The Unmoved Mover

We all have ways to explain the universe. Many of us find our own ways adequate enough to at least get some sleep at night. But I have long struggled with the perception, projection of the unmoved mover. Aristotle started it trying to make sense of the simple laws of motion, that somethings move us but where were they moved from and ultimately concluding that a logical reasoning deduced an originator, a god/God that somehow was exempt.

I see this in my cancer world ("my cancer world" ... I wish I could explain that better) as we survivors deal with our mortality. Humans, the vast majority of us, are in denial of it; something I've seen on deathbeds. The unmoved mover is sometimes death itself, something that the fear and stakes we put on it doesn't seem to be with the force itself, or is life the force. Others have played with a concept that perhaps it was all one long cycle and therefore needed to be no originator; I've tried to never accept that as that's literally circular reasoning.

Why do we let the inevitable like death mess with us so much? And when we're truly honest for most of us is the thought of our own deaths or the thought of others harder to take? Why are we so often moved less by so much of life? I have turned 39 since the last time I wrote here, which now puts me less than 1 year away from the age, 40, that statistically I was not likely to reach. I avoid hubris and I don't want to be Icarus burned especially in the Texas summer sun but the even though the sun is also a star, the night ones seem closer now, a little brighter.

I've been doing a few more things in the cancer world perhaps because I'm a little less scared of it, some in groups, some one on one. While I was in Wyoming with TNT, I made a decision to make a conscious set of thoughts on a particular point in a familiar route that I've done at least weekly since returning. Tonight I am in Pocatello Idaho just having finished the speech of my favorite start line which like my favorite race is a simple answer, "the next one." It's the first marathon that invited me to speak after all the media and there was I talking about the race I won etc, and how I was focused to make sure that I die trying. But when I came the first time I came alone with no ability to drive. This time I came with my wife and I had friends here from back then and since then from other places. I took a rental car to the state fair the race director had been kind enough to take me to last time. I drove to a part of town to just walk around. I gave a speech where I didn't focus on my times or my wins but on just realizing that continuing to get to start lines is why it matters.

The last time I was in Pocatello I would qualify for Boston, PR. I didn't sleep well the night before. In fact I got up and wrote half this blog entry in the middle of the night to try to clear my head. Shall we call it progress that I'm writing this one before the race even starts because I just shared a conversation that for the vast majority of us, in regards to races, the journey to the start line often matters more than the journey from the start to the finish line of the race itself? I spend more time in my speech talking about why I put off brain surgery to run a marathon than I do talking about the 26.2 miles, I spend more time about why and how my mom started running, about how and why I started running with Kiana in a stroller than I do about the Gusher Marathon win. So suffice it to say that while there's a bib on me and my body is physically capable I'll always be competing, I'll always be trying to PR but right now I can't imagine ever writing about a finishing time in here and I'm going to focus on the start line. It feels particularly appropriate here because I found out after the speech that while the start line remains the same, the path to the finish line is not.

I do not think there are any unmoved movers, at least not any healthy ones. Death is an unmoved mover but death is the absence of light just as darkness is the absence of light. Its not it's own entity. I think even the creator of the universe has to be a moved mover because how could he create the beauty of life without being moved? Perhaps I'm romanticizing it too much but if someone messes with me and the connection isn't moving them back... that's not a dynamic I want to be a part of. I took pictures of some clouds from the plane coming in and thought that I've looked at clouds from both sides now from give and take and still somehow it's cloud's illusions I recall.

I have only ran 2 marathons in the last 3 years, this will be the first time since 2015 that I run 2 in one year because somehow I've never entirely shaken being the cancer guy that runs marathons but I think my own speech today may have moved me to  just focus on the start line and that retirement already came when I broke 3 but that retirement just means on the clock. So at least for tomorrow's marathon, no matter how good or how bad it goes, in this blog which is the last thing I intend to read before I die, the place where the most important things go either straight written out or have nods that I hope trigger the right confessions into my memory, whatever time I hit tomorrow will never ever be written out. Every marathon has a theme song I listen to as I prepare and this time it's the one from Hamilton Hurricane due to a couple of lines:

In the eye of a hurricane There is quiet
For just a moment A yellow sky

I'll write my way out Overwhelm them with honesty 

And the honesty is that what matters about tomorrow's race is that I'm still here, still somehow getting invited to share a story with strangers and with friends and more importantly still getting to live it.
Appropriately enough shortly after finishing a speech about the start line, I head to Wyoming immediately after the race where the exercise that conscious thinking came into view with a little bit of good luck. I've been running marathons for nearly a decade now, just a little longer than I've had cancer but in dealing with both, with life, with love, I'm going to try to take it as fine wine and let it improve with age, take it in and let it move me.

Emergency Contact

I just got back from a very intense conference at MD Anderson that was entirely for Brain Tumor

patients and their families. It apparently happens every two years which means I could have attended a few times now but it had never gotten on my radar. I say intense because of several reasons. There was emotional overwhelming because some of the people who are big advocates there shared early on how lucky I was still to be alive. There were several patients there some with staples and/or stitches still in their head. There were some brilliant doctors. There were stories, some with little I could relate to outside of the cancer experience and some where parts of our lives seemed like part of the same poem. There were others I thought maybe I could show them poems you read further down the line that even though I was a first time participant, the brain tumor experience felt more like I was alumni.

I suppose I was already prepared for this to be emotionally overwhelming as I was packing I wore my irreverent shirts that came along the cancer journey. I wore the seizure one of when my language functions freeze with the caption "sometimes I stop to think and I forget to start again," my going into brain surgery one (it's not rocket surgery) and my leaving one (gave him a piece of my mind) each day. The tumor hasn't faded but has also stayed stable and turns out the humor coping mechanism still matches. Hope I've always declared is my 4 letter word and the conference was titled "Together in Hope." 

There were stories of cold hard facts about longevity and prognosis, sometimes spelled out but often read between the lines that for a lot of these 120+ different types of tumor there is no known cause and no known cure. There was the advancement in science, some of which I've been privy to as it's developed about the gene mutations that now help predict things better. There was more coverage than I'd ever seen about neuropsychological evaluations and cognitive impairment and function. There was actually a spelled out line by line item of somethings that seem to increase the median survival rate for participants divided into a variety of categories about emotion, diet, exercise, mental and spiritual (I kid you not without knowing them I was doing all but one on the list; the intuitive force is unusually strong with me). There were general presentations, some breakout sessions and one of the ones I picked out was how to read an MRI better; I haven't taken a CD home in years and I don't know if I'm more or less tempted to do so after doing that. I even got to practice drilling into a skull with the tool that was used on me (on a fake skull) and doing brain surgery with a tool though I'm not sure whether or not that was the one they used one me (on a grapefruit)

But invariably my favorite part was the human part; the groups where we sat and traded stories. It's not the first I've sat in groups like that but for a guy who is as obnoxiously chatty as me, I usually sit through and don't say anything. I've got this place where the story has poured out plenty by hiding in public and I get to give it in public places (though that's got a little more polish) but in these circumstances I listen and listen and listen. There were groups for people with children, young adult cancer survivors and gender specific groups. I primarily focused on the mens one but was reticent enough to share to where I actually got nicknamed "the quiet one." Listening to people who also shared jobs lost, marriages broken, someone else who had become a single father, seizure stories, beating the odds stories, clinical trial stories and invariably friends they'd made along the way who were no longer on the path because their tumor grew and took their life just made me more attentive and more quiet. There were people there who genuinely surprised me with how much they valued not dying no matter what the quality of life; I don't share that value but it was good to hear it. 

There was another element that was a focal point for me; I was one of the few people who had come there alone. Most of the guys younger had come with their mother; only one with his wife. Most of the guys around my age or older had come with their wives or significant other. There was a disproportionate number of men in this group. While brain cancer is disproportionately male, it isn't as much as it was at that conference. A far bigger percentage of the women who had come were there on their own. I didn't know what all that meant and I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions but for me I wondered if maybe you know I should have brought one of the meaningful people in my life... I didn't give it much immediate thought as it wasn't correctable at that point but it did stick out. 

But it kept reflecting because another point stuck out. As people told stories organically, they would praise their doctors or medical teams a lot or tell points about their jobs or their circumstances. The reactions would be like "I'm sorry" or "what a great decision/outcome" or "that is a great doctor." It was not intentional but somehow my stories always ended up revolving around the ways people helped me, from walking me back into hospitals, running with me, driving me, flying out to Duke, helping with the medical bills. The response I got to a variety of stories almost word for word was "You have such great friends." The fact that I'd put off brain surgery to run a marathon came up but it's speed did not nor did the fact that I won a marathon pushing a stroller. It was refreshing to have it be where I was just a runner who ran to escape from cancer not a cancer guy who ran. And this, this was made possible my friends. 

Appropriately enough, the conference was about that. I had dinner with a friend on Friday after the first day who has his own brain issues. I was staying and hanging out at a friend's house who had been part of the fundraising efforts from the Ultimate crowd. I got up and ran 20 miles with a friend. Saturday night I had dinner with a relatively new friend from the Wyoming crowd that when someone asked if she was my wife who I'd been talking about pointed out that I was old enough to be her father (she's 23, I'm 38...). 

Still, hanging with her while thinking about the you have such good friends remark made me think about a conversation I overheard while in Wyoming. People were sharing some break up stories that coincided/overlapped/might have contributed to while cancer. One was relatively recent with the person they were breaking up literally moving out while they were backpacking with us. It ended up in a conversation about how at least a couple of them had kept their ex as their emergency contact. I didn't say a word but they explained that in that scenario that would be the person who knew the most. They however genuinely believed that their emergency contact was not and perhaps would never again be a regular part of their life. 

My emergency contacts and executors of my will have always been two friends; part of that is they are literally people with lots of financial information from their degrees (MBA, Ph'D in Math) but somehow I want to believe that their being close but not as close they could have an easier time making objective decisions or respecting my wishes. This was something that was shared at the conference as being clear with people. 

Nonetheless, the thought I left with was that if the story of my life is "you have such good friends," that's a life I'm rather pleased with. Today started with an old friend sending me a picture from exactly 10 years ago when we were playing ultimate in Boulder. I was a few days from 29 then and I'm now a few days from 39 and I like to think I haven't changed much in looks but a good chunk of the guys I played with are still my friends. Every single friend I called from the hospital is still in my life. 

On the better part of 3 hours on the ride home from Houston to Austin when there was cell phone coverage, I spent the vast majority of the ride on phone calls. Before brain surgery, I had gone on this tour over the places I lived and said hello to people from stages in life. I suppose like a tour of life or a funeral, it was the poignant moments and I wanted at least one more. For better or worse since then, the relationships that matter to more now are the consistent ones. Life doesn't always give you too many luxuries; I'm not naive but the friend who I ran 20 miles with we once had a conversation about when have you made enough money and he cited a study about how once you've got the basics covered and enough for a few frills, life satisfaction doesn't actually go up in proportion to huge wages. It stays all but flat but the improvements to life come from how many connections do you have that you can call at 2:00 in the morning when something goes wrong. I am pretty happy with that list but I didn't want to save it till 2 in the morning and spent from 12-3:30 or so just chatting about sports and the weather and... just things good friends talk about and saying thank you for the things from so long ago but also for how we hung out relatively recently. Any of those calls could be emergency contacts but I was glad they were just regular contacts, all people I had seen relatively recently and would see again soon. There's plenty of people I love to party with that I'll have a shot with late in the night but it's the people you could share the silence with, perhaps with a glass to share in the all but quiet, thats an A-frame picture right there no? 

I'll join some friends for a run in the morning but I still may share a glass or two tonight. There's still plenty about my brain tumor that no matter how much hope still lies in front of us, there are lots of answers where we don't even know the question. I don't know or where when I'll have my next emergency but I'll keep trying to never pass up the opportunity for good contact.