Michael Martinez has always had a positive outlook on life with a focus on family and helping others. Three years ago, Michael’s optimistic attitude took a hit when his life and health were threatened by a series of medical challenges he never saw coming.
“Prior to July of 2021, I was just living a good life,” Martinez sad. “I was a five-day-a-week mountain biker and a body builder with three kids and 10 grandkids. I was just living life. I didn’t have any health issues.”
But that all changed the morning after a Fourth of July gathering to watch fireworks in 2021. “I got up to take a shower on July 5 before going mountain biking because that’s what I usually did on days off,” he said. “I finished showering, stepped out of the shower, and I collapsed.”
Martinez said he was in and out of consciousness, but he remembers falling and stumbling around the bedroom before completely passing out on his living room floor. At the time, he wasn’t sure he would survive what he thought was a massive stroke.
“I said to myself, ‘This must be how it ends'”.
“I really thought my life was ending there because everything went dark and I closed my eyes. It must have been seconds or minutes later that I opened my eyes and it was bright. The sun was coming through the window, but I felt like I couldn’t move.”
His right side paralyzed, Martinez still can’t explain how he not only discovered his cell phone within reach on the living room floor but was also able to use his left arm and hand to call 9-1-1. Minutes later, the fire department arrived at his home and rushed him to the hospital.
Martinez described the next few days of uncertainty. “So, I’m sitting there in the hospital, and they started doing CTs and MRIs to look for a cause,” he said. “I remember one neurologist from St. Mark’s came up and said, ‘You know, we don’t know why you had this stroke. We see something in there but there’s so much bleeding, we can’t really tell.’ It was a hemorrhagic stroke, a bleed in the brain.”
The answers and diagnosis Martinez would need to understand what happened to him on July 5, 2021, would not come quickly. Over the next year, he would undergo intense inpatient and outpatient rehab to work back to near full strength in his right hand and arm.
Meanwhile, doctors would give him an initial diagnosis of a cerebral cavernous malformation, or a collection of abnormally large blood vessels in his brain. They can cause problems if they bleed as they did the morning Martinez suffered what he thought was a stroke.
“I did a lot of reading about cavernous malformations, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh is it going to bleed again and am I going to have another stroke?’” he said. “But I was always upbeat, and I never let anything get me down.”
Then, in May 2022, his neurologist called Martinez to say, “‘I want to look in your brain again and see if the bleeding has gone down and we can figure out why you had the stroke.’” Another MRI a few days later revealed a brain tumor. That’s when Martinez was introduced to Sarah Menacho, MD, vice chair of the Department of Neurosurgery and director of the Neuro Critical Care Unit at University of Utah Health.
Menacho performed a craniotomy on Martinez, took the tumor out, and sent it to pathology, where her suspicions were confirmed. The metastatic brain tumor had originated in Michael’s kidney.
“Melanoma, kidney, breast, and lung cancer are all known to travel to the brain, and then the kidney tumors are known to hemorrhage in the brain as well,” Menacho said. “But we didn’t know at the time I met him that he had kidney cancer. It was after the scans that it was discovered.”
Once the kidney, adrenal gland, and a heart feeder vein were identified as cancerous, Martinez had them all removed during surgery in August 2022. Manish Kohli, MD, an oncologist at University of Utah Health, basically changed Michael’s original diagnosis.
“Dr. Kohli said, ‘You know, you had all three of these situations—the kidney, the brain tumor, and the thyroid nodule—on the day of your stroke,’” Martinez said. “That’s when they moved my diagnosis of Stage 4 RCC (renal cell carcinoma) or kidney cancer to July 5, 2021.”
In January 2023, it was time for Martinez to decide how he wanted to monitor his cancer and overall health going forward. “They suggested several different treatment options, and I chose the option to be scanned every three months and to address any new cancer that might come up with either surgery or radiation,” Martinez said.
For the next year, the scans showed no signs of any new cancerous growths, and Martinez continued to build up his physical strength while also earning a master’s degree in social work. At age 65, it is the third career Martinez has successfully pursued, including time in law enforcement and as a construction company owner.
“I have always been positive, especially when it comes to my kids, my parents, and my grandparents...I hate having to do rehab over and over again after surgery, but I am alive and still able to do the things I like to do.
"I hope my experiences will make me a better social worker. One thing I want to do is talk to patients up at Huntsman Cancer Institute because I see a lot of those patients who are in despair.”
The ability to focus on the future with a positive attitude has already seen Martinez through a setback earlier this year. In January, another small mass appeared in his brain and needed to be removed. This time, he chose a minimally invasive laser ablation to burn the cancer cells and make them go away. Menacho performed the ablation, currently only done in Utah at University Hospital, and described it as successful.
“The prognosis for Michael is pretty good,” Menacho said. “Other than the brain, the cancer has not really spread to many other places in his body. It’s not like he has tumors everywhere. It seems to be more isolated to the brain.” However, she stressed that, “Unfortunately, there isn’t a time with kidney cancer when we can say, ‘You’re cured, move on with your life.’”
It is fortunate for Michael that he isn’t dwelling on what might happen but rather living in the moment and enjoying his family and career as a social worker. “All my doctors tell me that your positivity is definitely helping you through all of this,” Martinez said. “I think I can have a positive effect on all the people in my life.”