I Run for life

Last week, I officially hit remission for Primary Mediastinal B-Cell Lymphoma, which happens two years since your diagnosis. My chances of getting lymphoma again drop by 80%.

I debated whether to write about it today.

Honestly, I’m still debating it, even as I type these words. It feels weird to call attention to that part of my journey sometimes.

July 26th, 2023 I walked into the Emergency Department at a small hospital in Brunswick, Maine., a backpack loaded with my laptop and plenty of work to distract me in what was sure to be a hurry up and wait situation.

I thought I was seeking treatment for a collapsed lung, which made sense, given the cough I’d had for two months, my wheezing, and my overall fatigue that was shaking me down a bit harder every day.

I was glad to know what was causing these issues, and eager to get on the other side of them. But I wasn’t prepared for the ED doctor to tell me that there was also a 7.5 inch tumor in my chest. (To go with the collapsed lung...)

She told me, as I sat in a narrow hospital gurney with a sad blue johnny loosely falling off my shoulders, working on my laptop.

“Ok,” I said. And I went back to my work.

She left the room and I looked at my wife, whose face had drained of color.

“Well that’s not what I thought she was going to say.”

That moment was the beginning of the emotional ride that is cancer.

I thought of that Tim McGraw song, where the guy finds out he has cancer and goes sky diving, and Rocky Mountain Climbing, and rides a bull named Fu Man Chu…and thought well that’s a bunch of malarky.

I could barely walk 100 feet without needing to catch my breath, let alone hike a mountain.

I spent the next 54 hours on that hospital gurney, waiting for a bed to open at a larger hospital. I lobbied the doctors to let me go home, but my resting heart rate was 105 and neither the doctor nor my wife would sign off on it.

And so began the first of 18 days in the hospital.

Those first few days I did a lot of sitting and staring.

It took almost a week to get the biopsy. Then finally, my oncologist, a small quirky dude who closed his eyes when he spoke, wrote the entire diagnosis out on the cabinet that doubled as a white board.

I was stoned on pain meds they were giving me for the various tubes draining fluid out of my lungs and from around my heart, and in my drug-addled state, watched him write:

Primary Mediastinal B-Cell Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

He wrote the treatment; called EPOCH.

I would do six rounds every three weeks. Each cycle would be in-patient and I would endure a total of 600 hours of chemo. He wrote all of this too.

Then he wrote another word on the board.

Curable.

I was fit, he said; though I felt as far from fit as I’d ever been. He felt good about my chances of being cured.

There are a lot of ups and downs and upside downs on the roller coaster of cancer. Much to my surprise, there are a lot of ups and downs after cancer too.

It’s weird to be a survivor.

It’s weird to look down and see the battlefield of scars my chest has become.

It’s weird to think that, at this time two years ago my hair was falling out in clumps after just one treatment.

Last week, when I hit that official two-year mark, I celebrated with my longest run in years. Compared to the miles I used to log, it was just a 5K. It took me over 40 minutes – a far cry from the 25 minutes it used to take me.

Part of me finds that discouraging.

But there were also moments of the run where I’d never felt so embodied in my life. I was grateful for the pain in my shins, grateful for the slapping of my feet on the pavement, grateful to push my body in such a satisfying way.

When you are embodied, you are mindful of your own body. I find that exercise is where I am often most embodied, and most present. But I've also had plenty of moments the past few years where I do more lamenting what I can no longer do and less celebrating what I can't.

But for a few minutes last week, my mantra as I ran was simple. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I hope you too can find ways to celebrate your body and all that it has done, and can do for you.