This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, we have another listener's story sent to us from Roger Wrench in Iowa.

Today, Roger is sharing a story about his stepson, Sage, called The Winner Who Always Finish Last.

This is the story of the kid who finished last.

Every time.

He ran in the slowest heat with the slowest runners,

and he was the slowest of the slow,

often coming in several seconds behind the other runners.

For three years in track meet after track

meet after track meet, he finished last. It had not always been so. In seventh grade, he was the

fastest kid on his cross-country team and competed with the best runners from the other schools.

In his last meet, he finished 12th out of 169 runners, and the other 111 ahead of him were all a year

older in eighth grade. He loved running and looked forward to getting better and faster.

Then, tragedy struck.

A tumor was found in the back of his brain.

This, after a lifelong genetic disease, had limited his physical activity his whole life.

Running was the first athletic thing he was able to do,

and now that was being taken away. He endured a year and a half of radiation and chemo.

Because of his rare disease, sometimes the doctors weren't sure how to treat him. There were difficult days, including 17 in a row

where he was unconscious for most of it over the Christmas holiday. The tumor was removed quickly

after being discovered. He made it through treatment in many months of physical therapy.

...