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.