All Mental

Yesterday, I had a ridiculously good medical appointment, the best in a while. My heart rate came back as it’s best ever (it was 51 the day of the original seizure, 47 the day of the brain surgery and yesterday it was 44). The anomality in the MRI has remained stable enough to where we are going back to doing MRI’s further apart. The bloodwork came back as we hoped and because I was smart enough to do the Boston Marathon intelligently… I can choose to do another one but was also reminded that seizures, like strokes, can have permanent effects that have nothing to do with cancer… Something to think about. I asked my doctor’s office to sponsor the Brainpower5k and they are considering it. Matt, who wrote that article about me and made me get a mohawk, is now signed up with my neurologist. From the appointment with the neurologist I had some time to kill before a relatively successful counseling session with Kiana’s mother so I ran a very hilly 6 miles trying to keep that heart strong. And then I met with the minister I meet with every week.  While Monday at 9:00 is not when we usually meet, I purposely scheduled it for that time because well, I was nervous something would go poorly today.

I saw a sign in Boston which was how I felt yesterday: “We may not have it all together but together we have it all.” And man I love the communities that I’m part of both those that were there long before this and those that came because of this. I had a good conversation with Big, one of the coaches from my running group, who still makes fun of me that I called him after the surgery and apparently had almost the exact same conversation with him two days in a row. I don’t remember anything else from it except him making fun of me during the conversation about how I could barely walk around the hospital floor when less than 2 weeks before I had qualified for Boston. He said something that would not sink in till much later: “Thus proving that all marathons are mental.”

All my best races have come after the diagnosis which I keep joking about how its because I lost some dead weight. While I meant a few ounces in my brain, more than one person has joked back that I lost over 100 lbs of dead weight. While that’s not what I meant, it’d be less than honest to say I’m not amused by the remark. My best marathon didn’t have great though not horrible weather but drawing energy not from random strangers but from friends and family got me my best time. Having conflicting emotions during the comeback one got me a solid time but I let some of that dead weight enter into my mind through memory and music. In Boston I layed things aside and had an absolutely great time (and a slow marathon).  And in the picture shown here (this one’s copyrighted so leave it here) I was oddly enough asked to pose wearing my Boston jersey but discouraged from smiling. That was weird but I am sad that the picture they chose is one where my livestrong bracelet is covered up.

I am going cycling tonight and maybe, just maybe, I should be open to some new possibilities in all types of areas not just exercise. People have pointed out that I seem closed to love and I have been but maybe, just maybe, it’s time to consider considering the possibility. I still remember from my cultural anthropology class that love is actually the emotion/idea that there are the most definitions about in different cultures. I don’t know what the correct definition but I guess I see the feeling of love as in the taste of food. Just becomes something tastes good is nowhere near enough indication. Love has feelings involved but I see it more like nutrition. If you want to be healthy, you can find things that both taste good and are good for your system or things that taste good but are horrible for you. But if you follow nutrition at all, we know that it’s not something that there is a universal agreement on. Still, I had a decent breakfast and lunch today and I’m weighing in well at the doctor and my heart is strong. My mind has some cracks but maybe they are getting better or at least stable. I’ll take it all.