To hear John McDaniel discuss his life, you’d never sense his terminal diagnosis. He is thankful every day. To see him play pickleball with oxygen strapped upon his back shows how determined and resilient a man he is, not letting his diagnosis stop him. McDaniel appreciates that each day needs to be cherished. He tries to choose and plan his activities wisely, and most often, he chooses to play pickleball.
“I had a cough that would not go away. I assumed it was allergies. And one day, I was just at the doctor’s office getting a check-up, and he said, well, everything’s looking good. Do you have any issues? I said I have a dry cough that will not go away,” he said.
McDaniel’s doctor decided to have X-rays done, which resulted in the need for a cat scan and his case being handed over to a pulmonologist.
“The pulmonologist reviewed the cat scan, examined me, and said, I have some good and bad news. The good news is we know what it is. The bad news is there’s no cure for it. It’s called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Idiopathic means they don’t know what causes it. Pulmonary means lungs. Fibrosis means scarring. And the doctor says the bad news, too, is that the average lifespan once diagnosed is about two and a half to three years. Well, that was pretty devastating to hear,” he said.
That conversation was 2 years ago.
Cheyenne
He was born in Cheyenne, Oklahoma, a small farming community. Not much happened there. He kept busy through sports. The schools were too small for football, but he had baseball, basketball, and track. McDaniel played them all, with basketball being his favorite. He had never played a racquet sport before picking up a pickleball paddle.
His parents owned and operated a general store. He worked there from age 15, and since they had an open meat market, he learned to butcher. He also learned every corner of the business, from doing the books, ordering goods, inventory to sweeping up each night. McDaniel likes to study things inside and out. When he graduated high school, he headed off to college to study to be a teacher.
“I went to college in Western Oklahoma, a liberal arts school. Southwestern Oklahoma State University, I believe it was, and it was a small school. I graduated from there with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and physical education,” he said.
McDaniel received a teaching certificate but never taught. He was recruited during his senior year by the owner of a local phone company in his hometown to do accounting and be an office manager once he graduated. When he returned home, life in the small farming community was exactly as McDaniel remembered.
“I was freshly out of college and returned to my small town and was bored to death. Go to work, get off work at 5. Nothing to do. Repeat. So being in the farming and ranching community, I got a mentor, a school teacher that I got along with very well, and he seemed to take up with me,” he said.
McDaniel’s mentor taught him farming and ranching, and McDaniel would join him often and help after work. Ranching and farming cured his boredom and became the best part of his day. He decided he could take on a farm himself and still work at the phone company.
“I went to talk to my local banker because I had no money, right? And asked him if he would be interested in helping lend me some money to buy some land and to get into the agriculture business. And he kind of took up with me also and said, yeah, we’ll work with you. So a farm came up for sale, 160 acres, and it was a lot of farmland on it and some grassland. And they were having a public auction. So I went and talked to him and ask him what he thought about that. And he said, yes, that’s very good land and if you can get it bought, that would be good.” he said.
McDaniel spent the next 10 years buying and accumulating about 2,000 acres of land and eventually decided he’d rather be outside than in an office all day and became a full-time farmer. He revisited the banker and purchased a convenience store from a friend. He now had land, farms, cattle, and a business, and all the hustle, bustle, and debt that go with it. It was just about that time he met his future wife, Becky, a native Oklahoma girl. They were married in 1981, and they were a perfect team.
“We got along very well in our dating relationship and decided to get married. So she worked the convenience store while I worked the farms and the ranches. And since I didn’t come from a family with money and she didn’t either, I thought the only way to get ahead was to work hard, be conservative, and invest our money the best we could. And that’s worked well for us,” he said.
McDaniel was 31 when he married, and Becky changed everything for him. The hard work at the farms, ranches, convenience store, and all the long hours now had more meaning. McDaniel considered himself lucky.
“I married a girl. She was very beautiful and sweet and kind, and she liked me. So it worked out really well. Great life ever since,” he said.
Ever Since
McDaniel and Becky went about life raising their son Zachary, contributing to the community, and spending every day working their businesses. When Becky was 35, she took a trip to Sanibel Island in Florida with a few other ladies. She loved everything about the Island, especially the beautiful beaches and all of the tennis courts. As soon as she returned home, she told him they would one day retire to Florida. He smiled, thinking to himself, ‘yeah right, we are in debt to our eyeballs!’ However, many years later, when McDaniel sold all but 320 acres of their land and keeping a small cattle interest, Becky mentioned a vacation to Florida, this time with him.
“She has an influence over me and always will. So around 2007, she talked me into coming down to Florida on vacation and wanted to show me the Sanibel Island. And while we were there, she said, you know, why don’t we rent a place down here and see if we like it? Well, I fell for that, and we did. I went back to Oklahoma to do some more work, and she stayed down there to fix things up and get situated. She wouldn’t come home, so I kept calling and saying, well, when are you coming back? She said, Well, I don’t think I need to come back. I said I’d like to see you. She laughed and said come back down here and see me. So, I finally realized if I was still going to have a marriage and a wife, I better get my tail down to Florida. Anyway, I got a manager to manage my convenience store, and I had a partner handle the cattle business,” he said.
Florida fit as Becky knew it would, and by 2014 they upgraded from their condo to a lovely home in Ft. Myers with plenty of room for the grandchildren to visit. McDaniel sold all of their cattle and dissolved the operation, but to this day, he still has the store and even does the books.
Pickleball
One day Becky met a lady, and she accepted an invitation to a recreation center to play pickleball.
“So off she went and came home and told me, oh, my goodness, you ought to come to play pickleball. And I said I’ve never heard of pickleball. And she says, well, you’ll love it. It’s the most fun sport, and you meet so many people, and you get exercise and all this. So I said, I am not playing pickleball,” he said.
Becky has a way of influencing McDaniel, who is still as smitten with her as when he was a young man working the farms. And after a few months, she changed her approach to the idea. She ordered him to go.
“Well three or four ladies started going together, and one of them coaxed her husband into going. So Becky says, well, you need to come today because Joe, or whatever his name was, is going. And I said, well, okay,” he said.
McDaniel found himself standing on a pickleball court with a paddle in hand, and for the first time since college intramurals, he was playing a sport. He loved it, and like many, McDaniel had the pickleball bug. It felt so good to be able to relax and just enjoy people. He had spent a lifetime working, and it was nice to enjoy an activity with others for fun.
“We got more people in our housing community to go with us and have become good friends with them and met some new friends there that we would never have ever met or known prior to that. And it was just great recreation, a great challenge to learn a new sport, a nice social event to go and meet people and do things with other than pickleball, even. And I mainly just played recreational pickleball for three or four years. Never took any lessons, just went and played and just had fun,” he said.
Everything was great. Until that one day, he noticed that he had this dry cough that wouldn’t go away.
Life with Doctors
At first, McDaniel still felt fine. The doctors dutifully warned him of the side effects of the one medication that existed for his circumstance. McDaniel dealt with that and what the doctors told him about a 2-3 year life expectancy.
It was good for a year, but McDaniel’s body would remind him of its condition. He was playing one day when after 2 games, he suddenly went short of breath, became lightheaded, and very dizzy. Becky was afraid it was his heart. They went back to the doctors.
“I go to a cardiologist, and he checks me all over. Your heart seems to be fine. So I went back to the pulmonologist, and they did a stress test on me with an oximeter on my finger. Had me walk for three minutes, and my oxygen level went from 95 down to 85 in three minutes. So they wheeled out an oxygen tank and strapped me up to it. He told me my lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen into them when exercising or doing stressful activities, and I needed to be on an oxygen supplement. That was the next step of devastation, I thought. That ended my pickleball plan, he said.
The part McDaniel forgot is the pickleball plan included his pickleball friends. He went to the court the next day, and as pickleball players do, they thought of ways to play still.
He said one of his friends asked, “Why can’t you get a backpack and find some way to put an oxygen concentrator or an oxygen bottle in there?”
McDaniel thought that would be too heavy or difficult, but his friends continued to ponder the situation. They didn’t play pickleball. They sat and considered their friend’s situation as a community.
“So bless their hearts, they checked around and looked for backpacks and oxygen concentrators for me and said, we found something we think will work for you. And so from there on, my pulmonologist wrote me a prescription for oxygen. So I got that, and I’ve been now using a backpack with an oxygen concentrator or an oxygen bottle in that backpack to give me enough oxygen when I’m playing,” he said.
His friends all played a part in making sure McDaniel didn’t just give up on pickleball. First, there was his wife, who wanted him to exercise. She saw its value mainly when his doctor supported the idea and showed his colleagues the backpack McDaniel was using. The exercise is good for countering the scarring of his lungs. Then there was the discovery of that backpack that fit the oxygen concentrator perfectly and kept the weight as low as possible on his back. A good friend found it at a medical supply store in Ft. Myers and immediately brought it to him.
McDaniel also leaned on his friend Bill Berrier, an exceptional pickleball player, who will play with McDaniel anytime he wants.
“He will play with me anytime I want to play, be a partner, play against me, and give me recommendations on things to do differently, to change. Everybody’s been so supportive, and it’s just amazing how compassionate people are, especially the pickleball community that I know,” McDaniel said.
Two years after his diagnosis, McDaniel plays onward. He still meets people who offer help and ideas but mostly don’t look at him through sad eyes. They see a competitor and appreciate that he is part of what they love, pickleball. They tell him they can get off the couch and do the same if he can play. They thank him for reminding them their lousy back or shoulder shouldn’t stop them from playing.
“I’ve had a lot of success playing in pickleball tournaments. I played in the US Open tournament last year in Naples, Florida, one of the biggest tournaments in the United States or worldwide. I entered that with a gentleman named Brad Bates, who was 71, and I was 75. And we ended up winning a bronze medal, which was a big deal to us. I am so thankful that I got to play in that tournament because that’s been a goal of mine ever since I started playing pickleball,” he said.
Bill Berrier was watching and even coached the men on the sideline during a time-out. In the first game, McDaniel created another memory that he savors.
“I was the starting server, and I served eleven straight serves and won eleven consecutive points. And we won eleven to zero. And that’s called, in the pickleball world, a GOLDEN PICKLE. That was a bonus. That was kind of like cream on top of the pie.”
McDaniel doesn’t think about the diagnosis or lifespan; he lets it sit way back in his mind. He doesn’t sit home depressed and afraid. He and Becky get out there and play.
“I just take it now as part of my putting on my pants and shirt, putting on my backpack, and walking out the door. It’s just part of my life now,” he said.
