The Day I Raced My Palliative Care Nurse

[TuffNuttoCrack]

I’m coming off the mountain top!

What an incredible experience and I’m sure Nurse Sarah (not her real name) feels the same! I was smiling and laughing all the way home from my hospital! So much fun! I can only say in my life that my wife’s birth to our daughters surpasses this. The only thing that I can think of in the future that will surpass my experience last Tuesday is the day all cancer cells in my body have been completely annihilated forever. It will come.

My Palliative care nurse and I met for the first time last Tuesday morning at the start of the Skybridge, chit chatted and went to the starting metal strip. We met previously several months ago on telemedicine where she interviewed me prior to the doctor. I disclosed one feat I was especially proud of as a 70 year old, 200 pound man with a very rare, poorly differentiated, extremely aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer. In a clinical trial, I had the second fastest time in the six minute walk, with the fifty year old athlete beating me by six feet, or one second. Nurse Sarah said to me suddenly during the interview. "Let’s race!" I am thinking what? “You want to race with me, you are definitely one confident, enthusiastic incredible lady to suggest this!” So a few months later after recovering from a 16 day hospital stay with deadly hospital acquired pneumonia possibly acquired from bugs aspirated during an esophageal Botox procedure and then getting RSV with whooping cough for another six weeks, we did. With my lack of an immune system, setbacks come often. But whenever I do have a setback, I do my workouts with greater resolve and determination to surpass my physical condition before the setback. I fight hard, really hard to try and defy my doctors expectations. I try to inspire others to do their best to overcome adversity.

Last Tuesday the Skybridge traffic was really light. Nurse Sarah said she was going to walk with me rather than to walk after me. Nurse Sarah looked extremely physically fit, like a gymnast in her jet black warmup suit and told me she spent a lot of time on the treadmill. I’m thinking “uh ho, I’m in deep trouble".

Off we went. I immediately went into choo choo breathing mode and I was surprised that she didn’t fall behind one iota. Neck and neck the entire 1500 feet. Midway, I managed to blurt out “I’m turning on my afterburners, Sarah”, but it didn’t phase her, she just turned on hers, and I thought to myself “gosh dog I can’t shake her off”. She said to me “you are really, really fast!”

With the finish line metal strip 30 feet in front of us in front of the dune buggies ready to take folks from the clinic building to the hospital, I told her “look for the metal strip!”

As we both crossed it simultaneously, I did my classmate's track star and high hurdlers’ lunge to see if I could beat her convincingly, if only by the length of my shaggy unkept hair. Amazingly there could be no doubt that it was a tie, one that the doctors and nurses of my hospital, especially Palliative Care, could be proud of. Tuff Nut to Crack too was just glowing. The finish was so exhilarating for both Nurse Sarah and me. The time was 3 minutes 29 seconds, a personal best for both of us. In fact Nurse Sarah said she beat her previous time taken the week before by a full minute. That’s booking it man! With me still huffing and puffing, she went and got me a glass of water and we took a selfie with both of our index fingers signaling number numero uno. With a few bystanders at the finish line looking in amazement, she told them she had just been in a race with her patient. Ha, Ha.

We probably won’t walk together again, as it would really be tough to match what we experienced last Tuesday. We will savor the moment forever! Thank you Nurse Sarah! You made my last two years of tough treatment extremely gratifying in the 3 minutes 29 seconds and 27 milliseconds that you spent walking with your patient Tuff Nut to Crack.

Power walk, exercise at your own risk and take care not to put other people in danger. Attached is the certificate I made up for her. She loved it!

Thank you Lord for giving me this experience, and enabling Nurse Sarah and I to start a new friendship.

All God bless you, put your trust in the Lord, he will save you. See page 420-421 of Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer for his thoughts on spirituality.

Sent from my iPhone