasn’t getting three more miles done, it was getting another 100 yards. It was getting 50 feet. Around the next corner or up this hill,” Major Moyles said. “I was running 23 miles physically and the last three miles mentally.”
Major Moyles and his wife crossed the finish line at 4:49:48 to the cheers of family and friends.
“It was like an ending of this whole ordeal that we’ve gone through,” Angela said. “To be there and to know what he’s gone through and that he can accomplish such a feat like running a marathon, it was emotional for both of us.”
When all was said and done, Major Moyles had raised $6,815 for the National Brain Tumor Foundation. The money will go toward researching a cure for cancer and aiding those afflicted with the disease.
But Major Moyles isn’t stopping there. He’ll be competing in three triathlons next year and plans running another marathon in the future.
“Cancer is not a death sentence,” he said. “It’s hard for some people, but think if you had only one more day, or only one more week. How would you live?
“Don’t wait until you have a week a month left or a year left to think -- well then I’d better start living a certain way,” he said. “You never know. So live today like you’ve got one more day.”