“Tarzan Dan” Freeman has announced he’ll be taking another leave of absence from his Bounce Radio midday show to undergo a stem cell bone marrow transplant.
Freeman, who went public with a cancer diagnosis last September, has been undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma. He returned to work in late November after being off since mid-May of last year.
Broadcast Dialogue spoke with Freeman on Tuesday as he underwent a plasma transfusion at the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Calgary to boost his immune system. His last day on-air at Bounce Radio will be Friday as he prepares for the transplant. He expects to return to his midday show this fall after a three-month recovery period.
Seen wakesurfing a few weeks ago on his Instagram account, Freeman says with his cancer count now at levels where he is essentially free of any active cancer, his medical team feels it’s a good “window of opportunity.” It’s an extreme high point from last year at this time when Freeman struggled to walk between rooms at the hospital without the use of a wheelchair.
“That’s how feeble I was,” Freeman recollected, who said he willed his body to get stronger, starting by walking 25 miles a week.
“If I kept walking, if I kept getting going, I could get stronger. I could get better physically. And so my goal is to get back behind a boat wakesurfing within a year, and I did,” he shared. “It was funny, my Fitbit the other day sent me a message that I walked 990 miles in a year and I was like ‘what? like are you kidding me, 990 miles?’ But yeah, it was all about, you know, my brain being in the right place. I think that your best healing is your brain, trying to stay positive, trying to recognize that this is something that you have to deal with…it’s a speed bump, but obviously you’re still around and you have more story to tell so, live, right?”
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Freeman, who lives just blocks from Ghost Lake, west of Cochrane, AB, said he’s excited about the stem cell transplant and the possibility it could give him “a full life.”
“It is just unreal…to have multiple myeloma and AL amyloid, I thought it was gonna do me in and I really did think that that was it and I was caught off guard. And if anything, I’ve really taken a different headspace in life with just appreciating so much more.”
“Basically on June 23rd, I will go into the hospital to put in a pick line…on the 24th they give me a high dose of chemo, which will kill a bunch of cells – all the cells good and bad, and what happens is on the 25th I will get my stem cells back,” explained Freeman, sharing that about six months ago they harvested and then purified his own stem cells looking ahead to this moment. “And then you start regrowing your system. They call it your rebirth because essentially you’re like a baby, you have no immune system. You are susceptible to anything. So I’ll be in the hospital for about 16 days and you start to regrow your system. You regrow your bone marrow, you regrow your immune system..and hopefully in that process you are cancer free and I’m so excited about it. I’m just amazed by the science of it all.”
While publicly, Freeman has maintained his sense of humour and been an almost relentless optimist, he acknowledged there have been moments privately, where he’s let things “get in his head.”
“So many people have dealt with cancer and I feel fortunate that I have a great team and good people that care that they caught it in time. As I said, I was four weeks away from organ failure…it was that serious,” said Freeman.
“If you’re having a bad situation, give yourself 20 minutes – you know, name it for what it is and then move on. And so, that coping mechanism has really worked for me and so trying to stay positive, trying to keep that mindset – you know, ‘LFG’ – let’s f**king go – type of attitude.”
“No day is a bad day and still being here and being able to say that makes a major difference to me. And so, that’s my mindset with work as well,” said Freeman.
“I just want to thank everybody in the industry who has reached out and drop me a note or you know checked in. It really does mean a huge amount to me,” he added. “I can’t believe the size of of the reach that I’ve had in this career and I feel so fortunate to have friends and colleagues who care so much.”
