Love is the Tuesdays

“I've come to know that love's not only the best days Or the worst days Love is the Tuesdays“

Waiting for cancer results is never fun. Cancer friends understand that. Some non cancer friends who have had family also understand it. One of them said, because she knew from her father’s experience who passed away from cancer, that ‘whatever happens it’ll be a relief. I think that all your friends are so used to hearing good news that when the bad news day comes we’re not going to believe it.” I genuinely appreciated that she said when the bad news comes because for very very few of us is it if, it’s just when. 

I’ve reevaluated the job I have and had genuine conversations with my boss about where I feel in it. I shared things candidly and bluntly. I had conversations with the boards I sit on that were blatantly honest. I also let the pain dictate too much and didn’t run despite two rough nights until finally this morning I ran. Running was the better decision. I dealt with a couple of organizations I’m on the board and let them know what I think we should be doing for long. I talked to Kiana about how she’s closer to an adult and what she’s thinking about today, this summer and the rest of her life. I also finally started working on the ‘memoir’ of sorts (who knows how it’ll go but if you want to see it painfully in progress send me a message and I’ll send you a link). I don’t think it takes someone with a whole lot of psychological training to wonder whether or not these are mistakes but they certainly point to someone who wants to know they are or did contribute while they are facing their mortality. 

In the middle of all this, a friend from elementary and middle school shared something online mocking Tuesdays. It was definitely amusing but it reminded me of a song quoted above (https://youtu.be/IdZvEZlBJPU ) that was shared with me a few years ago, Love is the Tuesdays. I had a friend get married on a Tuesday last year and unfortunately was not able to make it but shared it with them and they used it at their wedding. I don’t own it unlike my favorite music but I listened to it because the guy who doesn’t get relationships right still somewhere believes in love and life after love. ‘

But the theme there is what matters to me. I appreciate the friends and family who showed up at the hospital, at the weddings, the ones who will come to the funeral. They will be among the best friends who had the capacity to also be there when the messes had subsided to just take the random walk during injury or the random ride when I couldn’t drive or just called to talk about nothing. It wasn’t the concert or the happiest memories because the human mind isn’t wired for that being a big impression but like proper regular nutrition as opposed to an occasional salad or regular flossing more than biannual dental cleaning or the regular runs that create the heart, lungs, legs and mental health which is even more important than the races, it is the things that occur regularly that shape us even if we don’t recognize it. 

So as I headed to get the results, I focused on who had been there on Tuesdays and random regular moments, the ones that occur and occur and shape you slowly and steadfastly like a river carves it’s path. Perhaps it is the flood of cancer that leaves some damaged and permanent shaped scars both below and above the surface and can literally flood too much and change the landscape forever but the Grand Canyon wasn’t created by a flood, it was created by a river. It is those deep and shaping influences that I hoped to focus on, those who know who to show up and those who I showed up for. And honestly focusing on that helped me realize that whatever the results had been made thankful for a very good life. 

So that’s what Tuesday was but then came Wednesday, the day of the results…I woke up early and I ran, slow and easy and without focus. 

When the results finally came in, and as I drove there, I realized I hate that neighborhood. I can’t shake the trauma of it. I’ve been to a wedding within a  block of it. There was a girl or few that I’ve taken on a date near there.  Kiana was literally born in the hospital that I’ve had some work done and that was the original memory but now I can’t seem to shake the most persistent memory of the WADA tests, and the ER visit and the neuropsychological and the MRI results and the and the and the. It’s like the house where I had a seizure next to I’ve run it by a hundred times next to it, other than shortly after it, I haven’t avoided it but it still comes to mind. So much for a damaged memory you have to accept that trauma can be king. 

The results were stable. The doctor who spent most of the first decade telling me it was a if not when it grows and said at 10 years that for most people it grows before 10 years. He’d seen it too much between 10 and 12. But here at 12 he said maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones. He also shared that he recently had a transplant from LA that’s had it for 30 years. He hopes I’ll be a patient that has it that long longer and maybe I’ll also get lucky. I genuinely appreciated that he kept saying lucky. I have too much guilt in knowing the friends I’ve buried along the way to have the arrogance to say that it’s my running or my health habits or the importance of my parenting or because I have something left to give. The only way I assuage any of that guilt is by believing the old proverb that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong but chance and circumstance happens to us all. I am okay with that being why I got it, why I survived it. 

We covered the car accidents and how similar they were. He said that may also have been dumb luck (does it all balance out that you keep having bad luck that doesn’t kill you but just costs you money?). However, we are going to do a more thorough vision test, a neuropsychological like the ones we did early in the cancer journey and possibly a wave test to see if I am having focal seizures that I’m missing. There were no residual signs of trauma or impact from the accident though everything seems to be consistent that I am having inner problems when it’s happening. 

So I’m calmer and hopefully I sleep better tonight from relief and exhaustion. And I’ll definitely going to live from the dreams I’ve thought through and about in the last 48 hours. But I”m also going to focus on those who  can share the Tuesday jokes and moments with. 

In Restless Dreams I walked Alone

“ Why live life from dream to dream and dread the day when dreaming ends?”

If anyone wonders if scananxiety is real, it’s 2:26 am and I am blogging. I had an MRI yesterday roughly 12 hours ago to see whether or not my tumor is growing. Somewhere the logic says, just 6 months or so ago, the doctor told you that he believed you’d be one of the lucky ones. Somewhere the eternal optimist says come on you’ve gotten through so many of these this should just be a ritual. But the nightmares still came the night before and tonight, one of two between results. 

Somewhere the hopeless romantic wishes I was better at real connections to where the nights weren’t alone, somewhere the guy who has inadequate approach to at least those types of relationships is relieved that if something goes wrong there’s at least one less worry. I have a ritual, habit, of spending that time framing my mindset of it’s my time, what will I need to do to get ready and if it’s not what do I dream of in the future. For better or worse, the older I get, the shorter both lists get.

This is the closest these have been since my 8 year cancerversary. There is nothing gigantically critical that I or anyone has told about why the tumor has been growing that prompts this 6 month interval instead of what had now become annually. But I had two car accidents since then, both of which I was behind the wheel. I wondered then and now and had conversations with some other brain siblings was my brain failing to send some signal, was it just an actual accident or are there gaps? I’ve had a lot of vertigo since then, mostly occasionally but still happens as recent as yesterday. It can apparently be relatively normal because of some dislodged ‘rocks’ in your ears and can last for a while. Anyway, this MRI is both to see if there is tumor growth or some other type of brain damage. 

There has been some highlights since then. If anyone wonders if I still care about running despite that I had been on a string of my slowest races ever with little exceptions for most of a year and a half, it’s not a coincidence that I scheduled it the day after a half marathon and four weeks before the marathon. They give me a medal dye that sometimes makes me nauseous (it did yesterday) and so I wanted to disrupt my training as little as possible. 

It was a good half, the weather was perfect. I made a playlist primarily of old songs that remembered and focused some of the concern and worry and anger about having cancer. There was a nod to my 92 year old grandfather whose independence even as he is less mobile and has lost his partner of 71 years is still pushing. There was exactly one new song on there that had never been used on a playlist, purchased that morning, Rihana’s love on the brain thoroughly appreciating the nod that I would run for miles just to get a taste, must be love on the brain. 

I appreciated that immediately afterwards the song Humor of the Situation came on, reminding myself of the reality that somewhere I still appreciate that running arbitrary distances at arbitrary speeds is some measure of self worth. It was a sub 1 30 marathon. That was my goal for my first half marathon ever and I didn’t hit it till my second one. It was nowhere near my fastest but with the way the last one went (1:34) I wondered if there would be another one and I was glad that day was not the last one. 

Sometimes life leaves you high and dry, feeling abandoned on the side of the road. I’ve even woken up in ambulances on the side of the road in the middle of a run. Here, a friend with me in the middle of the road but on both sides of the road there were friends both old and new cheering while traffic was being held for us to run this town. 

I’ll get results on Wednesday and maybe, probably? it will all be fine but the scanxiety is real, the loneliness at 2:52 am is real, the feelings are real even if the fears that cause them may all be imagined. You know, the guy and friend I run with the most, said that there’s a study that showed once you make a certain capacity of money happiness is measured by how many friends you have you can call at 2:00 in the morning. I know there’s no need to call anyone about scanxiety but I also, I also know there are good people I could and that makes me very grateful.

I know someday I’ll fly away and leave all this to yesterday but while Moulin Rouge may wonder why you life life from dream to dream, I am not going to dread the day when dreaming ends. I am going to acknowledge that I am thinking some of what if the dreams are wrapping up if my time is too. But if it’s not, even if it’s just between MRIs, even if it’s just one race at a time, one day at a time I’m going to keep dreaming.