lost myself in my running

I’m a rarity: a survivor of very advanced stage cancer. I was diagnosed late for the same reason many people my age are diagnosed late: lack of good health insurance. I knew for almost two years that something was wrong, but even though I had health insurance the huge deductible was a pretty persuasive reason to try and self-diagnose on the internet and to engage in delusions that nothing could really be wrong. After all, I’m a runner. You know, a healthy, fit person. We don’t get cancer. Or at least we’re not supposed to get cancer. Sadly, runners do get cancer. Unexplained symptoms like a cough that lingers or a decrease in your ability to run that you can’t explain … those need to be checked out. Consider the lecture over.

Very few kinds of cancer are curable once they begin to spread through the body. Lymphomas like Hodgkin’s Disease happen to be one of the few kinds that can be cured at even what appear to be the last stages of the disease. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of how fortunate I was.

Cancer is the disease of the zombie cells — marauding fast-dividers who refuse to die like normal cells and left unchecked slowly consume the host. Hodgkin’s Disease is a cancer of the B-cell lymphocytes, and accordingly, can be properly classified as a blood cancer. That is one reason why it is so sensitive to chemotherapy. However, unlike leukemias, in Hodgkin’s Disease, these B-cell lymphocytes tend to collect in the lymph nodes, forming masses. In the summer of 2006, one of those masses in my chest began to effect the nerve that runs down my right shoulder, elbow, and into my wrist and hand. I began to first experience some numbness, which progressed to the limb feeling cold. The discomfort slowly swelled into outright pain. By the end of the year, my entire arm ached incessantly. You know that feeling when you strike your “funny bone” in you elbow? My arm felt like that all the time. The pain would throb and radiate through my shoulder, down my elbow, and even into my wrist and hand. I was gobbling Aleve during the day and taking double doses of Tylenol PM at night to sleep. It was this crushing and eventually overwhelming arm pain that ultimately drove me to get diagnosed. By the time I was finally diagnosed, I couldn’t sleep laying down anymore. My arm hurt too much, and when I would wake up in the morning my face would be puffy. So I had to sleep sitting up. The pain was so severe it was actually nauseating.

As I mentioned above, Hodgkin’s is a very chemo-sensitive cancer. Within days of the first treatment, my very visible abdominal mass had shrunk. And within a few more days, my arm started to feel much better and I could sleep laying down again. I still have lingering pain in my arm, though. It is much worse when it is cold.

Lately, my office has been a freezer. I don’t know why they have been running the air conditioner like it has been 95 out when it is only 70, but these decisions get made much higher up the food chain than me. To try and stay warm, I’ve resorted to wearing a winter hat, gloves, two longsleeve shirts, and a hooded sweat shirt over top of it all. My ridiculous layering is an attempt to keep the cold from effecting my arm. This week, it hasn’t worked very well. My arm has ached so badly that I’ve been compelled to leave the office to go outside to warm it back up.

I know it is the cold of the office that is triggering my pain. But try as vigorously as I can to ignore it and to rationalize it away, this pain disturbs me like nothing else. Logically, I know I have no other symptoms. There are none of the night sweats I used to wake up with every night. My chest doesn’t itch like crazy. (The Hodgkin’s Disease itch simply can not be described with words. It is an intense itch underneath the skin and no amount of scratching will stop it. I literally scratched till I bled and didn’t even notice.) I don’t have a cough. I’m running the best I have since before I was diagnosed. It’s just the cold of my office. That’s it. Nothing is wrong.

And yet that right arm pain looms like a specter — a hideous, haunting reminder of the gravity of the disease I have been diagnosed with, a stark and terrible demon that gnaws at my psyche. It fuels the fires of my deepest and darkest fears.

Struggle as I might, no amount of rationalization has ameliorated my distress this week. Usually when I feel fear beginning to grow — starting as that cold feeling in the pit of my stomach — I can silence the crescendo simply by thinking things through logically. The demons kept winning over logic this week.

Fortunately, I have running. I don’t know what I would do without running. After spending many long hours staring into the dark, I finally got up and put on my shoes. I slipped out the door into the cool and damp darkness. It rained last night and the although the air was heavy enough that you could almost reach out and cut it with a knife, the air had that sort of freshness you get after a good rain.

Prodded by my fears and worries, I started too fast. But soon my pace moderated. My pace and breathing began to even out. And I could almost feel the fear begin to fall away. The demons that had been plaguing me couldn’t keep up.  They tried to match strides with me, but I was too strong for them today.  They fell back, farther and farther ….

I lost myself in my running.

I lost myself in the rhythm of my footsteps thudding on the dirt trail. I lost myself in the primal intake of breath in and out. I lost myself in that floating feeling, in the elusive groove where running feels effortless. I lost myself doing something timeless and eternal, something that the species was born and meant to do.

Running is so simple, and yet so freeing. Left behind was the dull ache in my elbow; it was swallowed up by the endorphins released by a thousands footfalls. Much more importantly, I could feel the gnawing fear recede and subside, as though washed away with the beads of sweat that formed on my body.

I left my house this morning plagued by doubts and by fears. I won’t say that dragon is slain for good. But I do know when I returned to my house, the cold grip of fear no longer dominated my thoughts; it had been scrubbed away and released, dissipating in the heavy morning air. In its place was a genuinely good feeling, a warm feeling.

The person who went out the door at 5:00 and came back in at 7:00 was a different person. I can truly say I went for a run this morning and I came back changed. For the better.

And that, I think, is the true power and beauty of our chosen sport. The ability to lose demons and to come back changed … Not every sport offers that power.  But I can say for certain running does.