This is Real

A chime sounded on the platform before a prerecorded man's voice began: Step behind the yellow line. The approaching train does not stop at this station.

The train approached fast. I thought about jumping onto the tracks. I thought about Linda. The train sped through the station and I realized there would be no second chance. Once on the tracks there would be no where to go. If in that split second between jumping and being hit there would be no escape if I changed my mind. I wondered whether Linda had changed her mind. I wondered whether she was here right now.

I have wanted to be dead so many times in my life. But I have never been able to pull the trigger. My appetite for what is on the other side of the door is insatiable. In my darkest of darkest hours, balled in a heap with tears flooding down my face I have always had one thing. Hope.

Today I unraveled my compression stocking slowly up my arm, beginning at the wrist, stretching and smoothing out any wrinkles. Brightly colored in pinks and blues. The person sitting across from me said it was pretty. To me just another of the many constant reminders that I had cancer.

In conversation she told me this isn't real. We only experience things as real because we have five senses.

But this is real. I'm real. My life is real.

I appreciate different points of view. I appreciate that this is her point of view. But there is no way I can go through life with the belief that this is just a game of senses.

Someone else looks over at my compression stocking engulfing my right arm. I catch her glance. She smiles and nods in the direction of my sleeve chasing her nod with her eyes. I smile back then cover my sleeve with my jacket. I know that she is just one of many today. I know that if I leave my sleeve on - like I should do - I will be pulled aside and searched when I reach the U.S.

I am a passionate person which I've often considered more of a liability than a strength. I don't just cry. I get into it. Tears stream down my face. Big. Fat. Tears. I curly into a ball and rock back and forth on the floor until I cry myself to sleep or cry every tear I have. And when I'm happy, I'm all in! I exude that joy from deep inside every cell of my body. I sometimes think that people half way around the world can feel my pain and my joy.

When I watched that train blow through the station just a week ago my thoughts shifted to Linda and then to everyone else I've known. Some who've died by their own choice. Some who have not. Some whose lives were stolen by disease. Their words come back to me.

I've made up stories of why Linda stepped in front of that train just before Thanksgiving three years ago. I admired her strength, but hated her choice.

If life wasn't real and I truly believed it wasn't real I would jump. I would get rid of the hurt and the hate. But life is real. And with that hurt and the hate, I would lose the joy and the happiness. I would miss the fun. I would miss my dogs licking my face clean after a peanut butter sandwich. And spring. The fresh smell of the forest after an August rain. I would miss the sea and the rivers polishing the rocks below. I believe life is real. And with that life - my life - I have hope.

Life Happened

This past year has been unbelievably challenging for me. I feel amazingly displaced swirling in a spiraling vortex to an end I have no control over. It is as though everything that has happened in my life up until this very moment finally weighed me down like an anvil on my shoulders. Life happened to me.

Every word that has ever been spoken. The things that have happened in my life. The events of the past. All of the big fights. The enormousness of it all. It is suffocating.

Each day it has been harder and harder to get up. I struggle to get through the day once I get up. I can't wait to go to sleep, but can't sleep once I get there. My brain will not shut down or power off.

Today I stood in front of a doctor who told me I was fat. Thank you. I have a mirror at home, put my clothes on every day and take a shower naked. I know what I look like. Chalk it up to cancer -- that big fat fucking "c" word that stole my life, buried my soul and then served it all back to me in a broken body. Fat body.

In my life I've heard so many times -- rise above this. What is interesting about the people that say that is those are the people who have never had anything go wrong in their lives. Those are the people from Norman Rockwell paintings with perfect teeth. Well my teeth are not perfect. I've been through the wringer. I've lived at least ten lives in the past 46 years and the start of this year ain't anything to write home about.

It's not a money thing. I have money in the bank. A fair amount of it actually. I'm debt free, yet surrounded by emptiness and the back end of a Toyota 4Runner. I've been here before, but this time is definitely different. The emptiness is dark without color. And hollow.

A Different America

In the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in the candidates were Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and billionaire Ross Perot. I was 21. Clinton won. My friends had a bumper sticker that read: Lick Bush in 92. (Laugh--even if you were a Bush supporter, it's a funny bumper sticker!)

Perhaps it was that election that set up the Clintons to run against billionaires. Ross Perot is actually very similar to Donald Trump. He never held a public office, but ran several successful corporations. You could never understand what Perot was saying. And both he and Trump are a bit funny looking. Looking back over this year's "race to the white house" I can't help but think Trump learned something from Perot. He had to get the Republican nominee to have a chance in hell. And the star of that "Primary" circus was Trump. On the democratic side Hillary was groomed by the National Democratic Party to be the next president since being defeated by Obama eight years ago. Poor Bernie never had a chance.

As the election came to a close Trump was declared the victor. He beat Hillary by electoral votes. And Hillary? She joins Andrew Jackson (Democrat, 1824), Samuel Tilden (Democrat, 1976), Grover Cleveland (Democrat, 1888), and Al Gore (Democrat, 2000) as a candidate to win the popular vote, yet not the electoral vote.

Whether you voted for Trump or Clinton, the ballots have closed and Trump has won. I can offer one condolence for those supporting Clinton -- marijuana, whether recreational or medical, passed in all states where it was a ballot measure except Arizona. This makes the west's "blue" states (pun intended) a recreational marijuana mecca. And don't worry Arizona, California rejected this measure the first time around also!

What happens next? For some, fasten your seat belts, for others run for the border--to escape or go home, your choice before the wall goes up. Republicans rule the House, the Senate and the Oval Office.

Trump is the first businessman to take the seat. He is not a politician. Let's see what he can do. And in four years, if America is not "great again" we can say "You're Fired!"

Seven Year Cancer-versary

It's been seven years today since I heard those magical words "you've got cancer." Last week someone asked me what the significance of 7 years was. I told her it's like turning 19. It's older than 18, but still three years away from 21.

Graduating from high school is like the first cancer-versary, whew, I made it. Turning 18 is similar to the 5 yr cancer-versary. You're still getting "window" envelops with medical bills, but you're strong enough to "vote" for the medical care you wish to receive in the future. Then you wait five more years to reach the holy grail of cancer-versaries -- 10 years. Ten years is definitely the equivalent of 21. You can drink! Before health care reform after 10 years you were stamped "CURED" by the insurance companies and cancer was no longer considered a pre-existing condition.

Yesterday I woke up to Truckee blanketed in 5 inches of snow. I donned my snow boots and walked the dogs to the river. It reminded me of years ago when it used to snow every April in Truckee. It reminded me of backcountry skiing "right into the lake" before feasting on a shared sandwich and cookie in front of the fire at Tahoe House with a friend that is no longer alive. It reminded me to enjoy this very moment watching the water flow away from the mountains towards Pyramid Lake where once I took the Squaw Valley company car -- a sporty Subaru -- to see how fast it would go. I drove 120 mph down a two-lane road and to this day that remains the fastest I've ever driven.

A lot of life has happened between April 24, 2009 and today. In my memoir, Saving Second Base, I wrote:

I stood there staring at my own body but did not see me. I hated cancer. I hated the way I looked. I hated the way I felt. Mostly I hated that my life was not my own.

The truth is I wasn’t sure I wanted to fight cancer. Cancer was my way out of this world. If I died from cancer that wouldn’t be my fault. 

But yesterday I thought of something else I used to have written on pieces of paper all around me. It was not from cancer, but before cancer. I lived by the words and those words have taken me all over the world. I read the saying somewhere that I do not remember and I cannot remember the words exactly, but it went something like this: 

I don't think about what I would have missed if I had never left, I think about what I never would have known if I had stayed. 

In revising these words yesterday, I wrote: 

I don't think about what I would have missed if I did not fight cancer, I think of all the experiences I've had because I did. 

Here is a photographic journey of the past seven years. 

Celebration after finishing treatment, Dec 2009

Alaska Cruise for Bubbie's 80th b-day June 2010

Empire Mine with my nephew, Jack, Spring 2011

Florida Breast Cancer Marathon, Valentin'e Day, 2011

Teaching my niece, Haley, to ride a bike Spring 2012

2nd Denali attempt, 17,000-ft, 2012

Surfing, Costa Rica with Mom, January 2013

Ropes Course, Costa Rica January 2013

Oregon, Spring 2014

Theo's 2nd 14er, CO 2014

Making cookies for Santa, December 2015

Teaching Jack & Haley to Ski, 2016

 

Great Ski Race (checked off the to-do list), March 2016

Tulips in Nevada City with Julie April 2016

Statistics Don't Lie

...but they definitely don't tell the truth. On April 24, 2010 I shifted from cancer patient to survivor. I earned my "Year One" badge. And with that was set back into the world to be free. 

My treatment was far from over. I continued to have surgery after surgery. In 2011 I began testing for uterine cancer, First an ultrasound then D and C and finally in September 2011 a complete hysterectomy and oophorectomy. Then my life changed. For the first time weight piled on -- 40+ pounds of it. And I cannot get it off. I exercise, diet, exercise and diet and then I eat a cherry pie. 

The level of frustration grows every single day. 

In my recent 6-year "cancer-vesary" I told my oncologist that if this how it is, I don't want to live forever. She said I needed a psychiatrist. Since 2011 I've been screaming at the top of my lungs without a sound being heard. I don't need to see a psychiatrist. I just want everyone to know the truth. 

Cancer survivorship comes at a cost. Oncologists call it a New Normal. Others call it "at least you're alive". Well I have news for those that haven't walked a day in my shoes ... this is not alive.

Take a look at the girl in the pink dress. Would you go out with her? When you look at her, what do you think? 

Now take a look at the girl in the blue tank top. What do you think of her? When she tells you she's a climber, what do you think? Yeah, really? 

It's OK. People judge. I judge. When I look at the girl in the pink dress I think she can do anything. And when I look at the girl in the blue tank top I think she should go on a diet. 

The pink dress girl was running in the Hood to Coast relay. The blue tank top girl was hiking the traverse from Peak 1 to Peak 10. The girl in the pink dress swam in the ocean after the team crossed the finish line. The girl in the blue tank top didn't get to Peak 4. What is the judgement now? I really think the girl in the blue tank top needs to go on a diet.  

How about when diets really don't work, then what? One of the doctors I saw said to me it's a matter of calories in, calories out. So I stopped eating. I have yogurt and granola for breakfast a tangerine for lunch, maybe a bowl of soup. Sometimes an egg. I'm done eating for the day. Only for a nutritionist to tell me I don't eat enough and that's why I'm fat. Anorexics don't eat at all. They are not fat. 

Another oncologist said I should accept the new me - the fat me. A primary care doc said I was fat because I don't sleep. A registered dietitian put me on "magic soup". It didn't taste great and I gained 2 lbs. She said I didn't do it right.

Recently I went to an endocrinologist. A specialist in hormones and metabolism. He asked me why I cared whether I lost the weight. I told him because I can't do the things I used to do. People judge me. He said so it was for vanity. 

It has nothing to do with vanity. About a year and a half ago I was working on a filming project. I was told that a consultant reviewed the footage and requested that I do a video to explain why I was fat. I actually had an interviewee ask me why I was fat and I answered her. The girl in the pink dress would have told her to fuck off!

Somewhere in this thing called survivorship I lost. In less than 60 days I will receive my "Seven Year" badge. Every day that goes by I keep going. I cling to something called hope. Somewhere inside of me is that girl in the pink dress. 

Statistics don't lie, but they are far from the truth. 

Side note: The endocrinologist is the first doctor I've seen since 2011 that actually believes there is something metabolically out of whack since my ovaries were removed. Under his care I will undergo testing over the next month to find replacement therapy. I asked him if I should have hope and he said yes.

"My first friend in America"

We live in a world of instant: Instagram, Instant Message, Twitter, Text, Tumblr, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest.

And in an instant I was reminded how simple it used to be when I received a text with this attached photo. A whole lot of life has been lived since these photos were taken.

Yet, I just want to find a way to crawl back into the skin of the girl smiling in the photo booth hanging out with her best friend.

Loss? Or just giving up?

There's loss of innocence like trying desperately to be 21 when I was only 15. Loss of the ability to do something I used to be able to do like back walkovers into the splits. There's real loss, like when my boyfriend fell 240 feet in a fatal climbing accident.

Then there's two days after his death when I was climbing with Nettle, wailing and pounding my fists into the rock barely able to mutter words when Nettle said to me "time has a wonderful way of healing and I know you don't think this now, but you will love again."

Years later cancer stole from me. I've lost my insides - every part that makes me female from my breasts to my cervix. I write "droid" on forms where I should check either male or female.

When I stand at the bottom of a climb I look up. Many times I've already given up in my head. It's a long climb. The ice is brittle. What if I don't have the gear I need. I'm done before a single ice ax is swung.

Loss is real, it makes life go round. My brother desperately tried to have kids for more than a decade. My niece was born almost exactly 1 year after my grandmother died, She's my grandmother in a beautiful new way. My brother never gave up. And after our other grandmother died, his son was born.

What will happen next when I'm standing at the bottom of a climb - figuratively or for real? How will I write the ending to the story? Will I blame loss as I give up?

I bought myself a greeting card a week before I started chemotherapy. Today it still hangs on my fridge and some days it is the reason I put one font in front of the other. I changed "you" to "me". On the outside it reads: Believe. On the inside it reads: Because I Believe in Me.

I'm not even close to the top of the mountain, but I show up and I climb.