I have an MRI tonight at 10 PM. It’s the latest I’ve ever done one of those. It’s on a new machine which while consistently using the same on for several years this will be the 4th machine in 4 years. The old one where I used to do it, even if there was a nervousness to it, there was a familiarity with the place, with the staff. It’s literally in a media piece about me.
Then there was covid and different insurance etc which led to a different machine in 2020 and a different one in 2021. This year I tried to go back to this one but there’s a new machine with better technology from the same company. I don’t have a great reason, there are never good reasons for giving up too much coping skills but I just scheduled this at earliest availability. I usually schedule the MRI or the results on the 8th, believing that somehow the kid born 8/8/80 gets the universe to bend a little more towards giving me life than death that way, at least for now. But the MRI was randomly scheduled and a few days ago the appointment is going to be in mid June something because my doctor had to go somewhere unexpected.
Life has changed so much since the last one. The world has reopened officially but a lot of mine has shifted and much of it has shot down. I used to really only live one MRI at a time, never looking to far ahead but I have stopped looking even that far forward or even far back. For the first time since I was an adult, I didn’t hang up an ornament at Christmas trying to represent the most important event of the year. I didn’t set my usual 8 New Year’s resolution, I didn’t even set one.
I’ve had some health problems that I didn’t even blog in here, I haven’t been blogging in here but there were several issues with my bloodwork in February that have affected my athletic skills. I’ve long said that running is how I get through the day and raising a kid is why and I feel like I’ve not been doing a great job in either. I have not been able to train and I haven’t really had a good race since last June. Kiana has some challenges of her own, some I think due to the post covid world, some entirely from lots of elements of life handed down to her.
I’ve still kept notes and organized a few things but these missing blogs are perhaps because I don’t know what to say any more for it to be effective as a personal narrative when who you love and thought love you are less stuck in a life with their own place away from a shared one.
It’s been tough to be an idea. I was frustrated with some things going on with health insurance recently at a dental cleaning and they mentioned something about dental insurance and I focused on the other part. I didn’t think anything of it but apparently my walking out after having paid my bill thinking about that caused enough concern to where the office manager MAILED me a note saying she would work as best as she could with my dental insurance. That didn’t matter but I called and said thank you and explained myself. But it reminded me that if somewhere I show up and am not cracking jokes as I check out after a dental cleaning it worries people.
It’s the game in races for the last year where I still smile and cheer even as I struggle with my times because somewhere I still am recognized enough. I really do enjoy running but there is a frustration to how much I’m slowing down. Still this weekend, I did a Spartan. I signed up only 3 days before because I had a social media reminder I had done my first 9 years ago. I am in better upper body shape and actually ran more than that one. It was nowhere near my peak a few years ago when I could hang with the elites. Yet, how I could do, I smiled with conviction at the end that somewhere in me there was still enough fire to make the grim reaper work for it. Kiana did the sprint the next day with her mom and stepfather. I only found out afterwards because she said she didn’t want to tell me afraid I’d be hurt because it had always been our things. I responded with anything that’s healthy for your mind and body of course keep doing and I’ll support and cheer whether or not I’m there.
I am struggling, perhaps because I am not running anywhere near as much nor as often. I focused on that and ran 6 out of the 7 days last week with 5 of them by myself. It wouldn’t have been that long ago that I wouldn’t run that many days alone in a month so it was both a positive and a negative but that’s life these days. Diet is not as disciplined when you’re back in an office all the time but since May 1st I’ve been up desert more because I’d like to keep fitting in my pants. Dealing with that and obstacles and making sure your mouth is connecting in the right place without breaking down too far on Sunday brunches makes you realize that somewhere I still have discipline.
Still, Tonight I have an MRI at 10:00 PM in a fancy machine to see if my brain is the same level of cancerous or worse. This is the worst gut feeling I remember though this journey but then again I have a damaged memory. Perhaps it’s reflecting that at 11.5 years of surviving, I wonder how much I’ve gotten right vs how many things I’ve still screwed up while being given a 2nd chance at life (the latter is much bigger). Perhaps it’s that my doctor’s office gave me a call and said something happened in his life and he’s going to be unexpectedly gone and I may not get results for 3-4 weeks. There’s a fear you can only survive Russian roulette so long even if the barrel is more magnetic and tube shaped. For a guy who has lived with hope as his four letter word, I am trying to focus on what Mariame Kaba said “hope is a discipline.”
So tonight, I’ll try to remember that I am a disciplined guy, that roughly a year ago, I was facing demons in running in and out of the Grand Canyon, that less than one I still won a couple of races, that just two days ago I still successfully completed most obstacles, that Kiana’s still going in her own ways, and that hope is not a feeling for me today. Today hope is a discipline.
