Saturday, June 28

Training Day: 5

Days Until Race: 127

Ran 11 miles in Central Park this morning, which marks the start of a new phase. From now until November 2^nd, all weekend runs range in the double digits. (Woot!) New Fred’s Team friends keep promising that before long I’ll be up to 20, and jogging 20 miles without crying will be possible—but that still sounds absurd. My ankles hurt. The blister between my big and second toes hurts, and who knew you could even grow a blister in that tender crevice? (For days I poked at it with tweezers, thinking I had a splinter, succeeding only in enraging it before the run.) My arms ache, from pumping twice up Cat Hill and once to get over the knoll in Harlem. My throat is raw, from choking repeatedly on battalions of floating pollen that today basically ruined the life of anyone with allergies or asthma. But something new happened this time. Somehow, in the last mile, when my legs burned most, I sprinted instead of slowing. And actually passed other joggers. 

My mom spent Wednesday night in the hospital. Early Thursday morning she was scheduled to start round three of the clinical drug trial that’s helped keep her in remission. The second round hadn’t gone well. Two hours in, she had a severe allergic reaction to one of the drugs being dripped through her veins. First she got itchy, then dizzy, but she waited to push the distress button because all her life she’s been (justly) branded a hypochondriac. Except, like the wolf boy knows, every so often danger is real. My mother called for help at the last second. When she woke up, her room was teeming with doctors. I imagine their voices, which sound like when a heart rate flat lines in the movies. That panic. My mom. They gave her a shot to pull her out of anaphylactic shock. Then unhooked all the IVs and kept her under vigilant surveillance, until they could be sure. I got a text at work from my sister. “Mom is OK, but we can’t talk to her yet. Dad is driving to the hospital. I can answer all your questions.” It was that last line that got me from my desk and into an empty conference room, where I turned my head to the wall, put my face in my hands and cried, praying for many things, among them that no one would walk in. My little sister, at home with her son, my three-year-old nephew, August. Unable to indulge in the luxury of breaking down, like I had, because he’d be terrified. Trying simultaneously to reassure me, even though she didn’t know.

Our mom went home that night, and next we worried she’d be removed from this trial program that has, in all likelihood, precluded the need for a second round of chemo. Instead her doctors said they’d tweak the cocktail and administer drugs slowly, so slowly, over the course of 12 hours, which is where we found ourselves on Thursday. For 12 hours she couldn’t eat or drink a single drop of water. I called her from the office many times, and once she answered. She sounded like a sun-bleached version of herself: hoarse, confused, voice faint and small.

Fighting her cancer has opened a chamber in my gut where the terror siren is always flickering. It takes very little—one call picked up by the machine when I know they should be home, a late text after we’ve already said good night—to flip it on. It’s been this way since the afternoon I found out she’d been diagnosed…which is a story for another post. Since that day, I’ve been out of control. I watched her grow gaunt and lose her hair, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, and no way to diminish her pain by making some of it my own. Which is where the strength reserve comes in. Because along with the terror chamber, there’s also a power tank. Tiny, yet enriched. Supplying fuel for things I can conquer, like the pavement beneath my feet.

Miles: 11

Time: 101 minutes