CareerJitsu Mini Episode: Tyler Ross, BJJ Practitioner Overcomes Cancer Through Jiu-Jitsu

What happens when the fight extends far beyond the mats? In this powerful CareerJitsu mini episode, we explore how the mindset, resilience, and community found in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can help someone navigate one of life’s toughest battles—cancer. Discover how embracing adversity, staying present, and refusing to quit can make all the difference when facing challenges both on and off the mats

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

I go to see the urgent care guy and uh he puts his x-ray up and he goes, So what's going on? I just remember looking at the bone, and it was like a Swiss cheese. And he points at it and he says, So what's going on is you had a microfracture and uh your body's trying to heal it. That's what you see right here. And he showed this thing that looked like it was growing around the Swiss cheese. And uh he said, So it broke. He was like, So I don't have the means to set it here. He's like, Well, you're gonna go see a specialist on, you know, when they open on Tuesday morning. And so, yeah, so Tuesday morning, and um I went to go see this gentleman. He was uh 40 years, he had been a hand surgeon, and he walked in, he looked at the x-ray, and then he turned around and walked out. He didn't say anything to me. A nurse came walking back in there and she looked like she'd been crying. And so she wrapped my arm and she said, you know, if you need anything, just let us know. You know, we'll we're we're gonna be we're gonna be here for you through it. And I had no idea what she was talking about. So the doctor walks back in and he says, uh, son, he's like, I've done this 40 years, and I can count on one hand how many times I've seen that. He said, That's a malignant tumor. He was like, You're going to see a specialist at Mission Hospital. So I I'd heard the term malignant before, but there's just so much going on, I didn't put two and two together what that meant. So he gave me the gentleman's name I was going to see, and it's Dr. Donald Gayevski. And uh so I I'm driving down the road and I just pull over and I Google Dr. Gayeski and it pops up and it says orthopedic oncologist. And I was like, Well, there's only one reason you go to an oncologist. So I remember I called my wife and I said, Hey, uh, I need you to meet me. I'm on my way to this other appointment. And or I need, you know, that that's not true. I called my wife, told her what the doctor was, called my community pastor, talking to him, and then my phone rang about an hour later, and it was Dr. Gayevski's office. They had a cancellation, and uh a buddy of mine's wife was his assistant, and she saw my name and she knew my birth date, so she knew it was me. And she just went to Dr. G and she said, Look, she was like, if anybody cancels, can we please get Tyler in? This is one of my husband's best friends. Dr. G, I saw him the next day. He looks at it and he says, and he's like, That he's like, there's there was five different types of cancer it could be. And he went through all of them and I forgot what the other four were because he looked at me and he said, Um, the one we don't want is osteosarcoma. So we did a biopsy and come to find out a few weeks later it was stage three high grade osteoborse osteosarcoma, and I had to start um treatment for it within just a few days of the diagnosis because it was once the tumor broke and hit air. So what the gentleman was looking at, and he said it was Swiss cheese with like something grown around it. The Swiss cheese was the was the the area where the tumor was, and what we saw growing around it was the outside of the tumor, and when it broke, the tumor hit air and started growing faster. So it started expanding a lot quicker. And he said, uh he was like, We need to get you Dr. Gayevski said, We've got to get you to another specialist. So I went downstate to another specialist, Dr. Savage. And that's the greatest name for any oncologist is Dr. Savage. You hit the bill. And uh he said, Son, we gotta get you started on chemotherapy within the next uh within the next two weeks or I can't guarantee that you'll be here three years. And so uh God was good and he took care of me and uh five days after that diagnosis I walked in and started treatment. Savage. You hit the bill. And uh he said, Son, we gotta get you started on chemotherapy within the next uh within the next two weeks, or I can't guarantee that you'll be here three years. And so uh God was good and he took care of me and uh five days after that diagnosis, I walked in and started treatment. And so for 11 months I went through what they call the map regimen, and it was all inpatient because it was all fatal doses, lethal doses of chemo, and I had to be under constant, you know, moder uh monitoring while I was getting it. And uh the cycles would be four to six weeks, four to six weeks long, with sometimes a two-week break in between them. But a lot of days it ended up being uh less than a week because getting the chemo out so certain types of medicine out of my body, like one was high dose methotrexate, trying to get that out of my body, it took a little bit longer. Um, and then they did surgery, and so they took it out and like they took the tumor out, put a cadaver bone in with a titanium plate. During that time, like I remember the days where it's like, you know, obviously there's dark days that you're gonna have when that stuff's happening, but there were times where I just remembered being a kid in high school and in that mat room where it was tough. It smelled dudes that I was wrestling with, like I was not a wrestler to write home about by any stretch of the imagination. I got to train and wrestle with some really phenomenal wrestlers. And um, I just remember working with those guys and just there would be really, really tough days. And I just remember like the mental fortitude I got from that of like, you know, this is gonna be over in a minute. You know, it's gonna be fine. I just gotta lay in here, do my part, and I'm gonna be fine. And uh, my sons at that time, they started going to Gracie Ba. And the days that I would get to come home and I would get to go see them, Josh like left me alone on the back corner, and I looked like Uncle Fester. So my face was swollen from the steroids, I had no hair, and I like just had a mask on and my hood up, you know, because and people, the parents knew, like, hey, he's going through treatment, let's just leave him be, you know. But uh I got to watch my sons just roll, and I got to watch that community of people that didn't know it that well. Love on my family, you know, just because my boys were in there training jujitsu. And I got to watch my my boys get some confidence. You know, they're like their dad, they're not very tall people. But uh I just remember just sitting there during all that thinking, man, I cannot wait to get back out on the mats. And uh May 6, 2021 was my last date of chemo for osteosarcoma. And uh I had to wait six months to get my port out. I had a port in that they would dual administer chemo in. And I had to wait six months to get that out. I had to have two clear scans before they take it out. And uh they took it out and I had to wait so many days before the port area would heal to where they let me go back on the map. And I went back out on the mat in December of 2021 and caught COVID after not having it, like being in and out of the hospital with cancers, treatments, not having it. I was technically I had to take the rest of December off until I got, you know, over COVID. And then January 2022, I started rolling in uh April of 22. I remember it was my second class back, and I looked at Josh and I said, There's a tap cancer out tournament happening in Charlotte in April. I said, Do you think I can do it? He said, Yeah, you can do it. He was like, You don't need to get in your mind that you're gonna win. He was like, But the fact that you want to do it, we're gonna work with you. So three months after I was back on the mats, I went and uh fought in a tap cancer out tournament down in Charlotte. Did not make the podium, obviously, but it was it was really fun. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Well, there you have it. As we wrap up today's episode, let's take a moment to reflect on the powerful connections that we've explored between the art of history and North Korea. Video Workplace and Art and