“ 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.
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