Cancer Survivor reports for the Lymphoma Journal

August 15, 2005.
My check ups have been good this year, so nothing to report there. No gnews is good gnews.

Last night at a concert I yet again met an old friend and lymphomajournal.com reader who recommended that I turn the site into a novel. Sounds like fun but since I've recovered and have become way busy with being a sort of normal grown up, I rarely have time to write. Emails seem to be my greatest creative outlet these days. And I've written some pretty damn good emails this year!

Let's see. Cancer stories: Well, I went to my 2nd "BMT survivors" picnic last week. Since it was at snowbird, and I'd been planning on running to the top of the Bird sometime this summer, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one...

...Is it okay to use the word "kill" in a cliché statement about a survivors picnic???

Anyway, I arrived early and ran to the top of the Bird from the Cliff Lodge parking lot. Thunder and threatening skies helped me to decide to run the more protected access road instead of the exposed ridge trail. I paced myself slowly and felt good running the whole way. Easy, even! I estimate the route to be around 3 or so miles, with almost a 3000 ft gain. It seemed like a record time to me. I made it in 1.5 hours, which accounts for some wrong turns but continuous running. I don't think there's been a summer in my life that I could have run that long and high, so I considered it a great feat. Then, since I didn't want to be late, instead of running back down, I rode the tram to the picnic at the base area. (Nice excuse, eh?)

Oh, I should probably mention that it's a bit of a feat that I'm alive as well. It's been almost exactly 5 years since I heard my doctors say "ya got a 50/50 chance of making it 2 years, kid!"

A whole lotta survivors, one of who was awfully sweaty and stinky. (green shirt, far right).