Day +125 and positive it is.
If this were a stage show, I'd cue the music "ain't no mountain high enough" and put up a big-screen photo montage of me and my family climbing a huge chasm in the Adirondacks one day and tooling around the Catskills another.
I'd stand, stage left, so everyone could see the screen clearly, and begin my soliloquy:
A score of 4 (EDSS) several years ago, and my doctor told me Too much sport could be tedious at times Break my heart, I must not speak about it In my mind it was nobler to suffer silently than to reveal The aches and arrows of this shitty diagnosis. Now here we are, on this journey I climbed a mountain (from 9 to twelve) With my vaulting ambition and a new immune system And I'm kicking ass and the diagnosis they wrote it on
[pause for applause]
No, I'm not drinking. But I do feel high (Joking, Mom, I've never been high).
I can't believe how this summer has been. I believe it was me who told you I don't WANT to climb rocks after I started feeling stronger. But guess what? I spent the day with Matt and the girls in the Adirondacks climbing around a chasm. We even went rafting. It was mid-July and the heat didn't take me out. I tried not to make a deal out of it in case it was a one-time thing.
But come on! I mean, I climbed rocks in the heat of the day 3 months after a stem cell transplant!
I've been doing a lot of reflecting on the past decade. It's crashing my hard drive, the past ten years: changing family, changing homes, changing careers, changing stem cells, changing hair styles...
The last 10 set a precedent. I think I'm up for more change if it keeps going up hill like this.
