Simply stated, hiking to the summit of Guadalupe Peak is mentally and emotionally to this point the toughest hike I have ever done. And I’ve done a lot of hikes. Throughout most of our three thousand foot ascent on Guadalupe, I’m feeling just about creeped out, one banana short of a bunch, an ant short of a picnic, one hump short of a camel. Y’know, missing something, something like courage. Yeah, you could say I’m terrified. Trudging up the sides of these cliffs, there is a tornado of, as my brother Laurence would call it, the squigglies buzzing around inside my body. A symphony of jimjams, the dithers and shakes, the colleywobbles.
Get the picture?
Why, then, am I doing this? Why am I forcing myself four and a half miles out and 3000 feet up on this narrow trail on the steep sloping side of this enormous mount with my heart gallantly squeezing blood and my lungs sucking air in spite of their constriction? I’m good with the sweat and the burning hamstrings, but why the fear? Why do I continue, clinging the inside wall and forcing myself not to look around?
The views here are spectacular, my worthy girlfriend tells me, and I huddle myself against the stone wall, studying the cracks and tiny plants that try to grow here. I walk uphill on the spare gravel and dirt footpath with my inner arm extended toward the solid rock and my whole body leaning away from the chasm which I know is just a foot and a half away on the other side. Acrophobia abounds. What the hell kind of way is this to have a vacation!
The answer is simple; I know exactly what this is about. Fifty-three weeks ago I had some, as they say, “medical procedures.” On March 21, I made an outpatient visit to the hospital for a test called a lymphoscintogram. A month earlier my dermatologist peeled off a “suspicious” mole from the top of my foot. Results from the lab came back two weeks later. The best they could tell me was, “Hmm, there is some kind of abnormal growth here, but we can’t tell what it is. The cells are atypical.” When you are talking about cells of your own body, and it’s your dermatologist who is doing the talking, “atypical” is not an adjective you want to hear.
The lymphoscintogram starts with injections of technetium-99m, a radioactive elixir, into the top of my foot. A big guy, about the size of a small motel, was present for the procedure. His job was to hold my foot in position — which he did admirably — so that I couldn’t jerk it away when the doctor inserted the needle. Four times. Who knew how sensitive the top of the foot is when you insert a needle! Who knew a gorilla would be called upon to hold my foot.
During the first injection, I made up new words that were not complimentary to anyone now living on Earth. I shouted them. When the doc inserted the needle the second time, I repeated my oaths, louder, amazed at the focus of pain. She said, “Amazing, given how small this needle is, that it hurts so much, huh.”
Huh.
For the third injection, I made up more words and I directed all of them at the doctor, her ancestry, any existing dependents and all past acquaintances and future descendants. Plus her pets. She was not to be deterred. By the fourth injection, I practiced being like a monk. Or a nun. Whatever.
After all the viper venom had been thrust into my system, my instructions were to lie there on the cold, shiny metal table and wait for the injected juice to go where it might go. This was not cozy, and it was made worse by being captive to the little radio over there, out of reach on the shelf, playing Celine Dion.
Three songs later — Celine Dion being followed by the Bee Gees and then Abba — please, stab me in the foot again! — the big guy ran a scanner over my body: two pivoting breadboxes on swivel arms mounted on a tracking frame attached to a rolling framework the size of the room. It whirred, moved mechanically and made me think of Robocop with the hiccups.
If the suspicious mole was made of cancer, the bad bugs would travel, as a matter of course, from the mole on my foot to a collection place. In the human body, this gathering area is any of a large number of lymph nodes. Whichever lymph nodes would collect the technetium-99m would also be the ones where the cancer would go.
The next day, I was back in the hospital, in surgery. The mole on the top of my foot? What the dermatologist removed a month ago was just an introduction. What the surgeon removed was the whole rest of the mole, which had some depth to it, as well as a broad inch and a half of the top of my foot that surrounded the mole.
The surgeon also went into my groin to remove the two lymph nodes where the radiated fluid collected, the sentinel nodes. If there was cancer, this is where it would be found.
Now I am on the trail. I am breathing heavily, mostly from my fear of height, or more accurately, my fear of falling. I didn’t sleep well last night and we got up early. I’m not getting my standard quantity of enjoyment from this hike as I am too frightened. I have the hand-and-feet-paralyzing fear, the I-can’t-look-down fear, the get-me-out-of-here-now fear. I am experiencing the kind of nightmarish waking dream where I’ve lost control of my entire Universe and I’m in the last place I would ever choose to be.
Why, why!?
Because it’s better than the alternative. I’m climbing to the top of the Lone Star State. It’s the first warm weather I’ve experienced since last fall and I’m with my excellent girlfriend. The sunrise at trailhead this morning was magnificent, glorious.
We are climbing to this high point because climbing to high points is a superb thrill. This is our vacation and climbing to high points is a goofy, whimsical, and supremely challenging thing to do. And we are doing it because we feel like doing it and we love doing it.
Days after the surgery, I got a call from the doctor’s office telling me that they discovered no significant cancer. Had the nurse on the other end of the line had different news, I could right now be lying on my back undergoing treatment that would leave me sick and weak and, at best with this type of malignancy and given my family’s history of cancer, would probably give me another six months to a year before I would die. My appetite would fade, my hiking days would be over and I would be figuring out who gets into my will and for what. I would be my mother’s second son whom she outlived and I would be wondering what would be next. Meet God? Meet Mr Scratch? See my brother again? My guess is, I probably wouldn’t meet anyone, known or unknown. I would likely just be dead. Not as soon as if I were to fall off this cliff, but soon enough.
Actually, if I’m gonna die, I’d rather do it while I’m hiking than sitting in a chair with tubes and beeping. That’s for damned sure.
But here’s the thing. I don’t have to figure it out now. I do not have cancer. Today I face a fear that I have chosen rather than a fear that is foisted upon me. I fear because I choose to fear. While I’m not looking to end anything, I would choose the fall off this cliff for my ultimate demise, rather than wafting away from cancer. My choice is to be here, fear and all, and lucky me, I get my wish.
I have a hiking buddy, Joe, excellent outdoorsman. The envy of the other guys, married himself a Hooters girl. Nice girl too. Grew up to be a model mom, teacher of special kids, bunch of other great stuff. Breast cancer. Dead at 45.
It was 52 days post-surgery that my foot was healed enough that I could, once again, put on a pair of hiking boots. It is now 375 days post-surgery that I am climbing this big, scary mountain. Y’know why? Because this big, scary mountain? It ain’t nothin’. Y’know?
I learned from my brother that the end days don’t come when you want them to. You can only get away with putting things off for so long. I ask myself, What am I waiting for? What are any of us waiting for? We’re waiting for the fear to go away? Ha! We can’t wait that long.