The Biggest Step – May 7, 2010
Since moving to Calgary in 2003, I have fallen in love with hiking. Living a mere 45 minutes from the mountains it’s not uncommon on a sunny weekend morning, to wake up, check the weather and decide we need to get outdoors. Jared and I will grab one of our trail books, flip eagerly through the pages, choose a trip, and away we go. However, unlike my love for Jared, my passion for hiking was definitely not love at first sight. I remember my first hike in the mountains in the summer of 2002. Jared and I had been dating a mere 3 months and I had flown to Calgary to drive back to Ontario with him when he finished his 6-week optometry internship. I had been “hiking” before in Ontario and of course, I had been running on a treadmill in the gym so I thought the “intermediate” hike to Bourgeau Lake Jared had carefully selected would be no problem. Pulling into the parking lot I recall seeing a large steel gate in a fence and asking Jared what it was, to which he nonchalantly replied, “It’s the trailhead”. When I inquired why it was gated and fenced he calmly responded “To keep the bears in”. Great, I thought, let’s go into the caged areas with the bears, that sounds like the perfect trail I want to hike on. Seeing the nervousness on my face Jared tried to relieve my anxiety by explaining he had protection and showed me a can of bear spray. He also reminded me that I had probably developed some great endurance and hopefully speed from the running I had been doing at the gym so surely, he thought, I could outrun at least one person on the trail, explaining that you don’t need to outrun the bear if you can outrun at least one person in the group. Somehow his faith in my running abilities and the small can of aerosol spray (which interestingly was fastened to his backpack) did little to ease the images of “When Bears Attack” that were flashing through my mind. Nevertheless, we suited up, him in his outdoor gear, me in my running stuff, and into the bear sanctuary, we went.
I can’t remember how long it took us to climb the 7.4 km, 725 m ascent but I remember it feeling like an eternity. When running at the gym, 45 minutes would go by in a snap as I had the distractions of my CD and the 7 televisions in front of me so I never really focused on the steps I was taking as I ran. On this trail though all I had was the distraction of staying on high alert for bears and trying to keep Jared and the bear spray in my sight. With little distraction, time seemed to stop. I was frustrated there were no signs on the trail to tell us how far we had left to go, so when we passed a couple coming down I inquired if we were almost there. They smiled and shook their head no, before estimating that we had another hour to an hour and a half at least. Are you kidding me, I thought, and then spotted Jared ahead of me shaking his head. Suddenly my 45 minutes on the treadmill on incline 5 didn’t seem so impressive. Jared just smiled and kept trekking away. A little while later we crossed a beautiful stream and I remember seeing a gradual hill on the other side. I thought the hill marked the end and I breathed a sigh of relief that the worse was over. However, when I got up the hill and turned the corner I didn’t find the flat meadow I had anticipated but rather another slightly steeper hill was revealed, which inevitably lead to another corner which always revealed an even steeper hill. When I rounded the 5th corner and saw no meadow, I yelled to Jared – “What is @!*$ is this?” to which he again smiled and introduced me to the term “switchback”. After what seemed like 8 hours of climbing (Jared estimates it was only 2), we reached a flat meadow that opened up to a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. There were other people there but the space was so big it felt like we were all alone. We found a rock and ate the sandwiches Jared had packed. We took some pictures and made friends with a chipmunk before starting our descent. I keep the self-portrait we took at the top in a spot I look at often and although I still remember the pain it took to reach the meadow, when I look at the picture I also remember feeling a great sense of pride in my effort and remember being in love. I remember it being one of the happiest moments of my life.
Over the years Jared has encouraged me to continue hiking and as I become more experienced I better appreciate that the harder the climb, the greater the reward. Accordingly, I am now more eager to search for more challenging trails rather than picking leisurely Sunday strolls. Jared and I have hiked hundreds of kilometers which have taken us to the top of mountains like Grizzly Peak in Kananaskis, Ha Ling Peak in Canmore and what I feel is our greatest ascent at 1570 m, Rundle Mountain overlooking Banff. Although we love a great day hike what we enjoy even more is backpacking. Most summers we try to get out on the trail at least 2 – 3 times for overnight trips where we have access to even more remote areas. I’ve had dinner in the shadow of Mount Assiniboine, taken a picture of the glacier that feeds Takakkaw Falls from the Iceline in Yoho, and sipped Berg Bellinis (a mixture of orange Gatorade and Lemon Heart Rum) as we waited and watched the top of Mount Robson, the largest peak in the Canadian Rockies, clear for a brief moment. On hikes now time seems to find a perfect pace as I have learned to calm my mind and be totally in the moment so I can focus on the experience as I take each step. Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would enjoy so much an activity where good food is dehydrated, a good shower is a jump in a glacier-fed lake, and good sleep is in a bear country protected by a thin layer of nylon and a good time is spent silently in self-reflection. But I guess I also never appreciated the lessons that all these good things would teach me.
On April 25th, 2010, Jared and I did our first hike of the 2010 season. After spending the weekend at Fairmont Hot Springs Resort in B.C. Jared found a trail not too far away in Top of The World Provincial Park. After an hour's drive along a gravel road switchbacking along the side of a mountain, we arrived at the trailhead to Fish Lake, a moderate 13 km, 250 m rise trek. We donned our boots and gators, adjusted our poles, and grabbed our packs filled with warm clothes, bear spray (again on Jared’s pack), water, and sandwich fixings before we headed off into the wilderness. As with most hikes when it’s just the two of us although we start together inevitably his longer stride allows him greater speed and on this trip, you combine that stride with my slightly lower energy due to the year of treatment, well, he got ahead of me pretty fast. This used to really annoy me and I would often spend time while hiking being angry at him for not waiting for me. I would think about a bear attacking me or seeing a hazard and imagine I might trip and hurt myself. As I catastrophize about these improbable situations I would get angry he was so far ahead, rationalizing that he was too far away to help me when my inevitable downfall would happen. However, over our journeys, I have realized this negative mindset only serves to distract me from enjoying the experience of the hike inevitably blinding me from seeing the beauty in the journey. Although I may not be able to protect myself from a bear, realistically two of us might not have a better chance together. Being a slightly clumsy person, falling and hurting myself is realistically the greater risk to my safety. Certainly, I could take care of myself if I were to twist an ankle or fall and let’s be honest, it would have to be a fairly serious fall for me to hurt my voice enough that I couldn’t alert Jared to come back to check on me. With this confident perspective when Jared now inevitably strides off ahead instead of thinking about all the things that could go wrong, I try to focus on all the things that are going right, most specifically focusing on enjoying the opportunity I have to be in place so few people will ever experience and be grateful I have the health to be able to take each step of the journey.
Even on the most modest of day hikes, we typically spend a good 3 – 4 hours hiking. When it’s just the two of us I would say 75% of that time I spend on my own. It’s rare I have that amount of quiet time in my life, and I put the time on the trail to good use by investing it in self–reflection. When I was working I would often use this time to think about work however on April 25th, 2010, it had been a year since I had been in the office so instead of trying to solve my professional problems, I took time to reflect on the body of personal work I had achieved during this past year.
I thought about April 2009 and how pivotal that month has been in my life. It all started on April 9th when I went to my family doctor to simply inquire about my depression and discuss briefly the “mild” headaches I had been having for months and were now keeping me home from work. He sent me for blood work which I found out on April 15th was pretty well normal. We discussed my poor lifestyle (poor eating, no exercise, too much stress) and the dramatic weather changes. We both agreed that changes in these factors would probably be the best first step to addressing my headaches and depression and I left feeling motivated to take better care of myself. I remembered waking up on April 16th to another pounding headache and feeling guilty about calling in sick to work once again. Over the weekend the headaches progressed and as I spent days in bed watching TV I remember how I felt ashamed and lazy that I couldn’t find the motivation to get out of bed and do the things I thought would help take away the pain. On Monday, April 19th when I called in sick again I remember Jared insisting I go to a Walk in Medical Clinic, even calling me mid-morning from work to ensure I was going to go. I remember walking out of the Medical Clinic with a referral for an outpatient CT as a “precaution” and the attending doctor advising that my headaches were probably, again, related to the weather and my lifestyle. I remember going to work on Tuesday and Wednesday and sitting in my office frustrated I couldn’t find the focus to complete the final three performance appraisals I had been working on for three weeks. Instead, I spent much of the day playing Bejewelled between trying to manage my headaches. On Thursday morning at our staff meeting, as we were having problems with lateness and absenteeism, I thought I should lead by example and I apologized to my team for being late and absent over the preceding three weeks. I informed them I was seeking medical attention to hopefully identify and resolve the problems. Later that morning I left my office and spent 45 minutes in the bathroom trying to relieve my headache until I decided that I should go home and rest. I took the bus home, had a nap, and then went to the gym for an appointment with my trainer thinking I needed to start pushing myself to eat better and exercise, as lying in bed was obviously not helping. Nevertheless, I left 35 minutes into the session because the headache was so bad. I smiled as I remembered the events of April 23rd, 2009 when I woke up with another headache and booked a deep tissue massage to relieve it. Jared was off work and drove me to my massage and met me afterward. After the massage, I thought I felt better and attributed my headache to hunger as I hadn’t eaten breakfast. We went and got some noodle soup which I barely touched. Then he dropped me off for a haircut. As I changed into the robe, I had to sit down I felt so dizzy. During the haircut, I almost fell asleep twice. After the cut, I had to step outside to get some air before I paid as the pain was so intense. I called Jared who picked me up and when I got home I literally crashed into bed. I was supposed to fly to Kelowna that evening for a Yoga/Meditation retreat weekend and even though I hadn’t packed, it hurt too much to stand up. Two hours later when I started vomiting, Jared told me he had had enough and dragged me to emergency at Foothills Hospital. I was admitted a few hours later after a Cat Scan found a close to 7 cm tumour in my right frontal lobe. A week later on May 1st, I had brain surgery and on May 7th I was told I had a Grade IV Glioblastoma which is an incurable form of brain cancer.
As I hiked up the mountain to Fish Lake, I reflected back on what I was doing a year earlier, April 25th, 2009, and smiled remembering that I was in the hospital awaiting brain surgery. I thought about the visitors that came by, remembered the conversations I had with my family who had all flown out and smiled remembering the beautiful flowers, gifts, and cards that were delivered. I thought about the brown gift bag that sits on my desk where I keep the cards and planned to spend some time on May 1, the anniversary of my surgery, sitting and rereading the messages I had received a year ago. I was again grateful for the quality of care I had received during my time in the hospital and for the compassion that was provided to me and my family when we received the worst news of our lives on May 7th. I stopped for a moment as I hiked and teared up remembering the response from the dozens of phone calls I made May 7th – 10th where I told the people I loved the devastating news that I had incurable cancer. As I exhaled in that moment of reflection, I remembered the compassion and courage it took for me to make those calls and recognized for the first time the role those calls have played in bringing my family and friends closer together, during what is surely one of the most challenging experiences in our relationship. As I looked over a canyon river I took one last moment to relive that experience and I felt extreme pride in how I responded to the worst news of my life.
As I slowly started marching back up to Fish Lake my thoughts quickly moved from reflecting on specific events and activities that have occurred over the past year and instead I started reflecting on all the things that have changed. Although only a year has passed, I look back to the person in the hospital bed and feel I am a very different person today. I feel for the first time in my life I have started to personify all the values I have told people that are important to me. For the first time, I feel I am living an authentic and genuine life. I had talked the talk for many years about being healthy and “protecting my health as my most precious resource” but a year ago I was 165 lbs, eating out almost every day and only exercising to try to lose weight. Today I am 145 lbs and I receive compliments all the time that I have never looked better. I have accomplished this not by calorie counting, but rather by walking the walk and “investing into my body’s healthy development every day” with every food choice and making time for exercise daily, even if it’s only a light walk or an easy yoga session in my bedroom. I make these choices not to see a number on a scale but rather because I genuinely place a high value on my health. A year ago, although I talked the talk about being “grateful for the blessings of friends and family whose relationships I will make a priority to nurture” often the relationships most close to me I would only make a priority when I had nurtured all my work priorities first. I tried to stay up on personal emails but inevitably work emails always got in the way, even on weekends and in the evenings. Today I take time daily to recognize the milestones of my friends and my first priority in the morning is to answer personal emails before getting into my volunteer or writing tasks. My brother and I, who a year ago might have talked once a month at most, now speak to each other almost every week and I speak to my parents almost every day. A year ago my role in my household was limited and scheduled only when work didn’t interfere. At best I might have picked up groceries or cooked dinner once a week, but most of the time I would come home late, quickly eat the meal that had been prepared for me without thanking the chef Jared, and would then proceed to the bedroom to do more work. I ignored my home responsibilities selfishly not realizing the impact my ignorance would have on my most important relationship, my relationship with my partner. Today it is rare that dinner isn’t ready when Jared comes home, that the fridge isn’t full, that the laundry isn’t done when we need it or that the bed isn’t made daily. Through these genuine actions I acknowledge the value I place on my relationships and I feel I am finally walking the walk on nurturing these relationships as a top priority in my life. I smiled as I reflected on these and the other examples of authentic actions I feel I have adopted over this past year and am proud of the genuine work I have produced.
As I turned my attention back to the trail, I thought about the recent comments I had been getting from friends and family about my upcoming 1 year anniversary of diagnosis. Although reactions are different, the common theme of the questions is typically related to what I feel has changed the most this year. This is always a difficult question for me to answer because I feel everything is so different from a year ago. Consequently identifying one specific thing as the defining or biggest catalyst for change seems to minimize the importance of what this year has meant in my life. As I thought about this challenging question, I became aware of each step I was taking in my hike up the trail to Fish Lake. I realized that trying to identify the “Biggest Change” by asking me to identify a single most significant action this year, was like asking me which step was most important to ensure I got to Fish Lake. It’s a challenging question because there is no single step in the hike that would ensure I get to Fish Lake. Rather it is the cumulative result of taking each step inconsistent succession which will ultimately result in me reaching my destination.
When I think about the “Biggest Change” that has resulted from this year, I immediately think about how proud and confident I am of the actions I choose to take the day in and day out. But I was curious to see if I could identify what was at the root of this newfound sense of confident pride? Interestingly as I focused on this sensation the image of Jared and me on our first hike immediately came to mind. I recognized the self-pride I have developed over the past year, I also felt sitting with Jared in that moment of accomplishment at Bourgeau Lake. I realized my love of hiking is more than just looking at spectacular views or challenging my endurance, but rather hiking has taught me inherent lessons, that no doubt I have applied to help me develop such a genuine sense of self and positively manage such a pivotal year in my life.
When I hike, it is one of the only times where I am forced to stay in the moment as although I might have a map that describes the journey, until I am on the trail itself I never really know what terrain I might encounter. Consequently, I have to stay focused on each individual step, watching for fallen branches, roots, or other hazards and carefully placing each step to ensure I safely reach the end. When the terrain permits I can let my mind wander and for a few moments I might lose track of the immediate task at hand which is hiking. Inevitably though, it is always in the moment when my mind strays too far that I miss a root or step in a soft spot of snow and sink, ultimately hurting myself and potentially disabling me from reaching the end. This slip refocuses me back to the present moment as I recommit to ensuring my next step takes me safely in the right direction. When I hike I also can’t control the direction of the path nor can I try to control the path to ensure I take what I believe is the most efficient or easy journey. Inevitably the trail always seems to take the path of most resistance and just when it seems like I have gotten into a comfortable pace the trail will reveal a series of switchbacks to challenge me. I might, at the moment as I struggle up the steep terrain, question whether the effort will ultimately be “worth it” once the path is complete. However, I have learned the trail always provides recognition equal to the effort I have given to the trail. For instance, a short straight walk might offer a beautiful forest and quality time spent with a friend chatting about life. Whereas a strenuous climb might offer me a breathtaking view from a mountain top, where I might see the trailhead in the distance and I can spend a moment literally reflecting on how far I have come. Finally, the trail keeps me at the moment by only allowing me to see a few hundred meters ahead. Along the way, I might get a marker that tells me how far I have gone or in some cases give me an option to go another way but these signs are few and far between at best, and most of the time I just have to put one foot in front of the other and have faith that if I keep walking forward I will reach my destination.
When envisioning my last year I can completely relate the journey of my first 12 months with cancer, to almost all of the journeys I have had hiking. On May 7th they told me my treatment, or described the terrain I would face in the upcoming year, however, I didn’t know how I would react or what each day would be like until I lived it. So I chose to take each round of treatment day by day, step by step. I sometimes make plans during treatment, however just like I know I have to watch for roots and branches, I always make arrangements to ensure that these plans do not disable me from completing the task at hand, which is the successful completion of my treatment scheduled to end in June 2010. Most trails I have hiked are not a direct line to the end, but rather they turn, climb, drop, and climb again, sometimes with no apparent rhyme or reason. So too has my journey in my first year with cancer been. Some days are easy, some days are great but some days, for no reason, are just down. And just like the hike, all I can do is put my head down and keep trekking away, knowing eventually the path will get easier if I just keep moving forward. This past year I have only been able to see a couple of months ahead, as I am basically making plans on how my last treatment and MRIs have gone. Along the way, I have been given some indication from my oncologists or medical team (largely based on how I look and my blood work) that I am doing “well” however no one can really define what “doing well” means for me in the long term. I have learned I can’t control necessarily how I am going to feel tomorrow or in the future. But I accept that focusing on a potentially negative future will only work to distract me from the fact that I feel good today. Just like you never really know where the trail is taking you, in terms of my prognosis all I can do is have faith, that what I am doing is moving me in the right direction and I just need to keep moving forward and trust that I am on the right path. Finally, the journey I have taken this year has been a strenuous climb, full of the switchbacks of 3 weeks off, and 1 week on treatment. However I have taken time on the straightaways between treatment rounds to exercise, meditate, write, journal, and connect with loved ones and when I look back to the trailhead, or the beginning of my journey with cancer, I can see my new body, my website full of essays, journals full of entries and intensely strong connections with the best people in the world. And although the climb is far from over, I know the view will only get better.
As I hiked up to Fish Lake, there were occasions when Jared would stop and wait for me to ensure I hadn’t gotten stuck in a snow hole. When I would catch up he would jokingly ask “Why are you so slow?” On most trips previous I would make some sort of crude retort back or potentially make an excuse on how my ankle hurt or I hadn’t eaten enough and that was the reason for my poor performance. But on April 25th, 2010 I simply responded with “I didn’t know it was a race. I feel like I am right on time and exactly where I need to be. What’s your rush?” Although I know Jared was joking, my response got me thinking. Inevitably once we got to Fish Lake our plans were to make sandwiches then we would turn around and go back to the car. Our experience was never about getting to Fish Lake but rather it was about the journey that was most important and deserved to be appreciated and savored, with every step. Similarly, there is no destination in our lives, but rather a series of steps we walk each day that take us on different paths, some hard, some easy. Although we choose what path we might take, we can’t always see or control where that path may lead us. Moreover, when we rush to get to the end of the path to see what the future holds we ultimately miss out on most of the experiences we have in the present and really isn’t where we are right now, the most important place we need to be. In thinking about all the positive changes I have made during this pivotal year, all of them have resulted from stronger confidence that I am exactly where I need to be and moreover to “walk the walk” all I need to do is to focus presently on each step of the journey and trust that my path will continue to lead me to bigger, more positive changes yet to come.
