Press On

Assume this will be the only blog entry that addresses the "press" where apparently I can be easily googled under. I think it's against the rules to google yourself but here are some thoughts. I can assume it was a slow news week and then it will return to what it’s always been, just a way to remember, to cope, to hope, to vent, to share because it is in expressing and holding hands in our joint humanity that any of the senseless mess of the last 2.5 years makes any sense it all.

I would have never imagined the last week… this blog doubled up its subscribers… lots of people added me on facebook… people have asked to guest blog in it… I’ve been given a couple of dozens cure to cancers from all over the world from this juice to marijuana to those pills to mediation this alternative treatment here in various parts of the world…various interview requests, various incredibly kind gestures like a double bike, and a couple of girls who asked me out on dates (both got no’s since I’d never met them)… I have said in here many times, I have a lot of bad qualities but pretentiousness isn’t one of them but let me quote a more eloquent author we call Shakespeare, to thine own self be true and that way to not man canst thou be false. 

Above all things, I want to express gratitude because that’s the one emotion that’s never blinked. Who would have guessed that running a marathon would have resulted in all this? In the very few actual interviews (they’ve all only been a few minutes of questions back and forth), they have asked about the Gusher marathon’s college fund (see it at thegushermarathon.com) and asking if there’s anyway they can help. Of course, any parent would like a scholarship but more importantly share something you love with someone you love because trying to do things alone is how you end up alone and that’s worse than cancer. A few months ago, I was in a hospital room of someone dying from cancer and those are moments that I rarely blog about because it seems entirely inappropriate but there as he took his last breaths, he was surrounded by his kids, his friends and I’ve not seen many people die but he was incredibly at peace as he died poor and broke. I have another friend who right now has a job where he’s making lots of money from a job that required lots of travel and shared that his kids not too far from Kiana’s age said, when are you going to get a job where you don’t have to leave as much? Those are two extreme moments and life is somewhere more in the middle for most of us… but I’m going to catch the moments I can with my daughter as best as I know how. Please don’t misunderstand…we had spring break last week and we had play dates almost everyday and during those times she just hung out with someone her age and I sat in the background for a lot of overjoyed at watching her smile… but the experience of is like scuba diving which I used to do or walking through a forest… to see the natural in its own element instead of just hearing about it is something that simply can’t be beat. I didn’t run with her just to keep running, if you watch a youtube video which now has had way too many people see my fat shirtless self singing badly, she’s perked up the entire time because it’s an activity we both enjoy. Some parenting requires discipline and this little girl doesn’t like when I use the word consequences and usually gets in line pretty quickly when it comes out but that’s the tough part of parenting, the reward is the fun parts.

I’ve talked to a couple of local radio and TV spots here and in Beaumont because that’s all I thought it would ever be and I’ve learned quickly that people who have made videos of me for their news and websites exactly what freedom of the press means (and I have no objection). But I also passed up an media because they wanted me to run a race I was doing with Kiana with a stroller for 2 reasons. One, and let me say thank you, Bob was kind enough to give me a free stroller since the one I use for races is borrowed and it hadn’t arrived and two I’ve only done evening 5k’s with Kiana with a stroller because she’s not a morning girl and… she did the kid’s dash after, part of the joy, perhaps bigger than my trophy is cheering her races. It was a race raising money for brain cancer, the head for the cure and there were two people who hugged me and they were some odd moments because they said my brother died of brain cancer and I signed up for this to meet you and tell you to keep going and my daughter died of your cancer and she’s telling me from heaven you’re going to heaven. Seconds after both of those I wiped a tear but not some fear from my eyes. I came in second in that 5k teaching me perhaps not to race so quickly after a marathon (the marathon was a last second addition that race had been on the calendar for months).

I've given immediate no's to anything that would get in the way of time with Kiana. This marathon is getting people’s attention for a variety of reasons but one of them is that I did the right thing of sharing life with my daughter more so it would be a mistake to do it less. I had an invitation to a fancy dinner Saturday night and went through with the plans that I originally had which was to have dinner with the friends who had named themselves the J Crew from my running group because this was a brain cancer race. I assume this will all fade in a couple of days and in the end, it will be the people who are still there that matter and they are awesome.

As far as all the alternative treatments or other doctors I’ve been encouraged to see, I have no way to discern which ones would work or which ones wouldn’t though in simple frankness the simpler ones I've tried. I haven’t worked in almost a year so trying them all can’t be cheap and just as significantly, if I tried them all that would have to make me sick somehow. Perhaps as simply, I trust my doctors. These are guys who let me put off brain surgery to run a marathon, who when the MRI is stable rather than just deliver it blankly say it with, I’m not sure your brain is stable from the way you run but everything else is. They smile when they see me because they know I’m not trying to avoid dying just trying to focus on focused living.

So anyway, I lived in England one summer where they say today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish wrap. The press coverage will end soon I assume but my two big truths me running, me loving my daughter until I get to the finish line, you better believe we’re pressing on.