It's been a month of highs and lows for my family. While my mom celebrates what appears to have been a successful lumpectomy and cancer-free lymph nodes, uncles have received news of surprise setbacks. I hold my breath every time I open one of their update emails, never sure if the news will provoke tears of relief or worry. What has struck me recently, in these messages of their medical progress, is the wide net of support they are receiving from those in the medical profession. These are doctors I did not know a few months ago, and now their names are so easily recognizable. It's gotten me thinking about the communities of support we have in our lives, and about the coincidental crossing of two communities of my own, in recent months. That's what has inspired today's post.
On Sundays these days, I have been running with kids. Grade 11 kids, who, two years ago when they were students in my English 9 class at Cariboo Hill Secondary, expressed an interest in completing a half marathon. That first year, ten of them ran the Rock ‘n Roll Vancouver Half Marathon, with all ten of them completing it. This year, four of them returned, three to run their third (we ran the Scotiabank Vancouver Half last year) and one to run her second. This paragraph, about these kids, will not come close to capturing how strong and dedicated and driven these kids are, nor will it depict the level of commitment exhibited by this group, turning up every weekend to our meeting place at Science World, to run. They are an incredible group, and I have been lucky to train with them. I’ll just leave it at that.
While we are on our training runs, we discuss aspects of our program, like good runners do. We calculate our pace, debate nutrition and hydration, commiserate over sore muscles and tired bodies. But we also talk about our lives, our friends and families, and our future plans. The students are a year away from graduating, so we often discuss post-secondary dreams, upcoming school exams, and summer jobs. They ask me about my work at SFU, inquire about my children, listen patiently as I go on and on about the future of education. It is these latter conversations I most look forward to. The discussions about non-running topics are a big reason I love training with a group.
A running community is a powerful thing. I belong to a few different running groups, and I love the support and encouragement I get from running with others. When I was training for my first marathon, I joined the Denman Street Running Room Clinic and was embraced immediately by a large community of experienced runners who were quite happy to take me under their wing and provide advice about marathons. They were also happy to share of their lives and personal experiences, helping me to better understand my own. And when training runs became near-impossible, these were the people who kept me moving and helped me finish.
I don’t want to undermine in any way the impressive work done by the medical community, particularly those who work with cancer patients, by comparing them to the running communities I belong to. I mean no disrespect in speaking of them that way here, nor do I wish to imply that running a marathon equates in any way to the struggle of living with cancer. But, these two communities – runners, and those in the medical field – share similarities that these days, are hitting pretty close to home.
When training gets difficult for me, it’s my running friends I turn to for support. They listen to me complain, offer advice for how to overcome obstacles, and urge me forward. I have been out on a 32 km long run before, in so much pain and so ready to quit, and it was my running community who kept me going. Three of us peeled off from the main group, and walked/hobbled the rest of the way back, limping and crying, wanting to give up, but unwilling to let each other down.
I see this same kind of support in the doctors and nurses who have been treating my mom, my uncles, my friends. They are scared, and tired, and ready to give up, but are being urged forward by the medical community. Being supported, listened to, encouraged, through some of the toughest experiences there are.
I still can’t really believe that these two communities have collided in this way, and that I will be granted the opportunity to run through the streets of NYC with those people I love who are fighting cancer, those doctors, nurses and researchers working to save them, those people I love who have helped me discover my passion for running, and those people I love who have donated money in support of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in order to help me reach my fundraising goal, all in my heart. With that kind of support, reaching the finish line will be a communal achievement. You’ll all have helped me get there, and for that, I am so grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment