Tag: running

Disclosure: Michael lost his battle with cancer in February 2019, but he had asked me to tell his story–our story–and so I am. You can read more about why I’m doing so here. When I originally started this blog, I wrote about events and feelings in the moment, because everything was happening so fast, and everything was chaos. Now that Michael is gone, and I’ve had the time to slow down and look back, all future posts will tell Michael’s story in a more chronologically correct order…or mostly so, no guarantees. They’ll also include some insights and commentary forged from hard-earned hindsight.

Within four days of Michael’s prostate cancer diagnosis, his urologist, Dr. Hudnall, started him on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) using a drug called Firmagon. Because Michael’s cancer was aggressive, Dr. H also put Michael on a drug called Zytiga. I outlined Michael’s whole initial treatment regimen in this post, as well as how Michael responded to treatment (short version: started off promising, then it quickly started going south).

In spite of the cancer, all the pain Michael was in, and the brittleness of his bones brought on by the bone mets and side effects of ADT, Michael wanted to run. Except he couldn’t, not really. It hurt too much. But in the course of researching prostate cancer and the organizations offering knowledge and support, Michael had stumbled upon ZERO – The End of Prostate Cancer, a non-profit offering support and resources to prostate cancer patients. One of ZERO’s biggest fundraisers was, and still is, a series of 5k’s they put on across the nation. Come to find out, there was a race to be held on September 16, 2018 here in San Antonio; another to be held in Fort Worth on October 6, 2018; and a third to be held in Corpus Christi (I can’t remember the date). We signed up for all three races.

The morning of September 16 was rainy. Not cold or anything, just really, really rainy. We drove from our house way up on the north end of town, down I-35 south towards the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Michael and I chatted along the way, not a lot, but some. I remember that he’d brought along his green tea in a stainless steel to-go mug. He hated green tea–absolutely despised it–but we’d added three cups of green tea a day to his diet, since green tea was/is presumably helpful in the fight against cancer. Other than the obvious issue of, you know, cancer and the fact that he couldn’t stand green tea, Michael seemed fine.

The starting line of the race was in the shadow of Mission San Jose. We pulled into the parking lot of the national park. The rain, which had stopped for a time, started up again almost as soon as we’d parked the car. We sat there, waiting it out, talking, listening to the radio, Michael with his green tea, me with the coffee I’d brought along. Michael was mid-sentence when he suddenly flung open his door, leaned out, and threw up. This was jarring, to say the least.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” I asked him, wide-eyed and heart racing. He had been perfectly fine a second ago, so WTF?

He remained leaning out the door for a beat, waiting to see if he’d retch again. When he was sure he wouldn’t, he sat back up.

“Yep, I’m fine,” he said.

“We should go home,” I said. But Michael kept insisting that he was okay, that he wanted to run. We went back and forth for a few minutes. The weather was ugly, he’d just gotten sick, we had two other races we were signed up for so why not sit this one out? Michael was undeterred. The rain was no big deal to him; he felt fine now, it was probably just that he hadn’t eaten and the tea was just a little too acidic for his stomach; and we were here, right now, at this race that we’d signed up for, so let’s knock it out.

The rain was coming down hard, and we weren’t at the race to win it, so I grabbed an umbrella from the backseat to take with us on the run.

The course was 1.5 miles out, 1.5 miles back. We started off walking, me holding the umbrella over the both of us, more to shield our faces from the driving rain than to keep us dry. Somewhere between the quarter and half mile mark, Michael broke into a jog. It was slow, but it was steady. I kept pace with him, still holding the umbrella aloft. As we crossed the one mile mark, Michael started crying.

“Michael…” I said.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he said. Since his diagnosis, Michael had been crying ever more frequently, and always he apologized. Always. Even though there was nothing to apologize for. It was heart-wrenching.

“Are you okay?” I asked again for the second time in the span of maybe twenty minutes.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m just so happy to be running.”

We ran the whole rest of the way. Slowly. So slowly. Even people who were walking passed us. But we–he, Michael–ran nearly the whole 5k, in tears, in the pouring rain.