03/02/2022
“We started doing popups January 2016 through DMs and Social media only. Got a few write-ups before the city shut us down, then hooked up with our friends at Brass Bean () and started growing. My buddy Drew and I go serious about BBQ and started looking for buildings. Building we’re in came up for sale, so we went to the bank to see if we could get a loan for it. We got the loan and bought the building September 2018.
Opened our doors February 2019. Daniel Vaughn () was here the first day. It was a madhouse. Big line around the building. Had a few friends come through to help us with cooks the first few weeks. We were just out here making peppery ass bark, Saturdays only, doing our thing.
November 2019 I started having back pains. Couldn’t figure out if it was my sciatic nerve or what. Coworker suggested I go see a doctor about and get a PT. Got a doctor referral that Monday. That night while eating pot roast my son was eating some veggie sticks and starts choking. As I’m running to help my wife as she’s is yelling “He’s choking!” I slipped and fell, put my arm out to break my fall and I hear a ‘pop’. Sounded like I tore my rotator cuff. I ran, stuck my finger down my son’s throat and got the veggie stick out. Afterward she asked if I needed to go to the doctor but I told her I had one already for that Wednesday, so I waited.
At the doctors office I told the doctor “I know you’re looking at my sciatic, but I think I tore my rotator cuff” He picked up my arm and it just flops down. So he had me do an MRI to see the extent of the damage.
Got my MRI done on Black Friday 2019. On December 3rd I go back to the doctors office and he said “There’s something not right with your shoulder, you might have cancer”. My first reaction was “WTF did you just say?!”. He said it may not be cancer but still needed to get it checked out. He sets me up with one of his best friends who happens to be one of the best orthopedic surgeons in Dallas. I go see him the following Monday, December 10th.
I walk in and I’m the youngest person in that room. He tells me its a giant cell tumor and we just just need to take it out. We scheduled to take it out the next day.
My whole family was there for the surgery. Doctors told me it was benign. If it wasn’t cancer the procedure would take 2 hours. If it was cancer it’d be 30 minutes because they’d have to close me up. After the surgery I wake up, look over to my nurse and asked how long my surgery was. She said “40 minutes.”
I had cancer. Multiple myeloma, to be exact.
All I thought was ‘God, I just want to see my kid grow up’. And as weird as this might sound, in my head I was thinking was ‘I want to make it until the next list comes out’.
My doctor sets up appointments with radiologist, bone marrow specialists, and oncologists. I won the jackpot on this one though, because the average age that gets this type of caner is about 75 and I was 32 at the time.
We meet with the first doctor, the radiologist, who told me I was going to live. He also told me I needed to talk more with the bone marrow specialists. I asked how it was going to affect my back since I do BBQ and he said “wait, you do BBQ? Has Daniel Vaughn ever eaten your food?”. I told him he had, so he looks up my place and saw “flawless brisket” (Thanks, Daniel!). He told me to hold on, walked outside, told the bone marrow specialist who I was and came back and said “He’ll see you right now.” We sat with the specialist for 4 hours that afternoon and came up with a game plan from drugs to stem cell to beat this cancer.
December 23rd insurance approves the plan, January 3rd 2020 I started my treatment. By the end of February I was in technical remission but still had to do stem cell. I told the doctor I was invited to a BBQ festival (Red Dirt) and wanted to finish the treatment so I could go and party there. Then Covid hits.
Now I’m thinking I’m going to die of covid because I have a weakened immune system. We had to wait until May when the numbers started dropping and did the stem cell then.
I had to be in the hospital for 10 days that June because my white and red blood count was at zero. On day 6 I get a call from my dad saying my AC at home went out and they had to put my dog down. The same day CJ calls me and said they caught the smoker on fire and burned 10 racks of beef ribs.
All through covid we were 1 day a week pre-orders only. I couldn’t really be up there so I sat across the street on walkie talkies with the team answering questions and doing admin stuff. But I needed to get back in there and start cooking. So in July, with my doctors permissions, I started going to the restaurant when no one was there to do some cooks.
For 5 months I didn’t tell anyone I had cancer until the end of May when I was about to lose my hair from chemo. Employees and family knew, but nobody else did. So I did a video and announced it to everyone. It was the greatest thing because afterward people would come up to me and tell me they were in remission, too. That was the most uplifting thing hearing people who’d been in remission for 5, 6, 10, 20 years. All these people I had no idea had cancer because everyone was afraid to talk about it since you’re scared its going to come back when you say something.
That October we start opening Friday service doing burgers and fajitas. We started getting busy again. January of 2021 we opened 2 days for lunch, hired our 5th employee, started getting busier, and ended up with our best month to date. Then the ice storm came that February, busted our pipes and we had to shut down for 9 weeks. All our momentum stopped.
April 2021 we go back and we had one focus. The list was coming out so we put our powers together like the Power Rangers and got going. We hustled and did everything on point for the next several months. List comes out in October and I never lived in the moment like that. That morning I was drinking champagne out of the Yeezys on my feet, had no clue where my phone was, not a care in the world, and it was a beautiful feeling.
I’d told myself during this whole thing I wanted to start living in the moment and for now. As much as I said I was going to do that when I was done with treatment I never did. But I finally did it and it was the best.
I feel like now its my responsibility to talk about my cancer for the people that came before me. I’d be doing a disservice to them for getting me to where I am now. For 29 days a month I live and don’t think about cancer, but 1 day every month I go and get checked and my heart stops knowing it’ll come back, but hoping its not anytime soon.” - Joe Zavala. Owner of Zavala's Barbecue, Cancer Survivor.
