Who Am I?

Who am I?

It's a question we've all asked at one time or another.

Speaking from a survivor's perspective, I can honestly say I am defined by what has happened to me. In a way, we all are.

But the question remains - Who am I?

After a few decades of thought, I have come to realize that I am something of a traveling sentient. Explain? Sure.

I feel it is my role to help someone heal, however that may be defined. I gravitate towards those who just want a listener.

Oh yeah, I am a good listener. It got me nothing by way of a well documented non-prom date but that's another story for another time.

As the disease and its fallout twisted and turned my internal vision of who I was physically, I discovered something deep within that may not have burgeoned without the ordeal to bring it forth.

Empathy. It makes me a good writer. It makes me a good listener. It's the ability to share what another person is going through.

I don't say this with ease. I can't really explain the situation properly. It just happens.

Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by people who 'told me' things. They told me how to run my life. They told me what medicines I will take. They even told me what I may be incapable of doing.

All were well intentioned. But the people that truly stood out in my life are those who simply listened.

So, today, I listen. Many times I can't do a thing about someone's situation. But I've found that people just want to be heard. It's a catharsis we all need. At least I do.

Perhaps I should leave that to the shrinks. The galaxy knows that I've seen enough of them myself. But I am compelled. It is like being magnetized, drawn to a crying spirit.

Yes, there is a downside. What trained counselors are taught very early on is the art of not getting involved. To be a passive ear, gently guiding some soul to the other side then once your job is complete, letting that person go to stand on their own.

Downside? You have to let go. Many souls have crossed my path and I have had to learn that when you extend a hand, it is simply to get that person to stand. Once they learn to walk, you have to take your hand back and wave goodbye.

Internally, this hurts. I've had to wrestle with my own inner demons and regale myself with tales of why letting go is a good thing for all.

It doesn't make it easier but if I am obliged to carry on this skill, then I'd better learn what the pros already know.

Still, the lesson is here for all - we just want to be heard.

Have you heard anyone today?



**** The Patient  ***

The patient explained that he felt overcome by a terrible sadness, that he didn't want to get up in the morning. He could not see any point in his existence.

"With your condition I would normally prescribe a course of my patent powders," said the doctor, "but it so happens that I have recently come across something which will alleviate your condition much more quickly.

"You must," he continued, "go to the Covent Garden theatre to see the pantomime, Harlequin and Mother Goose. This is the happiest thing I have ever seen performed on a stage, tears of laugher ran down my face. Why, sir, I can almost guarantee that watching Grimaldi the clown will cure you completely!"

"Ah, but doctor," said the man sadly, "I am Grimaldi the clown."

The Ripple Effect

Funny what medications can do to a body. Even funnier, and in most cases, lesser known is what harsh treatments do to the mind.

I was one of the few kids who wouldn't have passed the NFL drug policy. One of the drugs I was on was called Prednisone - a steroid used for everything from bad allergies to cancer treatments.

Side effects are numerous. I was a solid 6 year old that ballooned into a 130 lb 8 year old. By the time I hit 7th grade, I was 150 and climbing.

By comparison today, my 9 year old son is 75 lbs.

I don't like to sit and list blame criteria. It's a common issue with cancer survivors - Who is to blame? What causes this? Why me?

Still, it was widely known that the Pred was something that caused, at times, much weight gain. I honestly don't even know why I was on the stuff. You don't get much say at that age.

What is left behind is an overweight kid who still hides the scars from being the butt of the cruelest jokes. The circle was complete - made fun of, go home eat more, gain more weight, be made fun of more.

Let's not get all crybaby about it. It was a long time ago and we all know kids can be cruel. It's a fact of life and part of the emotional maturation process.

I'm also not going to lie. The ripple effects can be enormous.

To this day, I still can't go clothes shopping. I have no issue with certain sizes and all but the images of a fat kid trying on 'husky jeans' always come rushing in and I am 33/34 waist today.

In fact, let's be honest. Many cancer patients can be spotted a mile away. Bald heads. No eyebrows. Weakened walk. Who knows what else but usually the general public has some inkling something is going down.

As a kid? No one really knew. And if they did, the rumors would abound. One kid, the purgatory of my life, would often come up in my face and say wonderful things like, "Oh come on. Everyone knows you have leukemia."

Sigh, no jackass, I don't. At least that was my thought process back to him.

But why bother explaining. And what good would it do in the first place? You simply turned into the kid who couldn't take gym class or the fat kid with the wonky body parts who left early on certain school days.

I am unsure as to what the worst crime against a survivor can be - pity or simply ignoring them.

It's a fine balance. I say treat them as you would anyone else but slip in a "how are you doin?" every now and then. You may be surprised by the answer.

As children, the survivor scope widens. Kids don't have the life experience to cope at times. Who knew anything about Post Traumatic whatever? Who thought a child would be an insomniac at 14? Who knew or cared about the impacts to self image, aptitude or social trauma?

It was shock and awe. I hope it has changed, but I suspect when sniper fire does not work, it reverts to shock and awe.

It is a necessary evil. It is a genie with 3 wishes but with a heavy price to pay.

You can make your way back. I know this much. I just wish I had a guide out of the hole, decades ago.

This one is for those who don't think they can make it emotionally.

We can all be something great. In fact, I am pretty sure we all are.

Countdown....

I always get jittery in the office.

The oncological surgeon has a spot in Cancer Central. Four corners of a major space all filled with scientists, surgeons, oncologists, nurses and that one gal who validates parking.

I am not being braggadocios. I am surrounded by the elderly, the infirm and those who are struggling with their disease. I try not to stare because I understand and yet I don't want to know. The thoughts always race through my mind - who won't be here next time? I don't look like I should be here.

But no one ever sees the scars.

A new elderly nurse calls out my name. She actually pronounces it correctly. I believe in signs(ish) and this was a positive one.

Same old routine. I've learned where they put my chart on the side of the door so when the nurse closes it, I can listen for the rustle of papers. That will mean my doc will be right in shortly thereafter.

I read and re-read the same Melanoma poster that seems to be in every room. I'm pretty sure I can spot it now that I've seen the cases 450 times. I pass on reading the hand sanitizer. There were days I'd waste qtips in the garbage pail. Tell me you never pretended having an olympic javelin toss in an office!

Then the rustle. I hear him. Oh I know he's there.

He's the chief of oncology surgery. I got the best. I documented that a while ago. He's six feet tall and about 250 lbs. A right jolly ole elf sans the jolly part.

As the door opens, he fills the entire door frame. Usually, he is a whirlwind of personality and he thrusts the door open to announce my results even before the door closes.

Today, of course, is different. His round face is always beet red. Gotta watch that blood pressure, Doc.

"How are you feeling?"

"Who? Me?" Stupid question I know but this is unusual. "I am fine."

It's the truth. I am fine. I feel fine. I feel good. I kept telling myself this for the past two weeks. I'm not the droid you are looking for.....move along.

"Are you losing weight? Trouble sleeping? Body aches?"

"Well......yeah? I just want to lose 2 more lbs, I haven't slept since fourteen and you see how you feel when your 75 lb nine year old says 'Carry me, Dad'."

I made him chuckle. That makes me chuckle. I have bedside manner down to a tee. Just that silly doctor thing and I'd be in the club.

"Your scans were normal." Finally he says it. Fongoo, what took so long? It's been at least five minutes. He does what he always does after that - bring it all back down to Earth.

"Given your unusual tumor (read: we have no idea what the hell it was), I am always going to be extra cautious. One more year and we will scan once a year. How does that sound?"

I don't know? Sort of like Dana Scully saying, "I really just want to stay and watch bad TV with you."

I'm easy for him. In. Out. Collect copay.

I already have my appointment for next January scheduled. That's how we roll.

Tomorrow morning, run. Tomorrow night, shrink. Friday morning, weights.

All pretty normal. All pretty boring.

And that's just how I like it.....

Just a little more...

Today I lifted more.

I know. It's not big news. It's not a record. In fact, I am pretty sure someone walked into the gym shortly thereafter and did more.

We all want to see progress. I was doing squats and felt good. I added more weight...then a little more.....then a little more.

It has been over 10 years since I had a triple bypass. Lots of people don't remember but it is still pretty clear. The other day I noticed the scars for the first time in a while.

It may be a good thing. I am taking it for granted.

The story has been told but to make it simple, radiation as a child caused a heart blockage requiring a triple bypass in 2003.

I could have used a fourth but they could not bypass a blockage on the back of my heart.

So to this day, I work to avoid the blockage. I still can do just about anything.

I've been cleared to run as far as I want. Pretty much do what I want.

There are certain problematic circumstances of course.

When I run hard that whole oxygen transfer doesn't work at optimal. I am a human who is governed through meds so the heart rate won't go too high. A precaution but a valid one.

A 5k is a marathon. So be it.

I have flashed back to the day of diagnosis this year for some reason. I remember not watching the video they tried to show me.

I remember my brother telling me, "You know they crack you open right?"

I remember my other brother asking, "Can I have your Star Trek collection?"

I shake my head now. The scar and, what I think, gnarled bone in my chest has healed. When a barbell bounces off of  me now, I still think I hear a 'click'.

All of this has been documented. All is pretty much known to others. Some don't realize which is fine by me.

I work to strengthen what I have. I can't go as fast as I'd like but that's okay. I can go.

Today it was particularly hot in the gym. Sweat poured off as I walked past the main desk to the muggy outdoors.

I always stop just outside to breathe and savor another moment of 'doing something'. The sun was hidden but the gray sky was calming.

Nothing great happened today. No records were broken. No human kind history was made.

But then again. It's been over 10 years so my history has been made. Selfish as it sounds, that means something.

It seems that every survivor needs to strive a little more....a little harder. Whether you are chasing someone to the finish line or chasing a nine year old across the yard. As long as we keep chasing and moving.

I am always reminded at how lucky I am. Even when Life's stresses hit hardest - always attempt to hit back.

Millions have not made it this far.

For those who haven't survived - This one is for you...

Dr. Oz and the 1 1/2 day adventure...

Okay you've heard me expound many times on the virtues of diet and exercise. It's a lifetime/lifestyle change for many people, Survivors or not.

To that end, I am always interested in other points of view, other options, heavy on the yadda yadda.

We could be talking new ways to exercise, see Insanity and Crossfit, or new ways of eating.

One of the tried and true proven ways of total nutrition is obvious - eat your veggies.

Here is where it gets a tad muddled. In my learning, what I see, hear, read and experienced with my own habits can be broken down into the following mistakes made with people adjusting to life after Twinkies:

• Eating 5 - 9 fruits and vegetables a day
• What the hell is a serving anyway?
• Thinking one vegetable suffices for all
• 10 lbs of mashed potatoes a week isn't the answer
• Subsequently, 10 glasses of apple juice a day isn't either
• Neither does potato chips...
• Don't like the taste
• You've trained yourself not to
• Possible culprits are the addicting forms of processed foods
• The chemicals that make meat hit the pleasure center of the brain

So I ventured out to the land of Oz. That immortal, Oprah-made, doctor we all love to sit and admire for his words of wisdom that sing to use in our LaZboy chairs.

During one of his shows, a particular cleansing diet, called, of course, the Three Day Cleanse, was illustrated as a great way to get your body sync'd. Get you on the right track. Reset you. Get it?

Now I'm an avid juicer and all that. How hard could this be? Just get the allotted ingredients, prep, then smoothie yourself to heaven.

Day 1...

You start with what Ozzy calls the breakfast shake. It has all of your ceremonial 'stuff' in it. Everything from raspberries, kale, bananas etc etc. You can even go all Vegas and add a tablespoon of almond butter - crazy talk!

Oh and don't even bother with coffee....nope. Done. Your caffeine days, organic or not, are done, my friend.

Instead, you will insert an IV of green tea. Add some lemon and you surfing with the alien.

Trust me.....you are full....for a time. It's not like this is the ambrosia from the gods but it tastes pretty
darn good. You get huge greens, reds and whatevers. Plenty of melatonin from the raspberries and no coffee should make for better sleep.

Hurdle number 1...No midmorning snack. I eat every 2-3 hours and sucking down tea just wasn't cutting it. Lunch came early.

At 11(ish) I decided to go for the lunch time shake. This was made up of many cruciferous vegetables. Celery, cucumbers, green apple, and the list goes on and on. It wasn't just green it was ANGRY green.

I'll admit it - I was intimidated. This green monster was tough to stare down. I gave it my all and to my surprise, it wasn't half bad. Again......not hungry. I was full. Walk away Joe.....walk away.

More tea in the afternoon. My bladder and kidneys wondered if I was aboard the Titanic. (Insert eye roll....you know who you are).

The all mighty and powerful Oz deemed I get a snack which is just another rendition of your favorite shake. Well that would be some type of strawberry Awful Awful back in the day.

I made a miscalculation here. I lost track of time and was imbibing in my tea-fest that I was encroaching on dinner before I had my mid afternoon snack.

No way in hell I was gunning down two shakes at once.

Hurdle number 2 - I was on edge. I didn't chew a damn thing all day. Seriously? Artisan soap? With a ribbon on it and everything? Who gets this stuff and why did they make it childproof when you just want to get it out of the bejeweled package to wash your friggin hands...

Dinner shake was different yet the same. A green was in there, kale, I believe, along with mango and a dash of coconut oil. Cayenne pepper made the shake exotic. I gunned that bad boy down.

I'll restate it. Not hungry. Not something else though either. I couldn't put my finger on it.


Day 2.  I woke up. Period. Now there are many out there who go off on the energizing effects of these drinks. How they woke up and learned to levitate. How this drink made them flush their viagra prescription. How they now see the reason for saving the egyptian asp from extinction.

Okay. I woke up. I went and performed my intervals.

I didn't feel bad. I wasn't even hungry per se. I gunned it down again. Breakfast shake. I was full but I was not satisfied.

With my keg of green tea in tow, I went to work with all the shakes a boy could use on a Tibetan harvest walk.

Again, no mid morning snack. I got to 11:15 and took down my Merlin's potion of green. Full. Sort of. I don't know.

Oh but I enjoyed the algae at snack time too which came only 2 hours later.  Now I am searching the floor for an Ezekiel crumb of sorts. If I found the mouse that had one, I'd probably bite its head off.

One and one half day. That was it. I called it quits.

I felt weak but then again, I reasoned it out.

This little adventure is surely aimed at those who are on the Twinkie Diet. It's for those who bow to the anti-nature Pop Tart.

You do a 5k in calories and not in kilometers, then this little ritual will seem like a march to the Himalayas to meet your maker. Oh the heavens have opened and the doves will fly.

But what if you are sort of already there? It made me wonder. This isn't so far out of the ordinary for me....outside of that chewing thing.

For me, there was no massive weight loss. There were no visions of diet deities. I felt okay with it. I felt full. I also felt something was missing.

I don't condone fads or quick fixes.  Does this cleanse work? I think it's good to try. If you aren't in the green or need to adjust your portion controller? This is a good start.

And we all need a good start, don't we?

Remember, you diet for life.

JM

What slows you down....makes you stronger

It happened in December 2012. I was running in the Jingle 5K and at mile 2, something was amiss. My right knee started to throb.

Of course, being an ass, I kept going.

As I approached the finish line, I am now in a full limp.

That was 5 months ago...

I have not been able to run with any distance since. This is more taxing mentally than it is physically. In fact it was downright stressful.

The miles have turned into fits of frustrations - Longer walking than running. Pain filled events that make me wonder what the hell am I doing out here.

This impacts my survivor mentality of 'keep moving'. I firmly believe that if I can keep my body as tuned as much as I possible, I can always give myself a fighting chance. I don't care if anyone else believes that or not. This is just me.

To that end, I can't move the way I want. I can't race my heart the way I feel I need to. I pour supplements and juices into me in hopes to compensate. The gym is the second home. Early hours of harsh activity...that's me. Yet, I am still held to human standards.

At a recent doctor appointment, for the ailing knee, it finally dawned on me. What I keep preaching to all, I had forgotten myself.

I am breathing.

When you remind yourself of this, you start to feel what it is like to believe again.

Breathe. Just try it.

A simple, reflexive act. Your body is the perfect machine. Fill it with the fuel it needs and do the simplest of tasks - breathe.

I left the doc's still limping but with a new resolve. Dammit, I am breathing. I know too many who aren't any longer.

The visions start to splay in front of me - fragments of fantasy.

A shrink once asked me to write down in a notebook what I wanted to be. Who was I? What was I?

I wrote down one word - Superhero.

I wanted to be that. The fragments of memory often collide with fantasy. As a child up to this day, I still feel the ripple effect.

I still fall asleep to thoughts of being superhuman. Someone who can't be touched. I've done it so much that I keep testing to see if I have super powers. Two attempts at lifting a car, and I realize I am still a puny human on this planet.

But mentally...well, that's the trick and that is where the true power lies.

We can't leap tall buildings, but we can build them.

We aren't bulletproof, but we can choose not to shoot at all.

We aren't hulking monsters whose rage conquers all. But we can bring peace to an entire world.

We are breathing. We are walking. We are living.

Maybe more like limping. Maybe we slow down at times. Maybe we simply cry until we can't cry any longer.

But the limp goes away. The aches just remind you that you are living and tears always dry.

And you simply breathe. An uncomplicated and mostly unconscious act.

Everyone's time is coming. Just choose later than sooner.

Me? I'm running tomorrow. 

The Panel

We all sat down at the front of the room. We were informally introduced in front of sixty to eighty people.

At first, I felt like we were the tribunal. All six of us, sitting there as the counsellor spoke over the crowd about long term survival.

Our ages range from, roughly, twenty years of age to yours truly.

I chuckled to myself as the mic started at the opposite end of the panel. I'd be last. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing. I don't like public speaking so I tried to crack myself up inside.

I wore a new shirt and "dress jeans". It's funny. When you sit in front of people on the subject of long term survival, you sort of want to look, what's the word? Healthy.

I get touchy about such things. The room was a mix of nurses earning their career continuing education points, and parents of children with cancer. Some of the "kids" attended with their rental units.

One girl in particular caught my eye. She was probably in her mid to late teens. Slight, with a RISD wardrobe and accompanying attitude. Her multi-colored hair was short and screamed punk rock. A big ass sticker was just below her shoulder that said "survivor".

She had the attitude. I am sure I romanticized it a bit but her look equaled what I felt inside. Rebellion. Fight. Attitude. I just wanted to scream at her - keep going, keep it up...don't give in.

The mic was getting closer. God, I had nothing to say and everyone was staring. The doctor before the panel had plastered various pictures of long term affects stemming from chemo and radiation. Yeah I was checking them all off in my head...one by one. It was a literal WTF moment.

I shook it off. I looked at my panel-mates and a wonder dawned on me.

We all look normal...

Okay, for those who know me and want to spew their almond milk at the equation Me=Normal, you know what I mean.

The mic got closer and closer. I looked over again and I confirmed what I've always said - we were still here. Normal, albeit affected, people talking about their lives in front of an audience. It was a surreal moment, both fact and fantasy swirling together.

We all sat in those large, badly colored lounge chairs with needles in our arms. We all smelled the rubbing alcohol till it made us nauseas. We all listened to the babble of doctors telling us they'll see us next time.

I took a peek at the audience and they were listening, hanging no less, on the words through the mic.

My innards shook. My legs were numb and I could have drunk a gallon of water because it was so dry in the room.

The mic was one person away. She is a stately woman, twenty-something, who is a criminal justice student. She didn't waver in her statements. She had an easy pentameter that spoke to me about that word again - healthy.

The mic was passed from that artist, to the counselor, to the nursing student, to the physician's assistant, to the law student...then to me.

We all were well. Sure, our bullets were used up early. Sure, some doctor somewhere will find a case to argue how healthy we really were...

We have scars. Mental ones as well.

I could argue that a generation was sitting before the audience.....ready to tell them that age old book title - We are still here.

I want the message to resound over the airwaves. We are still here.

Dammit.....hand me the mic.