Sweetwater Authority Board member Steve Castaneda said he is not resigning from his position as Division 1 Director or his campaign for Chula Vista City Council despite recently being diagnosed with cancer.
“There is no indication in my recovery or my doctors saying that anything is going to disrupt my life,” he said. “I am not resigning (from Sweetwater Authority), absolutely not.”
Castaneda, 58, who is in the last year of his first-term with the water agency has foregone re-election to the water agency in favor of a run for Chula Vista City Council District 2.
On Oct. 30 Castaneda disclosed his health condition in a campaign email.
“I have cancer— but it won’t define me,” the subject line of his email read.
He opened his email to his subscribers with his announcement: “Four of 10 Americans will get cancer in their lifetime, according to the National Cancer Institute. Today I’m one of those statistics. I was recently diagnosed with Lymphoma, which is a cancer of the immune system. My symptoms came on suddenly, and were so severe that I had to be hospitalized.”
Castaneda said hearing the diagnosis was difficult but he said he remains positive knowing non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is one of the few cancers that can be treated and is curable.
“From the very beginning, my doctor was very clear about the fact that lymphoma is extremely treatable and curable,” he said. “They caught it in time.”
Castaneda said he chose to go public with the disease because people will start seeing a physical change in him owing to the chemotherapy and other treatments.
He said he has lost about 30-pounds since his first chemotherapy session and he said he is expected to start losing his hair soon.
His bout with Lymphoma started over a weekend in September.
He said he started feeling “a little rundown” and had initially chalked it up to his busy lifestyle which includes being a family man, running his own consulting business, governing on the Sweetwater Authority board and campaigning for city council.
Then suddenly, he said, he felt excruciating pain in his chest and stomach.
Castaneda said he figured he just had the flu. But after four days of rest, he was not getting any better and his lymph nodes began swelling.
“It was not only physically but it was visibly clear that there were some issues that maybe extended beyond just the run of the mill sickness,” Castaneda said.
At that point, his wife got concerned and demanded he go see a doctor.
Castaneda tested negative for the flu. Then after getting his chest X-rayed Castaneda said the results showed he had a small case of pneumonia “and then she (the doctor) detected spots on my lungs in the X-rays,” Castaneda said.
A few days later the doctor called Castaneda and told him of his diagnosis.
He completed his first round of chemotherapy this month and he said he responded well to treatments and medications.
“I’m feeling great,” he said.
Since his diagnosis, Castaneda said he is taking it easy.
Work has been on autopilot and he said he has only missed one Sweetwater Authority board meeting because of his medical issues. He said his campaign has paused momentarily but plans to hit the ground running very soon.
Castaneda dismisses any notion that publicly disclosing his condition was an attempt to gain publicity for his campaign.
“People are going to believe what they want, if people want to be cynical that’s up to them,” he said. “Cancer is a disease that I would not wish on anybody and I find it hard to believe that anybody would think that I would use a disease that could threaten my life and my family to gather some sort of sympathy from voters or (contributor) is outrageous.”
