I ride alone

January 6, 2016

Somehow I have made it into another new year. This is very exciting for me. I live one day at a time, I have not assumed I would get this far. I just keep pushing myself forward. I ride more than ever or at least as much as I ever did 5 years ago or last year. I cycle better, I cycle faster, my joy is greater, my attitude has more peace in it even though I ride harder, much harder on my new mountain bike. It was my gift to myself August 2014 after treatment, I had 90 grueling days of it and at the middle developed cancer. Now I ride it to survive cancer as long as I can. How long? Who knows? Honestly, I have recently come to understand that I have been changing so much from having that surprise cast on me that I see now I do not even think of myself as being ill from anything but a failing liver. I will die not so much from cancer as I will from the effects of decompensated liver disease. Its causing all my organs to malfunction, especially my brain, I have a very serious serum sodium imbalance. I also have little ability to clot blood. My organs seep fluids. I live with smaller to greater amounts of edema.  None of it keeps me off the road cycling or out of the woods on my mountain bike. It limits the energy I can ride with so I focus on building muscle, it now propels me. I have some badass glutes. My core is hard muscle. I eat like a horse, I pack fuel like a work horse. This is my success. I seem to have lost almost all else. I must not be enjoyable to be around for most people I know. But the few take me the full mark of knowing they hate knowing they will lose me any moment even though I look fine and dandy. My act does not fool them but it gives them hope, it makes them happy, they are so dear they tell me I inspire them. I so love hearing them cheer for me, for my life that I am able to keep going. No one foregoes treatment for cancer but I believe there are people who fully recognize the dangers of the methods used to treat large organ cancers. No one else is my call. I do respect whatever choices a person in my shoes makes. Here, there is no right, no wrong but a hell of a lot of chance. I exercise strenuously every week many hours in hopes of improving my chances and possibly creating some new ways to approach our feelings and our fears about cancer. I could sit down but I surely would lose my mind. Its better moving, circulating blood and oxygen that is stagnant. I have become rather addicted at this point to forcing life out of myself then back in. Yes I am a bore. I have become a bore. I am serious. I am focused. Life is beautiful and light feels grand but the daily ho hum is flat deadening. Once I found a great deal of joy in most of it; now my focus is very tight and its grip refuses to be broken. I am happiest cycling alone. I doubt I am much interesting to anyone other than myself...