Exactly one year ago today, I received my diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. It’s also been exactly six months since my final cancer treatment. I’ve always referred to all my tests, surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and so forth as “my cancer adventures.” To mark this day I wanted to have a normal outdoorsy adventure, but one that somehow linked back to my cancer. I decided on a run.
Running is not only one of my hobbies, but it’s also one of the things that I missed doing the most while on chemo. There were times I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed, but something in me always wanted to be outside moving my body. As I’ve mentioned on here before, I started running again in May as I was going through my radiation treatments. Since then I’ve progressed little by little, getting some muscle fibers back, getting faster, and gaining endurance. My longest run so far has been 10K, or 6.2 miles.
That was until today.
Like I said, I wanted today to be an adventure. Today’s route was from to my main oncology clinic (where my doctor is located and where I went for chemo) and back - a round trip of 8 miles. (I didn’t do it on purpose and it didn’t dawn on me initially when I planned the route, but 8 is significant. It’s the number of chemo treatments I ended up having.) Running 8 miles was going to be a stretch at this point in my training, but it was doable.
The run was indeed fine. My legs were hurting towards the end, but I made it - and did so with a decent pace. I wish it would’ve been a bit warmer however as I was a bit cold at times, especially when I stopped to take the above selfie outside my clinic. Nevertheless it felt really good to be out there, pushing myself on just a regular everyday adventure.
During my cancer treatments, many people commented on how positive I remained (with a few mentioning that this often caused them to sometimes forget that I even had cancer). I did lots of reflecting on my run today, but one thing I realized is that much of this optimism probably comes from running (and biking too). When a run isn’t going so well, I just shrug my shoulders, decide to get on with it (because there isn’t anything else to do), and just keep moving forward. For all of life’s adventures, that’s the key. Forward, always forward.
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