Don't Push It

I begin this blog entry with a sigh. I understand everyone’s concern. Yes, I almost died, therefore I should take it easy. Rest is important. I get it. But to be honest, if I hear “don’t push it” one more time, I might just freak out.

See, when I say that I am running five kilometres only five months post-transplant, most non-runners are amazed and, often, aghast. Five whole kilometres?! How can this be? To many non-runners, this is an unfathomable distance to run. Many people train for months to accomplish a 5k running race. So for them, it’s a big deal and a hugely strenuous effort. It makes sense, then, for them to think that I am pushing it.

My running friends, however, who have logged hundreds of kilometres with me, will understand why five kilometres is really just baby steps. Five kilometres is me not pushing it. I used to pound back half-marathons every single weekend without a second thought. I would click off five-minute kilometres as my easy, resting pace. Now, when it takes me over seven minutes to run one single kilometre, I am horrified. (Yes, running pals, it’s true. Seven minutes.) So for me, I am barely going faster than walking pace. I hardly feel like I’m running. I don’t even break a sweat. And then someone tells me “well…don’t push it.”

The same could be said for weight training. I recently joined a gym again, upon the realization that all the good intentions in the world would never materialize into me lifting weights at home. For four months I had been telling my husband that I would strength train at home, transforming my stick arms into bulging biceps and my spindly legs into trunks of steel. And for four months I never did. So I joined a gym with childcare and now I go twice and week and pump iron. I use the term loosely and with much glee. This skinny body “pumping iron” is hilarious. I couldn’t push it even if I wanted to. I do the machine circuits, lifting a fraction of what I once could do. I try to do push-ups and collapse onto my face. Baby steps.

On my first day at the gym, I was warming up on the elliptical beside a woman who struck fear into my heart. As I stood on my elliptical, not pushing it, she looked like she was attacking her machine. I was waiting for her to mutter, “Die, Elliptical, DIE!!” I didn’t dare giggle.

On my second day at the gym, I went to a “Bodypump” class, which is essentially a guided weight-lifting session with wild music and lots of excessive cheering. I had no idea what I was doing. When I got in, all the women were grabbing barbells and sliding weights onto them. I have never used a barbell in my life. So I did what any observant person would do – I copied and dutifully slid on some weights, then used the clampy thing to hold them on. I looked around me and tried to gauge how much weight I should put on the bar. That woman looked retirement age, so I could probably lift more than her (I couldn’t). That other woman looked really skinny, so she couldn’t be much stronger than me (she was). I grabbed all the other equipment that the other women were grabbing, plus a few extra things just in case and then music began.

Lord have mercy. I clearly put too much weight on my bar. The retired woman was kicking my rear end. I tried to find a good time to pause and take off some of the plates without looking like an idiot, but there was no pause. So I suffered through. Then the music stopped and the clanking of weight plates was everywhere. What was happening? I looked around in a panic – were they making their bars lighter or heavier? Lighter, thank goodness. But how much lighter? Since I had no idea what was coming, I had no idea what to do. So I guessed, again, and got it wrong, again.

Clearly I don’t know my own strength.

But then I told someone else this story, thinking it was pretty funny, and instead of encouraging me or being impressed that I even tried a weight-lifting class, that person said, you guessed it, “well…just don’t push it.”

But what I’ve realized is this: survivors push it. That’s how we survive. We push through chemo, we push the odds, we push our doctors, we push for treatment, we push against treatment. We don’t sit around waiting for death. We run from it. For five whole kilometres.

When I had pneumonia, I didn’t push anything. I sat on the couch or in the hospital and watched TV. I did nothing. And, within days, I became depressed and felt like a sick loser.

And that happened because running is not just exercise. It’s not just about getting your heart rate up and breathing hard. Running is transformative, it banishes depression, it makes you think that anything is possible, it makes you feel part of the living again. And that’s why I push it.

Let’s be honest. Runners, myself included, don’t always want to run. We don’t love it all the time. It’s cold outside. It’s snowing. I have an aversion to wind whipping in my face just like most of you. Most of the time I’d rather just have a hot bath and a nap. But where would that get me? Yes, I need rest, but I also need exercise, even more than the average person does: survivors who exercise (vigorously) have a much lower risk of relapse.

So I will push it, thank you very much. And I will keep running for my life.

Sick Loser

Some days it’s hard not to feel like a sick loser.

I like to think that I’ve been fairly plucky and optimistic throughout this cancer calamity, but then I got pneumonia and found myself back in a hospital bed, getting IV antibiotics.

And I felt like a sick loser.

Now, this is certainly no judgment on other sick people, though I’m sure they feel the same way at times. Nor is this a call for Facebook platitudes that say: “You are SUCH a winner!” Please refrain. I know that I am not actually a loser. But when you find yourself back in that hospital bed with the IV swoosh-swooshing and the hum of nurses giving chemo or blood transfusions to other unfortunate patients, you cannot help feeling, once again, ejected from normal life.

Like many other Type A overachiever personalities, I had big plans for myself before cancer. Plans to do Big Things and accomplish Important Stuff. But the problem is, I was only in the middle of doing Important Stuff when cancer struck. I hadn’t actually done anything notable yet. In my mind, anyway.

Sure, I’ve had two babies and so far they are turning out ok, so that’s certainly significant, but when your circle of acquaintances is chock full of highly educated, super overachievers too, then watching re-runs of Love It or List It for months on end is guaranteed to make you feel a little short of amazing.

What I mean is, I’m not a doctor fixing cleft palates, or a lawyer fighting for human rights, or a refugee camp worker giving rations to pregnant women. I’m not in the poor neighbourhoods of Ecuador interviewing girls on the street (which is what I would have been doing right now, if cancer hadn’t struck).

Now, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do something Great. With huge restrictions on my traveling, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish my research, or if I even want to. I don’t know what I want to do when my health becomes predictable enough to actually work again. It’s really hard to see past cancer when you’ve been sick for nearly a year. I don’t even remember what my normal self feels like.

And that is certainly part of the problem. I have never shied away from hard work. When my high school drama teacher asked me to do a scene for an assignment, I did an entire one-act play. When I had a choose a country for my master’s fieldwork, I picked Colombia. When I needed to decide on a long-term career, I picked a PhD. Hard work is what I do.

Until I became a sick loser.

Now by the end of the day I can barely muster up the energy to cook dinner or sweep my floors. Change the world? I don't even change the toilet paper rolls. Everything I can think of doing is just too hard.

Finish my PhD? Way too much work.

Become a yoga teacher? Too much time.

Publish a novel? Too daunting.

Start my own business? Too complicated.

Become a professional trail runner? Too much training.

Become a professional clown? Too much makeup.

Become an actor? Too many auditions, too much work, too much everything.

Now I am not a lazy person, but cancer seems to have sucked all the drive out of me. Anything with the potential to make an impact in this world takes a lot of effort, effort that I do not have. And yes, of course I am recovering and of course I need to give myself time. But I have no idea how much time I have left.

So am I destined to be a sick loser forever? I sure hope not. But for now, being anything else seems like too much work.

Parenting Through

As I sit here reflecting (in the thirty minutes that I’ve luxuriously set aside for writing today), I have been trying to imagine what my recovery would be like if I wasn’t a mom. Do not misunderstand me – my children have been an enormous reason for my quick recovery and my ongoing will to survive – but I have a sense that the average cancer patient with young children goes "back to work” a lot sooner than the ones without children.

I will give you an example of what I mean. For the first two months after my bone marrow transplant, I slept until at least eight o’clock every morning. I had a nap every day, then I walked, wrote, read books, watched movies… sometimes I even managed some yoga or strength work. For the most part, I was a total sloth, and I needed to be. When the chemo and radiation are strong to almost kill you, well, they really do almost kill you. I spent as much time as I could with the kids, but after a while their noise and enthusiasm exhausted me and back to bed I went. I could afford to rest this much only because we had a full-time nanny and my parents were in town helping out (bless their exhausted hearts).

Those of you who are cancer survivors may be familiar with this phrase: “For the next year, recovery is your full-time job.”

Well… I hate to break it my doc, but starting two and half months post-transplant, when my nanny went back to school and my mom flew home, parenting became my full-time job. The doctors are very firm about not “working,” but they say nothing about parenting. And in my opinion, chasing after two energetic munchkins for ten hours every day is a lot more demanding than sitting at a desk for eight hours (and I’m not just ranting, I’ve done both. This is a very scientific comparison.)

So, even with part-time nanny help that breaks the bank, I am now up at six thirty every day. I make breakfast, pack lunches, sweep floors, put away toys, read books, end squabbles, drive to preschool, take the kids on nature walks, go to museums, go to the library, do laundry, make dinner and much, much more. I even made detailed spider and mummy cookies for my son's preschool Halloween party, and upon arrival realized that I had made the most elaborate cookies of the bunch. Now, I realize this is par for the course for any stay-at-home mom, but it isn’t for a recovering bone marrow recipient. There is not much room for “recovery” in this routine.

And let's add this little vignette: my son goes to a cooperative preschool, which means that each parent has a “duty day” every month. On this day, the parent is at the preschool for the whole three hours helping out. The duty parent must also bring the snack, serve it and clean it up, and then clean up the whole preschool (vacuum, sweep, bathrooms, etc.) at the end of the day. So there I was last week, exhausted from another night of insomnia, playing with a room full of four-year-olds, and then strapping my daughter to my back so that I could do all the cleaning afterward. I don’t even clean my own house right now, but there I was sweeping up sparkly sand with a twenty-five pound toddler on my back. One of the other moms, a kind soul who vaguely knows what I’ve been through, stayed with me and helped sweep. I must have looked as exhausted as I felt, despite trying to keep a brave and happy face.

I say this all not to complain – Lord knows there are people that have it tougher than I do. I do not, for example, have to cross the raging Mekong river on a precarious tightrope to catch dinner for my family (we’ve been watching a lot of BBC’s Human Planet around here). I simply share my stories to illustrate how different “recovery” looks when you have young children. I am sure there are thousands of women out there who have done the same. We are all “back at work” much earlier than the doctors prescribe, but it is rarely recognized as such.

Perhaps what I am not seeing is the recovery borne out of necessity. Perhaps if I were still allowed to sit around and watch movies all day, I would feel sort of listless and maybe even a little depressed at my lack of usefulness. Instead, there is little time for whining or even much self-reflection in my day. I am needed. I am wanted. I am busy. I often forget that I am in recovery and then become frustrated when I am so tired by the afternoon. In the brief respites I do have, I’m either napping or looking up recipes that might appeal to my ever-pickier four-year-old. By the time the kids are in bed, I flop on the couch like a fish that gave up fighting the net. Thank God I have an amazing husband who does all the clean up in the evenings. Otherwise we would all be neck-deep in dirty dishes, crumbs and leftovers, and, most likely, mice. No thanks.

Of course, while there are many days when I am proud of my ability to “parent through,” I do worry that the lack of adequate rest will affect my recovery. Like any cancer survivor, I am plagued daily with a fear that those nasty rogue cells will come back. I then fantasize a recovery without children, where I could get the rest I need – sleeping in, leisurely runs every day, hours to write, daily yoga, endless movies and novels…. It seems like heaven. Until I realize that in this scenario my children would never be there. You just can’t have it both ways.

The fact is, my kids give me the most powerful reason to live. And even though my son literally never stops talking, and my tiny daughter thinks it’s hilarious to smack me in the face, and even though the two of them can make a mess faster than you can say Tasmanian devil, I still would not trade places with a childless survivor for a second.

Well, maybe for second. Ok, maybe just for one day. But then I want them back.