A Rough Journey, But A Positive Outcome

By Miles Burghoff
BassFan Contributor

I can’t believe it’s October already!

This has certainly been a different kind of year for my family. It equally seems like at times it was dragging along at a snail’s pace, and at others I've found myself wondering where the time went.

As many of you know, the biggest thing that developed this year was our daughter Rylee’s cancer diagnosis in January. Since receiving the diagnosis, our family has been on what I can only describe as a pretty wild ride.

During the last eight months I’ve tried to document the journey, which I’ve been able to do somewhat well in the video updates that I post. But every time I sit down and write about our experience, I can’t seem to get it "right enough" to hit the send button.

I’m hoping I can break that mental block and start talking about it now.

The Year in a Paragraph

For those who don't know about what happened this year with Rylee, here are the Cliff Notes:

On Jan. 30, while practicing for the first Bassmaster Open on Lake Okeechobee, I received a call from my daughter’s pediatrician informing me that they found a large mass above her right kidney, which they suspected was a rare form of pediatric cancer called neuroblastoma.

On Feb 4, we were accepted into St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. My wife Katie and I packed our small family (minus our beloved dog Doppler) into our cars and made the move to Memphis.

In the following weeks, Rylee (10 months old) was officially diagnosed with intermediate-risk neuroblastoma. Her tumor was the size of a baseball and the cancer had metastasized in her bones, bone marrow and other parts of her body.

From there, Rylee completed eight rounds of chemotherapy, surgeries, and numerous scans and biopsies.

On Aug. 19, we received word that the most recent scans and biopsy results showed that there was “no sign of the disease.”

The very next day we moved back home to east Tennessee.

Hard to Find Words

Reducing the last eight or so months into the above outline of events really doesn’t settle well, to be honest. I guess that’s why it's been so hard to write about my experiences this year in general – it just never really seems to encapsulate what is going on, or what has happened. Also, I think part of it is that I never want to be too dramatic in what I share, but I also want to be accurate, which in this type of scenario is a hard line to walk.

Regardless, that is sort of what happened from a timeline perspective, but all the emotions, logistics and responsibilities that can be found between those bullet points are what are really hard for me to type out and feel good enough about sharing.

Normally, I wouldn’t feel behooved to share the most personal parts of my family’s life with the world. Sure, I’ve been happy to document my journey throughout my fishing career, but I always felt my personal life – especially in regard to my family – should generally remain just that.

However, when the news broke about Rylee’s diagnosis and the uncertainty about our family’s future, our fishing community rallied behind us with such overwhelming generosity and support, I knew to some extent we had to keep everyone updated on Rylee’s progress. Also, if our story could help even a single family with a similar cancer diagnosis, I felt it was our responsibility to share our experiences.

Another unexpected byproduct of our situation, which has filled me with a sense of purpose, has been being able to spread the word about one of the most worthy causes on the planet: St. Jude. What I have to offer this incredible organization may be small, but I’m proud to have the opportunity to share our experience there with more people.

Picking Up the Pieces

Since moving back, I've had a lot of people requesting updates on how Rylee is doing, and I recognize I have been falling behind of keeping everyone up to date, so I'm hoping starting to write about everything again will open that door.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my living room, with Rylee at my feet doing normal kid stuff. Doppler is sprawled out in the middle of the room.

After everything that happened this year, I can’t begin to articulate how good it feels to be home. It’s now been a little over a month since we moved back in, and it’s been a real pleasure to start piecing our family’s life back together. We’d barely got to move into the small house we built last year before this all went down, so for the most part, we've been focusing on household projects in an effort to “make our nest." Painting, landscaping, unpacking and organizing the house have been our primary focus.

Another byproduct of the experience we went through this year is the desire to get rid of “stuff” and simplify our lives out of both financial and practical necessity. We've parted with our big, expensive, fifth-wheel trailer we'd previously lived in, and I’m also in the process of selling my Lance truck camper, and the Ram 3500 that I used to haul it. These were all things that I thought made me happy before, but the added expense and constant maintenance necessary to keep them in working order isn’t aligned with our family’s goals anymore, so we're looking forward to finding them new homes.

As I sit here pecking away at the keyboard, I feel some excitement about the prospect of getting back into my normal role as a professional angler. Sure, my perspective on where my career ranks on the hierarchy of my priorities has changed this year, but I can't deny my goal-oriented nature, so I look forward to getting back on the water, catching up with sponsors, and also getting back to a daily content schedule on my YouTube channel, SonarFishing.

I've been pensive about what my career looks like from here on out, and to be completely open, there have been times that I didn’t know what I wanted to do after all that has happened.

Fortunately, getting home and having some time to get back to normal has made me realize that my career is still way too young to make any major changes, and so the only thing to do is to charge forward. The only caveat to that is that from here on out, my goals need to first and foremost serve my family, because what good are goals unless they help you enjoy what really matters most?

In short, the latest update on Rylee is that she is doing fantastic! That little girl has gone through so much this year, but continues to wear her glacier-melting smile, and keep her mom and dad full of hope.

Though this cancer journey is far from over, we remain hopeful that the worst of it is behind us.

(Miles "Sonar" Burghoff is a Bassmaster Opens competitor and BassFan columnist. To visit his website, click here. You can also visit him on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (SonarFishing) and Instagram (@sonarfishing).

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