Take Another Step

  Take another step...I wish I came up with those words myself. They were my mantra training all winter for Boston in what were often unbearable conditions...and for myself and my life schedule, often unbearable.  It's funny how 5:45am seemed early this morning for me, when for 16 weeks I would be running by 4:30am on Fridays. Take another step....

  I am a big believer in ongoing growth and self improvement...as a mother/spouse/friend, an athlete, and a professional...good is not enough for me. I don't have to be perfect, hell, I make mistakes all the time, but my daily goal is to be a better person than I was yesterday.  I may be a little too honest, too gritty for some people's liking....but I am as loyal as they come....and always open, open to learn, open to improve...open to taking another step.

  I've used social media to find those same people...striving to be better, better than they were yesterday. The people I gravitate most to are the ones that have lived through darkness and understand what that's like....To me, they exude light in a way the average cooky cutter, picket fence, picture of perfection does not. They've lived...they've had to take another step.

  I found one of these people on social media....a runner...an ultra marathoner...who beat cancer...and his words and shares, and motivation...always made me think, reflect, learn...and force me to keep moving.

  Never in a million years would I have thought I would truly understand where he was coming from. I've had plenty of dark, imperfect times myself...growing up with an alcoholic parent as a child/tween, having a mother fighting breast cancer in college....disordered eating habits when things got really dark....as a grown woman, financial times when the world crashed in 2008. I know what it is like to be in the dark, I appreciate the light...

  I started following Jim Willet and The Optimist Revolution for so many reasons...mostly because I am a runner...and running is just plain hard and when you are out there and you hit that dark mile, you need light to keep you from quitting...you need to take another step.

  And then, I was diagnosed with late stage Melamona...cancer...just like Jim, who has taken another step...many, many steps since his diagnosis...including many crazy beyond what I can wrap my head around 100+mile runs...but I get it.

  When you are stuck in this shitty world of cancer, all you want to do is take another step...literally and figuratively. Jim says it best in a verbal piece of art...that I've played over and over again...ironically, I found it right after my diagnosis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjM2S6MGPU

  Where I am today...I've taken several steps forward. On September 11, 2015, I sat in Boston traffic and sobbed because for the first time since my initial diagnosis, I had just left an optimistic appointment with my oncologist. The spot on the lung they've been watching is gone. My bloodwork is "perfect" as he put it. Nothing to indicate any sign of disease...of cancer. Granted, I'll be back in 6 weeks....but for now, one more step in the "training" log....

  Running wise, I've just started to feel my speed start to pick up...I might even be ready to charge up the Garmin and start holding myself accountable. I'm nowhere near where I was before my diagnosis...but I've taken another step...many, many steps in miles to get there.

  I've traveled where I hope people I love never have to go...in fact, I wouldn't wish this on anyone...but with it, I am learning every single day...that no matter what happens with this disease...no matter where I end up in my running...I am doing just fine...as long as I continue to take another step...

  "You shoot me down, But I won't fall"...

Partly Cloudy

  I've abruptly been yanked out of normal living today. You see, I went the entire month of August without one doctor's appointment...not one blood draw, cat scan, skin check...I didn't come near Mass General Hospital or any of their cancer care affiliates. I wasn't weighed, poked, prodded...I ran, worked, spent time with family, ate too much Mexican and drank one too many summer treats.  For one month, I almost forgot (minus the left over battle field scars and lymphedema)...but superficially, I lived a near normal life for one month.

  I have never considered myself a complete optimist or pessimist....more so, I have always coveted myself as a realist. Some may take this as being a pessimist....it is quite different actually than a pessimist...I see things as they are. I look for facts and logic. In certain aspects of my life, I do strive to do what might be seen as the impossible like in sport...and I do dream, but I am aware. I have to be, it's just how I'm built.

  Today I had the "routine" cat scan of my chest...in another three months (pending this scan is clean), I will have a full pet scan...and 3 months from then, another brain mri...and so on and so on. This is my actual normal living. This is a part of the plan when you've been diagnosed with cancer.  Just in case we forgot...the reminder that we have no guarantee...the black cloud that chases the sun....

  

  In July, I was still having a hard time walking...I worried that I may never run again. It was the hardest month of recovery. And it still has been an uphill battle...but I keep plodding along. I am out there, and it's not pretty...but I've finally gotten to the point that I am consistently running about 20 miles a week (far cry from what I was doing in the spring)...but I will take it. I'm starting to feel better on my runs. I have even recently had a few good ones where I could feel I am finally getting stronger and making progress to getting myself back into shape.

No clouds stealing this sunshine....

  I wish I could say the same when it comes to cancer. This is probably the part of the disease that I hate most. I know too many people that have been taken by cancer...their families are now left to bear the burden of that cloud alone. It makes me so angry when I start to count the number of families I know who are currently living this "normal" life of cancer treatments, surgeries, scans...this battle that is just another part of their life. It takes my breath away when I think of my own family and how they have seen me at my utmost weakest...not the vision of normal they were accustomed to seeing, and when they see I am off back to Boston for another scan & appointment instead of a marathon....the clouds come rushing in....

But, it is what it is. I have to continue on this new "normal living", trying to appreciate each day, each moment.  I am okay that they are not always mostly sunny which leads me to wonder...Perhaps being an optimist is not about seeing things half full or mostly sunny...maybe it is about appreciating a partly cloudy day...because it is still a day, one more day in my life where I take another step forward....perhaps I am the optimist after all....