Cancer, man. Cancer sucks. Cancer is the number one killer, near as I can tell, of people I am related to by blood besides sheer old age or accident. I have lost two great-grandparents, one great-aunt, and an uncle. My grandmother is more than, gosh, fifteen year survivor of cancer that is either classified as bone cancer and breast cancer (it was cancer of the breast bone, you see--I'm pretty sure the final word was that it was bone cancer.)
My father lost a little brother to cancer when that brother, who would have been my Uncle Dean, was just a baby. Dean was sick when he was born. It was the early sixties. There wasn't much anyone could do. With modern medical advances, I'm still not sure how much could be done if he was born today. Thinking about that absolutely breaks my heart--that a child can be born that sick, and with fifty years of medical advances, I'm still not sure we could have saved him.
No baby should have to face death before his life has really started.
And no parent should have to face watching their child's life flicker out that fast.
We had a lymphoma scare with one of my brothers two years ago. Thankfully, they were able to determine that while what he has is almost always associated with lymphoma, it isn't lymphoma--and that while it is irritating and painful to him to have it when it flares, it's not life threatening. They don't know why he has it and they can't really treat it without resorting to drugs that have a host of side effects that may be worse than the condition itself--they can only really watch and study it right now.
That's the crux of it, isn't it? There's still so much we just don't know, so much we just can't effectively treat and so many people we can't save. We don't even fully understand what makes cells go haywire.
I think I have a special empathy for how it might feel to have your cells turn on you because I have an autoimmune disease. I have Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, which is thankfully easy to treat, and I respond extremely well to treatment. Effectively, my immune system destroyed my thyroid. Doctors don't know why my white blood cells suddenly decided my thyroid is the enemy and began to turn it into a non-functioning lump of scar tissue. They can't stop it. All they can do is give me a supplement to replace the thyroid hormones my body no longer produces. Every day, for the rest of of my life, I will take a pill first thing in the morning. Every six months to a year, I will need blood work to determine whether my dosage is still correct. Most of the time I shrug this off as not being a very big deal. Hashimoto's, in its most severe forms, is a pretty scary illness but it almost never gets that bad in the developed world these days because it is easy and inexpensive to treat. I got pretty sick (and I put on twenty pounds, which I am still fighting to get off) but I also got better pretty fast. Even when my insurance has not covered my medications, it's ten dollars at Target for a three month supply. Almost anyone can afford that.
It still bothers me that it happened. It bothers me that the system that was designed most intimately to protect me instead betrayed me. In my darkest moments (thankfully rare) I have wondered if my immune system decided I wasn't worth protecting anymore; that I should be attacked instead. You can't live without thyroid hormone.
Those moments are rare. Most of the time, I know what I am, and what I am is very lucky.
I am lucky that the condition I have, although it can't be reversed, can be treated with ease. I am lucky it is cheap to medicate. I'm lucky that although my immune system misfired, what it decided to attack could be compensated for. I'm lucky it probably won't get any worse than it already is, I'm lucky that I will live a normal, healthy, long life despite it. I'm lucky that my brother wasn't facing death at seventeen, although I had to watch him try to deal with the fact that he might be while I grappled with those dark moments of wondering why my own body had turned against me. We were sick at about the same time.
In all the ways I'm lucky...those are the ways that people with leukemia, lymphoma and blood cancers are NOT lucky. Their medications, if they even work on them, are not available as a cheap generic at Target. Chemotherapy SUCKS. Doctors don't know how to stop what they have...and for them, that's a matter of life and death, not a matter of "Gee, popping this pill is really annoying."
I decided that I wanted to try and help cancer patients because of my own experience with an autoimmune disease. I decided on the Leukemia and the Lymphoma Society because of my brother, and our scare that he might very well have lymphoma.
If I can raise a little money and the slightest bit of awareness for LLS by agreeing to run 26.2 miles, I consider it an easy bargain.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Alicia the Very, Very Slow Runner
In the beginning...
I started with the Team in Training program over a year ago, you see. The timing was typical me, which means it was bad and I suspected it was bad but, caught up in my enthusiasm, I tried to make it work anyway. I just graduated from law school. I was getting married smack in the middle of the training cycle. I got sick, though, and that was pretty much that.
I felt good that I'd done something good, but it nagged at me that I didn't finish the program. So when I got a call in August from my local Team in Training chapter encouraging me to get involved again, I thought "What a wonderful idea!"
And then I sat on it for a month.
This is not to say I am generally lazy. I'm not lazy. I am however absentminded on occasion, and when the call came I was visiting my family in New Hampshire for two weeks, not at home in northern New Jersey. As soon as I got home I had a number of other things to turn my attention to. It therefore took me until I was walking around trying to brainstorm Things I Could Do With Myself Besides Pace About In A Circle And Occasionally Kick Things In Frustration while I am in that fun transitional period where I both wait for bar exam results and prepare to sit the New York Bar that I went "Right. Team in Training. Excellent idea!"
They got me set back up pretty easily and now I am happily (?) training for the 2011 Disney Marathon in early January, the timing of which is excellent since it's not too close to the February Bar Exam.
There are a few things I think I should clarify about me as a runner at this time.
I've been running for close to two years with some consistency. So it would be, perhaps, incorrect to say that "I am not a runner." What I am not is a very good runner. Knock on wood, I am not prone to injury--I stretch, I take rest days like a good little girl, I do other fitness things to keep my little joints nice and limber, and such. What I am is slow.
Slooooooow.
At least, I'm pretty sure I'm slow. I have a nifty Garmin 305 with a heart rate monitor, which I use. My current blazing top speed that I can both maintain for a full interval (I tend to run-walk when I do distances) is between a ten and eleven minute mile. I'm pretty sure that's a snails crawl. I know people who run slower than that. I also know people who WALK faster than that (or close enough to.) I can hit faster speeds. I've clocked myself being able to hold a eight minute mile pace for half a mile or so. But I can't safely maintain that; my heart goes thuddy-thud like a hummingbird's. Maybe I will be able to, some happy day far in the future. But, uh, not so much right now.
When I was a little girl my mother used to tease me gently about being a slowpoke. I was a slowpoke not because I was particularly low energy (anybody who's had the pleasure or misfortune of meeting me in person can't possibly believe I'm low energy.) It was because I liked to amble about staring raptly at things. I was slow because I liked to linger to look at fascinating street debris. Alas, this is not why I am a slow runner. I am a slow runner because my feet just don't carry me that fast.
I was not encouraged to run as a child. I was encouraged to be active (thanks, Mom and Dad!) but not to run, exactly. I biked. I roller-bladed. I skateboarded. I skateboarded down a big hill and knocked out half of a tooth when I was nine, in fact (they put it back together. Modern dentistry!). I wore a helmet, and it's a good thing, because I was a daredevil and frankly without a helmet and padding I'd probably have scrambled my brains and broken all my joints before I hit puberty. I've had some epic spills.
Then I got into martial arts. I am the world's most advanced beginner martial artist. I hold late intermediate colored belts in both major styles of Tae Kwon Do and in a large New England school of Kung Fu. "Get black belt" (which is really only an advanced intermediate degree, but never mind) is on the lifelong to do list; I never have because invariably either I move or my teacher does after two years, and it generally takes three to make it to black. I can still kick higher than my head. It helps that I am a freak and I have, in the words of one doctor, "the legs of someone who's five seven and the torso of someone who's five one"--buying pants is always an adventure. My freaky limberness in the kicking muscles is a good thing, since I'm not sure I could outrun an attacker, even if I was wearing running shoes and they were teetering after me on six inch stilettos that were two sizes too small.
So yes. Not much running, except what they made us do in gym. Since I was "made to" run a mile and I generally resent it when large, mustachioed men in obnoxious shorts with a whistle (a particularly memorable gym teacher) order me to run in circles for no discernible reason, I generally did this in the slowest amble I could get away with.
"Alicia, it took you half an hour to go a mile!" Mustache-with-the-whistle said to be in exasperation.
Me, blinking. "Is that slow?"
Him: "A one-legged seagull could hop it faster than that!"
He then began to whistle at me every time he caught me drifting off to the side of the track to stare at dandelions (some things don't change). This negative reinforcement did not help.
Eventually he gave up and let me go play field hockey and lacrosse with the other kids. I was decent at such things not because I am all that skilled, but because I have relatively little fear of getting whacked or knocked down thanks to a childhood spent falling off wheeled things at "woah that's a big hill!" speeds, and lots of healthy sports aggression not often encouraged in females who are not athletes. I'm sure when he saw me run down the budding high school freshman basketball star, finagle the floor hockey puck away from him, and run away, he probably rolled his eyes. That or wanted to strangle me. Possibly both.
I got into running in my late twenties because my friend Amber did. That's pretty much why. She seemed to enjoy it a lot. I was bored with the elliptical. I discovered much to my pleasure that I did like running. I am just not very fast.
This is part of what fascinates me about distance running. In distance running, how fast you go matters less than how far you go (or so I keep telling myself; obviously the actual, like, athlete people can run 26.2 miles at speeds twice as fast as my little ten to eleven minute mile shuffle, and even most serious amateurs go a LOT faster than me.) I am not fast. What I do have is endurance and that counts for a lot when you're talking about distances in excess of five or six miles. You learn endurance when during the course of a two hour class a crazy martial arts teacher makes you do drills five hundred kicks per leg with a resistance band holding you to the wall, and then immediately starts to chase you around the martial arts studio with a bokken (that would be a wooden practice sword used in kendo, and since that teacher didn't know kendo, I don't know what he was doing with it exactly besides chasing me.)
The first time I did a five mile run it was a revelation. I ran five miles! And it didn't even take all that long! And I felt good after! And my legs didn't even fall off!
And I like to finish what I start. Especially for a great cause (more on that soon). So here we go again.
I started with the Team in Training program over a year ago, you see. The timing was typical me, which means it was bad and I suspected it was bad but, caught up in my enthusiasm, I tried to make it work anyway. I just graduated from law school. I was getting married smack in the middle of the training cycle. I got sick, though, and that was pretty much that.
I felt good that I'd done something good, but it nagged at me that I didn't finish the program. So when I got a call in August from my local Team in Training chapter encouraging me to get involved again, I thought "What a wonderful idea!"
And then I sat on it for a month.
This is not to say I am generally lazy. I'm not lazy. I am however absentminded on occasion, and when the call came I was visiting my family in New Hampshire for two weeks, not at home in northern New Jersey. As soon as I got home I had a number of other things to turn my attention to. It therefore took me until I was walking around trying to brainstorm Things I Could Do With Myself Besides Pace About In A Circle And Occasionally Kick Things In Frustration while I am in that fun transitional period where I both wait for bar exam results and prepare to sit the New York Bar that I went "Right. Team in Training. Excellent idea!"
They got me set back up pretty easily and now I am happily (?) training for the 2011 Disney Marathon in early January, the timing of which is excellent since it's not too close to the February Bar Exam.
There are a few things I think I should clarify about me as a runner at this time.
I've been running for close to two years with some consistency. So it would be, perhaps, incorrect to say that "I am not a runner." What I am not is a very good runner. Knock on wood, I am not prone to injury--I stretch, I take rest days like a good little girl, I do other fitness things to keep my little joints nice and limber, and such. What I am is slow.
Slooooooow.
At least, I'm pretty sure I'm slow. I have a nifty Garmin 305 with a heart rate monitor, which I use. My current blazing top speed that I can both maintain for a full interval (I tend to run-walk when I do distances) is between a ten and eleven minute mile. I'm pretty sure that's a snails crawl. I know people who run slower than that. I also know people who WALK faster than that (or close enough to.) I can hit faster speeds. I've clocked myself being able to hold a eight minute mile pace for half a mile or so. But I can't safely maintain that; my heart goes thuddy-thud like a hummingbird's. Maybe I will be able to, some happy day far in the future. But, uh, not so much right now.
When I was a little girl my mother used to tease me gently about being a slowpoke. I was a slowpoke not because I was particularly low energy (anybody who's had the pleasure or misfortune of meeting me in person can't possibly believe I'm low energy.) It was because I liked to amble about staring raptly at things. I was slow because I liked to linger to look at fascinating street debris. Alas, this is not why I am a slow runner. I am a slow runner because my feet just don't carry me that fast.
I was not encouraged to run as a child. I was encouraged to be active (thanks, Mom and Dad!) but not to run, exactly. I biked. I roller-bladed. I skateboarded. I skateboarded down a big hill and knocked out half of a tooth when I was nine, in fact (they put it back together. Modern dentistry!). I wore a helmet, and it's a good thing, because I was a daredevil and frankly without a helmet and padding I'd probably have scrambled my brains and broken all my joints before I hit puberty. I've had some epic spills.
Then I got into martial arts. I am the world's most advanced beginner martial artist. I hold late intermediate colored belts in both major styles of Tae Kwon Do and in a large New England school of Kung Fu. "Get black belt" (which is really only an advanced intermediate degree, but never mind) is on the lifelong to do list; I never have because invariably either I move or my teacher does after two years, and it generally takes three to make it to black. I can still kick higher than my head. It helps that I am a freak and I have, in the words of one doctor, "the legs of someone who's five seven and the torso of someone who's five one"--buying pants is always an adventure. My freaky limberness in the kicking muscles is a good thing, since I'm not sure I could outrun an attacker, even if I was wearing running shoes and they were teetering after me on six inch stilettos that were two sizes too small.
So yes. Not much running, except what they made us do in gym. Since I was "made to" run a mile and I generally resent it when large, mustachioed men in obnoxious shorts with a whistle (a particularly memorable gym teacher) order me to run in circles for no discernible reason, I generally did this in the slowest amble I could get away with.
"Alicia, it took you half an hour to go a mile!" Mustache-with-the-whistle said to be in exasperation.
Me, blinking. "Is that slow?"
Him: "A one-legged seagull could hop it faster than that!"
He then began to whistle at me every time he caught me drifting off to the side of the track to stare at dandelions (some things don't change). This negative reinforcement did not help.
Eventually he gave up and let me go play field hockey and lacrosse with the other kids. I was decent at such things not because I am all that skilled, but because I have relatively little fear of getting whacked or knocked down thanks to a childhood spent falling off wheeled things at "woah that's a big hill!" speeds, and lots of healthy sports aggression not often encouraged in females who are not athletes. I'm sure when he saw me run down the budding high school freshman basketball star, finagle the floor hockey puck away from him, and run away, he probably rolled his eyes. That or wanted to strangle me. Possibly both.
I got into running in my late twenties because my friend Amber did. That's pretty much why. She seemed to enjoy it a lot. I was bored with the elliptical. I discovered much to my pleasure that I did like running. I am just not very fast.
This is part of what fascinates me about distance running. In distance running, how fast you go matters less than how far you go (or so I keep telling myself; obviously the actual, like, athlete people can run 26.2 miles at speeds twice as fast as my little ten to eleven minute mile shuffle, and even most serious amateurs go a LOT faster than me.) I am not fast. What I do have is endurance and that counts for a lot when you're talking about distances in excess of five or six miles. You learn endurance when during the course of a two hour class a crazy martial arts teacher makes you do drills five hundred kicks per leg with a resistance band holding you to the wall, and then immediately starts to chase you around the martial arts studio with a bokken (that would be a wooden practice sword used in kendo, and since that teacher didn't know kendo, I don't know what he was doing with it exactly besides chasing me.)
The first time I did a five mile run it was a revelation. I ran five miles! And it didn't even take all that long! And I felt good after! And my legs didn't even fall off!
And I like to finish what I start. Especially for a great cause (more on that soon). So here we go again.
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