Counting on Running

Having cancer changes you, you become someone different, someone whose life includes medicines and treatments, regular visits to hospital to have needles slipped under your skin...it's never a 'slight scratch!'

Many of the the things that you took for granted before the Big C are no longer a part of your life....But with the changes that having cancer brings is the desire to always be doing something, something that shows that you are still very much a part of the world and very much alive and kicking. I have always enjoyed being physical but now I feel I want to be pushing myself all the time, proving something to myself or to life I guess?

For me the biggest 'no!'  is no swimming. I still can't go because each time I get to the end of the chemo cycle, when potentially I could have a sneaky dip, my neutrophils let me down and this means I am still prone to infection. So what's a girl to do who wants to be out there swimming, who wants to be pushing herself....? Well I'll tell you...I am running. I have been a 'runner' a long long time ago in my life but recently I haven't been able to because of arthritic knees, a new hip and more recently the pain in my back and hip that the cancer was giving me. But the chemo seems to be really working and the pain I have had for the past few months has completely gone and so I decided to get out there and start doing bit of running. A few parkruns and a few very slow but wonderful runs with Rachel and other friends....and of course always with Olive who is a great running buddy (except when she sees a pheasant!!) I have run across the moor, up and down hills, through rain storms and rainbows, around ancient burial mounds, through streams, and along the beach and each run has been wonderful and with each run I have felt a little bit more alive and a little bit stronger.

So when I had my last chemo, just over 3 weeks ago, I said to myself that I would run every day between chemo treatments...including the 2 days that I actually have chemo. Of course the 3 weeks has been just about the gloomiest, wettest weather we have had all winter but that really hasn't mattered. With each run I went on, my heart would race, my feet would pound across muddy paths, my breath would fill my ears and my soul would soar with elation and the wonderful feeling of being absolutely alive and feeling absolutely healthy and not someone whose life is just a round of needles and medicines.

Because it's the sort of thing I do, I started to tot up the kilometres that I was running. I started to run a little further and a little faster. Last weekend I did my fastest 5K since I had my hip replacement last spring. It's ridiculous how happy this made me and even happier to to do it alongside Rachel and with a good friend, Natalie, watching on the sidelines. Last week I totalled the kilometres that I had clocked up and I realised that I was within striking distance of running 100k between chemos!! Of course this inspired me to make sure that I did indeed reach that target and so this morning me and Olive were up early (it felt really early due to the clocks changing) and met someone in the village who drove me out to the far end of the Valley, a quiet and secret spot and from there I ran the 7K home. The 7k that would take my total to 100K.

Fittingly it was the most glorious of all my runs over the last 3 weeks. The ground was cold and crunchy with frost, the sun warm and twinkling on stranded beads of water that coated everything, the skylarks singing, the deer watching from the hill tops and the sheer brilliance of the morning. It was actually overwhelming, as I crossed the river I stopped to marvel at the impossible brightness of the water in the early morning light and tears came to my eyes. I was being given a gift. When I rounded the corner to Cow Castle, an Iron Age Hill Fort, of course I had to run up the steep sides of the hill to be right on the top, because it was there and I needed to be on the top. To look forward down the valley towards home and to look back up the valley from where I had come, all the miles and miles I had completed over the last few weeks- gosh it felt good. 

Olive and I ran the 7k home, slowly and mindfully. We stopped to watch the deer, we stopped to watch dippers bob white breasted in the river, we stopped to throw flat smooth shiny pebbles into the clear cold water and we stopped just to be by the banks of the Barle. Actually I did all these things, Olive didn't stop so much, she just bounced and swam and leapt and ran!
When I got back home I had completed 101K (63 miles, for my American friends!) running between chemo treatments, but more than that I had been on an adventure with my body over the last few weeks, I had pushed it, and hurt it and proved that it still had lots of living to do. Now I need to rest my knees for a while...maybe a day off!

As I mentioned, I could do this running because all the pain that I had had in my back has gone. So I knew that the chemo was shrinking the tumours...it must be. This week I had  a CT scan and sure enough the pictures show that my liver is back almost to a normal size and the lesions in my spine and hip have shrunk away and the bones have begun to heal!! 

This means that the remission I need to be in to have stem cell treatment is happening and that my body is responding really positively to the chemotherapy. I like to think that the best medicine it has had over the last few weeks and months is not only all the running, but mostly the thousands of press ups that we have all done together. 

It's the first day of British Summer Time...and it so feels like it here on the moor. As I write this my back is to the open garden door and warm sunshine hits my bald head and a strong cold wind plays around with my senses. It's a truly beautiful day, I wish I could record the moorland bird song for you, or show you the shimmering moor as it slowly realises that it needs to start awakening all its colours again. I wish I could show you the silver magnificence of the river as it bounces through the village. 
But I can show you this....this is my liver before and after chemo!

Evidence that things are more than moving in the right direction, like me they are running in the right direction. I am half way through now, tomorrow I have my 4th treatment and on Wednesday another intrathecal injection. This cancer has changed me, for all sorts of reasons I will never be the same. But I know I will always be grateful for the gift of life and the gift of energy and the gift of friendship and soon I'll be able to stop running and go swimming again!
Oh, one more thing...Rachel is still running and pushing her mileage to get closer to the half marathon that she and Di are doing for the Lymphoma Association so here again is her Just Giving page...https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/run-or-die
Thank you again for all your support and for sticking with this!