Waiting for the Whistle

In the game of life, there are no time-outs.

There are no water breaks or substitutions.

(Not even a com­pli­men­ta­ry orange slice to be found. A sham!)

The ref­er­ee doesn’t blow the whis­tle at the first clap of thun­der. There is no lock­er room to wait out the storm.

In life, you stand in the storm and get drenched.

And friends, I have to tell you, I am soaked to the bone.

I have attempt­ed to write this blog post a min­i­mum of 17 times over the past month. Sim­i­lar to try­ing to merge 5 lanes of traf­fic at once, when there is so much to say, the words come to a screech­ing halt. The prover­bial bot­tle­neck of med­ical reporting.

In the past month, I have received med­ical care in Mass­a­chu­setts, Penn­syl­va­nia, Mary­land, and Vir­ginia. Next month, I will add Ohio to my list.

(Side­note, how many states do you have to go to before you can war­rant the pur­chase of a “Restart­ing My Hard Dri­ve Tour” t-shirt?! And can they be spon­sored by the bedazzler?)

I digress.

My beloved neu­rol­o­gist called last week. (That’s not sar­casm, she real­ly is the greatest)

The con­ver­sa­tion start­ed with, “I didn’t want to call you.”

(Friend­ly hint, that’s gen­er­al­ly not a sign of free pup­pies. Or cook­ies. Or Ellen Degeneres show­ing up at my door. In short, it’s not short­hand for all things magical.)

She went on to describe the results of my brain MRI and mus­cle biop­sy. Two tests that were done to look for diag­nos­tic clues, straight lines to con­nect the scat­tered dots. The tests were sup­posed to pro­vide much need­ed infor­ma­tion for the next steps. After she gave me the low down, I paused in my fran­tic note taking.

“So, let me make sure I have this cor­rect. Two areas of my brain are atro­phy­ing. My mus­cle biop­sy showed that I have mod­er­ate­ly severe neu­ro­mus­cu­lar degen­er­a­tion with asso­ci­at­ed scle­ro­sis. And on both accounts, we have no idea why.”

She paused and gen­tly sighed.

“Yes.”

The week went on to include a weak­ened immune sys­tem from the immu­nol­o­gist, a “fan­cy” new diag­no­sis from the urol­o­gist, dis­solv­able stitch­es choos­ing not to dis­solve from the sur­geon, and a new type of tachy­car­dia from the cardiologist.

Cliff Notes:
Peo­ple seem sur­prised over the weak­ened immune sys­tem sit­u­a­tion. I’m not sure where they have been the last 5 years of my life.
I now have a urol­o­gist. I also have a pace­mak­er. And I’m retired. You draw your own conclusions.
How do we feel about, “Wow, I’ve nev­er seen that before!” in tat­too format?
There is only one log­i­cal expla­na­tion for my new tachy­car­dia. Pene­lope enjoys a good dance par­ty. Obviously.
My med­ical shenani­gans always tend to come in waves. I’m not real­ly sure why, but there have always been some­what pre­dictable ebbs and flows. I rarely have one doc­tors appoint­ment all by its lone­some on the cal­en­dar, and it is an unusu­al occur­rence to be wait­ing for just one test result. They come in waves.

This past one, how­ev­er, was a tidal wave.

And after weeks on end of 3 hour appoint­ments, “get­ting reac­quaint­ed with the OR,” count­less blood draws, lengthy “dis­cus­sions” with my insur­ance com­pa­ny, trav­el by plane, train, and auto­mo­bile, and gen­er­al med­ical debauch­ery, I find myself stand­ing in the mid­dle of the field, chest heav­ing, and sim­ply drenched.

I keep wait­ing for a ref­er­ee to run into my liv­ing room and loud­ly declare a time-out. Just a two minute break to catch my breath (and find a darn orange slice.)

But there are no time-outs.

This is it, the real deal, no whis­tles or striped shirts involved.

Some days, I want to put myself on the bench. I want to go back to the lock­er room, change into dry clothes, and call it a day.

But I can’t.
I won’t.

I don’t know why my hard dri­ve crashed. I don’t know what piece of the puz­zle we are all so des­per­ate­ly miss­ing. I don’t know why I’m on this journey.

I don’t know a lot of things.

The only thing I do know for sure is that only I decide.
I can hide under the bleach­ers, or I can shake it off and get back on the field (sequined sweat­band optional.)

I have a life to live. It’s quite the gift.

My favorite col­lege pro­fes­sor had a small poster hang­ing in her office. I’m sure I’ve men­tioned it before — I saw it near­ly every day. The words res­onat­ed with me then, almost as much as they do now.

“The race is not to the swift, but to those who keep on running.”

I’m tired.
I’m drenched.
I’m dodg­ing light­en­ing bolts.
And, I’m running.

Let’s do this, friends. Game on.