Following my discharge from the hospital on the last day of August last year, my Mom and I spent roughly two weeks at the Hilton Homewood Suites in Brookline, a gorgeous neighborhood that happens to be a stone’s throw from the Fenway area, where Dana-Farber and the majority of Boston’s medical institutions reside.
After twenty-three days in the hospital, high-intensity chemotherapy, and a side effect or three, my team finally deemed me healthy enough to leave the little ~150-square-foot room that was my “home” during transplant.
Healthy is a relative term, of course. I was in rough shape.
Prior to transplant, not knowing any better, I had grand plans for how I would spend my time in the hospital. I brought a stack of books, my camera, my laptop, and anything else that I thought would help me pass the time.
Those plans also extended to how I would stay active during my stay. I had pushed to get an exercise bike installed in my room ASAP, as I knew I’d be restless and want to do some form of exercise while I waited for my transplant to take hold.
If you’ve been following along with my writing for a while, then you know exactly how this went. I touched the bike twice, maybe three times during my entire stay.
For the most part, it stood as a monument to what I’d call “best-laid plans.” In truth, my body couldn’t have done much more than what it was already doing internally to manage treatment.
I didn’t dare ask more of it.
That meant that when my Mom showed up on August 31st to join me in ringing the bell and guide me out of the hospital and back into the real world, I hadn’t really moved my body in any meaningful way in over three weeks.
I had lost nearly 15 pounds and was physically weaker than I had ever been.
During the first couple of days out and about, walking on my own, I couldn’t make it a city block without needing to stop and rest. My heart rate would spike, and I would get lightheaded. My two options were either to sit or be seated. Either way, my body was telling me I’d be going down.
Luckily, thanks to my Mom’s guidance, I chose the former every time.
With every passing day, it seemed like my footing got surer, and before I knew it, we were taking more substantial walks every evening once the sun started to go down.
I tell you all this, not for the first time, to emphasize a point. It was during those evenings last September, when I was essentially learning to walk again, that my physical recovery began to feel like a much larger mountain to climb than I had anticipated before transplant.
I blink, and hear my alarm going off. It’s 4 AM. It’s October 4th, a little over a year since those early post-transplant days last September. I am running on maybe 3–4 hours of sleep, having attended one of Zach Bryan’s shows at Gillette the night before.
I roll out of bed because, much like those couple of weeks last year, my Mom and I have a walk planned. It’s also my 26th birthday.
I am too exhausted to comprehend either of those things.
We arrive at Hopkinton High School around 5:30. The sun still has not risen, but we are greeted by cheery volunteers guiding us toward check-in and wishing us luck. Thanking us for walking.
My Mom and I agree that it’s too early for such cheeriness. We laugh, not for the first time that day, acknowledge our grumpiness, thank the volunteers, throw on our little packs, and board the bus toward the start line.
The town green is quiet, as nobody in their right mind is up that early on a Sunday morning. We get off the bus, look around for a second or two, and then start.
We are doing the Jimmy Fund Walk. A roughly 27–28-mile walk from Hopkinton to the Boston Common.
Much like last year, hardly a block goes by before I want to sit down. This time around, though, it’s just the lack of caffeine talking. My body is stronger than it has ever been, and my Mom, having completed seven three-day Susan G. Komen walks, is no stranger to long days on foot like this.
So, we walk. For roughly nine hours, we just walk. The route, in large part, follows the Boston Marathon course. A course that I will be seeing again in April, but that’s a conversation for another time.
There was little we didn’t talk about over the course of the day, from the mundane to a heated debate over whether Heartbreak Hill is one large hill or a combination of all the Newton hills (we still have differing opinions). Through it all, though, it was a very reflective day.
Whether we said it or not, I think we could both feel the weight of what we were doing that day. How far we had come. How different this early fall day in Boston felt compared to last year.
That, in large part, is why we chose to walk that day. Simply put, because we could.
The day before the walk, I was staring at a blank sticker with the prompt “I walk for…” You were meant to write why you were walking in the little blank space provided.
I initially struggled with what to put, as I’ve been writing for a year and a half and still feel as if I’ve hardly scratched the surface in terms of writing my way toward some sort of understanding of my experience.
I didn’t think that I could fit all my thoughts, my gratitude, my fears, into a concise statement.
My writing is a testament to that.
But I did land on something. A phrase that I think acknowledges my past, present, and, thanks to Dana-Farber, my donor, and so many others, my possible future.
So, what did I walk for?
Second chances. I walked for second chances.
Talk Soon,
Ethan
Resources
External links directly referenced in this article:
- Homewood Suites – Brookline
- Brookline
- Dana-Farber
- Zach Bryan
- Gillette Stadium
- Hopkinton High
- Jimmy Fund Walk
- Hopkinton
- Boston Common
- Susan G. Komen Foundation
- Boston Marathon
- Heartbreak Hill
- Newton
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