Taking My Cancer for a Walk

At the point, St. Patrick's Day eve, March 16, 2013. of my

decision to enter the Germantown Tennessee half-marathon, I was
the typical cancer patient, curiously diseased and absent the very
dysfunction that is at the core of the definition of disease. Here I
was, considering going over thirteen miles on foot, mind you -
without having trained at all for the event, and with an almond-
sized tumor under my jaw that had troubled me for five months,
albeit painlessly, but having been told by a hot-shot doctor that it
was of no concern. It's not cancer, he noted definitively.
I should have been in fact, a patient. I had cancer. But to have
called myself a cancer patient is wholly inaccurate. Of course, I was
the patient of the department chairman of the ENT department of
the University of Tennessee Medical Group. He had examined me
and gave me antibiotics, telling me it was probably an infection from
a tooth residing above my jaw. So, I was a patient. And the lump
turned out to be a full year after he examined me . . . three times .
. . cancer. So when I impetuously embarked on the Germantown
half marathon, I was indeed a patient with cancer, but not a cancer
patient . . . yet.
Eight months later my 13 mile escapade, at MD Anderson
Cancer Center record would say,
The patient reports that he feels generally well. Up and
about, he is fully capable of self-care and moderate
activities. There has not been fever or signs of active
infection. The patient does have a slight cough,
typically nonproductive, mild hoarseness and a subtle
change in speech quality which he does not quantify
well. There has not been stridor1, and he is not having
1 Abnormal, high-pitched, musical breathing sounds, caused by a blockage in
the throat or voice box It's usually heard when taking in a breath. The airway
can be blocked by an object, swollen tissue or a spasm of airway muscles. Or
cancer.
 oropharyngeal pain. He has neither chest nor
abdominal discomfort. Respiratory reserve is normal.
Appetite is intact.2 Swallow is normal. Bowel/bladder
functions are normal. The patient reports no
neurologic deficit.3
In doc-speak, I'm fit as a (fit) horse, healthy and rarin' to go. It's
just that I have cancer. Other than that, I am fine.
___________________________________

My training for the half marathon consisted of mostly mental

training, that is, I thought about it for sixty seconds. Indeed, I had
been going to the gym almost daily to lift weights and spend time,
sometimes extended, on the recumbent bikes. And I bicycled on
the open road some, too. Sometimes even getting in as many as
twenty or thirty miles4 in a day. But as for walking, any walking,
much less walking thirteen miles: rien, zilch, nada. Riente, zippo,
maughyt.
So, back on St. Patrick's Day Eve, I was leaving the fitness
center late one afternoon and I noticed a sign
Last day to sign up half marathon.
Registration closes at Six PM

A half-marathon . . . hey, that sounds like, uh, fun. I detoured to the

sign-up tables - a few volunteers sitting in the gymnasium, bored,
at long folding tables. I walked up to a volunteer whom I knew
slightly as an employee at the community library. She was stacking
brochures and papers. It was seven minutes to six.
Is this where you sign up for the run?

2 An intact appetite was, at least then, surely one of my best assets.

3 My later records would occasionally describe me as as well formed

individual and a very pleasant gentleman. I work hard to get those kind
of kudos.
4 I've been biking pretty seriously for a long time. My two longest rides, each of one hundred
miles, were brought about by my missing turns or landmarks and, in a sort of reverse
serendipity, having to go a lot farther than I had originally planned.
 She looked at me half in amazement, half in disdain and two
thirds with a smile of a sort of detached bemusement, and uttered
a long drawn out, You?
I took no offense at her words. I was in a fully whatever
mode, completely unperturbed, even though I was thinking exactly
what she was thinking.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking about it . . . you know . . .
wondering if I could do it . . . uh . . . . give it a try.
You? she repeated, this time offering a gracious half smile.
I knew she was thinking that try rhymes with die., but I
persisted. I had been low-key, actually more than a little apologetic
about my little venture. And I was only thinking about signing up
for the race. My anxiety now emerged, non-threatening, but
assembling a low-level emotion that was me feeling a challenge . . .
cranked up another level, I might have been defiant, but I lack the
confidence in myself to challenge her back. When she asked You,
I want to agree with her disbelief.
I managed the words, Yeah. I mean what is the worst that
could happen?
Uhhh, she tilted her head back, looked into space for a
moment with an eyebrow arched, apparently considering the
question as if it were not rhetorical.
I interrupted her silent construction of an answer. It was an
answer which I was pretty sure I did not want to hear anyway,
including, I'm sure, all sort and manner of injury and death. Worst
that could happen? How about wet and dry stroke 5; a coronary
artery that chooses to explode6; being hit by a car or emergency
vehicle; cramps; contusions; split and shredded ligaments, cartilage,
and tendons. Death, disease and destruction. War, floods,
pestilence and plague. The end not only for me but for all Western
civilization and culture as we know it. The apocalypse. That's the
worst than could happen.
5 There are two major types of stroke, neither of which are good. A wet stroke is the rupture
of a blood vessel that bleeds into the brain. A dry stroke is a clot, obstruction or blockage
which denies blood supply to a portion of the brain.
6 Or worse, implodes.
 I guessed later that her answers to the worst that could
happen were more likely to lead off with disgrace, failure,
abject embarrassment.
But, I nevertheless figured that as the little sojourn wound
through residential neighborhoods - with virtually no observers,
much less fans, critical or otherwise if I wanted somehow to
have a medically, if not psychologically, harmless finish, all I would
have to do would be step out of the race, remove my number,
throw the plastic chip card into some bushes, and figure out how to
get back to my car, and with an ignition invoke the gods of the
internal combustion engine, the more sane way to cover long
distances anyway, of course. Plus, the community hospital was less
than a mile from the route of the run
How much is it? I asked.
Huh?
How much is it . . . to run the race . . . to enter, that is?
There must be some kind of fee.
For YOU?, which was at least the third time I'd had to suffer
the indignity of her incredulity.
Yeah. I was getting irritated. Me, with a strong enough
positive accent on the me so that we did not have to have any
more mystery about on whose behalf I was considering entering.
How old are you?
A million. How much is it?
Seventy five dollars, if you are over sixty-five.
Is it less if you are under sixty-five?
No, it's more.
Duh.
I just worked out and I don't have my wallet. It's in my car,
can you give me a couple of minutes to get my wallet.
I close in about a minute.
What a threat. Damn. She was going to close the registration
table and I would not be able to risk life, limb and chagrin by
showing up with a thousand strangers at seven in the morning and
quit after two hundred yards. Talk about hollow threats!
 I'll be right back, I assured her and I ran, or rather
ambulated at what for me is high speed, and got back to the table
in a few minutes. By then she had thawed a little, took my credit
card and issued me a chip to lace onto my shoe and a number, a
very large number, to pin on my shirt. It already had four small
safety pins attached, if not for which I might never have entered. At
least I would know how to attach the number. Yea! I'd be
anonymous, known only as #1043. Only I would know of this
endeavor.7
Tomorrow would be St. Patricks day. I was the last person to
register. Where I'd finish was not even close to being on my mind.
My only question was, never having participated in a race of this
length8, how far could I go? It was not where, but if and how
that dominated my thoughts.9 I probably should have been asking
some why questions too, but my family was away for the
weekend, the lawn had been mowed and I'd cleaned the kitchen.
What else to do other than register for a half marathon?
___________________

Amid emerald green balloons, faux shillelaghs, leprechaun

7 Well, only me and the forty thousand employees of the National Security
Administration.
8 I'd done San Francisco's famous Bay-to-Breakers run, seven and a half miles,
or about half a half-marathon. But that was thirty five years ago. It's easy
because for half of the race, you have to slow-walk because there are
initially so many contestants, observers, and wild costumes that the race
proceeds at a crawl, sometimes literally. The year I ran it, the B-to-B had
about 25,000 participants. It's about 50,000 today. Really. For years, I
mistakenly insisted that the race was named the Beta Breakers, beta being
the symbol in finance for the movement of an individual stock in accordance
with the movement of the overall market. That was when I first realized I
needed to put more distance between myself and my Wharton experience.
9 What also dominated my thoughts was an unshakable image of people
stepping over my prostrate body, probably lifeless, saying, There's number
1043. I saw him a little while ago. I didn't think he looked so good. To
which his buddy replies, Yeah, I saw him too . . . and he actually looks
worse now.
top hats and green vestments of all sorts and festoons of other
emerald miscellany, I arrived at the venue early. I'd gotten up at a
wee hour or maybe never been asleep at all.
For starters, I no idea what shoes to wear. I found an old pair
of athletic shoes that seemed to have more tread and cushioning
than the others sharing the same cardboard box, and decided at the
last minute to wimp out and I brought along a walking stick which
I'd broken and taped up, the missing plastic handle a casualty of my
trying to hit an obnoxiously aggressive pigeon in the park a few
weeks before. Really.
Number? Check. Half decent pair of shoes? Check. Broken
walking stick? Check. Ankle brace? Check. Common sense? MIA.
The crowd was sufficiently large that when I got to the
starting line the clock read 9.30. No fair! I am already nearly ten
minutes behind! How will I ever win? At once, walking as fast as I
could in a jammed crowd, I was already nearly ten minutes behind.
Then I watched as hundreds of people disappeared in front of me
and watched hundreds more continue to pass by. I had learned
long strides and I tried my best to keep up a steady pace and a
long stride. But within a couple of miles, I thought I was watching
every entrant in the race from the back side.
The Germantown half marathon, as it turned out, was a six
and a half mile walk, or run if you sere so inclined it seemed most
were, out to a local high school, a loop, and a equal length walk
back to the starting line, which would be transformed by then into
the finishing line. Unfortunately, this out-and-back format allowed
me to see the faces of virtually every entrant, as they all returned at
the high school and headed back, passing me going in the opposite
direction, on their return to the starting point. Depressing.
As I reached the parking lot of the high school and began to
circle its athletic fields for the return trip, I realized that I was
actually passing a couple of people. Mirable visu. I'd finished a half
of a half-marathon10 I picked up my meager pace. I'd made it half
10 A quarter of a full marathon: about six miles. My $100,000 plus Wharton
MBA is paying.
way, would not be the last finisher.11 So far I'd suffered only blisters
on my hands from my walking stick, and I was only moderately
exhausted. Why would I think of cancer when I was not only
undiagnosed, but already overwhelmingly self-congratulatory about
my achievement. A few moments later I realized that I was as far
from the finish as I would get and I either had to finish on my feet
or stick my thumb out. I kept walking.
Plus, I was carrying extra weight. It was me and my tumor.
Though it probably had only been around for a couple of years, it
was getting sizable, now perhaps like a peanut. So, not only did I
not train, I was carrying extra weight.
The walk was hard. I struck up a conversation with one guy
that I caught up with. We could easily talk; neither of us were
winded at the pace we were walking, slow and steady and as fast as
either of us could manage. He was from California, a techie with a
defense contractor, and had slowed down to wait for his brother
who lived in Memphis. I left them behind and later saw them cruise
by in a back BMW. They both dropped out of the race . . . style.
That meant two fewer people behind me and therefore that much
closer to finishing last. Dirty politics. I gotta pick up the pace.
Slowly I trudged on and eventually saw a substantial image in
front of me going in the same direction. He got closer as I
quickened my pace and lengthened my stride to catch him. As I
pulled along side, so to speak, I noticed that he was perhaps six feet
four inches tall and must have weighted two hundred and fifty
pounds. (That's a BMI12 of around 32, maybe even 34, and made
the gentleman decidedly obese by federal government standards.13)
How much further is it? he asked me. He was straining.
About five miles I answered, maybe less . . . maybe only

11 Whether I dropped out or not, I figured I could not finish last wither way.
12 Body Mass Index witch is the body mass divided by the square of the body
height. It's one way, a good way, of quantifying the amount of an individual's
tissue mass (bone, muscle, fat) to tell if they are underweight, normal weight,
overweight, or obese. Over 30 is obese.
13 And everyone else's.
four.. You can make it . . . don't worry . . . I'll walk with you a while.
I encouraged him as much as was possible, but it was a self-
reflective effort. I was talking to myself. I was the one who needed
encouragement. But the only person within sight was surprisingly
doing worse than I was.
Is there any other way in? he finally asked, after trudging
alongside me for a few minutes.
No, not really. But I talked to that cop back there a ways,
and he said that the route makes another loop back on itself in
about a mile. So, you could skip that loop, go straight in . . . it's up
here a ways. You could take a mile or two off . . . or more.
Where's that? I'm from Memphis . . . I don't know anything
about it out here.
I pointed ahead and indicated where the route would turn
and explained, When the route turns right, just go straight and the
finish line will be just up the hill about a mile down. You'll see it . . .
can't miss it. But if you've gone this far, you might want to finish.
You'll feel great about it.
I'm gonna stop and find a place to go to the bathroom. I'll
catch up with you. He was struggling and I wondered if his dark
skin made it more difficult in the southern spring heat. 14 I left him
behind, knowing that the worst I could finish was next-to-last.
Yippee. I'd might have shouted, Cancer be damned. But the
endoscopy performed and the biopsy taken, both only four months
earlier, my told me that the aircraft carrier-sized lump under my jaw
was benign, maybe an infection in a tooth and of no concern.
An open-back truck came by with an indifferent kid sitting on
the tail gate. As the truck rolled slowly by me, he made eye contact,
unemotionally nodded, and continued to reach out to the side and
pick up the orange cones that lined the path of the rout. Damn, no
more orange cones the rest of the way.

14 The early March average high temperature in Memphis is only in the low
to mid sixties, but it would be over seventy degrees that day, a relative scorcher
for an obese person on a ten mile hike.
 I must be a mile, two, three from the finish line now. Fifteen
minutes later a police car pulled up next to the curb, twenty or
thirty feet away. Without rolling down his window he blasted my
ears with an announcement. Lord, he must have been shouting at
the top of his lungs as the roof-mounted speaker, next to his
flashing blue lights, blared in a police-announcement-like
monotone, The race is over. I repeat, the race is over. Without
breaking pace I looked up in front of me and turned around and
checked behind me. Not a soul in sight. Just me and the cop.
With no sense or humor or, apparently, irony - he re-blasted
my eardrums, so close that with five or six long steps I could have
touched his patrol car. The race is over. Please stay out of the
street. Please stay on the sidewalk. I repeat the race is over.
Lights flashing, he pulled slowly away, leaving me to walk alone the
miles left to get to the finish line. Where is Ben Stiller when you
need him? Shit, I knew the race was over. I hadn't passed a water
stand in an hour. They'd all been picked up. My obese friend had
disappeared. The streets were still cordoned off, so there was no
traffic . . . no cars, no trucks, no annoying police vehicles. Eerily
quiet. Just me walking along alone, by this time completely
exhausted and wonder with each step what the hell I was doing and
whether or not I could make it. I was beat. I was just me in the
silence, competing against myself.
The streets were still empty as I turned the corner to manage
a final five hundred yard stretch up a slight hill, which was Everest-
like to me at that point. I could see the big banner over the finish
line. As I got closer, I whispered an in audible wow . . . they had
kept the finish line open for me. So cool. They'd apparently known
someone, me of course, was still out there grinding away. Maybe
the police man or the orange-coneboy had said, Hey, there's this
old guy who's still out there walking. Except for him, that's it. And
they kept the computers on. As I slowly walked under the massive
finish line banner, a couple of volunteers clapped slowly and
deliberately, but earnestly and appreciatively. Good job, they
shouted. It felt like someone clapping at the opera twenty minutes
after the orchestra had packed up its instruments and left. The
singers had changed and were at a local bar having a post-
performance toddy. But someone, a blind man perhaps, sat in the
ornate theater slowing clapping . . . the punctuated applause
echoing eerily throughout.
Okay one of the race officials offered, turning to a couple of
others, that's it. A denouement if ever there was one. He's here.
he added like the last period in a Faulkner sentence, uncomfortable
because it should have come an hour before or not at all..
He graciously walked a few steps with me and apologized that
the complimentary Snickers, health bars, energy drinks and bananas
had been all packed up and had already been trucked off. I could
not have cared less. One of the volunteers bestowed a ribbon one
me. I bent over slightly and she reached out and placed the ribbon
cum bronze medal around my neck. I had finished.
________________________________

I kept up my slow pace, angling toward where I recalled I'd

placed my car; a few more steps across the parking and my car
appeared. Finding it would have been tough a couple of hours
earlier, but I was the last fan to leave the ball park, so to speak, and
it's pretty easy to find your car in a near-empty lot.
But what? Lo and behold, there was my obese walking buddy
with a three obese female friends. They looked like a Lane Bryant
They too had run the race, i.e. participated, but had turned in
very early apparently, and did not sport the heavy bronze medal.
How'd you get here,? I asked him.
I went straight where you said to . . . I cut out the last couple
of miles, I guess. No guess. He'd cut thirty, forty, fifty minutes off
his time. But despite his not finishing the full course, he proudly
wore the same half-marathon medal around his neck as did I.
He explained that he and his gal friends were part of a
weight loss club in downtown Memphis. He proudly showed me
his medal, the one he'd earned for walking an almost-half-
marathon. I think he earned the medal and I congratulated him
accordingly. Good for him and his entourage for coming to the
suburbs and doing a good thing for themselves and the community.
I was the last to finish, but I knew my friend deserved his
medal every bit as much as I deserved mine. I'd see his name in the
paper just a line above mine.
The next day the paper had a special race supplement, with
a sort of computer print-out of every race finisher, overall and by
category. I adorned the absolute bottom of a long, long list of race
finishers, male, female, youth and disabled. There at the bottom in
six or eight point type appeared my name:
M. Terry, Germantown, 4:11.
________________

Four hours and eleven minutes! What? That's the time it

takes the average finisher in the New York City Marathon. And a
marathon is, I am told, nearly twice as long as a half-marathon.
How do they do it? Only about twenty percent of New York City
Marathon participants take longer than five hours to finish.
The fit and infirm alike; all women, all men, all teens, all
children; all disabled - physical and mental - they had all finished
ahead of me.15
But I finished. Yes I did. Clueless me, making long strides
with only faith in myself for sustenance and energy; my crude
walking stick; hand blisters; ankle brace; and the (cancer) lump in
my neck16 . . . a diseased neck now sporting a nifty bright green
ribbon with a green and a medal.

15 I am getting quite tired of lessons in humility.

16 It would be another eight months before Sandeep Samant, my hero ENT doc, would figure
out that this boulder under my jaw was cancer.