Just for the record; this shoe stinks.
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It has been a slow but steady climb from the jangled nerves and weakened GI tract of the last stint, but I think we're getting back in line with the time-space continuum. For starters, since I am feeling better, N has taken on a nice sinus infection and is laid out on antibiotics: the seesaw, like the East River, just kind if flows where it will. We hope she'll get to feeling better before having to board a plane to Kentucky for her professorship. Planes and sinuses kind of hate each other--I have some image in my head of Sam Shephard getting a nosebleed somewhere during "The Right Stuff" that would seem apropos--and I hope she can get a little down time and rest this week where the weather looks to be a bit warmer and the hotel makes the beds.
Which leads to my imminent trip to Baltimore to be babysat by my mother and stepfather, but really, let's be honest...I'm a ringer.
Jim formed a team called "Kiss Myeloma" and things have churned up from there. The team has swelled to 16 members, I think. The team has raised some good money for the cause.
The shirt I am wearing in the above pic is from my Light the Night walk. It says 'Survivor' on the back. I have to admit I had a little trepidation donning (OK, cutting the sleeves off with the Leatherman and then donning) it before the Walk, because I don't think of myself as a Survivor yet. Not of my cancer. See, my slap-happy medical establishment has thrown this 'five years from remission' thing out there where they actually call you 'cured.' Now, being cured probably doesn't have a lick of anything to do with hearing every creak, feeling every twinge, doubting every breath, for however many long nights and stretched years to come. But they call it Cured and so that's the mark I will point at for my 'Survivor.'
Somebody call me on May 18, 2015, and we'll see how's tricks.
But Multiple Myeloma's kind of a different bitch. They don't have that 'cure' flag way down the road. They treat what ails you, and then back off and let you steam a little, and then treat what ails you again.
To likely bore you all to tears with a car-racing metaphor: a leukemia like mine is more of a "shit! we blew a tire and tore up the right side. Let's get some new rubber on there, tape up the gash in the fender, then get her back on track and see what we've got. Maybe we'll be OK, maybe a meteorite will hit us in twenty minutes." And Multiple Myeloma is more like "This car feels a little funny, like we're down on power. But it's a long race, so we'll keep an eye on everything and take swings at it when we have pit stops, and hope for a good strong finish."
So, as far as I am concerned, Jim could slip the 'Survivor' shirt on right now and just wear it through until he dies of something pleasant and singsony like 'a ripe old age.' That would be swell.
Anyway, that's just my view of the T-shirt thing. Back to me being a ringer.
I am planning on running the whole damn 5K of the Myeloma Run, to be held this Sunday the 14th in Virginia. I got back on my feet Monday with a mile and a half, whipped off a chemathlon today--besting my game but ballasted pal in so doing--and will probably do about the same for the second half of the week, before heading to Charm City.
Right now my goal is to break half an hour, which is just shy of 10 minute miles.
That hurt a little to write, but it healed a little, too. A few months ago I would have scoffed at the patheticism of hoping, fucking hoping for ten minute miles over a 3.1 mile course. I would have thought myself cheap, weak, not worth talking up.
But hey, guess what? Chemo has bigger fists than I do. I have a bigger heart, but fists...no contest. I have tasted a lot of my own weakness this past couple weeks, and am clawing back the bits and pieces as they come. And that in and of itself is a good game to be in. Duck, weave, take a breathe, lash out, duck, sidestep, run a mile, get some back for yourself. Swing when you can, swing for the fences, because your next shot may not come around for a while.
So I am going down there to run this friggin' thing. I will have clearance from my Drs--and here I pause to take in the true refreshment of having one of my Drs run Chicago in 3:41 and NY in 3:39 a few weeks later; Ha!--as to my health, and whether or not I can push a little or should just hang light. I will not be stupid.
Finish lines are not goal lines.
But if I can, I will leave a piece of myself out there. Because it is a race. Because I care about the man I am running it for, raising money for. Because there's no reason to try something and not give it a full shot. Because I somehow see it as holding up some end of some bargain--I do not know with who or how or why. But I do. I found this thing--this running thing--and it has made me feel better, and it made me better prepared to take the punishment of my own treatment, and it gave me something immediately to pin my eyes against the far blistering horizon weaving over the terror at the end of my chemo.
So I run with a purpose, if at all possible. So I run to leave a bit out there.
If you would like me to leave a little out there for you, and for a good cause, go here:
http://support.themmrf.org/site/TR/RaceforResearch/General?px=1481829&pg=personal&fr_id=1133
Jim--whose generosity I wish to emulate, but whose quiet I, by my nature, can do nothing but eschew--has quietly indicated that he is matching all donations. So go for it: break his bank; every buck you give is double.
That's all for now. I will leave this as the most recent blog for a couple days so people swinging by to check my less-frequent dribs and drabs will see the link and donate. that's more important than what I have to say.
Any day.
