Excerpt: 'Every Day I Fight'

— -- When Stuart Scott died on Jan. 4 at the age of 49, he left behind many lasting gifts from his career at ESPN and from his courageous seven-year fight with cancer.

Here is another of those gifts: His memoir, "Every Day I Fight," which he co-authored with Larry Platt. The book, published by Penguin Random House, goes on sale March 10.

In the following excerpt, Scott explains how and why he fought cancer the same way that an elite athlete trains to pursue a championship -- to remain in control of his health, to fight for others who couldn't fight, and to inspire his daughters Taelor and Sydni:

A lot of cancer patients fear chemotherapy. Me, I couldn't wait to start it because I've always physically fought for something. And I wanted to show Taelor and Sydni that their dad wasn't a passive patient.

My scar from the surgery had healed. So right after New Year's, I went to the infusion center not far from my condo for my first session. This would be my routine every other Monday for at least the next twenty-four weeks. Four hours of sitting in a cushiony chair while the poison pumped into my body, followed by forty-eight hours of a chemo cocktail drip strapped to my side. Followed -- immediately -- by a workout at my buddy Brian's gym. And I mean immediately.

I can't tell you how important it felt to go from the chemo infusion center to the gym. There were patients at the infusion center who were gaunt and too weak to walk. I wanted to hug them. I wanted to work out for them. It took about fifteen minutes to get to the gym from the infusion center, but I felt like I was traveling a great distance: from the land of the sick to the land of the recovering. I'd work out three or four times a week, but the most important workout was the one right after chemo. It was like I was proving a point: While you kick my butt, cancer, I'm gonna kick yours.

That first day is when, getting on the elliptical, I noticed the name on the chemo drip. The medical name of the medicine is fluorouracil, but they call it 5-FU. That's what it said, right there: 5-FU. All right, I thought. A sign. FU, cancer.

My return to the gym felt kind of spiritual. I wasn't really supposed to run since I was still connected to the port that was giving me my medicine. (Going through a port, rather than intravenously, saves the wear and tear on your veins.) I looked down, and my eye caught the logo of the manufacturer of the machine I was on: LifeStyle.

That word jumped out at me: Life. I started to pray, thanking God that I still had it -- life. I thought back to the first thought I had when they told me in Pittsburgh: I'm going to die. But I was still here. And here I was, not forty-five minutes out of chemo, and I was in the gym, doing what I do. I started to run. What could be the harm? The disease wasn't in control. I was.

I skipped rope for a few minutes. Then came two sets of fifty push-ups each and a few rounds of shadowboxing. Rinse and repeat. That was followed by five sets of dumbbell bench presses -- about sixty pounds each -- and five sets of dumbbell curls. It wasn't one of my pre-cancer workouts, where I'd be on the treadmill for an hour and then slamming weights, but it was like medicine to me. I didn't have the girls on Mondays, but I really wanted to see them after chemo, so I'd go over to my ex-wife's house and crash in the guest bedroom. I wanted Taelor and Sydni to see me coming back from the gym, sweaty and spent, fighting for them.

I joked around with the girls about my new friend, this pack of medicine attached to my body for forty-eight hours. "He's, like, my buddy," I said. That's when we decided to name him: Marvin Fitzpatrick Bartholomew. From then on, every time they saw me after one of my post-chemo workouts, Sydni and Taelor would say hello not just to me but also to Marvin. They didn't want to be rude and ignore him.

Sydni was fascinated by the port through which "Marvin" got me my medicine. My doctor gave me a duplicate one so that Sydni could take it to school for show-and-tell. She explained to her classmates how I got my medicine, and she told them all about her new friend Marvin.

My workouts were the most important part of my days. I hadn't done anything since the surgery, and, mentally, I needed to feel strong. I hated looking in the mirror and seeing some skinny dude with no muscle mass looking back. Maybe part of that was simple vanity, but I think it went deeper.

I'd been hardwired as an athlete since I was six years old. I thought that should give me an edge over most people who are diagnosed with cancer. I knew what it was like to work toward a physical goal, and I knew that there's no such thing as a purely physical act: the mental and physical are deeply connected.

Mentally, I needed to be in that gym. I'd talk smack to cancer like Ali talked to his opponents. A third set of push-ups? Take that, cancer. Twenty full-out sprint pass patterns? Cancer, you ever run up against this? Some kicks and punches into the middle of the heavy bag after the elliptical? I got yer cancer right here!

I needed to do that, not just to show my girls I was fighting for them, but also to show myself I had some control over the situation. 'Cause cancer wants to take control from you. You've got to very purposefully stand your ground. That's what going to the gym is to me. I decide, cancer. That's what going to work is. I decide, cancer. That's what traveling all over the country and abroad is. I decide, cancer.

"Every Day I Fight" by Stuart Scott with Larry Platt, published by Penguin Random House, goes on sale March 10. To learn more and pre-order a copy, visit the book's web page here.