Kuhr had a procedure similar to an open-heart

Mike Kuhr will compete in his fifth Firecracker 5K Wednesday. For him, it's not the number that matters. It's that he's running the race at all.

"To me, it symbolizes that I'm alive," Kuhr said. "You learn to appreciate life."

At one time, that life was in limbo.

On May 24, 2007, Kuhr learned the lingering cough and chest pains he was experiencing weren't the side effects of overtraining. The then-40-year-old actually had a rare form of testicular cancer, which caused a grapefruit-sized tumor to form on the top of his heart, and the tumor compressed his pulmonary artery and his aorta.

"They said, 'Mike, it's cancer, and if we don't do anything, you have about 48-72 hours to live,'" Kuhr recalled. "OK, then I said, 'What's the plan?'"

The next day, the Shreveport resident started 10 weeks of aggressive chemotherapy. The hardest part was telling his children: Kristen, 13 (now 18); Jackson, 6 (now 11); and Addie, 4 (now 9).

"They thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die really," Kuhr said. "I thought, 'Let's be as aggressive as we can with this thing.'"

Kuhr's 225-pound frame quickly shrunk to 170 pounds, but the always-upbeat Kuhr stayed upbeat as often as possible. One thing kept motivating him: He wanted to see his kids grow up.

"When we used to go visit him at the hospital, we were always so impressed with how positive he was," said close friend and Firecracker 5K race director Matt Brown. "Mike is always like that. You're not going to meet another guy like Mike."

In September 2007, Kuhr had a procedure similar to an open-heart surgery to remove the tumor on his heart. Doctors snipped the upper part of his left lung and also removed eight lymph nodes.

Kuhr said he experienced setbacks in finding his "new normal," but he got his second chance. He competed in the Rivercities Triathlon in 2009 but realized he came back too fast.

"Stuff just wouldn't work right. I would try to swim, but my chest muscles would start hurting to the point where I would get frustrated," Kuhr said. "The lung capacity, it's different. You train around it, through it, trying to get to a different threshold."