What do you do when you find out you’re not going to do more chemo? You find another way to kill yourself…. It’s called dragon boating!
I let the news soak in for a day or two and then decided I better just throw myself back into life before I lost my nerve. First thing first was to start working again. I was a little nervous about jumping back into things and not really knowing what I was doing, but my motto has always been “fake it till ya know it” and that seems to be working well.
Second thing was to get my body back into shape and try to feel like I was being proactive about maintaining my health. So what do you do when you’re feeling weak, tired and outta shape, join a high performance activity – not!
Halfway through my first practice I was sitting in the back of the boat, in the middle of the river, wondering ‘what the fuck was I thinking?’ That’s pretty much how most of my practices went for the next six weeks. But every practice I got better. I got stronger and stronger, and by race day I was confident I would finish each race without throwing-up on myself. (What can I say we all have different objectives when competing?)
This was also another fake it till ya know it moment in that I didn’t tell anyone on my team that I have cancer. I really wanted see if I could pull off “normal” again, I certainly don’t feel it, but I’m fakin normal until I feel normal again!
