I have a story I want to tell you.

Some of you know I have cancer, the Big C, a fact I discovered when I got back from a vacation to India in 2019. After the doctors relieved me of various organs that I no longer needed, they started a series of treatments that did absolutely nothing to kill the cancer, but that tried unsuccessfully to kill the rest of me. Fortunately, this failed, but it did make me sick as a dog (Why do people say that anyway? My dog never gets sick.)

One of the side effects was to make me so weak I considered it a major accomplishment if I could brush my teeth. Things got so dramatic around here that they stopped all the treatments and then put me on hospice care, which is usually when you’re about to meet your maker, but in my case just meant I got a lot of free hard drugs that I really didn’t want. Also, people like nurses and doctors came to my house, which was cool, instead of me having to drive to them.

I was eligible for hospice because the doctors had no more treatments for me, and they expected me to live six months or less. (Ha ha. Fooled them on that one.) The most difficult thing about this phase in 2020 was that I could barely walk. I needed a walker to get from my bedroom to the kitchen — a distance of maybe 40 feet. And I got plopped into a wheelchair whenever we went out.

Now, for a person who used to go hiking and tent camping, this was barely living. So my 17 doctors sent two different physical therapists to my house, to see what could be done about this. When they arrived (on separate occasions), I explained to them that I was weak because I hadn’t been out of my chair since my surgery, and I wanted to regain my strength. At that point, I couldn’t even climb the few stairs to my porch without help.

Both therapists gave me a few exercises, but also suggested that I just stick to walking between the refrigerator and my bedroom, so I could conserve my strength and not fall. After they left, I thought, “Forget that.” And I started my own exercise program. I have an elliptical trainer in my living room that I bought to train for Machu Picchu, and it worked. But I could barely stand up, let alone get on it.

So I pushed my office chair over to it, sat down and began pushing one pedal with one leg as long as I could. Which was about a minute. Then, I did the same on the other side.

Every day, I would push that pedal for a longer time, until the glorious day when I could actually stand up, hold onto the handlebars and push one pedal at a time on my feet. As you might guess, the even more glorious day arrived when I could actually get up onto the machine and use it properly. This was as exciting as winning the lottery at that moment. I mean, depending on how much I would have won. With my newfound strength, I could even climb the stairs to my house, albeit slowly and carefully, clutching the handrail.

I still use handrails for support and to haul myself up, but my muscles have now remembered how they’re supposed to work, and that meant I could take trips to Puerto Vallarta, Baja and Greece. This year, I’m going to even more places. Especially if there are doughnuts involved.

It’s remarkable what your body can do when you push it. I booked us into this small guesthouse on the Greek island of Paros, even though I knew it was a bit far from the center of town. “I’ll just get a taxi if I need it,” I said to myself. Well, um, no. It was August and high season and there were no taxis, because they were all booked every minute.

This meant that my only option for food was to walk several blocks into town. The first day I tried this, I was really in pain and could barely make it down to the waterfront. But the food was delicious. Yum. That night, I couldn’t sleep because my legs were throbbing so badly. The next day, I woke up hungry and knew the only way I was going to satisfy this hunger was to once again walk down to the old town on those throbbing limbs, with my son holding my arm.

By the end of the four days on Paros, my legs had mostly stopped hurting and I could make it down to town without too much whining. I felt my life starting to come back to me. I like to say I started walking again because of a desperate need for Greek food.

When I get on my elliptical now, I visualize being able to hike again. There’s a particular slot canyon in Utah I couldn’t get into last year, because my walker wouldn’t go through the sand to get to it. I think now I could do it with just a cane and an extra arm, and that’s got me chomping at the bit.

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