CIRCUS
Today, one of my favorite people wrote the following message on Facebook:
‘We have so much to say about our lives.
We have so much more influence on who we are, how we feel and what we reach than we think.
We are so much more powerful than we’d expect.
And at the same time.
Everything could be completely different, suddenly.
And just in those hard times you know what really matters to you.
And, in the midst of all chaos, it’s turns quiet in your head and clear in your heart.’
Lately I have been wondering what to think of life. I think I find it weird, in all its beauty. A year ago it was mostly ‘Jay!’ and ‘Awesome!’ and ‘Anything is possible!’. And now I still see life as a miracle, something so precious – but yet so fragile. The invulnerable feeling has left the building, after a year of ‘going strong’ and staying alive (I wasn’t going to die, definitely not, but the chemo-months felt more like staying alive than actually living life, looking back at it).
Sometimes I squeeze myself, thinking: ‘Whut? What happened?’ ‘Oh, yeah, there was this cancer thing.’ And I need to calm down when I feel a little sick or weird. I say out loud, to myself, that I am healthy and quite fit and that all those silly ailments are the results of a) 6 chemo treatments, b) hormone treatment (for the next 5 years, not incredibly bad but not that fun either), c) 21 radiations and d) my mind that sometimes can’t keep up with all of this.
It’s been a year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember so well how I dressed up my kids for the carnival at school, how I braided and colored their hair in orange and silver. I drove one vampire to school and one Pippi (and kept the little clown at home). Afterwards, I went to the hospital for an ultrasound on which, obviously, nothing would be found. But after that the circus was ON.
And just now that I am ready to look back and leave things behind me, someone close to me got severely ill. Ultrasounds, blood tests, MRI’s: the whole circus is starting over, but at someone else’s body. And it’s not clear it will end as well as my story so far.
Things I don’t know:
- Will I be healthy?
- Will my loved one be cured?
- Am I a good enough mom for my kids?
- How do I stay focussed at work?
- Can I, will I, run up and down mountains in a couple of months?
Linda wrote: ‘We have so much to say about our lives.
We have so much more influence on who we are, how we feel and what we reach than we think.
We are so much more powerful than we’d expect.’So what I do know is:
- I do anything to stay healthy, easily (I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, my only addictions are chocolate and lip balm, that would be alright I suppose?)
- I call and text my sick loved one to let him know he’s not alone in this.
- I realize my children are incredible human beings, with all their characteristics they are mostly great and NOW is the time I can be there for them, even when it’s sometimes inconsistent or very tired, even in a messy house and crappy cooked meals. Those moments at dinner are GOLD.
- That mountain: I recently ran 25 K through the Belgian hills and it went fine. I’ll hold on to that.
- That work: the one thing goes so much better than the other, which makes me think I should be doing more of the other than of the one.
I have something to say about this and it feels good.
‘And at the same time.
Everything could be completely different, suddenly.
And just in those hard times you know what really matters to you.
And, in the midst of all chaos, it’s turns quiet in your head and clear in your heart.’
And I am SO aware of the above nowadays. However it’s stormy more often than it’s quiet in my mind (I am the stormy kinda person, yes), I feel what these words mean to me. That life, in all its beauty and glitter, not gives a fuck about my plans and dreams. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and I can’t seem to choose the most simple things. But I know that I, when I have been running out in the sunny cold, see chrystal clear where and who I want to go and I reach out for it, even if -or because- it’s not the most obvious way.
ACTIVE RECOVERY
For myself, I believe in active recovery. I have no idea how much time I will need to completely recover from chemotherapy. The only times I feel something big happened in my body, is when I run, especially when running uphill. It’s probably the result of being poisoned six times and less training.
During the summer and fall I had six chemo infusions. They made me sick and tired for about five or six days; on day seven or eight I was up and running (literally) again. Fact. After the first two infusions my blood results were too low – and so was my energy level. Running made me feel alive, but for the rest I felt tired all the time; even during vacation with my husband and kids, bummer! After the third and the following chemos a nurse gave me neulasta, an upper for the white blood cells I was lacking. Hell yes, that worked!
Even though I was living life pretty well during chemo (working, being a mom of three kids, running, you know, the works…) it didn’t always come easy. So I choose easy training, just to be in that comfort zone I was craving for. And easy for me meant: runs of five to fifteen kilometers, preferably from door to door. A lot of road running, sometimes in a forest, but usually flat or flattish. Sometimes, in my good weeks, I did short hillsprints. But in general, I choose the way of no resistance.
Now it’s two months past chemo. Time to wake up the body.
On the outside it’s clear what I’ve been through: my hair is shorter than short and my nails are wasted. But on the inside (which is more important to me) I am feeling pretty normal. And that means energetic and fit, in my case. But running wise I am totally out of shape. Which is normal but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. It’s time to make the switch.
I subscribed for the nationals in skyrunning (which obviously won’t be held in The Netherlands but in Switzerland) in June. Not to be the best, but I want to be the best of me, do the best I can do. I know that means leaving the comfort zone. It means running uphill, it means strength training in the gym. It means getting up early and go out in the dark. To know this and to actually DO this: not that easy right now. I find it hard to switch, because winter and dark and cold and excuses ?. I need a little push here.
This is what does the magic for me: I run with my friends. They take me with them, even though I am so slow they could follow me on one leg with their eyes closed. Backwards. They invite me to do hills with them. Thomas, one of the best ultratrailrunners we have in this tiny flat country, reads and watches everything about how to be an excellent uphill runner and how to excel on the downhills. And he passes it on. Even to me, slow poke trail rookie. Training with him and our other friend Jeroen is a lovely mix between exhaustion (me) and play (them). The uphills kill me, but a hi-five or smile or just one look motivates me to keep running, with burning lungs and a beating heart. It makes me forget the bad hair and the past months.
These workouts kill me so hard that they make me feel not only alive, but actually living. That little push turns out to be big.
You can’t always predict how you react to what happens in life. You can imagine how you’d feel when, for example, your car gets jacked in front of your house (angry), when your best friend drops by (happy) or when your mom makes you your favorite dessert (jay!). But does it really actually feel that way?
I imagined how it would feel when chemotherapy was over. Dancing, balloons and cake! Of course I knew I wasn’t going to throw a big party as soon as I was given the last infusion – I needed to recover from that for a couple of days. I imagined how much energy I’d have. And once those first days were over, it was vacation and 24 degrees Celsius. With a friend, my husband and our kids I layed down on a beach in the Indian summer sun. Glancing at that soft autumn light on the water and at our daughter swimming there, I knew exactly what I felt:
Relief.
Intense, incredible relief. Nothing exciting, but a calm that I could feel anywhere in my body: This. Is. Done. No more chemo. Not now. Not ever (let’s hope so).
Even before school vacay was over, I was totally ON. I drove through the country for work, had meetings, went to the gym twice and did three runs. And I couldn’t help but wonder aloud why I wasn’t running any faster. Dick replied: ‘Maybe because you had your sixth chemo only 9 days ago?’
Hashtag patience.
Patience is not my keyword, nor my password and def not my best characteristic. For my kids I try really hard and I can be very patient with them, but for myself the patience button is usually off (or lost). During chemo I couldn’t eat grapefruits. And I happen to love them. When I walk in the supermarket, I smell them each time I pass by my juicy yellow friends. One more week and I can eat them again! That’s patience that I have. But being patient about running is much harder. I want to be running like I used to do at the pace that I used to run at. Of course I am happy having been able to run at all, but I can’t help being done with the slow shuffle.
Having said that, it’s not that I have a choice. My last chemo has been only two weeks ago. I run six K, then twelve. I shuffle through the forest and the next time I try a Strava segment. And meanwhile I wonder what it would feel like to not have had chemo in five, six of twelve weeks. When the poison has disappeared and I’m high on vitamine Grapefruit. When I can run 20 K at an acceptable pace of run 1K under four minutes.
That feeling… I can’t predict that either. I’m thinkin’ dancing, a bit of cake and more running.
Hashtag patience!
PS: I know now how I’d feel about that jacked car: yes, I was very angry! (Police found it -> relief! But I haven’t gotten it back yet -> patience!)
- Tomorrow I’ll have extra protection against cancer cells in my body.
- Linda is joining me for the 5th time. She is my Coca Cola on 80 out of 100 K in an ultra.
- I am not in this alone.
- Take this hour by hour.
- It will pass, regardless. And then home, to bed!
A SWEDISH TARMAC PARTY
SILENCE
After hearing news that i never had expected to hear, i was kind of blown away for a while. Weeks of hospital visits and a surgery were like a roller coaster to me. Everything seemed to be about doctors and results. I’ve always considered myself impatient, but suddenly those days, sometimes even weeks of insecurity seemed peaceful to me: no results are not bad results, right?
The good news is that this stupid cancer won’t kill me, at least not now or any time soon. A gorgeous surgeon took everything away, big relieve. Now that i am recovered from surgery and my after treatment hasn’t started yet, i am in a comfortable nowhere. I do my ‘things’: take the kids to school, pick them up, do my work, go to the store and visit my mom. And i run. I run as much as i can, now that i still can.
And however i can do all of these things with my eyes shut, everything feels different. Being overwhelmed so easily, i feel every ray of sunlight, i smell the springtime and i can see magic in the smallest things. And now all of my senses and my heart are wide open. The sunlight seems even brighter, the blossoms more joyful and i bless the rain on my skin. Music touches me even more than before, words linger through my brain and embraces sometimes make my heart burst.
Last week me and Hans Koeleman organised out first Dark Sky Running Camp. The runners joining us, our conversations, Hans telling stories and especially that midnight running on that endless, moonlit island: i wanted to stay right then and there, forever. Between that first light and the setting of that gold/pink moon. In between day and night: it was just perfect. There was nothing besides that one moment on that one beach.
I took it all in, so much that i know where to find it when i need it.
No one knows what summer may bring (that is a big question for any of us living in the green & wet Netherlands). I don’t know yet what my treatment will look like, or if it will make me sick (or bold! Horror!), and if i can keep running. What i do know, is that i am grateful that i am not alone. And that i have a heart full of beautiful experiences.
I can imagine closing your heart in situations like mine, or worse. For your own safety. But i’ll leave it open for now. You never know what may come it’s way.
- WAKING UP: every morning i wake up by the most wonderful almost-4-year-old in the world.
- BREAKFAST: after that, more fans are joining us for breakfast.
- WORK: when all have left the house, i get to work! And i have a dream job.
- DREAMS: i created this dream job myself.
- RUNNING: i run when, where and with whom i want to. Sometimes i run by myself, sometimes with people i find special and precious.
- BOOKS: my book ‘running for women’ sells alright and i am working on my new book: happy!
- LOVE: the love of my life has been by my side for years; sometimes he frowns when i present my latest wild plans, but he sets me free.