Blitz Your Life: Stories from an NFL and ALS Warrior

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved to run fast.

In high school, I was on the track team and competed in short distance, like the 100-meter and 200-meter races. I still recall those track meets like they were yesterday: the spectators, teammates, and competitors all milling about under the clear blue Michigan skies. I can still see the other runners stretching in the infield, decked out in their colorful school uniforms, with one eye on the events happening all around. Before getting into the blocks, I’d shake my arms and jump up and down a few times to loosen up. Then I would get in position, with the balls of my feet solid against the starting blocks, my fingers digging into the track, anticipating the starting gun…

Bang!

I’d explode out of those blocks, pushing the ground away, creating a wake of wind as I stormed down the track. In those moments I would experience the feeling, the joy that athletes call being in the zone. If you’ve played sports, you know it as the perfect swing of the bat, a three-pointer ripping through the net, or on the football field (the greatest moment of all), flying down the field to make the perfect hit. For my entire life, those brief moments of running always brought me a sense of freedom. I lived my life running sure-footed and at full speed.

I suppose that’s why it was so strange, then, to have something go wrong while running. I fell during a sprint down the field in a routine kick-off drill at the Tennessee Titans’ preseason camp. I had recently experienced some strange twitching and weakness in my right arm and shoulder, but multiple doctors’ visits and MRIs had so far been inconclusive. I just assumed it was another nagging injury to tough through.

I was running with the coverage team, weaving around my teammates, when somehow, my foot didn’t land correctly. It was a strange sensation, because my foot simply didn’t go where my brain told it to go. I stumbled and fell flat on my face. I wasn’t tripped or blocked to the ground, and no one else was even close to me.

Of course, I jumped back up as quickly as I could and right back into the action of the drill, knowing that all of my teammates had noticed. And they weren’t about to let me off easily.

Whooo-weee! one of my buddies called out. Y’all see the sniper in that tower up there?

Another guy picked up on the line, Watch out, fellas! Snipers are out today—they got Shaw.

Shots fired! yelled another.

And so it went. There was a lot of laughing and good-natured teasing.

Whatever my teammates thought happened in that moment, they knew tripping over my own feet wasn’t typical for me. Flying down the field, that was my style of play. Whether as a linebacker or on special teams, I could get to the ball carrier and get there fast. My speed and agility—my ability to run the field—had earned me six years of success in the NFL.

I suppose I had lived my life sprinting in pursuit of one goal after another. I didn’t jog through life—I was always running downhill—full speed and fearless was my approach to everything. It didn’t make a difference what area of life. If it mattered to me, I went after it like I was sprinting a 100-meter race at a track meet or running down an opposing returner on the football field. Even as I focused on my professional sports career, I still carved out time to earn a master’s degree in business at George Washington University while growing a fitness business and launching a real estate company. Anyway you looked at it, on the day of my mysterious fall, I was living a life that most folks would call the dream.

Even though I was in the second year of a three-year contract with the Tennessee Titans, that NFL dream wasn’t guaranteed. As they say, NFL also stands for not for long. Contract or not, if you’re cut, you’re out. No team means no pay. The day of my inexplicable fall, I was fighting through my seventh training camp, working to make the 53-man roster.

I finished the practice session strong that day and without further embarrassment. I headed home, feeling confident that my hard work, positive attitude, speed, and skills would once again make me a Titan. As a daily reminder of my monthly and annual goals, I wrote them down on a whiteboard on my bedroom wall. Having a game plan written where I could see it each day was an important habit I had created. I can remember the goals I had on that board like it was yesterday:

• LEAD BY EXAMPLE

•NO MISSED TACKLES

•NO MISSED ASSIGNMENTS

•MAKE THE TEAM

At the end of the long month of Titan’s preseason camp in August 2013, just weeks after I had tripped while running the kick-coverage drill, life really began to take a turn. I was sitting in the locker room when one of the team scouts hunted me down after practice with the dreaded words, Coach wants to see you. In the preseason, we called the scout that leads you to the coach’s office the Grim Reaper. I immediately knew my time with the Titans was over. I was led into the office, Coach Mike Munchak nodded to a chair at the conference table, and I sat down. I had great respect for Coach. His office was covered with Titans memorabilia: plaques, game jerseys, and shelves full of trophies and game balls. All of the things you would expect from the Hall of Fame player.

I want to thank you for all you’ve done for the team and organization, Coach Munchak explained. You’ve been a big part of the team. I’m sorry it ended this way.

I expressed my appreciation, and we said our goodbyes. Then came the walk of shame, which required reporting to the general manager, to the trainers to sign releases, and then to the equipment people to check in all my gear. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have time to process it. Within an hour, I was out of there. I left the Titan’s facility feeling numb.

In the months after I was cut from the Titans, I worked to get on with another team, but I wasn’t picked up. My body kept on struggling, and I knew that if I couldn’t train on the level that had kept me in the NFL, I wasn’t going to get to play. At some point, I decided I had put my body through enough. I announced my retirement from football in March 2014.

Only a month later, I found myself sitting in another important meeting—this time in a patient examination room at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville. I was waiting to be seen by a neuromuscular specialist, Dr. Donofrio. He had run some tests hours earlier that included an EMG and a nerve conduction study. For the nerve conduction exam, they stuck needles in the different muscles of my arm and leg and sent shocks through the muscles to test the response. I was pretty confident this meeting would go better than the one with Coach Munchak—I assumed I had a pinched nerve in my neck. Worst-case scenario, I would need an operation to relieve the symptoms. Whatever the doctor had to say, I decided that it couldn’t be worse than the message from the scout that had sent me packing.

The doctor finally entered the examination room with one of his assistants. I was sitting in a chair, not on the exam table, having already changed out of the hospital gown. I noticed that he had a piece of paper with about five things scribbled on it. He sat on a little round stool with wheels and rolled closer to me. The assistant stood behind him, close to the door. Dr. Donofrio looked up from the piece of paper he was holding and calmly leveled a diagnosis that would change my life.

Tim, I believe you have ALS.

My eyes immediately filled with tears as I tried to process what he was saying. He didn’t need to explain what ALS meant. Most people think of it as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Sports fans can’t help but recall the famous scene in Pride of the Yankees where Gary Cooper, playing Gehrig, addresses a stadium full of fans, his words echoing through the loudspeaker: People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today ... today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

The real Lou Gehrig made that speech in 1939, seventy-five years ago, and not much has changed as far as awareness or treatment of the dreadful disease. ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) affects the nerve cells of the brain and the spinal cord. Signals from the brain to the muscles travel over these motor neurons, which in ALS are degenerating and dying. When the signal doesn’t get through, voluntary movement and muscle control are lost—which is what happened when I fell during the preseason drill. My brain was telling my foot where to step, but the muscle just didn’t get the message.

But Lou Gehrig didn’t come to mind in that moment. I was actually thinking of my brother’s mother-in-law who had died months earlier from ALS. She went from completely healthy to deceased in less than five years. I could remember her at the end of her battle—consigned to a bed, unable to do anything physically but blink.

As I tried to fight back the tears, the doctor leaned in. I want you to get a second opinion, he said. I’m pretty sure, but we want it confirmed.

Dr. Donofrio also wanted me to begin taking a medication called riluzole that had demonstrated some success in slowing the symptoms of the disease. He wanted to know if I had any questions. A million thoughts ran through my head, all of them ending in nightmare scenarios. The only thing I managed to ask him was if I should start taking the drug or wait for a confirming diagnosis.

Start taking it now, he said.

I tried to hold it together as I left the office. My eyes were watering, but I was still keeping my emotions in check as I waited to get my car from the valet. Once inside my car, I lost it. I began to sob and offer up a jumble of anguished prayers: Why, God? Why?

Over the next several weeks, my vision would clear and reality would set in.

I was facing death.

The average lifespan of a person with ALS is two to five years after diagnosis. Two to five years!

And even if I beat the odds, how many years could I have? Ten? Fifteen?

It is a ridiculous disease, and it infuriates me that I have so little time left. I have dreams and ambitions, with the whole world in front of me, and now my time is going to be cut short. It isn’t right … it isn’t fair.

But then I began to realize I had always been facing death.

We are all going to die.

That’s life.

In my case, the experts have just said when they think that will happen.

Facing death forces us to analyze what we’ve done, from the triumphs and joys to the failures and regrets. It makes us answer some tough questions. How have we treated people? Have we accomplished all we wanted? Are we proud of the person we’re becoming? It can be difficult to give an honest evaluation, and maybe even more difficult to accept the truth of our lives. Most of us wish we had done things differently, that we were further along toward our goals. Once we are honest with ourselves, it gets even harder, because then we have to act to bring about change.

No wonder facing our mortality is not a popular activity.

The doctor’s diagnosis snapped this reality into view for me. But I refused to just sit around waiting. I have never lived that way and I never will. I have to live life on my terms, and that means not living afraid of death but pursuing life the way I love to run—an all-out sprint.

So I went to my bedroom and stared at the whiteboard hanging on the wall—the one that held all my dreams and goals. On my whiteboard, in addition to my old football goals, my friend Keith had humorously added a few new items.

He scribbled: Read more relationship books.

Later he added: Eat more pizza. And then, Drink more beer.

I erased all the frivolous and outdated words. I picked up the black marker and filled the board with new goals for the huge challenges I was about to face:

• BE MY TRUE SELF

• IMPACT OTHERS

• LIVE WITH INTEGRITY

• DIE WITH HONOR

My passion hadn’t changed, but with one sentence from the doctor, my goals certainly had become much deeper and more meaningful. I realized that I’d been given a gift, a wake-up call that would not allow me to live like I used to live. Along with the ALS diagnosis came the likelihood of a shorter-than-planned future. My now was immediately more important because my later was in serious jeopardy.

This is life for me today. With my future in doubt, I can’t wait, and I can’t waste.

Of course, this is the mindset we all should maintain. None of us know when our time is going to be up, but most of us live as if we do. We work for things that don’t matter. We have conversations and relationships that are pointless or even harmful. We put off what should be done immediately, because we believe we can do it later. We don’t say what we should say now, because we assume we will have another chance. We don’t take advantage of today!

It’s easy to assume that we will live to see old age. It’s normal to operate as if we have nothing but time. We hear and see all the tragedy in the world around us. But instead of admitting the reality that it could have just as easily been us, we operate under the ignorance of thinking, It won’t ever happen to me. The truth is that we are all facing death—with or without a doctor’s terminal diagnosis. I believe this understanding should actually free us to live life differently. We should live full speed and fearless, sprinting all-out and in that zone where everything comes together, where we experience a stillness and freedom.

I hate to admit it, but if anyone had ever been prepared to face a terminal illness such as ALS, it was probably me. It’s quite unbelievable how I was made ready to battle ALS. To begin with, I was physically prepared to battle the disease. I had an NFL linebacker body with muscles to spare. Since I was also so physically active, I can keep my body working and moving for longer than most people in my situation. From football, I had become not only physically but mentally strong. I need every ounce of mental toughness to attack all that is to come with ALS on a daily basis. This idea first occurred to me while I was standing at the Titans practice facility with dozens of cameras and microphones aimed in my direction. My old team, in my honor, had just completed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a phenomenon that spread across the country in August 2014, bringing awareness to the disease and hope that a cure was possible.

It had been four months since my diagnosis, fractions of the truth were getting out, and I knew I needed to make the news public. The Ice Bucket Challenge provided perfect timing for my announcement.

All of a sudden I had a message to share, I still had clear speech to communicate, and I had a platform bigger than anything I could have ever imagined. I was filled with a unique peace and knew I was prepared to face this. Yes, I still struggle every day with the knowledge of the ALS diagnosis, but I’m positive God has made good come from the situation.

Honestly, I wish ALS wasn’t part of my story. I think there are many people out there who are living through stories that they wish were not their own. For