Some 'REAL' updates…

December Greetings!

I do have some things to share for this update. I didn’t want to say anything before I knew what was up, and confided in a handful of my close, inner-circle friends as to what was going on in case their help was needed urgently. I love and thank those of you dear friends told as I obviously chose the right people in whom to confide – not a word of this got out, for which I am grateful. I know the people in my world I can trust and I will remember this always.

One of the things that came about as a result of the accident in Hawaii was some attention to my kidney. A cat-scan had shown something that initially I was told was a bruise. Amid all the other broken this’s and cracked that’s, a bruised kidney was just added to the list.

Once I got back to Atlanta I was fortunate to get my broken wrists looked after by Sports Ortho Dr Michael Behr, my friend from masters swimming. He was awesome! Thank you, Mike! Then, my good friend Dana connected me to her friend to monitor the rest of my injuries, neurosurgeon extraordinaire, Dan Moore. Over the course of several weeks, tests were taken to simply monitor my progress in healing. One of the things noted from an MRI was an ‘abnormality’ in my kidney. He listed several things it could be… a cyst, an ulcer, blood in the kidney … but it also could be a tumor.

Zoinks. Wasn’t expecting that one.

I am not one to rush to paranoid or even negative conclusions very easily. I am a fairly rational person… but, as anyone who has cancer in their family can probably relate to, I was ready to hear it was a tumor. Now – even a tumor didn’t mean malignant, but I was preparing myself to hear: Cancer. I wasn’t particularily upset, actually. That may sound absurd or easy to say after-the-fact, but I really was ok. Perhaps if I had children I would have felt differently, but as it’s just me in this little world, I really was surprisingly unaffected. I just wanted to know what was going on so I could launch my action plan. The following day a lovely bouquet of flowers arrived from Monica and Gordo. They had no idea what was going on other than the accident so the timing of this made me smile.

Dr. Moore wanted another opinion so he sent the film to his colleague, a radiologist. The radiologist agreed that something was abnormal, and both suggested further tests, which I did.

All of this took several weeks with communication, test scheduling and results discussed – and the bulk began going on right around the time of Ironman Florida (a month ago). This was a lot to have swirling in my head and with few people knowing …. well, it provided a lot of “soul” discussions with myself. I didn’t know what was about to go down potentially … and this is why I went to Ironman Florida this year as a spectator. The pain of an unhealed body and not racing what I had planned all year for didn’t phase me – if I was about to head into a world of biopsy’s and chemotherapy and who-knows-what, there were people I wanted to see before this happened. Somehow my perspective changed.

So – writing that I wanted to go to see some of those I loved had more meaning, to me, than most people realized. Pondering your own mortality has a way of prioritizing and focusing one’s true objectives. It was amazing to me how little I cared about people who had hurt me and how much I just wanted to be around people I loved, silently treasuring each moment with them.

I hope to carry this spirit with me going forward. I’m reminded of how wasteful time is when it’s spent on things or people who have little positive impact on your life.

For several weeks I walked around in a world of unknown. I bugged the crap out of my best friend Brian, an emergency room doctor in NYC. Poor guy was pulling down 100+hour weeks with no sleep but I would leave message after message on his phone asking if I should be feeling this or that, what was ok to do, etc. Finally he had lost his patience with me and barked, “Sharpie, I love you, but I have no f’ing idea. I haven’t seen any of the tests or x-rays. I am not going to give you a medical diagnosis or prescribe acceptable activity when I have no clue what’s going on. Trust the doctors who are seeing you and when you know something for sure, then I can help..” He was right (as usual), and he is an excellent doctor not to go playing fast-and-loose with a potentially serious medical situation.

It has been 6-weeks and all seems to be fine. No tumor and no cancer.. “yet”, as my cousin reminds. I am moving forward with physical rehab and getting back to moving strongly and am up to 45:00 of slow running, 2000 in the pool and indoor cycling rides. I thought about including some thoughts I had written in my private journal; what one thinks about (and cares about) when faced with a situation that could be totally fine or could be life-threatening… that really was a most bizarre paradox… but some of those things seem a bit too deep for a journal on an athletic site. I may change my mind. But in moving forward, I once again thank you for the tremendous support and loving words extended to me. At one point things were a bit serious and I appreciated so many of you, in ways you couldn’t begin to know.

Take care of your life, your body and who you are. Moments and time wasted on things that don’t matter are just that – wasted. Hold your head high, smile and rise above. The good stuff always shines when it matters…

Thanks for reading my journal.
C.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:37 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.