More Than Our Story
Nicholas Umali
Nicholas Umali shares his story of overcoming stage 4 medullary thyroid cancer, the loss of his career, and his resulting depression. He also shares how he now views his diagnosis as a blessing that’s given him a new perspective on life where he can focus on being grateful. He talks about how life is too precious to hold on to things we can’t control and how he strives every day to be the best person he can be in his walk with God.
Highlights
Back in 2020 I was diagnosed with stage four medullary thyroid cancer. Since then, it's been a whirlwind of emotions and different issues that I've had to deal with, and overall coming to a conclusion on how I want to continue to live my life and progress through my diagnosis.
Before this I was a pilot and I had ambitions to become a commercial pilot in the airline industry. And when I was diagnosed with, medullary thyroid cancer, my entire life took a different turn. I wasn't able to fly anymore. I wasn't able to perform the duties that I thought I could, and I kind of was lost for a few years.
It took me a while to kind of get my footing, and each day I still kind of struggle to find where my balance is. But I'm starting to develop a mindset of where I want to see myself, and how I want to continue my life moving forward.
I was working down in Southern California, the Temecula area, as a flight instructor. And while I was flying, I felt this strain in my neck. It kind of felt like some lumps.
So I went into the facility the next day... We did a CT scan, did a couple X-rays as well to see what was going on and I kept hearing the term cancer. It wasn't that they were saying that I had cancer, but they were using this word in their sentence structure. And it started to alarm me a little bit because I had never thought I could have cancer or deal with this.
So I go in to get a fine needle biopsy, and within 30 minutes, the doctor came back in and she's like, "you have cancer", and it was just kind of a shock to me. I was like, oh my gosh, this I never thought that this could be the reason.
I was kind of in a daze. I just kind of remember people were talking to me and it was almost like it was muted in a way.
I start getting calls from doctors and they're like, "hey, we're struggling to get a room so we can do a surgery". Now they start saying the word surgery, and I have no idea what to expect here.
I went in for surgery. It took about eight hours for them to actually conduct the full surgery, and it turned out it was a radical neck surgery, so they had to dissect complete dissection of my thyroid - they completely removed it. They also took out several lymph nodes and my laryngeal nerve on my right side.
I remember waking up and I couldn't speak, and that was probably the weirdest feeling was just realizing, I can't actually talk. I can't actually like function normally, and I think that's where it really set in that is, this is different. This is way worse than I expected it to be.
The first few days kind of leading up to that [surgery], I was in a bit of denial. It kind of felt like this couldn't happen to me. I was cracking jokes about it. I wasn't really understanding what was about to happen to me or what I was going through.
It was only afterwards when I started to realize, oh my gosh, I'm actually this is life changing. Obviously I was concerned about it. I kept praying about it, and I started asking God, "Lord, I don't know what this is, but I'm hoping that I can be ready for this."
I think my relationship with God has really helped me go through this.
I was kind of like, oh, you know, I'll get through this and then I can go back to flying. I didn't even think about how strict things are because as a pilot, we're required to maintain a clear bill of health and a medical certificate, which allows us to fly. A lot of people do fly with different preexisting conditions or cancers, it's not uncommon but it depends on the severity of the cancer and also how detailed it is. And I didn't realize how bad mine was. So after surgery, when they told me it was stage four, it had invaded multiple areas of my neck... there were also some spots around my lungs which they couldn't reach. So they were only able to get my neck and find out that it was a lot worse than I realized, it was also a wake up call... It kind of just felt like dominoes falling. It was this next realization that... oh my gosh, my career's affected by this.
I found what I wanted to do at a young age and being a pilot was just one of the coolest things ever that I got to do, and I guess I was one of those people that kind of made it my personality... To me, aviation was my solace. It was a place that I could go to where literally when I took off, all of my problems were on the ground... So when I found that I didn't have that, I saw this hole in my life, that I didn't have that structure that I built for myself, and it kind of led me down a route of depression because I didn't have that core anymore.
I go into the AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) and I conducted the physical, and I start to tell them about my diagnosis... He was kind of shocked that I would come in right after surgery and try to apply, but I told him I'm like, what can I do to make this work?... I kind of expected that I would receive a denial initially. [So I asked] what is the reapplication process? Turns out they said you have to wait two years, and my entire job was flying. So two years in my life, I'm not allowed to fly anymore and that was just a complete devastation.
This is my career right now. This is how I'm providing for my family. What do you guys expect me to do in these two years?
I lost a piece of my solace in aviation. Now I was doing something else, and I never saw myself sitting at a desk doing insurance work. And to me, that was just a huge blow to my life, is that this is where I'm at now. All of these things happened to me and I didn't have a choice on the matter.
It was kind of a wake up call to me when my wife started telling me, "I feel like you're so focused on this thing that you can't achieve right now, and you're starting to neglect the life that you're actually living".
I never wanted to be the one that was sick or had to bring all this negativity into the family, and yet here I was, doing all of those things that I feared the most. And seeing that, and realizing I know it's not my fault, but I got cancer. But I have a duty right now, which is to my family and to God. I need to be this role model in my family. So I start turning to God. I started talking to our pastor, and just working through things and having a devotion every day to try to rekindle my relationship. And since then, I felt more peace because I wasn't holding on to this thing in my life anymore. This thing that I had idolized so much I started actually just living my day to day and finding that I enjoyed it. The small things, the little things that I got to do just taking my dog for a walk, or having a nice meal with my wife, or doing something around the house that was productive, or honestly just going to have fun on a camping trip.
I'm still a person that's driven and goal oriented, but I feel like this journey was really showing me that I had put something too important in my life.
And honestly, cancer was just kind of the negative thing that happened and I sometimes would find myself blaming myself for getting that disease and I couldn't control it. It wasn't genetic, but it was just kind of a fluke scenario... It was a bit hard to process that, but I think I found this rhythm in just the day to day living my life and trying to be the best person that I can be is something I strive to even more than what my career was.
[My] medication is completely keeping me stable - and we don't really use the word stable - it's more suppress.
I did have a second surgery in 2022. They went back into my neck, basically full neck surgery, removed more lymph nodes and try to get any residual tumors. They were able to clear out most things, but it was still very difficult.
I have to remind myself that this could have been a lot worse. There could have been a fatal route to this. There could have been a completely life altering thing. But I can still walk, I can talk, I can exercise.
I need to keep living my own life.
I hope that if anyone could take something away from my story. It's that God is always with you. And I know not everyone's religious and that's fine, but I have found that my personal walk with God, he was actually with me through this whole process and actually showing me things that I wouldn't have seen if I never got cancer.
In a way, I almost view my diagnosis as a blessing because it's given me a new perspective on life.
When I was diagnosed, I actually had a friend of mine that I made through our diagnosis. His cancer was much more aggressive - he actually passed away within three months of his diagnosis - but the last words that he gave to me was that you need to keep going. God still has a plan for you. Just keep going. And you know, that's stuck with me, and I've kept going back to that when I struggle with things. In his last moments, he was so positive and uplifting about his life, and here I was, I still had a chance in front of me.
Daniel
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