My Turn

“Why are YOU doing this?”  It’s a question I have heard many times, and even asked myself.  I have never had cancer.  I have never been through chemo, never lost my hair, never “walked through the valley.”  My parents and children are all, thank God, cancer free.  I am not a truly avid cyclist (more, rather, of a weekend warrior).  I could not describe a crank shaft in detail nor do I know all the finer points of Assos vs. Chamois Butt’r.  The farthest I have ever ridden at one time is 70.1 miles.  At (still, and after losing 50 pounds) 30 pounds more than I should weigh, I certainly do not look like a cyclist!

Yet there are many reasons I am doing this.  My husband was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2007, after a thyroidectomy due to a completely inactive thyroid.  The tumor was less than a centimeter in diameter and, according to doctors, “if you’re going to have cancer, that’s the kind you want to have.”  Can you imagine, a cancer you want to have!  After just a few weeks of real doubt, we were cleared of any cancer demons and reassured that this was a fluke.

My grandmother also died of cancer (cancer of unknown primary origin) in 2000 at the age of 91.  From the day of diagnosis to the day she died was one month exactly, and it was a month from hell.  That said, being with a dying person was one of the strongest and most moving experiences of my life.  I treasure it deeply in a little safe place in my heart, and I recommend the experience highly.  But I wish it had not been cancer that had taken this remarkable woman, leaving her, in the end, with such little dignity.

My uncle died at age 60 of esophogeal cancer, and it was another useless death, filled with pointless suffering.

My father in law was treated successfully for bladder cancer in 2003 but has scars that he will carry for life.

So, I ride for my husband and his cancer-you-want-to-have.  I ride for Betty and Bob and Paul.  I ride for Susan.  I ride for Sally, and Holly, and Rhonda, and Lisa, and Linda, and the other Lisa.  I ride for Grace.  I ride for Jennifer and Stacy.  I ride for Lindsey, who does not have cancer but has a terminal cancer-like illness that is so rare the only research it gets is for cancer first, and her four year old son and her husband on his second tour of Iraq.  I ride for my mother and mother in law and brothers- and sisters-in-law and all our children, so they may never face this disease.

I ride so that next year, maybe no one will have to ride.

Recently, as I was preparing to leave my husband and three children for a week (no easy task I assure you) I thought whiningly to myself, “I can’t do this.”  And a voice popped into my head (Joey, I swear it was Susan!  Or maybe, Kevin, it was Sally?) and said, ”Don’t you DARE say that.  Of course you can!”   Several hours later I picked up my new issue of Runner’s World (sorry, I do not yet subscribe to Bicycling or whatever it is) and here was the first thing I read, a quote in a sidebar: “There will be a day that you cannot do this.  Today is not that day.”

So, there will be a day I cannot do this:  today, and tomorrow, and the next and the next all the way to Austin, will not be that day.

Susannah Hogan