Jack Sheehan on how one man’s tremendous courage can be an inspiration to us during this season when we reflect on our blessings and look to the future

Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006 | 8:36 a.m.

When you're dealing with cancer, there's no room for sugarcoating.

"You have an aggressive malignant pelvic tumor," the doctor at UCLA told Vince Schettler after examining his biopsy back in 1993.

"We are going to treat it immediately with both chemotherapy and radiation. You could lose your leg, and in all likelihood you'll never walk again without the use of crutches or a cane. You are about to face the worst year of your life. You'll be throwing up every day during these treatments and you'll feel horrible. Your chances of living beyond five years are about 15 percent."

After a long pause to let that grim prognosis take hold, the oncologist said to Vince, "But the good news is that you have the best team of doctors in the country to treat this, and we're going to do everything in our power to turn the table on those percentages. We'll have to start now."

Vince knew about long odds and how underdogs can pull upsets if they believe in themselves. That's because his father, Scott Schettler, had for years run the race and sports books for the Boyd Gaming properties in Las Vegas, and Vince himself was at the time employed in the sports book at Palace Station. But this was far more than another Saturday ballgame the doctor was talking about. This was his life.

Vince responded to the doctor by saying, "Not yet. I'm going to go home for the weekend and hang out with my family and friends and I'll be back on Monday. I want to get a running start and I promise I won't let this thing beat me."

Schettler reasoned it had taken some five months to get the accurate diagnosis for the pain he'd been suffering and that a couple more days wouldn't make a difference.

The doctor begrudgingly gave him permission but warned, "This tumor is on the move. It isn't taking a vacation."

When he returned to Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles for his first round of chemo, Vince saw something that he calls the turning point in his impending battle for survival.

"There was a baby in the unit, all hooked up to the same machines I was going to be using," he says. "It couldn't have been more than eight months old. And the infant's parents, who were in their early 20s, like me, were doing what they could to comfort the baby."

At that he pauses, and his eyes fill with tears. "It still gets me every time I think about it," he says. "But I resolved that day to be grateful for everything I had - a little son, parents who loved me and would fight the battle with me every step of the way, and a great group of friends. I'd had a blast playing baseball and football at Bishop Gorman. If my time was up, at least I'd had a good 22 years to enjoy. That baby hadn't experienced anything yet, and here it was fighting for its life."

In his year of hell, Vince underwent some of the most intensive chemotherapy and radiation that Cedars-Sinai had ever administered, three times the normal dosage, he would later learn. In five separate surgeries he had his entire left pelvis removed, including his sacrum, his ileum, and his pubis. His left leg is now three inches shorter than his right, and he's had several plastic surgeries and skin grafts to repair the scars from his cancer surgeries.

As if that weren't enough, two days before his first major surgery, in January of 1994, his wife left him and took their 3-year-old with her, leading to a prolonged custody battle. That was the low point.

But it would get better. And how.

Today, Vince Schettler is the highly successful acquisitions director for the Focus Group, master-plan developers of communities like Inspirada, Providence, Kyle Canyon Gateway and Mountain's Edge. He has remarried and now has full custody of his son, and he has adopted his new wife Kelly's son from a previous marriage. His life is full and rewarding.

There isn't space in this column to detail Vince's comeback to health and wealth and all the hurdles he has overcome. There isn't time to detail how in 1996 he answered an ad in the classifieds, started at the Focus Group at a salary of $7.50 an hour, and then worked tirelessly to learn all the aspects of his trade: about water rights, sewer rights, county development regulations, real estate law, and all the minutiae of providing infrastructure for a new community.

The important message is that Schettler's gratitude for his current good fortune is manifested by his generosity to local charities. He personally gave a million dollars to Nevada Cancer Institute in 2005, he serves as the president of the local chapter of Candlelighters for Childhood Cancer, and he sits on the boards of the Nevada Neuroscience Foundation and the Lili Claire Foundation.

"I love Nevada Cancer Institute because they are doing everything absolutely right there, and creating an uplifting environment for people to get treatment," he says. "They are bringing in great research doctors, and the staff is so positive and helpful. Las Vegas is lucky to have them here.

"And Candlelighters is just the best. We're helping young people and babies, like the one I saw at Cedars-Sinai that changed my whole perspective. We've helped a couple of thousand local families go through the ordeal of learning their child has cancer."

As one of just two people who have lived longer than five years out of the 30 patients at UCLA who have undergone the surgical procedure called an internal hemi-pelvectomy, Vince was asked to speak recently at a medical conference about the battle he waged, and how he used positive thinking to survive and succeed in life.

"When the doctors put my X-rays on the screen, before I spoke, the other doctors in the room couldn't believe I was there to talk about it," he says. "Their first thought was probably that the patient must be dead or at best in a wheelchair. So with all the stuff I've been through, I know I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

The holiday season is when we all take time to reflect on our blessings as well as the things we need to work on for the coming year.

An hour with Vince Schettler might convince you that no challenge is insurmountable, and that the greatest victories are those we share with others. When faced with almost certain death, Vince shunned self-pity and never once succumbed to the Why Me? question. He kicked death in the teeth and is doing all he can to help others do the same.

He carries the holiday spirit with him all year long.