okay.
i have to admit it on this blog: throughout the course of my cancer-survivorship, I stayed away from all things Lance Armstrong.
I wasn't interested in hearing about a super-star athlete and his triumphant journey from the face of death back to his bicycle seat. I openly question the amount of money going to his foundation and count myself as part of the anti-pink people who wonder aloud about the money going to maintain cancer foundations versus actual research.
I could not relate to a man with the resources at Armstrong's disposal when I got sick. I still can't.
Sorry, I didn't meet anyway at the clinic that dated Sheryl Crow.
But my therapist, an avid cyclist, has referred to Armstrong's book, "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life," quite a few times since our sessions began.
So a few weeks ago, I found myself in the $1 bookstore in downtown Burbank.
I found Armstrong's book on the shelf. Last night, I finished the first section of Bolano's 2666.
This morning I decided to read Armstrong instead of move forward with Bolano. Out of curiosity, I suppose.
I found this passage on page 3:
"I've read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don't fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else.
Cancer is like that, too."
Damn. Damn that's real.
Writing is like that. Playing an instrument is like that. And chemotherapy was very much like that.
I am always surprised by peoples reactions to my treatment and the attitude I took during those two and a half months of chemotherapy.
There was nothing heroic about my actions.
It was what you do to survive. Everyone in the clinic had the same attitude.
In fact, some more so than others.
I'll never forget that old guy with lung cancer. He didn't like to take his chemo. sitting down, so he'd hang his meds on a mobile I.V. stand and wheel around the clinic. A few times he checked on me.
That man is one of my heros. I can relate to him. Not Armstrong.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn from Armstrong's book.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The walking man. A poem? A video? Powerful image. Here's one of Emily Dickinson's mysterious poems.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone
This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go
Post a Comment