There’s a season in your cancer journey that nobody warns you about, mostly because nobody has a good name for it. Not treatment. Not recovery, exactly — recovery implies an endpoint, a discharge summary. And it’s not quite survivorship, since that also implies you’ve been handed back to ‘normal’ life. This is something else. Let’s call it the ‘after.’
READ MORETag: Running with cancer
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10k training: Week 2
I’ve always liked starting the week with a rest day. It gives me time to reflect on the past week, review the workouts for the week ahead, and negotiate with myself about whether my schedule or mindset might make completing my workouts a challenge.
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What was I thinking?
I’ve been home for a week now, after an intense seven days of conferencing in Halifax, and then a few more to spend time with my family. With a decent week of rest and sleep under my belt, I woke up this morning smiling as the thought, What was I thinking? ran through my brain about working at this level less than eight weeks post-surgery. I mean, really?
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And exhale …
There is nothing quite like the anxiety of sitting in your oncologist’s waiting room, knowing that on the other side of the door are the results that will shape, or reshape, your future. That was my Tuesday. To my surprise, we landed in an unexpected place. I walked in untethered, not knowing, and I walked out NED. My pathology was Stage I. Exhale, literally …
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Buying forward: Not running won’t stop me from buying new shoes
Four weeks out from a robotic right hemicolectomy, I have more patience than energy — and apparently, more optimism than sense. It’s Ottawa race weekend, and while I know why I won’t be toeing the line this year, it doesn’t stop me from dreaming about what’s next.
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Can running be bad for you?
I remember seeing the articles start to circulate last year. It was in the middle of race season, and I was following some of my favorite road runners’ transitions to the trails and ultra distances. The correlation was between extreme distances and the incidence of colorectal cancer. Without reading closely, it had a logic: distance running is hard on your gut, creating an inflamed environment that gives rise to pre-cancerous lesions.
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Sitting with what comes next
I wish that title were tongue-in-cheek, but I tweaked my right knee last week, and for the last few days I’ve been resting my legs while the swelling goes down. It’s feeling better, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to run again by the weekend, but in the meantime, I’m feeling proud of myself for not running through an injury, however mild it might be.
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Everything comes in pairs
I really wanted to be boring for a while. But oh well.
A few weeks ago, while waiting on pathology, I was musing about my colonoscopy results being ‘the other cancer shoe.’ Well, shoes do come in pairs, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when my doctor confirmed my colon lesion was malignant. To be precise: “Invasive poorly differentiated colorectal adenocarcinoma, BRAF Positive, dMMR, MSI-high.”
Two primaries. One body. Zero chill from my cells, apparently.
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Is this the other shoe?
When I was first diagnosed, I was going through a detailed mammogram diagnostic process as well. Mine was the 1 in 10 pulled for recall, and the tomosynthesis showed cysts, prompting a recommendation for an additional ultrasound. In the end, it was all summarized as ‘bilateral simple and complex cysts, benign.’ A relief, but in the moment, it definitely felt like waiting for the other cancer shoe to drop. I’m learning that a CLS diagnosis is a little bit like déjà vu.
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