Survivor Blog Questionnaire

To all Survivors...

I am seeking to catalogue via a series of queries on your life changing event. It will be a set of questions that will be posted to this blog. Outside of your first name, or preferred nickname, all personal information will be withheld. The point of the blog will be to document your life experience, aspirations, functions, dysfunctions, questions you may have, and help you may have to offer.

We are all related. Your words will help someone.

Thank you....

If you would like to participate in this event, please email me at the following:

joe.mazzenga@yahoo.com

Please put in the subject line: Survivor

Be well. Be strong. Be you.

JM

I can't stress enough...

Stress.

I call it the silent punisher. In the very least, it can be the ultimate agitation. The itch you can't scratch. The bill you can't pay. The grass you need to cut...again. And why doesn't the driver with the Massachusetts plate know that their blinker has been on for three miles?

Our ancestors knew stress. Neanderthals (some will state they are not part of the gene pool of modern human kind - sue me) had the stress of survival. Eat or be eaten. A broken bone sealed your fate. Hence, it was a miracle they lived to forty years of age.

Today? We live longer. Science and chemistry have seen to that. Instead of battling herds of wooly mammoth, we battle personal deadlines, inflation, money worries, wars amongst ourselves, social pressure, and diseases that may or may not be manufactured by the very environment we live in.

Same thing? Maybe. Where our ancestors had to fight for survival, more of their physical, instinctual and mental abilities were tested on the whole, daily.

Today, we are surviving on a different level. We match wits with styrofoam boxes instead of killing for our food. We sit all day in the name of being 'productive'. We don't walk miles to forage, rather, we jump on rolling treadmills to sweat for thirty minutes a day.

Still, there is stress. Like The Force, it surrounds us. Sometimes it obeys our commands. Mostly? Kills us slowly it will.

Like high blood pressure, it is silent. It can be seductive as well. Like a good cup of coffee, we grow addicted to heart pounding action. We feel we have purpose because "we're getting it done". To that end, we put deadlines on ourselves.

Is it worth it? Science tells us in many ways that stress is a great way to kill ourselves off.

Think of it if you take a car and max it out between each red light, eventually it will break. It's a fact not an opinion. The slower the pace of the car, chances are the more longevity.

As stated before, whenever I get cornered by stress (in certain areas of life it is inevitable), I repeat five things I am thankful for. Any five. It can be from the extreme to the extremely simple. Just do it. Repeat it. State it twenty times a day if you have to. And always remember to breathe.

It is all very mystic of me isn't it? Not really. It is clarity of thought and a restatement of what is important in life.

I can't stress it enough...

An Uphill Climb

This blog goes out to my Uncle Nicky and Eddie Paradiso.

Fifteen.

Today was the day. Another year had gone by. I felt the equivalent of tumbleweed passing by.

It was odd all around.

I just received news that Eddie, a friend I skated with for years, had passed away. Forty-nine years old. Pancreatic cancer discovered in April. Dead by July.

This was on top of the passing of my Uncle Nicky who fought for three years until he could fight no more.

Another friend’s dad was going in for a biopsy.

What the hell was going on?

I had to focus.

Fifteen.

I always walk into a roomful of stares in this office. Older people with walkers, wives holding up their husbands, and vice versa greet me in my running shorts and football tee.

I’m not here to be tested. I am here to break the rules.

They call it a stress test. You get on a treadmill and they jack it to College Hill scale and say, “go”.

It is my secret wish to never go to this place again. For now, I am here to show them, that is, show me, where my marker is. Today it is 15 minutes.

Eight years ago, because of well-documented treatments, I had emergency triple bypass surgery. Eight years of scars. Eight years of head shaking from therapists. Eight years to make a 5k my marathon.

It all comes down to 15 minutes on a treadmill. Every year I have extended my time a few seconds more. Last year it was 14:30. I could have gone longer but I was talked out of it and they pushed the big read, bozo button that stops the treadmill.

Not this year – 15.

I’ve had the same nurse for three years running. I like her. She talks a lot. I get the whole life story from the kids in the neighborhood to the fact that one of her workmates can’t even download a ringtone to her phone. She talks to me while the time passes on the treadmill.

“Joe? Joe Mazzenga?”

I am the only one in the room and someday I’m going to not answer just to see if they come over and check an ID or something.

It’s not the nurse. It’s not my nurse.

Her name is Faith. She’s a little thing standing about five foot nothing with silver starfish for earrings.

Truth, I can tell she might be new to the place.

Harder truth? She is quiet as a mouse.

The silence brings back all of the thoughts and questions. What if I don’t make my goal? Does that mean I am taking a step backwards?

The old technician from last year is waiting for the both of us. He’s never overly friendly. He just likes to take cold gel, a blunt instrument, and stab my ribs in an effort to impale me. No worries, I’ll show him too.

I am sore. Everything aches. I just need 15 minutes.

We go through all of the paces, wiring me up, asking me the same questions, and finally hooking up a battery belt in a last ditch imitation of the 6 Million Dollar Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc).

“Your BP is 106/60. Ready?”

I want to shout out, “No! Wait. Group hug!”

“Yup.” That’s all I got.

Stage 1 is a walk in the park. Okay, maybe with a breeze in your face and a slight uphill. Here is where my old nurse would start talking about dancing, her son in college, or her boyfriend that needed a job.

Faith just looks forward. “A little steeper. A little faster.”

I keep thinking she will sprout wings and grant me a wish. “What is Stage 2?”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“Sorry I thought you wanted it in a form of a question.”

Lo and behold. Things got faster and steeper. I think she did it on purpose.

To be quite honest, screw stage 1 through 3. I know I have these. Cut to the chase. Stage 4 and I am usually running uphill for real.

“Steeper and faster.”

Keep thinking and breathing. Since there is no conversation, all I have to do is breathe.

Fourteen minutes have passed. I can do this now. I know that for sure. I want to high-five someone.

Now I sense a presence. The old tech.

I look over my shoulder and he is watching intently, arms folded.

“Fifteen minutes,” Faith states. She is now smiling. “Want to go over?”

I had to ask. “Did you change the test?”

I wasn’t running. I was walking very fast. I was breathing but I wouldn’t call it all out gulping for air.

“Yes. I want to go fur-”

“No. Shut it down.”

What’s with the old man tech? Is there some sort of train coming through he had to catch? An old man tech convention where they were giving out prizes?

I was peeved.

“Shut it down.”

Faith hit the big red, bozo button and my 15 minutes-plus faded into a sagging ramp slowly puttering to an inchworm’s crawl.

I have to throw myself onto the bench where Vlad the Impaler hits me with a blunt instrument.

I wait for Faith to leave for a moment.

“I could have gone farther.”

“I know. If you go beyond 15, and something happens, she will be to blame.”

I think he just wanted to go to the convention.

Fifteen. The new goal conquered.

Dammit, I am having my cardiologist write me a note next time. Do I sound bitter?

Faith is back with water. It’s over. All of the tension that was built up over the days has faded now. It’s back to the real world. I want some sort of bad plastic trophy or maybe those lick on stickers to celebrate.

Eddie, I skated with you for years. I went to your Facebook page and saw you actually had an ID. I wanted to hit the ‘friend request’ but I knew that was now futile.

Uncle Nicky, you and your smile will always be with me and my family.

To Uncle Nick and Eddie – I may someday see you again, smile, and maybe even skate.

I dare say not for some time, though. I have a little Faith seeing to that.

Two Years and Counting

It’s always the wait.

It is hot today. I took my simple driving pleasure to the parking garage. It’s really cool to rev the engine throughout the echoing levels of the surrounding cement columns. Someday, I am going to go for it and smoke ‘em when no one is looking. Not today, though.

I jog down the stairs to the cluttered main street below. As part of my day job, I have an ID I keep forgetting about, attached to my hip. I’ve been asked once or twice for hospital directions because of it. I just might throw on a lab coat one day and run through the halls screaming, “It’s alive!”

Not today, though.

No matter how many times I’ve been to the same office, I always look up what floor it is on in the main hallway. As I wait for the elevator, I keep re-running the scene from Aliens when Ripley is waiting for the elevator before the harrowing beast gets her. Nice tension builder, but I don’t need any more anxiety as it is.

By now, a wall of impatient patients surrounds me. Everyone is a Ripley. I know the routine. The Pavlovian bell rings as the elevator hits the ground floor and I mouth the same words each time it does.

“Wait for it.”

No one does. Like an attacking force, they batter the people trying to get off the elevator like it is the last elevator of the day. I hop on last and remember to take off my ID. I can’t diagnose today. I’m off the clock.

There is the ceremonial ‘last guy’ who always dives onto the packed cabin. I keep scanning the last inspection notice. You never really know when that weight limit will truly be tested.

We are all partners for a few floors. Friends sucking in the same oxygen. Rescuers to those who try to get off on the wrong floor. Personal space monitors as the doublewide baby carriage squeezes in.

Fourth floor. I take a left. Wrong. It’s a right. Damn, I’ll never get that correct.

I walk past the disinterested “parking validation clerk”. I actually don’t know what she does outside of validating parking passes and looking disinterested.

It’s all deep breathing down the long hall until I meet Mrs. Claus as the main desk. She is a jolly woman, glasses, portly, and always ready with my chart. I had overheard her talking to a patient about the anniversary of her husband’s death. It had been twenty years. I’ve always felt sorry for her after that but she keeps smiling. I suspect she still smiles even when the disinterested validating ticket person gives her grief about walk “all the way down the hall”.

The patient types are wide and varied. I’ve seen the shock and awe. I’ve seen the beginning of their journey. The muttering as to what’s next, losing weight, even tears. I’ve seen old and young. I just try to keep to myself.

I pick up a holiday magazine – 2005. I make a mental note that every recipe in there would take me three hours to prepare. Someone had a three-page article on how lard is making a comeback. That was 2005. I wonder how that worked out for him.

I am not usually a patient person. Today, though they can take their time.

A mother daughter combination sits next to me. I am lost in a chocolate ganache recipe when I am overcome with perfume laced with the pungent scent of Marlboros Unfiltered. The daughter is in her late forties, I’d guess and she keeps cutting off her mother’s sentences. I see the signs of the children becoming the parents. She slugs a diet coke to suppress her wet hacking cough.

I put down the grand year of 2005 and go through some hockey saves. I have a habit of compulsively going over situations where I am playing goal and making saves. It’s a habit. I’ve wakened myself in the middle of the night, kicking out a leg many times.

“Joe, come on in.”

Damn, I’m the only Joe in the room.

The examining rooms are cookie cutter. I wave to Cindy as I walk by. She’s one of my angels. She brings order to the chaos by making appointments and always smiling with her Patriots smocks and funny colored scrubs. I wish my day job had a scrubs-only policy.

“Have a seat and he’ll be right with you.”

What she really means is – I will hear heavy footfalls, a rustle of paper then a large man with the face of a ten year old, will shoulder his way into the room. Literally.

I use sanitizer on my hands for the third time in the office. Why the hell not?

My doctor is a surgeon. Not just a surgeon but also the surgeon. Head of Surgery. The dichotomy between his scalpel and his blunt approach was noted from the beginning. He doesn’t hold back, mince words, sing or dance. I like to think I am his pet project since I am one of ten cases in the world for what they found.

He shoulders his way in.

“Hey…Two years. It’s been two years,” he says. He doesn’t even have my chart.

“Yup.”

“The images were perfect.”

I don’t celebrate. I don’t lift The Cup, kiss the girl, drink the milk or pour the champagne. This is my moment. It could have been a moment that would turn back time. It didn’t. It cements my present. It paves the way for my future.

“Good.” That’s about all I got today.

“You are different,” he says. “We will do this in six months again. But everything is negotiable. You are still high risk.”

That’s why I don’t celebrate. I know the picture. I don’t think about it – much. For the moment, I am normal. It is his duty to give me the crude truth. He just doesn’t know that I am going to outlast him into his retirement.

I shake his hand. He has plumber’s hands, which is odd to me given the delicate cutting he does daily. No matter. He could use a jackhammer for all I care.

I stop by Cindy and give her a wink. It’s my “See you in 6” wink.

The whole office nods and I give the final Pope Wave.

Someone someday might cause me to pause and think about my future. Some blip may show on my personal radar.

I will do what I do and that will continue to be whatever it takes. Simple stuff really.

Someone may tell me I have an issue someday.

Not today, though.

What's in a year?

Spring is here.

As I plow through the miles on my run, my lungs are infused with that yellow gunk known as pollen. With the apocalyptic rain we have been having, everything is green. Flowers paint the ends of driveways and the neatly landscaped lawns are dotted with hues of purple, yellow, red and white.

The temperature is fluctuating and I feel like this is as close as I'll ever get to understanding what menopausal women go through. I miss my snow demons as my lungs fill with hot, sticky air. I wonder what the weather is in San Francisco.

I glance at my stopwatch for some reason. It's never good news as I round my half mile markers. Just shave off thirty more seconds. Is that too much to ask?

Funny, when I am in the gym, punishing myself (Okay, you got me - I'm Catholic), thoughts of the disease never seem to filter into my mind. Call it the pounding music - I guess it's hard to get all philosophical over Linkin Park's Bleed It Out. Call it the fact just being stone cold comatose at 5 am.

Running is somehow different. All five senses flare at once. Memories fight each other in a cacophony of color and hazed over thoughts. Worry digs in to battle the eventual endorphin high.

This time of year one is surrounded by beauty, change, growth and reminders that life is good.

Then you get a letter. It is from your chief guy in the big ugly building Time for testing. It is time to be sure you are clean.

Another damn hill. Why can't I make it look as effortless as those people I pass in my car? Their legs all springy and you just know they are passing mile marker ten somewhere. My god, sweat, will you? And put your freaking' shirt on - no one wants to see ripped abs. Geeze.

I feel good. I am good. I am strong now. Yet, I will gulp down a liquid with the consistency of wet concrete, and the odd sickeningly sweet, baby aspirin and KO pectate that coats your tongue for days, all for the one scan that will verify that I am clean.

Can I be sure? Never. Survivors have the widest and farthest rear view mirrors. Every ache is analyzed. Every lump is prodded. Be sure to eat your veggies and wear sunblock before you turn on your lights in the bathroom. No one outside of the circle understands but I am thankful they don't sometimes. Just sometimes.

Mix in work, writing, a nuclear seven year old and you have a hodgepodge of emotions roiling like Narragansett during hurricane season only not nearly as picturesque.

The hill is over and the neighbors beagle is yelping his head off. He's been zapped by the invisible torture fence so he's not going anywhere and I am pretty sure Stephen King didn't have a beagle in mind when he wrote Cujo. Truth be told, I am so tired he could latch onto my leg for all I care. I'd just bite him back.

I'm still waiting for the endorphins to kick in. You'd think I'd be addicted by now but more than likely I'd run into a telephone pole or get hit be a Beamer if I was an endo addict. Nope. All I have is that sucking sound coming from my mouth in an impossible attempt to breathe normally.

I look down. A good rule in running is that you shouldn't see your feet. If you do, you are striding too far. Not an issue with me. I was passed by a Santa once during a Jingle 5K. Not fair and not funny.

Can I be sure? Never. I know I am clean. It cracks me up to just say it. I often sound like a prisoner out on parole only I get shaken down by people in lab coats.

Questions. Questions. I am clean. I just have to prove it soon. Again.

Bare Foot Bare Soul

We don’t want nothin’ from you

So you’d might as well take it back – Pint Shot Riot

I have recently switched over to ‘barefoot running’. It’s not truly running barefoot. You wear a special shoe what, basically, has a zero drop heel or something called ‘flats’. It shifts your body into what it was designed to do.

After a couple of years of ITB, knee and foot issues, I had to try it. It’s an odd feeling. Sort of like you are running in your slippers. For years my quadriceps took a beating and I didn’t know why. Now my calves are aching and for once, I think that is correct.

Still, with my new running, old memories remain. I have a nasty habit of projecting improbably or truly dour futures as I puff down the pavement. My shrink stated once that it was an attempt to control the future, which, of course, we can’t.

I agree with him. I can’t control the future, but I constantly try to deal with something that has never happened.

It extends to all parts of my family. I see loved ones pass on and I think of how I will react. I think this is something stemming from discovering your mortality too early in life. Being a child who ascertains that they can die isn’t a normal circumstance. It's a crime against all children that is played out all too often.

Gone are the immortal teen years. Gone is bulletproof quality of your twenties. You tend to look behind ever bush and under every rock. You literally wait for the signal. I have been through more funerals in my mind than I care to count. I even have the music selected for the ceremonies and what I would wear.

I went with more hills today. Damn hills. I hate them. I keep resetting my body to be in the proper running form. Fatigue makes that harder. Head up. Arms at forty-five degrees then forty-five degrees more and pulled slightly behind you.

Everything comes and goes no matter where you hide


I won't let you take everything that I deserve

Timing is the melody behind every word 


So get in where you fit in 


Time to put in on the line – Pop Evil

I always wait for those endorphins to give me that runner’s high I read about. I know they work. Maybe that is what keeps me from total depression. Like prayers to fend off some unholy monster, I start my Thankful List. I go over it constantly until my music fills my head. I even play a little air bass or guitar. Anything as a distraction. The clouds stretch for miles as they rest in a pillow of blue background. It really is a beautiful place to live, this little planet.

I am on a downhill now. I crack myself up as a G35 coupe races up past me. I am flying downhill and I give it an extra kick in case the person in the car is watching. Yes I do this a lot. Image is everything. In my head it needs to be.

I am strong. I am healthy. I will continue to be so.

I round the bend. Another hill. Damn hill.

I’ll give you all……and have none

Just to have you hear by me – Billy Idol

No pain in the knees. None in my feet. My calves protest but no big deal. I am thirsty and dehydrated. That was stupid. A sidebar showing of my impatience. If you want to do this, you do it right.

The tendrils recede back into my mind. The funerals are put to sleep for now. It is going to be sunny today. Deep breathing commences.

I’ll have another chance to run tomorrow.

That's a future I can control.

Beautiful Day

Step back, gonna come at you fast

I'm drivin' out of control, I'm gettin' ready to crash

My heart rate takes a while to get to where a normal man should be for running any distance. I’ve said it before – I am hot wired and governed.

It happens almost instantaneously. Memories and what I call thought-flashes collide. They don’t unfold. They barrage. Demons can invade a sunny day after all.

This weekend I was part of a Korean reunion in Massachusetts. My son played with his friends and the thoughts smacked me upside the head. If I wasn’t a Survivor, he wouldn’t have come to me. The most important part of my universe and I would have never met him.

Eleven mic’d soldiers on a one-way trip

Cuz we’re hardcore

Mechanized

Infantry

A cardinal zips in front of me - My first sign of spring and my favorite bird. I can feel the blisters on my toes pulsing now. They never heal so why bother anymore. I think there are cars flying by but I am too lost in the music and the tide of brain waves.

What if?

Something about breathing hard and fatigue always bring on dark thoughts.

I go over my list of five things to be thankful for. I go over them again. I pick five more and I go over them twice too.

The iliotibial band is now complaining. Lousy running shoes but I am working on that. Even worse running form but I’m working on that too.

For now, I know where I am distance-wise from the finish line and I want to stop.

Lately, it seems everyone is dealing with the illness. You can’t outrun the news. You just nod and take it one step at time. Hour to hour. You deal with what you know and not speculation.

Step by step. It really is a beautiful day but all I hear is music and my hard breathing.

I am angry with my body for not being better. It just means I’ll have to work harder. In my haze, I can barely make out my poor time on my stopwatch. I quickly remind myself that having any time at all is a blessing.

What if?

What about the people that are just starting their journey? You wish you could hand out a map that states, YOU ARE HERE. Then show them the exits.

So give me reason

To prove me wrong

To wash this memory clean

I’m done. I stop for a brief look at my watch and against everything my body was telling me, I start running again. I crossed the finish line but it wasn’t enough. I went a little farther and stopped in front of my house. I clicked my watch one final time. Lousy but it gives me something to work on.

All of the What Ifs fade. I should cool down. I should stretch. I don’t feel like it.

I disconnect from headphones. I keep taking deep breaths.

It is a beautiful day after all…