A song of ascents

I am a mountain goat. Always have been. Ask anybody who's been hiking with me. Sure, ordinary trails, I might amble along; but give me a good rocky hill to scramble up and I'm looking down before you know to look up. (I'm a lot slower picking my way back down hill, though...)

Chemo does strange things to mountain goats.

One of the side effects of chemo is inhibition of lung function. When Lance Armstrong went through chemo, he had his doses adjusted specifically to protect lung function.

Surprised that this week's treatment left me feeling relatively well, I took off on a last-minute trip to Las Vegas for the weekend, arriving in time for a good friend's baby shower, throwing in a "bonus visit" to see my aunt and cousin. Sunday, with the shower over, the partiers dispersed, and my aunt at work, I headed for the hills of Red Rock, one of my vividly positive memories of Las Vegas from an otherwise awkward junior-high-religious-school-orchestra-tour-to-Sin-City trip, many years ago.

It was a beautiful desert day - warm, sunny, dry, breezy - with the last of the spring blooms still coloring the sandstone. Fondue-dipped in heavy-duty sunscreen (chemo increases sensitivity to light), bandanna for my baldness, and armed with sunglasses and a camera, I set out on a nice, "easy", flat, gravelly, one-mile loop.

But the sandstone at Red Rock is irresistible. Up against the rock walls, shaded from the sun, my feet and hands reached for the crevices and footholds and like that, I was up, scrambling, stretching, skidding a bit, balancing. Up, sideways, up, over, always up. My legs and arms throbbed with excitement. My fingers savored the grit of the rock.

My lungs weren't so happy. Neither was my digestive system, which wasn't used to the tumult (abandonment of one's viscera at 3,000 feet is never recommended) nor my heart, which thirsted for oxygen as it sucked at blood thinned of its life-carrying cells.

I had to rest. It wasn't easy. I crouched in the shade and waited for my body to catch up with my spirit, distracted by the excited calls of kids and hikers and climbers echoing in the canyon. At long last, I crawled down from my rocky perch and slunk back by rappellers and picnickers and backpackers. I flopped in the car and cranked the A/C and flipped through the trail map for a long, flat trail, devoid of the temptation of rocky verticals and horizontals.

My second hike of the day was much easier, much flatter...and still a struggle to climb the last gentle slope to the parking area. I tell myself I made it - hiked a couple great trails, kept my muscles limber, my heart and lungs challenged, beat back the turbulence rumbling inside...and I traveled, saw family and friends, ate real food, enjoyed the heat. That I'm surviving. Still, sometimes, it hurts. It hurts to get worn out at a baby shower and have to crash for two hours in a side room like a little kid. It hurts to eat food and not taste it, or find even the purest bottled water tasting like milky Southern California tap-water sludge. It hurts to get winded walking up stairs, when taking a deep breath stings and standing up too fast blacks me out. It hurts to get tired after only half a day at work, and ten hours of sleep before that. To admit that no amount of effort or positive thinking will get me to 100% right now.

I tell myself I will never be challenged beyond what I can bear. And that perhaps, I am only learning the limits of what I can bear. Maybe my strength is yet to be proved.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help.