The Sporting Life, 2011 Edition

In Douglas Coupland's early 90s zeitgeist-fumbling novel Generation X, the narrator, describes having a "dreary workout regiment" inspired by a section of Andy Warhol's diary where the scrawny artist laments having never exercised. I remember reading this at the time (still have this first edition copy with the green cover) and focusing on the dreary part, not the benefits of exercising. Exercise? That's dreary! Pass.

Fast-forward almost 20 years. I moved to Baltimore from Chicago to live with my now-wife Lisa. Among the embarrassment of riches she's brought to my life was a reintroduction to exercise. I joined the local gym and started a mix of lifting, running, and biking. I could feel the difference, and it wasn't dreary at all if I had the right mix on my iPod. At the same time, my body was doing the weird stuff that turned out be the early symptoms of colorectal cancer (see the rest of this blog for all of the gory details).

2010 - the year of multiple abdominal surgeries, the ostomy bag, the lifting restrictions, etc - was pretty much a wash for exercise. Though I didn't explicitly declare it, 2011 became the year I got sporty.

In my home office, I have a massive metal file cabinet (thanks for selling to me, Sheryl!) with a bunch of running and biking event bib numbers from 2011. I'm not very good at keeping track of finishing times, although the events that had chips or time keepers are posted online and I could dig them up if I wanted. I don't really care beyond having a general sense of getting strong, better, faster. Here's a quick event breakdown and some observations:

• St. Patrick's Day Shamrock 5k - With Lisa and Becky. My first event. Downhill and flat with beer at the end. 
• Port To Fort 6k - Solo. Started and ended at Museum of Industry, where Lisa and I got married. I sweat a lot, but this was epic.
• Ride For The Feast 2011 (140 miles over two days) - With a slew of awesome friends. Ocean City to Baltimore charity ride for Moveable Feast. Raised over $1300 and had a ball. Doing it again this year. Donate here!
• Bike Jam (36 miles?) - With Becky. Around Baltimore City, which is a hilly SOB. Good ride for getting used to city riding.
• Larry's Ride (scheduled 63 miles, rode 59 miles(?)) - Solo. Uber-hilly horse country north of Baltimore. Way over my head. I ended on the side of the road puking from heat exhaustion. Lisa saved me.
• Seagull Century (100 miles) - Solo. Around the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Flat, but brutal windy for the last 36 miles. Learned the value of pelotons and saw the famous wild ponies of Assateague Island. Then my butt hurt.
• Run For Your Lives 5k - AKA the first ever, anywhere Zombie 5k. There's not enough room on the Internet to fully describe this experience. The idea: awesome. The execution: Babytown Folics. The sponsors oversold the event, causing traffic hell, and gouged the runners/spectators for money or cheaped out at every turn. Actual run was fun, wet, challenging. Results: I survived with one life flag, didn't not get turned into a zombie. Jim Vee saved me from hypothermia.
• Restoration Run 5k - With Lisa and Jules. Did this 8am the morning after a wedding reception and Jules had worked an overnight in the ER. Now convinced that running cures hangovers. Benefited Trout Unlimited. Sweet long-sleeved shirt with a trout on it.
• Celtic Solstice 5-Miler - With Lisa and Jules in celebration of Jules' birthday. Through Druid Hill Park. Great ending of the year.

Looking at this list now, I reminded of something Lisa told me her father said during the Ride For The Feast after finishing reasonably early (my in-laws volunteer at the rest stops, among one of the many awesome things about them): "I think Bob has something to prove to himself." He was right, of course, but I hadn't really realized it at the time.

Also, since this is a cancer blog, an update on that. All is well. Second cancerversary is early next month, and I have some CT scans and bloodwork. The monitoring moves from every four months to every six months after that.

How should we celebrate the 2nd cancerversary?

Cancerversary

February 3rd was the one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. It's the same day in 1959 that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper's plane crashed in Clear Lake, IA. My uncle Gord used to call me "The Big Bobber" when I was a kid, which could have also referred to my large head for which my mother bought special shirts with buttons to expand the head-hole.

Lisa and I had talked about things to do on that day. Celebrating felt odd, not that there weren't things to celebrate. I'd received the final set of results from the triptych of tests - CT scan, bloodwork, and colonoscopy - and everything is clear and good. I feel great and have started running (treadmill only - stupid weather), which I really, really enjoy. We've signed up for a 5K in March, then there's the Ride For The Feast in May, which will mark my first century ride (100 miles in one day).

My last post garnered two cancer anniversary suggestions: eat a bowl of bran and buy a 50-year subscription to my favorite magazine. As worthy (and delicious) as those are, I feel like doing something that's the exact opposite of what Lisa and I experienced that day (see the first handful of blog post for the blow-by-blow. Short-hand: OH FUCK, then a bunch of snow.)

Well, work and weather decided this for us. I had a trip to Chicago planned for work that week. The idea had been to fly back the evening of Wednesday, the 3rd, and maybe hit one of our local haunts for a much-deserved beverage. As the weather reports started hyping a killer storm approaching Chicago with the blunt force a 50-ton snow hammer, I extended my stay for another day. I usually don't do hotels in Chicago and instead crash on the couch of my condo or with friends, but this time, I'd booked a room at the Hotel Monaco on Wabash for Tuesday night and simply extended it for another day. For some reason - karma, payback for the crap experience I'd had at another Kimpton property in Atlanta the week before (long story short: previous guest drank and refilled the opaque minibar beers with water. Lame and yuck.), or fate - was upgraded to a suite:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69907266@N00/sets/72157625865971719/

So I rode out my cancerversary alone, trapped in a boutique hotel in downtown Chicago. I hit the local 7-11 for some beer and sat in a ginormous window seat the size of a twin bed and watched the thundersnow and lightning. Surreal. A year before, the two-fisted hit on Baltimore/DC was called Snowpocalypse. A lot of names were thrown around for what hit Chicago. Given the thundersnow's vaguely Biblical/Fortian vibe, last year's name is probably more apt for this storm. I'll never call it this, but my favorite Chicago storm name was Snowtorious B.I.G.

Later, I went out in it and went to the Bean - the mirrored sculpture called Cloud Gate in Millennium Park -  which looked even more alien and otherworldly beanish in the blizzard. I wasn't alone. Some poor soul in a yellow vest was there guarding it. I ducked into the passage the runs underneath it to catch a break from the snow. I wanted to take a picture, but I'd left my phone on the recharger in the room. So I took some pictures with my brain, then trudged back to the Monaco. Cold. Sad that my Lisa wasn't with me or waiting for me in that awesome window seat at the hotel.  But mostly fortunate. For everything.

Ambient Stress

I'd like to say that posting more blog entries is a resolution for 2011. This would be like writing a To Do list with "Write To Do list" as its first item waiting to be crossed off, thus giving you the warm, but false glow of completion. The truth has much more to do with shame. If the one of busiest people I know can start and maintain a blog, what the hell is my excuse? Sloth. Good old-fashioned biblical, non-three-toed sloth.

I've been married now for a bit over a month. We are slowing battling our way through the Thank You notes. There have been moments of hand cramps. People have been so generous to us that it's sometimes hard to adequately express how grateful Lisa and I are.

On the cancer front, the first anniversary of the diagnosis is approaching. A recent CT scan showed nothing out of the ordinary. I think I'm still technically under a 10 pound lifting restriction. The four month anniversary of my ignoring that is also approaching. I feel great, things in my nether regions are behaving somewhat differently than before all of this happened, but mostly fine.

Mostly.

The days leading by to our appointment with Steve-O to get the latest CT scan results came with ambient stress that slowly increased. Both of us: Bad, strange dreams. I had the aforementioned sloth times 10. The morning of the appointment - 8am, no less - Lisa and I were oddly silent and pensive. Once Steve-O told us everything was good, we almost automatically started joking around again as we read the report's goofy language:

• "Gallbladder is present." - Bob to Lisa: "Told you!"
• "The pancreas is unremarkable." - Lisa to Bob: "Told you!"
• "The appendix is visualized."- Lisa and Bob: "And that's different from 'present' how? Is there a rule about using the same adjective twice or something?"
• "The heart size is within normal limits." - Lisa to Bob: "Figures."

It seems painfully obvious in hindsight, but we hadn't tied any of above dread to the appointment and test results. Then again, I can be slow on the uptake. It took me years to realize those "colds" I was getting at the turn of every season were really seasonal allergies easily knocked out with Claritin.

A follow-up colonoscopy happens in a week or so, with the results dropping a few days later. We aren't expecting anything but a continued all-clear. Then a week later, the diagnosis anniversary. What do people do to celebrate/commemorate a day like that?

Our Cancer Half-Year

A few weeks or so ago, I proclaimed on Facebook that the cancer victory tour was over. The outpouring of support was amazing, but left me feeling a bit guilty. Nothing had actually happened on the health front, more of a mental shift from being someone who had cancer and beat it to being just a normal 41-year-old living in Baltimore, working in Chicago, and getting married in a few months. I never wanted to be defined by it.

The writer David Rakoff uses the term "cancer dilettante" to describe his attitude toward having Hodgkin's during his 20s. That sums it up nicely:

Cancer? Yeah, I dabbled for a half an year. It didn't take.

The jokey pose puts people at ease and signals All Clear without them having to ask, but for me it's also honest one. Most of the time.

At the same time I was diagnosed, our next-door neighbor also found out that she had cancer - a much more serious and wide-spread cancer. We used to chat about how our treatments were going, but it's recently slimmed down to the shorthand of "how are things, things are ok." She's wearing wigs and wraps now and will have maintenance doses of chemo/radiation for the rest of her life.

Another one. I recently spend several days in Bloomington-Normal, IL for work. I didn't have a rental car, so I took a cabs to and from the hotel to the client. Usually, it was the same cab and driver. It's that kind of town. My driver for several trips was a chatty lady in her 50s with no filter whatsoever. She told me about her ex-husband. She told me about Steak and Shake's 3-way chili she had, how tasty is was, and how gassy it made her that night. She told me she wished her ex was around so he would have to smell it under the covers of their bed. I laughed and mentioned that's called a Dutch Oven, but she wasn't paying attention. I hoped against hope that I'd get another driver next time.

On the second trip with her, she pointed to a clinic where she'd dropped off someone for some medical treatment. The cabbie then mentioned that she'd recently had a ileostomy bag. I leaned forward. "Really? So did I."

I suppose that given the number of things she talked about that we'd hit some common ground at some point, but having an ileostomy bag? Neither of us had ever talked to someone who'd had one before. She had had untreated diverticulitis for years. Her takedown surgery was scarcely a month early. She lied to her doctor, telling him she was a dispatcher so go back to work driving and earning tips. By the end of the ride, we were best buddies.

"You still reach for it even though it's not there?"

"Yes! At night . Did you have a one-piece or two-piece?"

"One piece. I had a two-piece fail on me."

"Me too! Then I had a blockage. I was back in the hospital for a week."

"Really?!? I was so paranoid about that."

Even in the realm of having an ileostomy bag, I got off lucky.

One more. This week was the three-month CT scan and post-surgery clinic check-in. All is well, by the way, but spending time at a Hopkins waiting room is hard reminder of my cancer kiddie-pool status. One of the appointments was with Steve-O, who looking at a computer screen commented it was the 6-month anniversary of my first surgery. Lisa and I looked at each other. I'm not sure if it was relief or disbelief, but we were smiling.

Lyndon Johnson Bared His Scars

I have some interesting scar action happening on my stomach these days. Even with the hair growing back, they are rather prominent. A few days ago, Lisa and I went to a local health club's pool to meet some friends. It's the place where Michael Phelps trained most of his life and still teaches classes. I'm still not allowed to submerge the takedown incision underwater, so I can't swim for a few more weeks. I didn't have a swimsuit on, but I could have take my shirt off and laid on the fake sandy beach area. As I watched the swimmers doing their thing, I remembered my scars.

Other than the medical folks and Lisa, the scars have yet to be seen. make their public debut. A few minutes ago, I held my scanner up to my stomach and tried to scan them. My advice is to never try something like that, ever. Unless you're Andy Warhol and your scanner is named Richard Avedon.

I did a Facebook post a few weeks ago about scars trumping tattoos, which started a brief discussion about people's reactions to seeing pronounced scarification. Several people talked about embracing them as a badge of honor: "Have you been in the shit? Yes, I have." And then it lead naturally to mentioning the infamous Scar Competition scene in "Jaws" between Quint and Hooper. (Note: The video clip cuts before Quint's USS Indianapolis monologue, which I think is the best thing Spielberg has ever written.)

One of my half-jokey responses to scars long before the surgery was that "Scars Build Characters" delivered in the same dismissive, Little League coach tone as "walk it off" and "rub some dirt on it." Or to quote the Team Atomic bracelet on my left wrist: "Harden The Fuck Up." According to Google, "Scars Build Character" is also the name of a play and appears in some modern country song lyrics. I have no idea how this came into my personal lexicon, but there it is, more relevant than ever.


In a few weeks, Lisa and I will be spending five or so days at a house on the beach in southern New Jersey with a group of old friends. It's been a hard year. Some of us have lost parents and I'm not the only one that as battled cancer. Barring a double-dog dare at a bar after a few drinks, the scars won't make their public debut until then. I'm not sure if I'm self-conscious about this or not. When I had the ostomy bag, I kept reading about people going the beach and swimming with them. Yes, mine was temporary, but I would have never, ever considered anything remotely close to this level of exposure and it makes my concerns about people's reactions to the purplish lines, squiggles, and dots written across my stomach seem quaint and prudish. 

One more scar note. I don't know what it means, but keep having a two-line poem about scars going through my head. It appears on the album sleeve of a mid-70s Neil Young album:

Lyndon Johnson bared his scars
American Stars N Bars

The Shit Is Alright

I arrived home from the hospital that Saturday with nine staples in my stomach and a PT drain - the hand grenade - sticking out of a hole below the surgery incision. I found myself instinctively feeling for the ostomy bag for the first few days, especially at night. The grenade was on my right side this time, which made taking a shower complicated. The left-side drain worked out well with our downstairs shower. I could pin it to the cloth shower curtain and do my business. With the right-side drain, I'd need have my back to the showerhead, sort of like facing the rear wall instead of the doors in an elevator.

The solution? I hung one of Frank's old leashes from the upstairs curtain rack. Mondo ghetto and hilarious kinky-looking, but functional. Our friend Joey from Austin was staying with us for a few days, bunking with the  Abe Lincoln lamp in my office. We'd forgotten to tell him the deal with the leash before he showered. Joey wisely decided not to touch it or speculate too much about its purpose. This launched half an hour of bondage jokes and potential penalties for "getting the leash wet."

I know I keep using different metaphors to describe the inner-workings of my body and how it's dealing with the cancer, the ostomy, and recovery. Let me introduce another. For the first week, my bowels behaved like an old motorcycle dragged out of a barn and kick-started for the first time in years. Lots of sputtering, strange noises, and not to be trusted on trips further than a few blocks. I was prepared for this in theory. In theory I'm prepared for a lot of things. I'll spare you the details, save one. Lisa and I have a couple of dry erase calendars on the fridge to keep track of appointments, deadlines, and obligations. In the middle of that first week I started doing a daily bathroom visit tally. One 24 hour period: 15 hash marks and I stopped counting.

This didn't stop me from leaving the house or starting work the following Tuesday (yes, it's from home, but taxing none the less), but made for some miserable days. By Thursday, I managed to get most of a night's sleep uninterrupted and Friday felt strangely normal. Had things really stabilized? Other than attempting Greek Tacos at Golden West on the Avenue, I'd being blanding my diet up - pasta, rice, bread. Now, decided to open it up. No real issues.

The following Tuesday was my first post-surgery clinic appointment. I wanted three things out this: 1. removal of the PT drain. 2. removal of the staples. 3. Info about the lifting restriction, which was at an annoying 10 pounds. The paperwork we received when I got released said two weeks at 10 pounds, which would be awesome and knowing my surgeon, was probably wildly inaccurate.


When Lisa and I walked out the clinic appointment, it was the first time in four and a half months that I didn't have foreign object sticking out of or attached to my body. Staples removed and drain pulled. Lifting restriction at 10 pounds for another month, then 20 pounds for a month or so after that.

To say things are stable on the bowel front is probably a 90% accurate statement. Weird shit shit still happens, but I'm comfortable enough to going on longish hikes and to start traveling again for work in the coming week. All in all, not too bad. I have an overwhelming sense of being incredibly fortunate in how this all played out. They found something amiss on Feb 2. Today is August 1. Six months later and I'm cancer-free and within spitting distance to being back to normal.

On Farting, Pooping, and Leaving

The idea of clear liquids is a bit of a misnomer. Beef and chicken broth aren't exactly clear, but after a day or so of ice chips, I'm not going to question this. The hospital's liquid meals tend to be brown - iced tea, coffee without cream, apple juice, and broth. I inhaled everything except the Jell-O, which wasn't brown, but 80s Day-Glo green and yellow and too sweet for human consumption.

1. Ice/water until I start belching
2. Clear liquids until I start farting
3. Solid foods
4. In the hospital until I start pooping

After a day of clear liquids, I still hadn't farted. Every doctor and nurse who stopped by to poke, prod, and probe me asked about it in some way or another. "Have you passed gas yet?" was a favorite, as was the soft-eyed look of sympathy when I said no. I knew that I was right on recovery schedule, but the cumulative effect of having everyone ask had an impact. Ok! I'll get my taxes done! It's only January 7th, but I'll do it already!


But wanting to fart and being physically able to fart are two very different things after a takedown from having an ostomy bag. The bowels have been asleep and the muscles gone unused. As Lisa snoozed on the foldout chair/bed, I started playing with the hospital bed's controls, looking for way to get gravity to help out. I raised my feet and lowered my head as much as possible and waited. I thought I felt some movement, but nothing happened. Then I tried the opposite. Same results. Nothing.

The next morning (Friday) I had the IV taken out, which made getting up and around much easier. Gone was the magic button of pain meds, replaced by oxycontin pills. Lisa had gone back to the house to take care of the cats and go into work for a few hours. Another round of brown food arrived and was dispatched. As I got up to do the morning walkabout on my hospital floor, it happened. I cut the cheese, passed wind, dealt it and smelt it, dropped ass, built a Dutch oven, pulled my own finger, did the one cheek sneak, let out a squeaker, passed gas, did the gas face with my butt, broke wind, and passed gas.

1. Ice/water until I start belching
2. Clear liquids until I start farting
3. Solid foods
4. In the hospital until I start pooping

It was too late to get my lunch menu changed. My friend Jen, the person I'd met Lisa through, was in town for a wedding and stopped by with a book: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. The bookmark with it said: "Here's a book about poop. For a champion pooper." It is a great book about poop, cholera, and how bad ideas survive in the face of better evidence. While we were talking, the nurse brought me crackers. Saltines and graham crackers.

1. Ice/water until I start belching
2. Clear liquids until I start farting
3. Solid foods
4. In the hospital until I start pooping

A greatly anticipated dinner arrived and disappointed. Some chicken something with green beans and more brown liquid. I picked at it while Lisa ran down the hospital food court and got me a 6-inch Subway Turkey sandwich with chips and a cookie. I'm not a fan of Subway at all, but anything as a first solid meal in four days was going to taste pretty good. Maybe even Taco Bell.

With real food in the system, there's only two options for it to go: north or south. North is bad and potentially very painful. South is good, but no fun and entirely necessary. My system broke south Friday evening with a vengeance. Repeatedly. Lisa and I were prepared for this with Baby Wipes, one of the truly great innovations of the 20th century.

1. Ice/water until I start belching
2. Clear liquids until I start farting
3. Solid foods
4. In the hospital until I start pooping

I woke up Saturday morning with every intention of being told I could go home. However, a nurse came in and told me that my potassium was low. Before I knew it, I was being hooked back up to an IV line with a bag of potassium juice. I knew I'd lost some vital body fluids, but was I so lacking in potassium that I really needed a drip? Can't I just have a banana and call it good? Within a minute or two, my hand started aching. It felt as if my bones were shrinking. And then on fire. I quickly called the nurse, who brought me a bag of ice for my hand and reset the IV to dilute the mixture. Lisa and I worried that this would keep me from being released.

A doctor came in and frowned when he saw the IV. I explained about the potassium and shook his head. "You want that removed? Do you wanna go home?"

Um, yes.

The doctor chalked up the IV to an overzealous RN. He turned off the IV and arranged for some potassium pills. A little bit after noon, I was signing the release forms. Like with the first surgery, I decided against having a wheelchair and walked out with Lisa handling my backpack. Three and a half days and I was out.