Shortly after Dusty Anchors was tagged with a terminal diagnosis of stage 4 heart failure last December, he summed up his approach to his final months through a personal slogan:
“Its time to get busy livin’.”
As a man told he had just months to live, that’s how Anchors carried himself as head coach through the softball season last spring as the Ridgefield Spudders advanced to the state quarterfinals — the deepest run of his decades-long coaching career.
Now, three months removed from the time period he was once told he’d be fortunate to live to, doctors have downgraded Anchors’ condition to stage 2-3, granting him a new lease on life.
And he can’t help but think the way he lived those months many were prepared to be his last had something to do with it.
“My mental attitude,” Anchors said, “I’d like to think that was a good part of it. I had the Ridgefield softball community behind me and the power of good thoughts.”
Last December, doctors told Anchors, 67, they would try to get him to late July so he could walk his youngest of two daughters, now Kelsey Goodman, down the aisle at her wedding.
Anchors wound up spending two stints in the hospital in June and July. Both were severe in nature, but neither had to do with his heart.
Three days after being released from hospital the first time, Anchors was out running errands with his wife, Lori Anchors, when he suffered what was later determined to be a popped blood vessel as the result of an ulcer. He was rushed to the emergency room, and from his perspective, the next few days were fuzzy.
According to Anchors, doctors pumped him with five units of blood. At one point, they later told him, he nearly died due to lack of blood. Nevertheless, gastroenterology doctors at Oregon Health & Science University put in three clips to seal the ulcer and he was released eight days later, in early July.
Soon thereafter, Dr. James Mudd, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at OHSU who has been Anchors’ doctor through the whole process, gave him the news he had been longing to hear.
“He goes ‘there’s nothing wrong with your heart. Your heart looks great.’ You’re going to be around next July,’ ” Anchors said. “That’s when everything, we got out, in the groove of things, started recuperating.”
He was told that a combination of the right medication, a healthy diet and weight loss were key contributors to the condition of his heart improving.
“It’s just one of those things that’s hard to describe, but it’s just a feeling of making it over another hurdle,” Anchors said. “I can see some daylight now.”
Two weeks later, Dusty and Lori were in the front row cheering on Pitbull at the ilani Casino, with tickets gifted from a Spudder softball family.
Anchors, admittedly has grown fond of the radio hit rapper nicknamed Mr. Worldwide, because Ridgefield’s softball pregame playlists always included his songs.
“That was another thing that pushed me to get a little bit better, too,” he said, half-jokingly. “I knew I had tickets to see Pitbull, and I wasn’t going to sit at home.”
He called the concert “pure energy.” The couple even posed for a photo with the pop star.
A week later, he walked his daughter down the aisle. Her wedding, he boasted, was perfect. Weather was sunny in the upper 70s, there were just the right amount of people and Anchors was able to lead the father-daughter dance.
In late August, he penned a lengthy Facebook post updating those following on his health. The comments section flooded with heartfelt messages celebrating the news.
“It was very emotional,” he said.
Day-to-day life these days is relaxed for Anchors. It’s off-season for softball, and amid a no-contact period between coaches and players, there’s not much he can do to prepare for the upcoming season.
But it’s hard to sit still when it comes to softball, he said. Spring is right around the corner, and coach Anchors has another season to prepare for.
