My First Loss: Running

My last good run was during covid. I know because I remember being far from home and pulling a bandana over my face when I ran near other people.

Then one day I slipped, caught myself, and somehow hurt my knee. I couldn't run for a couple of months until it got better. But after that, I could never run again.

From my late forties until my early sixties I had been a slow marathoner. I never thought of it as a competition, but my long, slow training runs kept me sane and in shape. I loved running for miles along the Lake Washington shore, or anywhere, really. I'd been something of a runner since the late 1970s. I used to be reasonably fast, but in late middle age I was happy to lope along. 

Then, suddenly, I couldn't run four blocks. I would be forced to stop, with chest pain and panting. I'd walk a bit and try again, and it would be worse. The chest pain was a kind of burning, like you felt as a kid when you ran too fast or too long.

I knew how to get in shape. I expected to get in shape. I knew to take it slow and build up mileage. But I remember telling doctors that I was having a hard time doing so.

Then I stopped being able to walk without stopping for breath.

I have walked long distances, alone, for even longer than I jogged or ran. I'm autistic. I walked for miles, enjoying the world, talking to myself, and working out problems. But all of the sudden, even on short evening walks with my wife, Rebecca, I had to stop for thirty seconds or a minute not so much to catch my breath, but to feel normal again.

Finally, I ran into a physician's assistant who actually listened and cared. She ordered up a CBC, or complete blood count.

In those days all I cared about were triglycerides and cholesterol. In my late forties and early fifties both had been really high. I gave up certain foods and they dropped to normal. So when I got my results I saw that those measures remained good and celebrated. I sounded like Trump. I wrote to friends and family that I'd "aced" my blood tests.

Then I began to see red.

My hemoglobin and hematocrit were red. My red blood cell count was red. My platelets were red. All of them were below normal. Something called monocytes were red, too, but higher than normal. There was a longer list of blood elements I'd never heard of, all red.

The physician's assistant called. She told me she would make me an appointment with a hematologist. I figured that was a blood doctor. I showed up to meet him, and realized I was in the oncology clinic.

He looked at my lab results and told me he was going to send me for a bone marrow biopsy, which sounded grim.

And that time, it was. 

I showed up and they put me in a hospital gown and a green shower cap. I asked repeatedly for something to ease my anxiety, and they told me not to worry--that I would be given something to make me calm and sleepy. It didn't work. It made me hyper alert and anxious. 

They put me in a giant scanning machine to find the proper spot to nail me. What I knew was that they hadn't nailed the anesthesia. I was anxious as hell.

I remember laying on my stomach in the procedure room and watching as the nurse or assistant brought the doctor a tray of tools. One of the tools was a silver hammer. They began to joke about the hammer as if I weren't there. They were like a bunch of carpenters making inappropriate jokes on the job. I think they thought the drugs had put me to sleep, but I was staring at the hammer with what had to be a look of grave concern. My concern grew more distinct when the doctor began hammering something into my pelvis. It didn't hurt, but it felt alarming, like carpentry work.

Months later I would wonder about the hammer, and if it was even real, or maybe just a the figment of a drugged imagination. I did some research. Sure enough.

(For people going for such a procedure. I was forced to change providers. At the next place there was no hammer, though I wouldn't have known because the anesthesia was so perfectly handled. No scan, either. No funny shower cap. No hospital gown. So what was for me a little unpleasant and uncomfortable event is not the standard.)

At any rate, the biopsy brought glad tidings. I seemed to have something called MDS, but I'd lucked out. My MDS was considered very low risk. Could things change, I asked the doctor? "It's an unpredictable disease," he told me.

I continued getting blood work done and noticed that my monocytes kept climbing. "What does that mean?" I asked. The doctor seemed unconcerned. "These numbers go up and down," he told me. 

Except that mine didn't. My monocytes kept going up.