Honey, You’re Never Ready
My cousin has started to suffer so much from her cancer that no medication can get her out of her pain. Every movement hurts. She is in bed, groaning from pain. I go to the Soul studio and make myself groan too, but they’re grunts of strength and hope for Hallie.
Hallie tells me from her bed, “Do you know what I miss most? Just getting dressed. Standing in an elevator.”
It is so hard to watch my gorgeous long-legged cousin—who passionately loved vogueing to Madonna—using a cane. Seeing her in a wheelchair breaks me on a whole new level.
I hurt so much during and after my workouts that I realize I am trying to make myself feel pain because she does. I can choose to have pain in solidarity with her; somehow we’re in this struggle together. Getting on the bike and going to the gym becomes a ritual, a way of praying for my cousin. It is my safe space—the furthest thing from a hospital. There are real demands being made on me by Stacey and especially Kate. I have no excuses not to sweat and push myself. I have never sweated so much—it is as if my entire body is crying.
Then one morning I wake up with a crushing pain in my left thigh. It feels like an elevator door is closing on my leg. It starts spasming. And if that isn’t unpleasant enough, the left side of my lower back hurts like hell. I am slightly self-conscious, because there is such a huge difference between a backache and terminal cancer that it seems ridiculous even to mention it. I’m embarrassed to seek help for my back, but when Tyler sees me limping and examines me, he insists that I need an MRI.
Tyler takes me to the MRI lab, and my friend Tomomi shows up too. I don’t think they need to be there, and I’m embarrassed to be having any medical procedure when Hallie is in the hospital. I put on my lipstick and get ready to go into the MRI machine.
I freeze. It looks like a casket. I can’t face going inside it, being enveloped by that machine with no way out. I take a deep breath and force myself to lie down on the scanning table. It slides into the enclosed tunnel, and once it fully covers me, it continues to slide me even deeper into the tube. I start banging for them to stop it.
“Help! Get me out of here!” I’m gasping for air. I have never had a claustrophobic attack in an MRI machine before.
“I have to get out of here; I have to have something to calm me down! I need a Klonopin. Do you have a Klonopin?” I’ve started carrying them in my purse, as a “just in case,” but I know my little plastic container is empty. I guess I’ve had too many of those “just in case” moments, despite my attempts to have a worry-free day.
Someone is pounding on the door of the MRI room. It’s Tomomi, and she comes inside the room to talk to me and help me calm down.
“Only ten more minutes!” she yells over the sound of the machine. “You can do it, Ger! Only eight more minutes!” Then, “Only three more!”
I hear her voice and am so thankful she is there. This is how breast cancer survivors cheer each other on and deal with these machines.
The next day I go to the spine doctor to find out the results of the MRI. Sitting in a hospital gown on the examining table, Tyler by my side, I listen while the doctor explains that I have L3 and L4 lateral herniations. That means worse herniation than regular herniation. Tyler winces when he hears the official diagnosis, which is exactly the diagnosis he predicted when he first examined me.
The first thing I say to the doctor: “I’m an athlete.”
Tyler laughs. “She’s not an athlete.”
“Stacey told me I’m an athlete, and I’m in training.” I believe Stacey. I have never thought of myself as an athlete before, but I do now. I want this doctor to know how serious I am about the bike and the gym. I need to get back to my training.
“Okay, athlete, let’s get you back in fighting form.”
And what the doctor says on my way out hurts almost as much as the shot he gives me. “No gym, no bike for at least a month. You need physical therapy. Do not lift anything or get on that bike,” he warns me sternly. He must see the disappointment on my face. What am I going to do without the bike and the gym?
After months, the actual day for getting back on the bike arrives. I’m sweaty with panic and afraid I’ll get hurt again. How will my other discs not herniate? One wrong move and I could be back in the MRI machine, with more painful shots and more physical therapy awaiting me. I bite my lip to taste my lipstick as I climb back on the bike and clip my shoes into the pedals.
The woman next to me must have seen my ambivalence.
“First time?”
“No. Well, it’s my first time back on the bike after my back injury. I’m not sure I’m ready—”
“Honey,” she interrupts me. “You’re never ready.”
Should I get off the bike? I panic again.
She adds, “Don’t worry so much. You’re a spring chicken; I’m seventy-one. I’ve had three back surgeries. I have rods in my back. I’m okay. You gotta get back on the bike! Just get back on.”
Then she starts pedaling furiously, as if to prove to me it’s my turn now.
I have zero excuses. The music starts pounding; I begin to pedal. Hallie is dying. I do not trust my body. But I will not let my fear of getting hurt again get in the way of my life.
I pedal slowly at first. With every move I make I’m acutely aware of the damage I might do. I can’t ride like this. There is no joy. I hate being aware of every twinge in my back and of how vulnerable my spine suddenly is. I like living in ignorance better. It is such a burden to understand that the things we take for granted can go wrong.
About halfway through the class, I face the facts: It won’t be fun if I’m going to ride scared. I want to hold back and protect myself, but there is something stronger that’s urging me to lift my butt out of the saddle. It is like life. If I hadn’t had Skye—for fear that the cancer might come back—I never would have become a mom, and learned to be nicer to my own mom. If I hadn’t had Hayden because I was scared of my lung nodule—well, I can’t even imagine how much I would have missed. I’d been scared to take a break from working in corporate America because it was the only identity I had known, but when my job disappeared I got to spend more time with my kids.
I’ve had my second act, a life that was cancer-free, but can I have a third? Can my next chapter take me out of the shadow of cancer that still seems to cast its darkness? Can I finally truly pedal forward, knowing I might get hurt, but feel the joy, the sweat, and the heat, and let myself melt into that singular moment, like Mother Teresa advises, without looking back or forward? It was the joy I remembered, before the back injury.
Stacey is screaming at us, “Find the beat! It’s so important to stay in the beat!” For the first time I feel the beat. I’m in it! I came to work on my ass, but I stayed to work on my heart. The heart is a muscle too.
Hallie is whispering in my ear as I sweat on the bike. She is saying, “Live!” I can only pedal forward.