The fight against a devastating diagnosis
At 13, he was found to have a positive tumor gene that, through the development of a rare disease called familial adenomatous polyposis, causes cancer in the digestive tract with a 99.8% probability.
At 19, they removed his colon and rectum, and at 28, his stomach. And his gallbladder.
He lost 50% of his body weight in 3 months.
“People’s minds are blown,” he tells me when he talks about it. Mine too. This is the story of Valencian Juan Dual, an influencer, writer, speaker, and athlete about to turn 40.
"It isn't easy, but you can live with it." That's the answer I receive after asking him to explain how it is possible to live without a stomach. Or colon. Or rectum. Or gallbladder. For more than twenty years, he has had to go to the bathroom between five and seven times every day. The presence of the tumor gene in his body means that he cannot predict - or expect - a guaranteed future, and yet I cannot detect a single sign of discomfort in his expression. Even after talking for almost an hour.
The three times he came close to death
Before I can process the magnitude of every word that comes out of his mouth, he tells me that he has come close to dying three times due to surgical complications, and that this, together with having witnessed several deaths in his family, has shaped a different outlook on life. He is truly aware that nobody is immortal, and his priorities are clear: "For a long time now, all I ask the Three Kings for is one more year of life." Silence.
I had prepared many questions, but I see that they are absolutely irrelevant and decide to listen to him. "Through sport, I regained control of my existence," he assures me. “I started by walking, then moved on to jogging and later running. Little by little, I increased the distances, and in doing so I regained physical and emotional independence, which led me to achieve financial independence.” He was even able to move out of his parents’ home, where he had had to return. But the comeback was not easy: “I couldn’t go more than five meters without stopping to catch my breath.”
Sport as his driving force in life
It is precisely the memory of how much he suffered in the hospital that keeps him consistent in sport, “seeing that I’m no longer pushing an IV pole while counting floor tiles.” Juan runs and does ultradistance cycling, and admits that nothing matches the feeling of freedom he experiences running or cycling alone through the mountains. “It reminds you how insignificant you are as a living being in the universe… and keeping this constantly in mind is addictive.”
Not long ago, he decided to share his story on social media after his friends argued that a story as powerful as his could not remain within a small circle. And how right his friends were. Since then, he has created content about the fight against cancer. "And I speak openly about death," he adds. "This comes to an end, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can live as fully as possible."
When he finishes speaking, I feel compelled to ask whether he has a life motto, a phrase that defines how he faces life. “I have it tattooed on my arm,” he confesses: “Don’t think about it.” He believes that the moment we start overthinking things, we find excuses not to do them, and that we need to get moving. We are where we are because we have moved. That is why sport means so much to him.
What an inspiring person. In the end, I think, the question is more about how we face what happens to us than about what happens to us itself. A textbook cliché, yes. But there must be a reason it is a cliché.
