“I will watch those that I used to be. The stallions that dominate the race and pummel it into submission. I will cheer them for their abilities in a sport that has given me sustenance. Helped me make sense of myself. And there is always the future. The next year. The next decade. I hope to do what I am able. To run. To trot. To jog. Or even walk if that is what it comes to in the end. I will simply do what I can do. So smile, youth. Enjoy the time. Someday it will come to an end. Sooner. Later. But someday. That is inevitable. There is no sadness in the fact. Just an acceptance of an immutable element of nature. Someday, given the Lord’s grace, I will be seventy or beyond and do what I can do.
“And that is goddamn okay with me.“
Paul Maurer shows what it means to keep going
despite the ‘darkness’ of rare cancer
by Lori Nickel for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 11/26/2024
What’s your reason?
For getting in that late run after a draining day of classes and studying? Or getting up before dawn, quietly to not wake your kids, to hit the treadmill for a few miles. What’s your reason to keep doing the physical-therapy exercises and finally take up yoga? For pushing through a demanding schedule to get to the gym. Or counting the extra steps while caregiving for a parent. For working out through depression. Or fatigue, or injury, or arthritis, or limited mobility.
Paul Maurer climbed into the seat of his recumbent bike once again yesterday. And the day before.
His relatively new three-wheeler is positioned in the sun room of his home in the Town of Norway in Wind Lake, and mounted on a trainer, turning it in to a stationary bike. He rides for 20 minutes, usually with nothing to watch on a TV screen because the vision in his right eye is 90% gone.
He rides − despite the discomfort, knowing his medical-care team stopped treatments two weeks ago.
He rides − alone with his thoughts, alone with his fate, trying his best to accept what it is.
He is a 65-year-old man, once capable of cycling 250 miles in a day, now living with Glioblastoma Multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor that has begun to jumble his thoughts and his speech.
His reasons? Because it’s what he does. Because it’s who he is. Because pumping the heart and expanding the lungs and working the legs is and always has been everything in what it means to feel alive.
Because it’s a sneer at cancer.
“It was shocking. Yes, it was,” Maurer said during a phone interview last week. “We got the report; kind of a WTF kind of moment. Like, are you kidding? What is this coming from? We had not had any history of it. It’s rare; glioblastoma is a rarity. And we have to accept it, I suppose − if there’s a right way to phrase it. To be angry … not angry, but it’s just difficult to accept.
“I called it, The Darkness.”
Paul Maurer has been a lifelong competitor and adventurer
Maurer is an alumnus of Wisconsin’s biggest and best races, runs and rides. The Horribly Hilly Hundreds. Ride Across Wisconsin. Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon. Al’s Run. Badgerland Striders. He ventured into Michigan and other Midwest states, too, for 24-hour races, for crazy athletic adventures. In 1983, after Paul graduated from Wisconsin, he took one epic cycling trip.
“He geared up his bike, with a sleeping bag, essentials and cash. No cell phones, of course,” said his sister, Mary Maurer. “He charted a bike course on a paper map and took off from our childhood home in Greendale and did a solo six-week bicycle ride to Phoenix, Arizona.
“He called our mom from a pay phone about every week and, in between, we just prayed he was alive. He has told us stories of how he slept in cemeteries, under bridges, in farmer fields because it was safe − nobody was around those places − and of course, cheap.”
Maurer would ride his bike to his workplace, a chiropractic office in Greenfield, for extra miles. It’s funny, too, because in his heart he’s a true runner, and that’s his favorite sport. He didn’t cut back until he entered his 50s and his knees begged him to do lower-impact epic stuff.
“Paul is also a doctor of chiropractic, a husband to Sue, father to three amazing young men, brother to nine siblings, and uncle to 25 nieces and nephews,” Mary Maurer said. “On top of all this, he is a hobby farmer in Union Grove and an author, having written several books.
“His life was wonderful until one day it all changed.”
In December 2023, Maurer went in to work for the last time on a Thursday, struggling with vision problems. The following Monday, he had an MRI. And then the diagnosis. A brain tumor.
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a fast-growing, aggressive brain tumor. According to the Glioblastoma Foundation website, https://glioblastomafoundation.org/ Glioblastoma is the most-common malignant primary brain tumor, and many refer to it as the emperor of all cancers because it is a very difficult disease to treat, and the highly invasive nature of this disease causes significant morbidity and mortality. The prognosis for glioblastoma is generally very poor and current treatments often fall short. The need for more research, more-effective treatments and better outcomes is desperate.
Maurer learned this about the disease as he underwent treatment for it with chemotherapy, radiation and a newer form of electronic therapy directly to his brain. He also began thinking of ways to support the research efforts for glioblastoma.
“He is nothing short of one amazing and gifted athlete, only outdone by his generous and kind heart and positive spirit,” Mary Maurer said. “We were devastated but, in total Paul style, he attacked this.”
He kept riding, as well, incredibly, outfitted with the low-riding three-wheeler but still sailing 40 miles a ride months ago. The miles have waned in recent months, but he still turns the gears.
“Even though he’s walking currently with a walker, throughout his treatment and such, he’s tried to continue to ride,” Sue said. “We switched from an upright bike to a trike, but he never backed down. It’s almost like his release of all of this.
“The care team was absolutely excellent, from the radiation nurse and doctor through the oncology team, the neuro-oncology team. I can tell you that it was two weeks after he was diagnosed, he already started talking about doing a ride for life, or a bike ride, something to raise awareness of this.
“He called it the darkness.”
Paul Maurer’s motivation? To ‘show people not to give up’
For a lifelong athlete, who medaled in so many races in his age group like Maurer did, there is no finish line. There are just new challenges and new chances to bring along everyone else in the pack. That’s the duality of a compassionate competitor like Maurer. His competition is cancer and his hand is out, thinking of others with the same cancer.
“I just wanted to, I don’t know, show people not to give up,” Maurer said. “That we’re still too strong and that we don’t need to give up anything.”
So Paul, Sue, Mary and the closest family and friends of Maurer gathered together in September for a private bike ride and picnic as a way to support and honor Paul but also to point to The Glioblastoma Foundation for future donation considerations.
“I thought I’d do 30, 40, miles. Maybe I was being my old self, being a little braggy − a little Mr. Tough Guy,” Maurer said. “But I eventually, I left it at about 20 miles that day. It was very hot.”
If only he could also be the author of this article. He’s more qualified.
Maurer started writing after getting some of the details of his own stories a little mixed up. He was always telling his sons – Adam, Jeremy and Luke – stories when they were little. Jeremy, paying close attention, had a suggestion:
“You have to write down these books because you’re getting them wrong.”
A natural progression for Paul was to write about running and cycling, since these sports were so much part of Maurer’s life, and since his wife, Sue, understood so well the arc. She was a competitive runner herself, who raced collegiately at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“Paul captured many of these memories and experiences in a 2017 novel called Life in the Breakdown Lane,” Mary said. “While not a memoir, it does originate from Paul’s initial trip as a young man.”
The Unforgiving Line is a book that features his favorite running shoes. [Five stars & two thumbs up.-JDW]
“I always liked writing,” Maurer said. “My books always were a little difficult for the person, at first, but then there was always a redemption.”
After his diagnosis initially, Maurer kept writing − about 150 pages − but sadly, it’s not possible now.
“I wrote seven or so really, really good pages about this ‘Darkness,'” said Maurer, referring to brain cancer. “I needed to still write about it. I needed to illuminate on what I had to come across. Now I’m kind of done. I can’t. I’m not going to write anymore.”
‘I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up.’
It’s cruel and unfair. It really is. But there’s no one working in the complaint department on this one, not that Maurer would bother. Athletes don’t whine. They put one foot in front of the other. They find that bike in the sun room.
What’s your reason? For doing a Turkey Trot this Thanksgiving instead of grinding away in the kitchen endlessly? For using adaptive athletic equipment to kick ass on a trail? For not allowing weather to be an excuse? For starting over again, for the 99th time?
At the end of a 40-minute conversation, Maurer sounded a little tired, understandably, after listening to questions and reflecting on his journey. His wild adventurous world has gotten smaller in the past year and yet the challenge he’s facing is the greatest one yet.
He’s got two reasons now.
“People can contribute to the foundation,” Maurer said at first. “We’re not raising any money for us; we’re asking to raise money for future research for the foundation.”
And:
“I want to do something,” he said. “It’s been no fun because it’s really limited, but it’s the way it is. I’m accepting that I can do what I can do.
“I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up. I’m going to keep trying no matter what I got. I’m going to keep doing what I can. And accept the reality of it, too.
“But being an athlete, and, I don’t know, a strong human, is doing what you can do along the way.”
I first got to know Paul Maurer, so much an athlete and a strong human, through his writing. And I thank him for much enjoyment and some wisdom, too. Here are a few samples of Paul’s work I was honored to share. – JDW
If you made your way all the way to the end, you may recall Mike Fanelli – just one year ago – also died of glioblastoma. Mike kept his illness private, so did Paul. Until now. https://glioblastomafoundation.org/get-involved/donate Please and thank you.