Do It Anyway

May 2011. Ten months pre-diagnosis (and eight months pregnant).

“Mommy, do brave people ever get scared?”

“Yes, they get very scared.”

“Then why do we call them brave?”

“Because, honey, brave people get very scared, and then they do it anyway.”

Last October, I was celebrating one hundred days post-transplant. My hair had only just started to grow back. Peach fuzz. I was still wearing a wig and I had no eyebrows. I was a skeletal waif, shuffling along the river paths, and I could barely do one push-up. I could “run” for about fifteen minutes, tops.

Fast-forward a year. My two-year-old daughter talks like a three-year-old diva, my son is in kindergarten, I have re-defined my professional goals, I have gained nearly 10 pounds of muscle, and I am now training for a triathlon.

Am I scared? Yes. Will I still do it? Yes.

Because really, what is so scary? Well, I’m a bit scared of swimming in the open water with limbs flailing everywhere. I’m scared of being kicked in the face, losing my goggles, or of someone swimming over top of me. I’m also scared of learning to ride a tri or road bike, which are both very different from a mountain bike. Wait, back up. I’m scared of not even having a bike to race on. I’m scared of getting a flat tire and not remembering how to change it. I’m scared of crashing. I’m also a little scared of the run, even though it is my strongest sport of the three – I’m scared that my injury will not be resolved and that I won’t be able to finish the race.

I’m also scared that I won’t be able to raise the funds I’ve committed to raising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Sure it's scary. But is it cancer? No. So I'm doing it anyway.

June 2011. Nine months pre-diagnosis.
(Did I already have leukemia? No one knows.)

Because someone has to.

Let me clarify. When I was in the hospital, being told I had a low chance of survival, being told that the treatment would permanently damage my lungs and possibly my heart, being told that I would never be fast again, I spent hours on the Internet, searching for someone who had defied the odds. I wanted a story of an athlete who had received a bone marrow transplant, but was still able to return to the life he or she had before. I found a lot of BMT survivor stories about chronic illnesses, repeated hospital admissions, kidney, liver and lung damage, permanent disabilities…the lists went on. These people were alive, which was a relief, but competing in athletics? Definitely not.

I was terrified. I needed to be active. I could not comprehend the idea of being sick and disabled for the rest of my life, or even for the next few years. I needed to find a story of someone who had a BMT and returned to competition, someone who got back to the level of training they had before, or perhaps even better. Someone who overcame the fairly discouraging odds. But I couldn’t find it. (Ok, I know you’re going to say Lance Armstrong, but I’m talking about a regular person, not a famous/infamous professional athlete. I read his book in the hospital and was inspired that someone could go through all that and rebuild himself and compete again. His story is amazing and gave me hope. Without venturing into the drug allegations melee, Lance has undoubtedly inspired many people struggling with cancer – myself included – but it is a bit hard to relate to someone at world champion level. I will never be a professional athlete. I just wanted an everyman/woman story. Plus, he didn’t have a bone marrow transplant. Just saying.)

So now I am that story that I couldn’t find. Or at least I want to be.

April 2012. One month post-diagnosis.
Think a triathlon is hard? No. THIS is hard.

I want to show those considering or undergoing a bone marrow transplant, and their families, that there can be a rich, athletic, fulfilling life after such an extreme, harrowing treatment. I want to raise a ridiculous amount of money for blood cancer research and support. And I want to show my kids what it means to never, ever give up.

I invite you all on this visualization exercise with me. Imagine you are a fit, athletic person in your early thirties. You have never smoked, you eat ridiculously healthy food, you are careful about avoiding toxins in your products. Women, imagine that you have a seven-month-old infant and have just worked to get yourself back into shape after pregnancy. That infant is not sleeping. Ever. You are sleep deprived but running every day anyway, because it’s important to you.

Now imagine that you don’t feel quite right on one of your runs. Something is off. You go snowboarding and feel a little dizzy. You get progressively sicker over the next few weeks. You try to run but can’t. You go on antibiotics over and over again. Nothing works. You get blood tests, you get a bone marrow biopsy, you get a broncoscopy, you get sicker. Finally you are admitted to the hospital and they tell you: you have leukemia. Your life explodes. You have to wean your breastfed daughter immediately. Your children cannot visit your ward. You call your mom.

Then they tell you: you have a very aggressive leukemia. Your chances of survival are not good (understatement). Without treatment, they give you weeks to live. Weeks. You need a bone marrow transplant right now. Your brother is not a match.

You have to explain to your three-year-old son what "cancer" means, and that mommy has it.

October 2012. Three months post-transplant.
Hiking with the wig (and a sleeping baby)

You are confined to your room, not even allowed to walk the halls. Your only athletic reprieve is a reclined stationary bike. You put on your iPod every morning and climb on, IV pouring chemo into your veins as you look out the window at smokers gathering below. Despite yourself, you hate them for being able to go outside and for wasting that freedom with something as toxic as smoking. You redirect your anger to the bike.

Now imagine that you survive months of daily vomiting and severe pain and mouth ulcers. Crushing fatigue, anxiety and depression are never far off. At some low points, you feel so awful that you just want to give up and die. But you don’t. You rally. You force yourself to eat. You lose twenty pounds and almost all of your hard-earned muscle. You are so tired you can barely walk one hundred metres. But you do it anyway, because you read somewhere that the more you move, the faster your lungs will recover.

A few months later, weak, skinny, but alive, you start running again. You will not lose this fight. One minute on, one minute off – it’s a shuffle, without doubt. You do it anyway. You go back into the gym to regain that lost muscle. You can’t even do one full push-up. But you do push-ups anyway. Girly-style.

You look at your skinny self in the mirror and envision a stronger you.

A few months after that, you can run a few kilometres. Barely. You get pneumonia. You recover. A few months after that, you push yourself to run a full ten kilometres, in the dead of winter. You get a vicious gastro illness and lose seven pounds. You recover. Then, ten months after the doctors killed you with chemo and brought you back to life, you are at the start line of a fourteen kilometre trail race. And you actually beat some people. You sob.

You are not quite back to where you were, but you’re close.

June 2013. Victory Lap.
12 months post-transplant, racing Emilie's Run 5k (time: 21:32).

Then you set a goal to run a half-marathon. You register and you train hard all summer, but injuries keep happening, one after another. Hamstring, calf, hip flexor. Your mind is ready for the heavy training, but your body is not. Finally you can’t run at all. You have to pull out of the race. You give yourself one day to cry. But there’s no giving up now. So you start swimming, after many years out of the pool. You ride your husband’s mountain bike. You crash. You bleed and feel grateful that you don’t have to worry about platelets and infections like you used to. You get back up.

Now imagine setting a new, slightly crazy goal. A goal to show people that you are not done yet. A goal to show cancer survivors, and especially BMT survivors, what’s possible. A goal that will help others through the same nightmare you just lived. You decide to try something you’ve never done. Something that scares you. You decide to race harder and farther than you’ve ever raced. To go somewhere you have only ever dreamed of racing. Somewhere you never thought possible.

Now stop imagining. This is a true story. This is my story.

I need your help to finish it.

***

The crazy details: 

I have signed up to race the Lavaman Olympic-distance triathlon in Kona, Hawaii with Team in Training to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. On March 30, 2014, I will race 51.5 kilometres (1.5km swim, 40km bike, and 10km run), farther than I have ever raced before (pre- or post-cancer).

If you want to help me achieve this dream and help find better cures and treatments for blood cancers, please consider donating to the cause here.

If you’re not sure how much to donate, consider $1 for each of the 51.5km that I will race. Or just sponsor the bike leg (40km) or run leg (10km). If you can’t afford that, you probably know someone who can. Please pass it on. Spread the message far and wide to everyone you know. Anything helps.

If you cannot donate funds but still want to help, I am looking for a few volunteers who could donate 1-2 hours a week to help me with fundraising – you can live anywhere to do this. As my budget is very tight, I am also seeking donations of new or used training gear (specifically: a bike [lend or donate], race goggles, and tri shorts/top). Air miles donations are also welcome!

Contact: rachel@rachelschmidt.ca.

Start Now

I’ve decided that every cancer survivor should get a trip. It should be a package deal: “We’re sorry to tell you that you have cancer, but there’s more! After you go through hell to get rid of it, we’re giving you an all-expenses paid trip to wherever you want!” It would not make the year or more of hell any better, but it sure would be a nice reward after all that suffering. When I was first diagnosed and dying in the hospital, I remember telling my mom that all I wanted after this nightmare was to go lie on a beach in Hawaii. I would daydream of myself on a beach, cancer-free, cocktail in hand. (Billionaires, take note: cancer survivors deserve free trips.)

I was lucky. I survived and I did get my trip (albeit not for free, and not Hawaii). My husband and I recently returned from ten glorious days in France. It was our tenth anniversary (yes, we married young) and if it weren’t for cancer, we likely would not have done something so extravagant. But since 2012 was without doubt the worst year ever, we were determined to make the bliss of 2013 outweigh it, even if that meant stretching the budget just a tad. It is hard to fully explain the strain that cancer can put on a marriage. While in the end the experience made us stronger and closer, it is an understatement to say that it did not afford us much enjoyable time together.

But we made up for that in France. We spent half the time meandering around Paris, taking copious amounts of pictures and ducking into endless cafes to escape the rain. The other half of our trip was on the French Riviera, soaking up the sun and enjoying the luxury of beach time that didn’t involve sandcastles or water fights. We ate on terraces, practiced our feeble French, and gawked at the yachts in Monaco. I swam in the sea. My husband longingly watched countless cyclists whip by on the coast, and both of us began to ache for some real exercise. Despite that, I literally ate my way through France. Pain au chocolat, cheap wine, croissants, macarons, fresh mussels, baguettes, espresso, goat cheese, crepes with Nutella…there was little I didn’t devour. And to my shock, despite the fact that I could not run, I did not gain a single pound. French women really don't get fat! Apparently paying large amounts of money for small amounts of food and walking for hours each day will do that. (Oh, and the smoking. But not in my case, obviously.)

Being able to celebrate life in this way was by far the best post-cancer gift I could have ever had. My husband and I had not had a real child-free vacation since before we had kids (our oldest is five). My parents generously flew out from Vancouver to care for our children while we were away, and having that much time without work or parenting or doctor’s appointments was so completely foreign to both of us that it took a few days to realize we didn’t have anywhere to be. No babysitter to get home to. No six o’clock morning workouts. No work deadlines. No meetings. No errands. No training logs. And best of all (for me), there were no meals to cook and no bathrooms to clean. I highly recommend it.

Now that we are back, regular life is in full swing. Young kids don’t wait for jet lag. But I feel great. I still get tired, of course, but I cannot tell if that’s still post-chemo fatigue or just the general exhaustion of raising young children while juggling writing, yoga training, a new business, and training five or six days a week (I’m guessing the latter). Compared to last year, or even compared to previous years in graduate school, I don’t even recognize my life. And that’s a great thing.

The only trouble is, I currently can’t run. Not only can I not run fast, I cannot even run across the street. I had to drop out of the half marathon taking place next week that I've been training for all summer. Devastating. About a month ago I was hit with an excruciating pain in my hip that still has not resolved (diagnosed as bursitis). After lamenting about how many injuries I’ve had this summer, my coach surmised that perhaps part of the problem was that my post-cancer body was simply not ready for the mileage and hard workouts I was putting on it. When I mentioned this to my physiotherapist, he shook his head.

“That’s not part of the problem. That’s all of the problem.”

Oh. OK then. But how do you know when your body is ready? His answer: you don't. Frustrated and generally bummed out, I took some rest time, then returned to the basics and hit the gym. Desperate for cardiovascular activity after a few weeks off, I also hit the pool for the first time in years (though admittedly, there is something a bit torturous about jumping into a cold pool at six in the morning). Then I borrowed my husband’s mountain bike and went for a spin. After a couple weeks of this and still no injury resolution, I realized I was turning into a triathlete out of necessity. Interesting.

I’ve always wanted to do a triathlon. I swam competitively in high school and I’ve run competitively for a while, so it sort of made sense (yes, I was fully ignoring the cycling aspect of the sport). And then, of course, there was my Ironman obsession that arose while I was sick. (This came after the Biggest Loser obsession – I told you I watched a lot of TV last year). I read Chrissie Wellington’s book and then started watching Ironman footage, repeatedly, on Youtube. Eventually, I was sold. It's no secret that I like crazy things - especially crazy things that involve amazing feats of human endurance. I wanted to do one. Never mind that at the time I was a waif running eight-minute kilometres, and I hadn’t hit the pool in three years, and I didn't own a bike or a helmet. I could dream.

I've also been an honoured teammate for Team in Training for the last eight months (TnT is the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society). I am supposed to be inspiring the people training for various events who are raising money for blood cancer research, but honestly I think they inspire me even more. I have had so much love and support from these people, and I've decided it is my turn to start giving back. But my bursitis dictates that I can't really train for a marathon right now. My ambition and restlessness, however, dictate that I need to be training for something.

Then I saw that Team in Training is doing a fundraising event in Kona, Hawaii in March. An Olympic-distance triathlon, in the same location as the Ironman World Championships. Interesting again.

I've learned many things from cancer. One of them is to not put off things you've always wanted to do. Don't say "maybe next year," because you might not get a next year. Don't say "we'll do it next time we come here," because you may never be back. Don't wait for ideal conditions. If it's feasible, plan it. Then actually do it. Start now. That's why we went to Paris and didn't wait until we had more money. And that's why I want to do this triathlon and not wait until the timing is better or the situation perfect. This might be my only shot. You just never know.

Of course, there is this teeny, tiny obstacle called a bike. I don’t own one. I used to have a mountain bike that I loved, but it was stolen while we lived in Vancouver. I haven’t owned a bike since and cannot afford to buy one - just a slightly small obstacle in a sport that has a significant cycling component.

But I like to think that I'm not easily defeated. I survived one of the most aggressive forms of leukemia there is. If I can do that, then there is really no good reason why I can’t solve this bike issue, and this injury issue, and do an Olympic distance triathlon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society five months from now. And if I can do that, then there’s no reason why I cannot do a half-Ironman eleven months from now. And if I can do that… Well, maybe we should leave it there for now. (Let's just say a lot of bargains and bribery would have to take place in my household before I could even think of training for a full Ironman. I guarantee you  my husband is shaking his head as he reads this.)

So my obstacles now are finding a road bike, learning how to change a tire, and fundraising the required amount for Team in Training. But honestly, after what I’ve been through, that’s really not much… is it?

I guess I’ll find out. And you'll find out, because I will write about the whole crazy journey.

But you all already know how much I love the crazy.

-----

P.S. If you are interested in sponsoring me in this event by donating to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, check back on this blog soon for a link to my fundraising page. Thanks!

Making It Count

I admit it. I have an obsession. I want to count. I want to matter. I have had this ever since I was a young child. Maybe everyone feels this way – I’m not sure. But ever since I was young, I was terrified of being ordinary. I always wanted to be special, stellar, an ace, the best. I lived off accolades from other people (one of the many reasons why I loved acting - where else do people applause every time you are done working?). As I grew up, this shifted from a rather self-centred drive to be the best (at anything) into a longing to make an impact. To leave a positive mark on the world before I die. To change something for the better. 

Actually facing my own death made this a bit interesting. After diagnosis, I reflected on my life and wondered what, exactly, I had done that would leave any mark whatsoever. I hadn’t worked in refugee camps. I hadn’t published anything of note. I hadn’t started my own charity for impoverished children. And then I looked at my kids.

Right. Those little humans.

You see, I have started to notice an interesting thing about this generation of young mothers. While there is, of course, nothing new about the unending conflict between staying home and going to work (and the so-called “mommy wars”), what I have been noticing is a large internal conflict in many of my friends between wanting to “be something” and wanting to be a mother. As if those two are mutually exclusive.

Because, for some reason, many of us don’t count raising a human being as something significant.

Of course, logically, we know it is significant. Endless pages of words have been written about this issue. And yet, when that is our sole focus, when we put our career aside in order to care for young children, many of us feel like it is not enough. It is not prestigious. We are reminded as we wipe peanut butter off our jeans and clean up the kitchen for the fifth time in one day, that we are “just” mothers. (As if there is anything “just” about 24/7 parenting.)

I want to share with you a quote from one of my dear friends, a friend I’ve known since childhood who is a lawyer and a very accomplished career woman, but like many of us, has made professional sacrifices in order to be present for her daughter. This is what she wrote to me, when I told her that not working outside the home made me feel like a professional loser: “When done well, raising humans is noble.  But only hippies talk about it. Professional people apologize for and/or cover up anything related to their children, because after all most of the human race has managed it.”

Perhaps this doesn’t resonate with you, but it really hit home for me. I am not judging anyone’s work or stay-at-home choices. But when I was in therapy post-treatment (and believe me, therapy after cancer is a must), I was lamenting the stall in my career and how I might die without doing anything “important.” I wanted to get back in the game, to have a career, to “lean in.”

My therapist gently pointed out that I was raising two kids. Wasn’t that important?

 
Of course it is. It is, as my friend put it, noble when done right. It is the most important (and exhausting) job in the world. How could I think anything otherwise? But at times, we need reminding. These little tyrants who mess up our houses and assault our eardrums and wake us up all night are also the future custodians of our planet, future doctors, actors, writers, world leaders, and future parents of future little tyrants. 

That is no small thing.

On Saturday, I had to bring my daughter to the children's hospital because she fractured her elbow, horsing around with her brother. I was so grateful that I was alive and healthy and able to comfort her through that ordeal. The first broken bone is not a milestone to be missed. And her mommy was there.

On Tuesday, I got to bring my son to his first day of school. Five years old. Kindergarten. It was hard to believe. Once I got home, I became quite emotional as I realized that I could have missed that day. I almost missed that day. Had it not been for my donor and my doctors, I would not have been there to hug him and send him off. I would not have been there, waiting on the step, as he bounced off the bus with a huge grin on his face.

Of course, I still want to be extraordinary. That will never go away. But I am learning that there are many different ways to do that. I heard a great quote the other day that said: "Don't be realistic. Realistic is where ordinary people live ordinary lives. Be unrealistic. That is when you will do and be amazing things."

Indeed. So now I am striving to be as unrealistic as possible. I want to live until I'm 90, disease-free. I want to publish many, many bestsellers (that are all turned into movies, of course). I want to make a difference in the lives of impoverished children and at-risk teens. I want to move our family to Vancouver. I want a house overlooking the ocean. (Hey, if I'm going to be unrealistic, I'm going all the way.)

So as I lean into the value of motherhood, I also recognize that I still want a career. Not the same one I had before cancer. I’m letting that go. I’m simply not interested in an academic life that demands fifty hours (or more) a week. My life is too short, and too precious, to work that hard, to invite that stress into my life. But I do want something. And so now I explore. I find a way to fit my work into my life, and not the other way around.

Because I’m still here. Right now. For however long that may be. And if I die young, I want my kids to remember that I was always there for them, no matter what.

In the end, that's what counts.

Abundant Joy

A few days ago, a dear friend sent an email to me telling me not to fear joy. She couldn’t have possibly known, and yet somehow she did, that for days I had been planning a blog post about how scared I am to be happy.

It sounds strange, I know. I’ve been working on a happiness project, I’ve been trying to make 2013 the best year ever, I am doing my yoga teacher training in pursuit of joy and peace, I took another year leave from the PhD to figure out what I really want, I launched my own home business to give myself more happy time with my children – everything that I have been doing in the last six months has been in pursuit of happiness. And yet I’m terrified of it.

In a way, I feel this fear is justified. Soon after I had my daughter, my husband and I were sitting together one blissful morning as my infant slept on my chest and my son played on the floor, and I said to him: “Isn’t it crazy? We have everything that most people want. A boy and a girl, a house, a car, very little debt, jobs we like – it’s amazing.” I felt like it was almost unfair, how we had so much.

Eight months later, I was diagnosed with leukemia.

Do I feel like I jinxed myself? Just a little bit. I will never forget making that comment. I play it over and over again in my head like a bad dream. I had everything I ever wanted, and then my life exploded overnight. So I am very afraid to be in that place again. I am afraid to allow happiness in, because I feel that it will just be ripped away. I am afraid to shoot for the stars because I might not be around long enough to get there.

Do I want to be happy? Absolutely. And in fact I am quite happy at the moment. That’s what scares me. I am happy and making plans and loving life, and everything could come crumbling down at any second. Every time I have pain in my back (like right now), every time I have a sore throat, every time something feels not quite right, I feel a lump of panic congealing in my throat. In fact, after I post this, I am on my way to the hospital to get bloodwork done because of increasing low back pain I’ve been having. It could be nothing. Or it could really be something.

And so I worry.

Other survivors tell me that this fades with time. I can only hope. I feel like every time I turn around, someone else I know, or someone else’s child or mother or brother, is being diagnosed with cancer. And every time I hear that news it’s a punch in the gut. When will we stop poisoning ourselves? When will we fix everything that is broken?

In that same email, my very wise friend sent me this verse: "Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good" Psalm 90:15 (NLT). I hope she is right. I hope that someday I do get my pony, and that the immeasurable joy that is coming my way will far outweigh the heavy sorrows of last year.

Another very dear and wise friend said to me that I might need to reframe my idea of success. We are conditioned to believe that we go to school, get an education in a field we like, and then (ideally) get a job in that field and we’re set. But that’s only one path to success. Just because my career plan exploded doesn’t mean that another one, a better one, won’t rise up to take its place. And I need to embrace that. I need to believe that I will have insane amounts of joy and success, whatever “success” may mean to me on any given day (and believe me, it changes). I need to believe that the ever-increasing light will far overpower the darkness that was 2012.

Because when you just keep waiting for the fall, you miss all the good things that are happening in your life right now. And I do have so many wonderful, amazing things going on.

I took my kids to the waterslides on Monday, and as we ran around I thought about my trip to the waterslides at this time last year. At that time, I was not allowed to swim because of the catheter in my chest, and because I was so weak all I could do was sit in a chair and watch. This year, not only could I go into the water, but I had the energy to do the entire outing by myself.

And that, my friends, is today’s version of success.

One

I am one year old. Well, my immune system is, anyway. It is weird to even write that, because I remember the day too vividly for it to be one year ago. I remember sitting in the hospital, sick and exhausted from vomiting non-stop for 48 hours straight (thanks to chemo, radiation and multiple drug cocktails), watching as they hooked up a huge bag of bone marrow to my central line. A bag of marrow from some mysterious heart-of-gold stranger. My husband and I watched in silence as the blood slowly, slowly made it’s way down the line into my body. I prayed that this blood would get along with my body, that my donor and I would live in harmony, that I wouldn't be permanently disabled from side effects. My musings were disjointed and unequal in gravity. I wondered if I would get new allergies. I wondered if it would be my last week on earth. I wondered if my celiac would go away and I could eat bread again. I wondered what exactly would happen to me if the new immune system didn't graft. Would I die right away? Would it take a few days, a few weeks? I realized that I had not said a proper goodbye to my children. Of course I hadn't.. Because I expected to live. All of these things went through my mind as the IV drip, drip, dripped into my veins.

One year later, I am healthier than I ever expected to be. While I still have challenges and take medications, I am able to be a full-time mother to my children. I do the things that I love. I was enormously blessed not to have suffered from any significant graft-versus-host disease. I know that many others are not so fortunate. I attribute it to prayer, a combination of conventional and naturopathic medicine, a perfectly matching donor, and my pre-cancer good health. But really, you just never know what outcome you’re going to get. So far, mine is good.

As I sit here writing this, I am eating banana bread, and not the gluten free kind. Indeed, my doctors were right. The transplant wiped out my celiac disease. (Celiac is an autoimmune disease, so when you replace the immune system, you wipe it out. Doctors are actually doing clinical trials using BMTs for all sorts of autoimmune diseases, but because the risk of mortality is so high, obviously the condition has to be pretty severe to warrant it.) But all that aside, I can eat bread. All it took was being decimated by the most toxic chemo-radiation one-two punch the human body can stand. Real bread. Heavenly. (And yes, I know it is somewhat ironic that just as everyone is going gluten-free I am going pro-gluten, but whatever. It doesn’t make me sick and it is delicious.) It is certainly not something I would recommend as a celiac cure, but at least I won something out of this whole nightmarish experience. Sandwiches.

So two days ago, we partied. I invited all the people who had supported and cheered for me over the last year (well, not all – there were people all over the world and they couldn't all be there!) and we gathered in a beautiful park and ate and laughed and chased small children around. It was a good day to be alive. It’s hard to imagine that I almost didn't live to see it.

I still don’t know what’s coming next. I am still terrified of a relapse. I regularly look at pictures of myself and inadvertently think, “Oh, that’s a good picture for my kids to remember me by.” I keep journals for both of my children of things that I want to tell them when they’re older, or things that they've done that only I will remember, just in case I don’t get that chance. I make every big decision with this thought: “If I’m in the hospital a year from now, will I regret this choice?”

While physically I feel fairly fit and energetic (until 7pm, that is, when I crash hard), mentally I struggle with concentration and focus. I feel permanently scatter-brained. (My husband tells me I was always a scatter-brain, I am only just noticing it now because I was too busy before. He may have a point.) I am hoping that will fade with time, otherwise an academic life is never going to be in my future. But maybe that's OK.

And even though I wish this whole screwed up year had never happened, this experience has opened me up to the tragic and courageous world of people scarred by cancer. I don’t say “touched” by cancer because cancer doesn't do that. Touch implies some element of gentleness. A disease that takes down three week old babies does not touch. It maims, it attacks, it scars. Cancer is not a gift. It is a serial killer.

Throughout this experience, I have had the honour of meeting amazing people who fight back. I have met courageous little boys and tenacious mothers, brave fathers and gritty siblings. They rally and cry and hug and endure. They laugh at things that really aren't funny. But sometimes there is nothing else to be done. They know how precious life is, and they fight for it. And I will stand alongside them.

Because this fight isn't ending any time soon.

Back of the Pack

With teammate Lisa Steele, at my first 5k post-cancer race

As many of you know, I recently re-entered the competitive (amateur) running scene, and with that came a return to my faithful coach, Ken Parker, and my beloved women’s running team, the Ottawa Athletic Club Racing Team (OACRT). Over the last year of recovery, I imagined returning to this team, which has boasted many of the fastest women in Ottawa. When I first started running with them, in 2009, I was almost always at the very back of the pack. I was often the last one to finish a race or workout, and I trained hard to edge my way up until by 2010, I was running mid-pack and broke 20 minutes in the 5k. 

But now, with all the setbacks that cancer brings, I find myself at the back of the pack once again. I’m not going to lie, this brings with it all sorts of difficult and conflicting emotions. On the first workout back, I was not even sure I would be able to keep up on the warm-up (I could). I told my coach that I would likely be a full minute behind everyone else on the mile repeats (I wasn’t). But I was still at the back of the pack. I was with the pack, mind you, but at the back. Again.

With my daughter
(and the cursed hat that cost me a sub-22 race)

When I came home from that workout and sighed to my husband that I was last again, he laughed. “Oh, you’re less than a year from your transplant and you’re at the back of a pack of the fastest women in Ottawa? Poor you.”

If you want sympathy, don’t cry to my husband.

It’s all about perspective. Sure, I was a little bummed to be at the back again, but I was also elated that I could keep up at all. When I ran my first 5k after cancer, in May, I was aiming to be under 25 minutes (seeing as I had not run one single kilometre in under five minutes since returning to running, that seemed like a reasonable if not optimistic goal). I shocked myself (and my family) by running 22:03. In fact, my husband missed my finish because he got to the line at 24:00 and thought something horrible must have happened to me when I didn’t show up by 30:00. Meanwhile, I was wandering around our meeting place wondering where on earth he was.

Yesterday, with a month of chasing the OAC ladies under my belt, I ran the Emilie’s Run 5k in 21:32. I was not remotely fast enough to win anything, obviously, and it was not anywhere near a personal best, but I was fifth in my age group, which to me was a shock (again). I am beginning to wonder if this is all because of my great hemoglobin levels, which, pre-cancer, were never all that good. I guess it's yet another thing I'll have to thank my donor for. (You know, that and my life. That's all.)

Some of you may have seen this article about me, so you know a lot of this story already. I find the entire thing quite hilarious, as I have never been a top athlete and could never have predicted that one day I would be on the front page of the sports section. On race day, random strangers who had seen the paper were wishing me good luck, and today on my trail run another stranger said: “Hey, are you that girl from the paper?”

En route to 21:32, a new PCPB
(post-cancer personal best)

As I count down the days to my one year bone marrow transplant anniversary (or, as I like to call it, my [re]birthday), all of these mini-victories are amazing gifts that I will never take for granted. Every day that I can run is a celebration. Yes, I am at the back of the pack. And yes, I may reach a plateau where side effects and decreased lung capacity dictate that my body simply cannot go any faster. We’ll see. But it really doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to win anything. I’m just enjoying being alive.

Although I'm pretty sure that at the race yesterday, I won the leukemia survivor category. That's a thing, right? 

Planning Schmanning

I am an obsessive planner. I always have been. I love to make plans, even if they never quite pan out as intended. Training plans, meal plans, weight loss/gain plans, career plans, school plans – I am a schemer and a dreamer. Lists, diagrams and charts are addictive little things. And then came cancer.(Ka-boom.) So now, as a previously incessant planner of all things, I am actually finding it difficult to plan a single thing. 

The future is tenuous for everyone. We know that. Anyone could die in a car crash tonight. But cancer survivors (and their families) feel that reality a little more acutely. When your whole life explodes with absolutely zero warning, you wonder if (or when) it will happen again. I wonder if my husband will get sick, or if my kids will, or if someone else I love will have a catastrophic accident. I no longer feel immune to tragedy, as I once did (but don’t we all, to some degree, until it hits us?). I had a lot of plans, mostly related to my PhD. But I also had baby plans, and plans to move to BC. And on diagnosis day, that was all blown to bits. 

Now, with nearly a year of recovery behind me, I feel this silent expectation that I will go “back to work.” One year, after all, is what they say you need to recover. But what does it mean to be “recovered”? Who measures? And with what? I don’t know if I’ll ever finish my doctorate. On the flip side, I’ve been in graduate school for so long that it’s hard to envision an alternative life. For now I’m taking a break. I think about planning the next steps, planning my fieldwork, and I feel exhausted. Then doubts creep in – why bother planning when my plans never work out anyway? Also, maybe it’s pure craziness to return to the same high-pressure, type-A life that I was living before cancer. Maybe this is a do-over. Maybe I should just give up planning altogether. Let the universe decide. Although… the last time I told the universe to “bring it on,” I got leukemia. (I’m not joking – that actually happened.)

But can we live life without planning? People are always asking me what I’m going to do next. (“So, you seem to have conquered this whole cancer thing. What’s next on your agenda?”) I often just shrug, and I can tell people are dissatisfied with that answer. We are, after all, a goal-oriented society. We don’t generally approve of aimless wanderers. But can we find contentment being in the here and now and not worrying about next week, next month or next year? My last big plan was to survive this year of recovery and regain my health and strength. So far so good. Gold star for me. But what next? If I don’t plan, then how will I know what will happen? How will I know what to strive for? And how, pray tell, will I measure progress? 

But the reality is, I can plan all I want, and I still can’t control the outcome.

I’ve found that a common thing for people to say is: “Just trust that it will all work out.” I am guilty of saying this many times myself. But for a cancer survivor, it is very hard to trust. It’s hard to trust anything after getting blindsided by such a trauma. It’s hard not to see terrible things lurking behind every corner. But I survived, you say. I had a donor. Therefore I should trust that all things are possible. Yes. I should. But the survival was not without scars. Not without loss. Not without permanent damage. And I’m still so early in my recovery that it’s hard to trust everything will remain well. I’m trying.

On top of a mountain!

So I plan tentatively, and not very far ahead. But one thing I never do is plan to be sick. I am prepared for the possibility, but I don’t plan for it. Obviously you get your affairs in order (I’m not that irresponsible), but that doesn’t mean you plan to be sick, just like you don’t plan to be hit by a car or blown up by a bomb one day. It could happen. I just assume that it won’t. If it happens, we’ll deal with it just like we dealt with it the first time, maybe even a bit better. (I would definitely shave my head sooner!) But if I only have a small amount of time left, I don’t want to waste it feeling anxious and depressed over an illness that might never happen. We don’t live that way before we get cancer, (or at least I hope we don’t!) so why live that way after? 

So don’t ask me what I’m doing next. I have absolutely no idea. I’d rather just live in ignorant bliss for a while.