Lance Armstrong Got It Wrong...

It Is About the Bike.

The gorgeous sunny Spring weather yesterday got me thinking about my bike and wondering how I would fare up the hills from Spanish Banks or Alma St. up to my place.

I've written about how being able to ride up those hills and ones up at Whistler after having a "window" put in my pericardium (the usually enclosed sac that surrounds the heart) last summer, was the sign that I was going to be okay. Right after the surgery I had symptoms that an elderly person with advanced heart disease would have. I would be out of breath just from a brief conversation on the phone, my heart pounded when I climbed up stairs, I literally almost passed out from running across the street to catch a bus...I was so breathless that a young woman on the bus offered me a sip from her water bottle...so kind but way too cooties for me to accept especially as I had my own, buried in my backpack.

Okay, where was I?

You guys are getting to imagine what it's like to have chemo brain just by trying to follow along with my train of thought. Imagine this 24/7. See another digression and then I have to try to get back to the original point...which one can never really be sure of at the best of times with a Zoë. Since I'm so off track I'm going to throw in another observation, which is that it is super interesting when I ask people what I was talking about...some people always know...they are actually listening to my ramblings, whereas others generally don't have any more of a clue than I do.

So, why do I say that Lance got it wrong? That it is about the bike? Because if I can pull off getting up those hills despite this chemo combat, it means that while I may have lung mets, they don't have me! It would mean that I am not being defined by the cancer. It would mean that I am living with cancer not dying from cancer.

And that, my friends, is an unquantifiably vast distinction.