Let's take a step back to the beginning of my awakening. When I checked in to the Emergency Room at Jersey Shore Medical Center (on the orders of my Internist after seeing my initial blood test results), among a host of issues, I presented with (that's fancy medical talk for I had the certain statistical factors) a hemoglobin reading of 7.6. Now normal for a male of my age and size would be between 13.8 and 17.2; so clearly I was off the charts - in a bad way. Many other test results further confirmed my issues, and as we know the answer was cancer.
That was over 16 months ago; an eternity in some cases and blink of an eye in others. Since that fateful day, my "numbers" have risen and fallen like the cars on the wooden Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. The analogy is more than casual, as the climbs have often been steep and the drops have been precipitous. The ride has been a whirlwind; fraught with moments that have been equally terrifying and exhilarating. But it has been a long ride, whose end is nowhere near.
This past Friday, I had a regular 6-week blood draw which allows my Onc team to continuously monitor my numbers; my progress, my regressions and anything else metabolic that they review as part of this ongoing endurance trial. Through the wonders of modern science AND communications technology, the results of that lab work were ready in a matter of mere hours and then posted onto my secure patient portal for my knowledge. There are a few benchmarks that I find particularly interesting (a lot of the data is waaaaay over my lay-person head), and my hemoglobin reading is one of them. For the longest time it hovered around 9.0 But this most recent reading was 12.6. This is more emotionally significant than medically noteworthy (though as the number increases so does my "wind" capacity), but it's yet another encouraging sign of the slow and steady improvement I am making and retaining.
Coincidentally, 12.6 is almost half of the distance in miles of a Marathon (26.2), and poignantly here I stand along the course of MY marathon - a long way still to go, but endurance is building and I've got good wind to keep pushing along the journey. Indeed, life IS a marathon, not a sprint. and it is the wise competitors in the game of life who allow THEMSELVES the tolerance of that pace and the pride of that stamina.
