Listen to What Randy Charach Has To Say When He Answered the Heroes Question "When Was The Lowest Point In Your Life and How Did You Change Your Life Path To One Of Victory Over the Obstacles You Were Facing at That Time?"
Randy Charach: I can offer a couple of different -- I don’t which one was lower. I’ve had several low points in my life. Let me discuss the first one that came to mind.
When I was 20 years old I started waking up routinely, like clockwork, in the morning -- I forgot the exact time, and it wasn’t exactly to the minute, but around four or five in the morning -- with excruciating pain down my left leg. This went on for some time. I went to see my general doctor and he thought maybe it was like from exercising and weights, a slipped disc or something.
I went to therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractors, all sorts of different things. Nothing helped, even pain killers. The pain was excruciating. This went on for probably for about half a year.
Finally, I don’t know how or why, but I tried using just plain aspirin instead of Tylenol 3s and this sort of thing, because it was affecting my life, being medicated and being in pain all the time. And that worked. It was interesting. I mentioned that to him and he said well, you know what?
I want to send you for an X-ray because maybe it’s something else. I went for the X-ray; that didn’t show anything. I started inquiring more with the X-ray technician and started doing a little research. My doctor was on to something. The aspirin was related to a rare bone tumor which we discovered I had, which was benign, fortunately. And that was discovered through a CT scan.
It wasn’t so bad. It might have been a year into it by the time we actually found out what it was. When I found out what it was, I was relieved because I honestly didn’t want to live any longer. The pain that I was having was so intolerable and the drugs that I had to take to live with it were creating other side effects. So I was relieved. All I cared about was can you fix it? And, yes. And is it cancer? No, it’s benign. They explained what that meant, the difference. And no big deal; simple situation.
It’s funny, Ralph. You know how whenever you go to a doctor they’re always the best? Have you ever heard anybody say I went to a doctor and I had this done and he’s the best? You ever hear them say and he’s like second best or the worst or for them to leave out the part that he is the best. Everybody goes to the best. It’s quite funny that way.
Anyway, I went to this guy who is supposed to be the best. He removed the tumor and then I was okay but only for five or six months and then the pain came back. I recognized this pain, this very distinct pain. It was like something hitting the nerve. Not just a regular pain; I knew the difference. So I had it re-X-rayed and it was discovered that he didn’t quite get it all. And so far we haven’t hit the lowest part. I am just building up to it, because this part wasn’t all that bad comparatively to what you’re going to hear, although it doesn’t get that much worse, either.
Then my father, who is a very loving father, he looked at this with me and said, you know, if you really want to take care of this, I will take you to Mayo Clinic in Rochester because they are supposed to be the best. And obviously the first guy wasn’t because he didn’t get it all for whatever reason. Let’s just go to these guys. So we went to Mayo Clinic.
I woke up from the surgery and there were two types of pain. There was the pain from the surgery where they cut open my leg. They removed some bone. They did some bone grafts, this sort of thing. Can you imagine how -- think about this -- that pain was like 5 percent compared to the other pain that I had been living with. The other pain was overriding it, so I knew when I woke up from the surgery they didn’t get it. I just knew it. They just, oh, no, no. You’re confused, dah, dah, dah. They sent me back home and I was right, they didn’t get it.
What happened was they didn’t re-X-ray and it had shifted a little bit, so really they went in and just sort of took out the wrong piece of bone.
It was horrible. So I had to recover from the next six months and then found another doctor locally in Vancouver where I live. He said, look, I can guarantee that this can come out. And what I would have to do is remove a bigger chunk of bone, put a metal plate in there to make up for that lost of structure. I’ll get it out. And I said, okay. Now, by the way, right now, just before talking to him, I’m at my low point.
Now to end that story and then come back to the lesson, he did perform the surgery and it was successful and I’ve been more or less fine ever since.
The lowest point was at that point after Mayo Clinic being unsuccessful, just thinking this is now going on like two years. I had to drop out of college for it and that’s a bit of excuse. I probably would have done that anyway. I went for one year of college while this was happening and I didn’t go back. I could have gone back, and again, there were different reasons I didn’t. I couldn’t go to school.
What it did do, and your question is how did I overcome this obstacle, is I had a change of attitude. The low point, the manifestation of my feeling, though, was like throwing food at people and swearing and hating doctors, people and just being a miserable guy, right? I was horrible.
That didn’t last too long. That lasted about a couple of months until I realized what I was doing. All of a sudden, and I’m not sure what it was, what I read or listened to or what somebody said to me, but it clicked that this is not a way to live, I should be happy. There are people with way worse. It was benign, I’m okay now or I’m going to be okay now. And I came back with vengeance.
I overcame it. It was just a simple like switch in my mind, that’s all it was that I switched. Just turned -- okay, forget it. I’m just going to do whatever I can. And I went out on crutches after that. In fact, that Ronald McDonald job, they hired me for it based on seeing some of my magic shows prior to me being laid up. I did some shows in between surgeries as well. When they approached me for the job, I said, well, yeah, but I have a surgery coming up and it’s going to be a few months recovery and then I will do it.
My very first Ronald appearance was the very first time I walked without crutches after quite a while and it was on stage at the Variety Club Telethon for the children’s hospital, walking on stage on this televised program as Ronald.
So that was something that really did change, truly did change my life, to be able to do that and overcome that obstacle and turn it around and come back with a whole different attitude towards people and life and challenges. It was something that, although I wouldn’t wish it on anybody and of course I’m not happy it happened, but a lot of good came from it.