Dan Pieper

A Lightning Bolt from Nowhere

Twelve years ago, life was good for Dan Pieper. Active, healthy, adventurous – Dan and a few of his friends had just come off a 444-mile bike ride through Natchez Trace National Park, a stretch of God’s country from Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi. Tall trees, clean air, happy squirrels, it’s an experience you hear about from your plucky, fit friends over beers, as you bite into a bacon burger. It’s what those people do – the people that are forever challenging themselves in epic measures of their aliveness. The sturdy oaks.

It started with a shriek of blinding pain. What followed was complete disorientation, disconnect from a previous state of consciousness to a new reality, and still more pain. The brain tumor Dan describes sounds like a stroke, but with an unforgettable-pain component – the kind of pain that broadens the scale on which you measure pain. Four hundred and forty-four miles is a grueling distance on a bike, but it was a journey he chose. I sat down with Dan to discuss the journey that was chosen for him. It’s a journey rife with unexpected beauty and overwhelming depression. People put themselves through ostensibly irrational tests in order to develop their “person-hood”, but it’s always the unwelcome hand of God that puts us to the fire. Hammered like hot steel, we’re shaped by the ‘lightning bolts from nowhere’, so this is Dan Pieper, pulled from the fire…

What was your reaction to the diagnosis, at first?

Well I didn’t have much time to react. It all happened so quickly. One minute I was in the emergency room, the next minute I was in the MRI, and the next minute I was being prepped for surgery, for brain surgery. It was stunning… but we were coping.

What was going through your head that night in the ER? Were you cognizant enough to realize what was taking place?

Sure, the waves of blinding pain and disorientation eventually subsided and I knew what was happening, but it was still a kick in the stomach. (Dan laughs) The scariest moment came right before the surgery. A priest came into the room and offered me last rites! I refused! (more laughter) I was like ‘I’m not ready to die. I’m not going to die here!’ I didn’t realize that the sacrament isn’t just for people with only a few hours left to live. That’s why I refused, but I have a better understanding of that now.

Your brain tumors completely derailed your life, and so in a way, you’ve lost your old self. That must be disturbing, but is there any way you can interpret this experience as a blessing?

Oh, that started immediately. I refused to be pessimistic about this. I started speaking about it in those terms right after it occurred. The hardest part was the first couple months when they (the doctors) didn’t know what to call it. The form of tumor I had was very rare. Despite all the pathology reports, they were stumped. It eventually came back as something called neurocytoma (only 38 words in Wikipedia – that’s rare!)

Once it had a name, it was easier to deal with. I don’t know why that is. Dealing with the unknown is really difficult, but something with a name on it… it’s more approachable.

That’ll probably be the first and last time I hear the word ‘approachable’ being used to describe cancer. So how did you expect to find meaning out of such a seemingly negative circumstance?

I’d originally wanted to start a ministry for people suffering from brain tumors, and more appropriately, their caregivers. The caregivers are really the ones that suffer the most. The burden of taking care of the people, and providing for them is impossible to describe. It’s usually a husband and wife situation, so the dynamic of the relationship changes over night. It devastates the life and lifestyle the couple were formerly leading.

I know that there are swarms of people out there dealing with these issues, but it turns out that these people are harder to locate than you’d think. I wanted to help people within the context of my faith, and so I had to adjust my thinking. I thought maybe I would just help those with cancer, but then realized I couldn’t relate with someone dealing with breast or colon cancer. Those are totally different than my condition.

What would you tell someone who’s just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, or cancer, or another life-changing disease?

Who can give advice? Everyone has to deal with it on the terms of their situation at the time that it occurs. I’d love to sit hear and say that having faith is instrumental in helping deal with it, but at the time, my faith wasn’t exactly that strong. I was a good Catholic, I’ve done a lot of spiritual reading, but along time ago I came to the understanding that I did not want to be a dealmaker with God. If I was going to live a life of faith, I was going to understand it, and understand what I was committing to…

In sickness and in health, so to speak.

Right, and not just be someone that goes through all the motions. The consequence of this commitment ended up preventing me from sliding into complete depression. There was none of this “Why me?” (as Dan looks up to God).

So you’re a catechist. How did that happen?

RCIA came along, once again, totally unexpected. At first, there was no appeal, and I don’t know why. I’d studied RCIA in the Rice School, so when Barb Catineau asked me to get involved, I thought, well, ‘I have all this schooling, I should probably apply it. Maybe RCIA is where God wants me to be, because… we never really know where our calls are going to come from. Mine came with a Boston accent from a lady in the narthex.

So you studied at the Rice School, what motivated you to do that?

When we moved to Florida, we were attending St. Cecilia. During a Mass, the deacon got up and spoke about the different degree programs available. I piqued my interest, but another year went by before I heard the same speech again. I decided this might be for me. So then I interviewed with Sister Sally and she convinced me to pursue the Master’s of Pastoral Theology degree. I felt called by the spirit to do this, and I loved it.

You know, it’s another one of those situations that once you get involved, you can’t stop. The program I was in became a part of who I was. It began to give focus to what I’d previously been considering – the support group for brain cancer survivors and caregivers.

So you’d always been sort of a ‘seeker’ – excuse the new-age terminology. Describe how it gave focus to your mission?

Studying whatever was of interest to me at the time, going from one spiritual writer to the other – C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Kathleen Norris – all these writers are wonderful people, but I just needed more order. The Rice School gave that to me.

I almost didn’t finish though. I’d been followed closely by the neurologists for years after my initial tumor, so in 2005 when they detected the second tumor, it was less of a shock.

Second tumor? This was a new tumor? Describe that. Where were you in your studies? Did it disrupt your coursework?

You bet it did. Tumor #2 was embedded in the left side of my brain, and it was a little deeper than that first, so there were effects on my motor skills. I don’t want to go too far into it, but I was seriously suffering. I probably would have quit if it weren’t for a dear friend, Father Jerry Austin.

Father Jerry Told me, ‘if you don’t finish that degree, I’m goin’ to my grave’. (Dan laughs) I figured I wanted him around for a while, so I stayed and finished.

What was more difficult this time around? How did you go to school and concentrate when you’d lost function in parts of your body?

It was a strange blessing in disguise. I was in a support group for brain cancer survivors at Lee Memorial hospital with about 18 other people. It’s where I got to do my Practicum, which is like a dissertation for theological studies. I pitched the idea to the group and investigated, with each individual patient, the role faith and spirituality had in their recovery. It was an experience I’d never have been able to have had the circumstances been different.

That’s the definition of serendipity, huh? And now here you are at Blessed Pope – a catechist – giving people the greatest gift you could give.

It’s become part of what my life is all about. When you walk into that room after Mass, and see these people (RCIA candidates) trying to live out what they’d just experienced… it’s powerful.

After living through his cancer twice, and meeting other people who are fighting and surviving, Dan’s gained a greater understanding of the resilience required to face the punishment that cancer delivers. It wasn’t his plan, but it was The Plan.
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You can see further into Dan’s life and personality in this week’s 23rd Times. Go online and check it out or look in your email for his video interview.