My arms slapped the water as I arrived at the far wall of the pool. I paused my stroke, coasted lazily for a moment. Then, I touched the edge, turned around and kicked off back the way I came.
I liked this part, where I shot through the water, well below the surface. I did nothing more than kick, gradually rising to the surface. It reminded me of how characters in comic books fly — nearly effortlessly and without all the flapping required for the flight of birds.
I liked the illusion of being weightless, if only for a few seconds. Of course, that was soon over, and I was back to slinging my arms and flopping my feet back and forth to just keep moving forward.
The laps stacked up until I had just over half a mile. Then, I crawled out of the pool and rinsed off the chlorine in the shower. I quickly dressed and made my way to the parking lot.
The swim felt pretty good, but a nap sounded nice. Instead, I went back to work. Later in the day, I was talking about my weekend and the dental work, which had kicked it off.
Talking about the ongoing process to get a dental implant had become something like an obsession with me. I was both horrified and fascinated by the whole thing. First, the loose tooth had been removed and then a surgeon had taken a drill and jammed it into my mouth. A power tool had burrowed through the bone of my skull to help set the ground for where a tooth would eventually go.
It was as awful as it sounded, and while I was recounting my morbid fascination with this relatively routine procedure, my friend moved and winced. I asked if she was alright.
“Still recovering,†she said.
I nodded but misunderstood.
I told her my attendance at the gym has been a little uneven and that my running has been off and on.
“And then I overdo it,†I said. “I’m sore for days.â€
“No,†she told me. “I’m sick. I have been sick for a while. I have leukemia.â€
She’d been in the hospital. I hadn’t known and hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t been around. Suddenly, everything I’d been talking about seemed very petty and pointless.
“Are you OK?†I asked, though clearly, she’d just said that she was not.
She sighed and told me it was an adjustment. The treatments weren’t as bad as she expected, but that didn’t make them great, either.
“I’m managing,†she said and smiled.
The diagnosis had been a surprise, but probably nobody expects to get cancer.
It hadn’t turned up at her last checkup, but she said she’d been feeling run down for a while. She chalked it up to stress, her age and the regular condition of being diabetic.
She’d written off the lack of energy to just her blood sugar or maybe some bug that was going around. It was toward the end of winter and the beginning of spring. There were always bugs going around, but then she passed out.
Somebody found her and called an ambulance. When she woke up, she was in a hospital bed. Doctors ran tests and came up with leukemia.
That had been an ordeal. She told me the doctor drilled into her hip bone to get a sample of her bone marrow. This is called a bone marrow biopsy. It’s standard procedure to evaluate the stage of cancer or to see how well treatment works.
The Cleveland Clinic’s website says the procedure usually takes about half an hour. It doesn’t typically require a hospital stay and the affected area is numbed before anyone brings out the power tools.
Of course, I’d just had a drill applied to my head. The doctor had numbed my affected area, too. The drugs began to wear off about 20 minutes after they sent me on my way.
“It was awful,†my friend said, shaking her head.
She didn’t look forward to doing that again. She hoped she wouldn’t, but she told me she was getting around OK. She felt like she was getting better.
“I’m able to work,†she told me. “I have to work, actually. I’m not in a place where I can quit or retire. I need the income and the insurance.â€
The situation wasn’t ideal. Days could be long, but she felt kind of lucky. There were worse cancers to get.
Leukemia is sometimes called “the good cancer,†which nobody with cancer wants to hear. There is no good cancer, but leukemia is more manageable than some others. The cancer is in the bone marrow and the blood.
This was why my friend felt so bad. She had fewer red blood cells to power her body. She was anemic.
There is no cure for the disease, but it can be pushed into remission. Treatment often involves medication to help crowd out the bad cells in the blood, while doctors try to build up the normal ones.
Caught with enough time, people with leukemia can live fairly normal lives. It sort of just becomes a chronic condition, like diabetes, that has to be monitored and managed but isn’t a death sentence.
“I just never saw this one coming,†she told me. “It was really, one day, I feel like I’m OK and the next day, I’ve got cancer.â€
It was a sobering conversation — and unexpected.
At the close of the month, getting to 5 miles in the pool turned out to be more trouble than expected. Between spring thunderstorms, federal holidays and my occasionally ridiculous schedule, I just didn’t get to the pool as often as I’d hoped.
Still, I expect to complete the 5 miles before June 1.
Those are just going to be some extra-long swim sessions. Naps may be required, along with some snacks.
Fundraising for the American Cancer Society, also, didn’t generate as much money as it could have. That was on me, too.
It just felt awkward.
Throughout the entire month, every time I thought about going on social media to ask for support, I was confronted with a new catastrophe. A lot of people were asking for help. There were injured dogs and cats, people trying to keep their heads above water after lost jobs, lost apartments and even relationships that had gone south.
There was always someone who needed help with medical bills.
Each ask seemed more personal and more earnest than my latest stunt.
It felt a little shameful to ask. So, I put it off and don’t know whether I’ll have the full $250 by the time this column goes to print.
I don’t think it matters that much. It still feels like I learned a lot.
