Desperately Seeking Hope

This is not an easy post to write and I am sure equally difficult to read. Please realize it requires no comment, no reply...it is what it is...my reality.

On top of my own surgery, and subsequent infection, the day I got home from the hospital post surgery, they called from Toronto to tell me my mother was just diagnosed with Uterine Cancer. Naturally I joked that it was a good thing she wasn't planning to have any more children...but inside I couldn't help but feel that as QE II said this was most definitely the Pelc Family " Annus Horribilus"!

A bad joke, that wasn't the least bit funny.

Throughout it all I was distanced, remote, I could easily see myself housebound. The slippery slope between healthy mental state and depression, neurosis, anxiety, was a fine line that I was crossing, as if on a tightrope perilously crossing a huge abyss.

Through it all I couldn't put my finger on the true source of my depression, yes a lot of shit has been coming my way, but that wasn't it....

I was finally able to verbalize the feeling about 3 weeks ago...I had lost my connection with hope. Throughout the last 6.5 years I have always managed to be hopeful...but it was gone. In fact those who have known me my whole life, would probably agree that my hope and determination are pretty much traits that defined me. The empty void was replaced by a profound ache, so profound that I wondered if I could go on living like this. Something so vital to my existence, to my personality, to who I am was gone.

Thankfully I am lucky enough to be in therapy, and through our conversations the options became clear...either I had to make peace with the New Sam...or I had to fight to rebuild my hope. I knew that the first option was not truly an option, I couldn't make this ache, this void a part of my life..this was not living. So that left us with Option 2...rebuilding hope, trying to find a way out of the darkness. Lana (my therapist) used the image of stringing pearls...telling me to string 1 image at a time...to find the patience to fill the necklace pearl by pearl, focussing on the pearls on the strand and not on the empty space still waiting to be filled.

I decided to use her image to make a real bracelet of beads that I found that represent Strength and Energy. Each night I sit here at home adding a bead for each hopeful image or thought I've had during the day. Let me tell you it ain't easy. Some days I struggle to find 1 image or affirmation that I have had to leave me hopeful. Some days I can add a bead or 2, smiling at the thoughts that bring me here, evidence of hope.

So where am I you wonder...about 1/2 way there, much further than I imagined 3 weeks ago, but still working my way towards the end. Today I reached the middle and I am finally able to share this post. What put me over the middle...a crabapple tree we have in the front yard.

For four years it has never produced the vibrant red fruit for which we bought it....and this year with all the sorrow and uncertainty...this tree on which we had given up hope is full of little red apples that shortly will be a vibrant red and a sign of life.

I'm sorry apple tree for every doubting you, for giving up on you, now I'm working my way to finding the same forgiveness for myself...

I am Pro Choice and also Pro Life ! There I have said it. Oh, don't worry not in the way you think. I may be a walking contradiction on many levels but no, this is no contradiction.

I realized this week that you need to choose to live. Not just breathe air, but really, really live.

After another minor bump in the road, I ended up back in the hospital for yet another sojourn.

As I sat in emergency for 7 hours before being seen, and then another 5 hours until they proceeded with treatment, I couldn't help feel an immense longing for the time being wasted.

I know we all use the expression " A waste of time" but truthfully is there anything in the world that should make us angrier...anything or anybody wasting our precious time.

Ultimately I realized that Time is finite...yet so easily wasted...so easily taken for granted.

How much time have we wasted, being bored, being angry...being, but not enjoying.

As I ended up on 9 Surgical ( yet again) I commented to the staff how sad it was that some patients, in the room next to me, were still in the hospital. After all I had already been home for 6 weeks.

" How long has she been here I asked?" Quietly the orderly help up 2 fingers. " Wow I said 2 months?"...." No" she said "2 years". TWO YEARS !!!!

I think my gulp was audible all the way to Toronto.

I actually became anxious. It wasn't the 2 years of hospitalization, it was the immense waste of precious time.

Recently someone very close to me was also diagnosed with cancer, yes when it rains it pours. Never a chipper person at the best of times, she has fallen into a depression and refuses to seek help. She hasn't come to the realization yet that you need to Choose Life...Choose to Live.

So really we should all be Pro Choice and Pro Life.

Pro Choosing to Live life every moment we can.

I don't want to die yet, don't get me wrong it's not the dying, it's the idea of NOT living that scares the hell out of me. Not laughing, Not smiling, Not Hugging someone you love, Not waking up each morning and doing something you love. Not, not wasting time!

Will there be sad times, yes, but even then we live by leaning on those we love, holding someone tight and crying on a shoulder of a friend.

Think of all the moments of your life that have been wasted and join me in choosing to live....

This morning I'm making Challah French Toast..ahhhhhh...let the living begin!!!!!!

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg

Self Esteem

It's remarkable how much of our self esteem is tied into body image. Duh, you say. Well today's views of body image weren't really a part of our growing up. When we were in high school, way back then, I don't think any of the girls ( I am sure I will be corrected) aimed to be a size ZERO and none of the guys worried about a Six Pack. Hell the only six pack we knew was the way soft drinks came ( no self respecting Canadian ever bought a six pack of beer, even if you were Jewish you knew to order a 2-4).

We were able to buy our self esteem, it required having the coolest, latest fad items.

Please let me take you down memory lane.. The Right Clogs, Sport Root, Painter Pants, Pukka Shells, Kodiaks, Denim Overalls, Camaros...I must have forgotten a few...feel free to add on...oh yeah my all time nemesis...Frye Boots.

I laugh because I was far from athletic. In fact I got caught doubling back with Hartzman smoking on a 12 minute run, but somehow I had these huge calves. These same calves which today are my pride and joy were so big even then that I couldn't wear Frye Boots...they would bunch around my ankles. You see, now I get stopped in the street about my calves.

In my lowest point wandering aimlessly down the corridor of the Royal Vic last month, hooked into I have no idea how many life sustaining apparatus, an orderly came over to comment " Hey man, nice calves, do you do a special exercise for them?" Someone even thought I had implants.

Hmmm...that's it my calves are the saving grace of my physical self esteem. You see I need to hold on to or find something to be self redeeming.

Over the last 6 years, although I have joked about it, the scars that crisscross my body have come with a heavy emotional price. I have tried to view each with pride as a memory of a noble fight, fought and won, but the truth is that it is not that simple. The doctors call them Red and Angry...how prophetic....if they only knew.

I remember conversations with Carmen and issues with Mastectomy and body image...back then I didn't get it. I didn't get the heavy emotional cost of having no choice but to agree to surgical mutilation ( sorry for the word...but ultimately it is what we agree to), but I do now.

5 surgeries later my body is not a canvas I recognize. So I struggle with body image issues. I wonder if I will ever take my shirt off in public again....will I scare small children on the beach?

Oh how I wish it was 1975 all over again...I would just buy those clogs, painter pants and even the pukka shells if it would make it all okay. If I could only buy back my self esteem...oh wait I almost forgot...I still have my calves...maybe things will workout after all.

A Fine Line

3 weeks and 1 day post surgery. My energy level is nowhere close to what it has been after the past surgeries. Thank you to all who so kindly have reminded me that now that I'm over 50 I can't expect to bounce back the same way...( Hallmark called they won't be needing your services).

Originally I had hoped to be back to work this week, at least part time, but that was clearly not going to happen. So next week it is ....or so I hope.

I also realized that apart from the physical healing, I had pretty much fallen in to a depression over the last few months. I don't mean profound sadness, cheesecake or hot bagels can pretty much cure that, I mean the kind of funk that baked goods won't cure.

I know you're thinking " Well after what you've been through, of course you're depressed", but somehow knowing your entitled to it, doesn't make it any better. Trying to plough your way through this fog is about as exhausting as trying to keep up with Lance Armstrong, okay not even close.... Lance was more exhausting.

That's it...this morning I smiled...Lance was more exhausting and I lived through that...I can live through this. So I made a plan to try to join the living, and this time it doesn't involve lycra.

I took a shower...and cut my toenails. Big deal you say.... Happy Feet...Happy Soul.

I wanted to rejoice in the mundane and so cart in hand I went to Loblaws and even did my own checkout....alone.

Lastly I needed to rejuvenate in the splendour of spring so I decided to make an outing to Jasmin, the best garden centre in all of Montreal. There is something very therapeutic in wandering down those aisles encircled by the beauty of nature in it's thousand hues of green.

Embraced by the welcome scent of lilac and roses, the watercolours of Hydrangea and the gurgling fountains, encouraging me to sit down, relax and refocus on the rebirth associated with the season. It certainly helped that my breakthrough omen Tracy was the first person I saw when we arrived at Jasmin ( to understand more you need to read the old posts about the ride).

I don't want to trivialize the despair associated with depression. I wish it was as easy as picking yourself up and brushing yourself off, it's not. I know I need help and have reached out to find the help I need. I know it's not over, but I also know that I will get through this.

Some of us are good at being chameleon's in the face of adversity, showing a brave outer face as we crumble inside.....some can't find the light... and some are overwhelmed by the despair.

Baby steps...Baby steps....walk before you run.....and then dance, and dance and dance!!!

Happy Feet....Happy Soul.

The Ride's Not Over

I have made the decision to keep this blog up and writing...because the truth is for me the Yellow Jersey is a metaphor of crossing the finish line. Not sure if it mean the finish line of life or any project we have, but truly it is about giving your all in the meantime. The last year has been another rollercoaster.

Somewhere along the way I made a decision to try to figure out how to live with cancer, as opposed to living my life waiting to die from cancer. The distinction is huge and really it was about trying to find a way to have cancer come 2nd.

That included a decision to monitor a 1.8 cm growth and continue with my plan to celebrate my 50th in Antarctica. Doctors reassured me that I was not putting my life in jeopardy and for once, I could live and have the cancer wait. Huge relief...I was getting the upper hand for a change....or so I thought.

My return in February showed that the tumour was now 2.4 cms through MRI and so the process began to figure out what it was and proceed with the necessary arrangements for removal. The tumour this time was firmly planted on my pancreas....but it was not pancreatic cancer. The doctor was quick to make the distinction as it seems that the pancreatic cancer diagnosis sends a chill up everyone's back and leads to deafening silence.

I was truly up for the challenge until out of the blue the new surgeon recommended a brain scan to make sure that the cancer had not spread any further.

Although I was ready for the battle at hand I had in no way anticipated that the rules would somehow change without prior notice. I know it sounds crazy, as if cancer plays by some standardized rules, but where the hell did the brain come from? How did it become an issue all of a sudden?

I couldn't take any more surprises so I requested a full body scan to make sure that another tumour wasn't lurking somewhere only to be detected in 3 months.

The ULTIMATE good news bad news scenario. The CT Scan found nothing else except the existing tumour we were working on...YAY....BUT somehow in this imaging it wasn't 2.4 cms anymore it was 4.6 and growing rapidly....WTF.

My head was spinning, yet again it was if cancer was laughing in my face. Just when I thought I had found a way to live with it, reality came home. In the interim we lost Bev to lung cancer.

Bev Levitt was a ray of sunshine. She was diagnosed with lung cancer precisely at the same time as my last kidney surgery which was November 2008. I completely didn't see her death coming. I wanted her to survive so badly....no lets be honest...I needed her to survive. I wanted the pact we made with Terry last July, to outlive the cancer , to be unbreakable.

Even then we knew it was back but Bev looked strong and with Mark at her side we all seemed invincible (cancer laughs again).

Bev's unveiling was on May 9th, Mother's Day, and 2 days later they wheeled me in for my surgery. My emotions were raw...the 5th surgery in 6 years. You know you are in the hospital too often when you end up with the same nurse from 1.5 years ago and they remember you , and it only makes it worse that I was in a completely different hospital. Will this be my road to infamy? Jim not only remembered me but the details of my previous surgery....Oy Vey....We have to find a different way to meet.

The rest is mechanics and I am home recovering very nicely....never as quickly as we would like but surrounded with love and good friends.

This latest round brings me back to the fight for a proper Psycho Social Oncology program at the MUHC. I realize that this battle needs to be waged and I am not prepared to give up. To those who are ready to join me in this battle your help and support are more than welcome. Knitting needles in hand I start to create the safety net to which I believe every cancer patient and their family is entitled. So bring your needles and join me....my next posting will be about the vision for the future. Like I said for me the Ride's not Over.

Views from the top of the Hill

After 4 months of training, spilling my sweat on the roads, and my guts on the blog, the weekend went by in a flash. Emotional high, somewhat exhausted and yet replenished...odd how that works.

You couldn't have asked for better weather. Earlier in the week they called for rain so naturally I went out and bought rain gear...a sure sign that it wouldn't. Fern and I rode up talking about the recent months, and I actually got him to agree to pursuing riding next year on a moderate level.

We checked into the Westin to begin this last leg of the adventure.

Cocktails at Quintessence allowed us the opportunity to finally meet the other riders, to exchange hugs, smiles and stories. I also connected with my posse, the "Less than Elite" Riding Group.Luisa, Catherine and I became a formidable block of average riders committed to the max. Catherine is Sarah Cook's aunt and was back for her 2nd year of riding. Sarah was recently diagnosed with a recurrence of her cancer at the young age of 17. Our thoughts are with her and Catherine's persistence at this difficult time was heartwarming. The true devotion of an aunt.

Fern and I attended the dinner and thanks to all of my team we were among the top 5 fundraisers, which placed us at the table with Lance. As I have mentioned before I am more of the Livestrong Lance fan than as a cycling phenom. I truly do appreciate his decision to walk through the public door with his cancer and to undertake this huge global vision for the disease. We are often encouraged to think outside the box but he has collected a huge array of creative thinkers around him that have a vision for cancer that is truly inspiring.

Lets just say my pre-ride sleep was not completely relaxed. The little man in the my brain kept running back and forth screaming.." It's not too late"..."Don't do it"..."What were you thinking".

Relax I told myself, you've got Luisa and Catherine...life is good.

The morning of the ride went quickly with Media interviews ( all in French) and the pre ride tension. More hugs all around, the presentation of the Yellow Jersey - Dr. David Fleiszer who raised $82,000 and we were off.

There was an amazing surge of energy when we took off and when I realized that we were riding at 33kms/hr. Hmmmm...not sure I can keep this up. Do your best...just do your best.

Lets just say, that the region is hilly and Lance rides quickly....okay downright fast. For someone who trained at 27 kms/hr realizing that the peloton was at 40k/hr was initially overwhelming. Finding comfort in my posse we soldiered on at our own rhythm in our own way. It was great to see the people on the sides of the road waving us on and ringing the cowbells to encourage our efforts.

We broke once at 50kms for a group picture and the peloton continued on the return. Arriving in Huberdeau we were welcomed by a large group of people and it was great to see Fern and Marlene on the sidelines cheering me on. The home stretch seems to go quicker since you are counting down towards the end...pedalling faster to get back.

Let's just say I wasn't at the front of the peloton. Luisa and I made our own way back probably 30 minutes behind the leaders, happy, and relieved to have completed the journey.

With a little bit of hindsight here is what I realize:

1. I am not a speed freak..I am just as happy cycling at 27 kms/hr as I was at 34kms/hr..maybe even more.

2. Everyone has a story...we need to listen

3. Cancer needs to be a global concern..Lance has it right.

4. Terry Diab gives great hugs and is a champion in all ways

5. Caroline Rhea is a mensch and funnier than you can imagine.

6. The feeling comes back eventually but it can take up to 48 hours.

7. There are flat parts to Quebec and you can ride there too.

8. Bad/Sad things are going to happen without any effort on our part...It is up to us to create Joyful moments...they don't seem to happen spontaneously..you have to make them happen.

9. Now that I've cycled with the best...time to look onto a new challenge...hmmmm maybe Swimming with Michael Phelps...I think I can beat him.

10. You can never say Thank You enough. I could never have undertaken this insanity without your support. From Andrea shopping the bike, Marlene and Sandy taking me on training rides, my lunches with Simon, Fern telling me I could, the countless emails and words of support from you, my friends and family, each and every step has been as part of a team. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You...

Stay tuned the blog will continue as we prepare for 10*10*10....in the meantime I better go get a Speedo...Michael are you listening?????

Thank You..you made it happen.

The Letter

To my indefatigable foe,

I know that most letters begin with Dear, but you can understand that in this circumstance I truly don't share those feelings. For nearly 6 years you have played much too large a role in my life. Yes the first surgery scared the hell out of me, but after that I was confident that the worst was behind me. You truly sent me reeling when you reared your ugly head only 9 months later. That was truly the turning point, nothing is more chilling than hearing the word metastasism.

Somehow over the years I learned to live and even more joke about my increasingly scarred body.

I learned to endure the looks of despair and pain in the eyes of my parents, family and friends, and together we found comfort in our tears. Thanks to you I joined a community of amazing people soldiering through diverse yet similar experiences, and formed bonds of friendship and camaraderie.

In the last few months I realized that despite my seeming optimism you did manage to shake my resolve. You made me question my future, my ability to dream, to make plans.

Will I celebrate 50? Can we even discuss retirement? Will I dance at Edan's wedding, Lenore's, Sivan's? Do I still have the courage, the guts to undertake another challenge?

Last May with the scars still fresh and the pain too real a rumour surfaced in town that you had won. Yes, through the grapevine, I heard that it was said that I wouldn't ride this year because my health was failing....things weren't going well.

How dare you. No one will say it's over until I say it's over, and so I rode.

Tentatively at first but with increasing strength. I rode alone because I needed the time to think, to cry and breathe the air of life, but I was never really alone. With me were all my family and friends. They powered my soul and my legs, yes those very tired almost 50 year old legs. The hills and the challenge of Tremblant await. On Friday I will ride in a peloton focused not only on the ride or the task at hand, but with your ultimate defeat.

I don't know what the future holds, but neither do you. What I do know is that Lance was right, It's not about the bike. It's about the road we take and our experiences on the ride.

It may be bumpy but this boy is strapped in and ready to go.

On your mark, get set...see you at the finish line.

Sam