We're back.
Early.
The short version is that everything's fine, with a dash of not-fine to spice things up.
OK, back up.
Far too much happened for my long-winded ass to re-tell it all without everyone reading to have stabbed themselves in the eyes before I get to day three, so here follows forthwith a seriously encapsulated version, with a focus on leukemia-related happenings:
We flew into LA, got a cab to our friend John's place. He's doing a play so was not there, but arrived eventually. I'd tell you where we found the key, but then someone might steal his Cleveland Browns memorabilia--not sure why, but they might.
The next day we exercised. N and John went for a hike in the hills above his neighborhood, and I was dropped off on a corner to run down to and through Griffith Park.
John's a lovely man, but he currently holds the world record in not-getting-out-of-the-house. It once took him three days to get out to his car for a trip to the Dry Cleaners. OK, that's an exaggeration. It took him six hours.
Somewhere in the back of my head I knew they would probably not pick me up at approximately 7 miles, as we had discussed. But I'm a macho dipshit and so just figured I would keep on running.
Gorgeous LA day. Hottest day in a while. 88 or so. Dry. Brilliant sun.
The Griffith Park Equestrian Trail is a good metaphor for LA in a lot of ways. Shaded, soft earth, beautiful winding trail along the bottom perimeter of the Park...
...and seven feet from one of the most clogged and exhaust-hurling highways in the United States of America.
So I ran that, and then got onto the regular road on the Valley-side of the Park. Which runs by two graveyards.
Except it's LA, so they aren't graveyards. Each is a "Memorial Park and Mortuary." I bet the tenants aren't dead. They're just on hiatus.
I ran past them. Then ran to Barham Blvd. Took a left, ran up a stupid steep hill. Ran across the 101 (on an overpass: I'm not that foolish) and up a little and then down through the Cahuenga pass. Then over the 101 again (again: overpass) and down to Franklin, where I took a left and ran past Gower and had made it just past the Scientology Celebrity Center (so many cult and idiot and only-in-LA jokes here I'm just gonna leave it) when N and John caught me.
11.34 miles.
Felt great, and to their credit N and John had texted me repeatedly with sage quips like "Stop running!" and "Wait there. On our way." It was all me: I could have stopped in the shade, dug the just-in-case bills out of the zip pocket in my shorts, bought a water, and waited. But I didn't.
Shocker.
The next day N gave a reading at a bookstore in Echo Park, which rivals New York's Williamsburg for being filled with morons parading around, throwing their hipness and chicness out like solar flares from a dying sun. Mopeds, pork-pie hats, chain-wallets on men who couldn't beat up a sparrow with emphysema. It was all there.
But a great crew of out-of-neighborhooders filled the back patio of the store for her reading: family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. A great afternoon.
The next morning I went to get bled at Quest Diagnostics, the 7-11 of blood labs: national, abundant, and a little skeezy.
The right arm poke was a failure, but not for lack of trying. The no-sissies-here full size needle was dug and twisted under my skin, searching for the vein. Then the other arm was optioned, and--likely scared by the excavation of it's partner--up filled the vial.
The Drs had put STAT on the form so that it could be returned and faxed quickly to NY, where it was three hours later.
Or not. It took until the next morning to get results. But I was in good shape, numbers up and going according to plan.
The next day I had a bit of a scratchy throat, and we drove to Santa Cruz in a rented Ford Focus. The car had a renter's governor and therefore only went 80. And whenever you got above 75 it went "Ping!" And when you hit 80 it went "Ping!" And when you slowed down and got near 75 again it went "Ping!"
Luckily, with the iPod high enough, you only heard some of them.
In Santa Cruz we enjoyed a very diverse, pleasantly odd, and lovely Seder with step-family and their friends. And N spoke to a class at the University the next day, after we visited with our step-grandmother-in-law, who we hadn't seen in a while.
Then up the state a bit more to Mill Valley, where N charged into the embrace of her recently-moved friend--a friend who has been wonderful even from afar at helping N through the weight-lifting and war-mentality my illness has thrust upon her.
And I got sick. Totally my fault; some bug I probably would not have even noticed crawled into the gaping hole created by 11.34 miles in a climate twice as hot and dry as the one I've been living in, followed by three or four hundred miles of driving and crossing into a cooler and wetter climate again, and I got me a nice sinus infection.
A call back East got me a Z-Pack, which is a powered-up five-day antibiotic. By the time we picked it up from a Mill Valley CVS I was shivering and weak. Freezing my ass of in the sunny 60-degree day.
N got to enjoy her friend, as did I. We went to college with her and her husband, and getting to know their kids and see their west-coast life was fantastic. But I spent a good bit of the days there in bed, recovering and letting the Z-Pack beat the sick out of me before it took hold.
And we changed our plans. Within a couple days it was clear I'd be OK--that it was an infection but that it treated me like a normal carcass and didn't bring on anything worse. But still, better safe than sorry.
The return flight we got was for a few days earlier than our original flight, and just after we would complete most of the things we wanted to: see friends, family, book stuff, and fun. So we cut the end of the trip short. I would do the audio-book from New York, and we'd be back close to the hospital sooner.
A compromise? No, a defeat. But that's OK. It was a battle we lost, and not the war. Being sick has improved my capacity for the long view.
When you're not sure how long, it changes the value, you know.?
I missed a union meeting and catching up with a friend and colleague in San Francisco. I missed seeing one of my step-brother's shows. N missed catching up with a few old friends. And that sucks.
Things suck sometimes. You deal with it. You take your Z-Pack, and you keep going.
We drove south to LA a couple days later. But only long enough to return the Ping! and borrow John's Prius and drive back north a bit to Santa Barbara to spend Easter with my step-mother and step-brother and his family. A great, easy visit with family, some extraordinarily therapeutic scratching behind the ears of their poodle, and a filling up of certain tanks that had been emptied by the isolation of the past year. We have had family and friends nearby, and they were and are all wonderful, but the sense that you are tied by fear and necessity to a place can drain you. Drains you. Feeling a little more free is a refill.
The following morning I got my next blood draw at a Quest in Santa Barbara. They stabbed at both arms again, and failed on the right again, and the lab tech told me to just give up on it. Too much scar tissue, too many stabs, too many needles. Just offer up the left now, don't waste your time. Don't suffer for no reason.
The right will heal up, hopefully, become pliable again, someday. But not for now. I am thankful that it held up this long, gave of itself to help me get better. This is my blood. Take it.
Then we went to visit my father's grave, overlooking the sea just south of Santa Barbara. Half of his ashes are next to my brother in Baltimore, and half are here, where his wife will rest with him in the hopefully many years from now when she rings the bell and steps out. We walked from his grave and watched dolphins rising and falling as they swam up the coast. The sea will eat the bluffs on which he rests one day. But not yet.
N had caught my sinus infection, so it was her turn to stay in bed. I managed to swap my ticket forward and see John's play, and when N felt a bit better we caught up with another set of cousins and kids back in LA. Full days, roaring through leisure, trying to get as much in as possible.
Which brings us to the above photo. I'm in the foreground--riding unsafely by taking a picture at speed (but just for a second). And in the background...that's N.
Years ago John and I went to the desert to take a day of off-road training, and it was brutal and phenomenal. And ever since we put this trip on the books, I've been looking at a day in the desert as a symbol, a middle finger shoved ardently in the face of leukemia. Dust, bouncing, sand, heat, sun, and the happy possibility of shattering your collarbone: none of that reeks of leukemia to me. How 'bout you?
Our last day in LA was the day we had scheduled in the desert. We managed to squeeze it in. We rode all day, and this time N and John's girlfriend were out there with us, scratching their tread marks in the dry lake bed along with us.
OK, neither one became an immediate hard-core moto-head. But they had a good day. We all had a good day.
Which was important, because we barely had time for a quick pizza and then hauled our bags and our tired asses--N still battling the sinus infection that had latched onto her about a day after it did me--and flew back to New York on the red-eye. Nothing like riding through desert scrub and on the cracked and baked floor of a prehistoric lake, and then sleeping in a seated position for three to four hours as the air pressure plays havoc with your sinuses.
That doesn't sound much like leukemia, either, huh?
I went to a Quaker school, and I was raised as secular as a minister's son can raise a boy. The times I've sat on the wooden benches of a house of worship, it has been in a Quaker meeting. Where truth rests in silence, and where there's no pulpit, no didact, no hierarchy.
God is a ghost story, but a quiet room and a moment to reflect; those are precious, no matter what you believe.
Life is like a pew. Even with a bit of a cushion, it's hard. Rigid. Unforgiving. Designed to make you pay attention, to punish you for losing focus.
But that's the seat we're offered. So sit the hell down. Find your center. Think your thoughts. Then rise, and keep going.
