FITNESS CONFIDENTIAL (15 page)

Soon, we were back in Deborah’s car, navigating the choked L.A. streets as we returned to her place. Nestled in the hills of Beverly Hills, Deborah’s ranch house was modest in comparison to the mansions next door in Bel Air. My truck was there. My dogs were there. It was going to be my home for the next three weeks.

We went inside. I sat on her couch, staring at her blank television screen and, for the first time in twenty-five years, I realized that there was nothing that had to get done.

It was a strange feeling. I felt like a heavyweight title fight was about to start and I was the arena. The chemo was fighting the cancer in my body while I just sat there, waiting for the outcome. My only job was to keep breathing. I figured that the next month was going to be lonely and quiet as the chemo did its work.

I was wrong.

Chapter Nineteen

SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL

As soon as my friends heard I was on chemo, I discovered that many of them were pot smokers. And even the dumbest ones, people who’d barely graduated high school, instantly became amateur chemists and botanists.

“Now this strain,” one of them might say, “this is Sativa. It has high levels of THC, the active hallucinogen in cannabis which counteracts nausea and the other negative effects of chemo.”

“Really?” I’d reply. “Don’t you still live with your grandmother?”

Here’s something you should know about me. I’ve never used illicit drugs. Ever. I know that’s hard to believe, playing major college football where that stuff is all over the place and sometimes free for players—not to mention living in Los Angeles, dealing with highly creative types who put cocaine on their cornflakes. In spite of being around them all the time, I’ve never been a drug guy.

Which is why I was stunned at how many people brought me pot as a gift.

Often, it was wrapped very nicely and presented with care. Even my friends who knew I didn’t smoke pot still brought me some, along with instructions on how to bake it into cookies and brownies. One woman actually brought me a vaporizer to “make the active ingredient” go down easier.

I took it all with a smile and a thank you. I’m a Southern guy. I was raised to think it’s impolite to turn down a gift. And, the truth is, if I’d gotten really nauseated, I probably would have smoked some of it. I hate feeling nauseated so much it actually makes me sick to my stomach. But I never needed to touch the stuff, because the hospital gave me some pills called Kytril to relieve the nausea. They worked well enough that I never had to resort to the pot.

Months later, I wasn’t sure what to do with my newfound stash, so I threw it all in a bag and took it to a friend of mine in Hermosa Beach. I knew she was a pot smoker and figured maybe I’d get laid in the process.

We’re being honest, right?

So she opened the bag, saw what was inside and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You have over a pound of pot in here! If you’d gotten pulled over, they’d have nailed you for felony possession with intent to sell.”

Not only are my pot-smoking friends amateur chemists, they’re also amateur lawyers.

By the way, about getting laid that night … yeah, that happened.

And, during that period, it happened a lot more than I would have imagined. I don’t know if it was charity or if women thought their vaginas had magical healing powers, but I had a surprising number of opportunities while I was hooked up to that chemo pump in Deborah’s house.

And I accepted them. Who wouldn’t?

Here’s how it started. This girl—who I’d modeled with a few years back—came to see me after a particularly rough day. I’d slept most of it in what I thought of as a “chemo coma.” It was late at night and she was on her way home from a dinner party. She thought I might be up because I slept at odd hours. It turned out she was right. We visited, had a nice time, but I got tired again. I got tired a lot then.

I offered to let her sleep on the couch while I went into the bedroom and she gratefully accepted. An hour or so later, I woke up and passed her on the way to the bathroom. She was still up. One thing led to another and, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I found myself having sex. Now, you have to understand, I’d lost my sex drive half-a-year earlier which, for me, was like losing my will to live.

Turns out that the cancer had robbed me of testosterone, which had a couple unexpected side effects. My hair, which had been thinning, started getting thicker. Not bad. But I also found myself weeping in movies. Unfortunately, I’m not talking about
Old Yeller
, the only movie a guy’s allowed to weep in. I’m talking about girl movies. And what was I even doing in girl movies? Hell, I found myself choked up during commercials for the ASPCA and women’s feminine products.

Even though I had parted with my sex drive, suddenly, it came back. Not all the way. Just a little. But a little was enough. So we bumped uglies.

And it was comedy.

The chemo pump was strapped to my waist, which made things … awkward. I tried to move it to the side, but it was still in the way. While I was juggling that, I was also trying to protect the tubing from getting ripped out of the PICC line in my arm. If that happened, it would have sprayed chemo everywhere, causing me to have to bust open the hazmat kit to clean us off like seagulls after the Valdez spill.

That would have been hard to explain.

But as crazy as the situation was, it was fun and, for the first time in a while, I felt alive. After all, can’t have sex when you’re dead. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had sex and now I started to wonder if this was going to be the last time. Who knew if I was even going to survive another day? Erections were a rare occurrence, like a solar eclipse or a basketball player that’s never been arrested, and I had to make each one count.

I did my best.

Now, what really made all this crazy was that the hospital had warned me about being careful to avoid getting sick. I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone. They even gave me anti-bacterial soap. There was a long list of instructions, all designed to keep me free from germs so that my weakened immune system wouldn’t get further compromised. It probably never even occurred to them to mention, “Oh, and also don’t have sex.” Mostly, I’m guessing, because they never thought anyone in their right mind would be interested in doing that.

I began to lose track of time.

The chemo lasted eight days, but I remained at Deborah’s for another two and a half weeks because, even though the chemo was finished, it was still in my body, working away at the cancer. The doctors told me that this was when I would feel the most miserable, and they weren’t lying. A lot of that was because of the Neupogen, a drug I had to take to boost my white blood cell count.

The nurses said that the Neupogen made your bones feel broken. They were right. My hips felt like they’d been shattered. No matter how I moved, the pain wouldn’t go away. Not only was it painful, it was fifteen hundred dollars a shot, money I didn’t have. I needed one shot a day. Luckily, insurance covered it. The hospital also gave me a prescription for Vicodin and Oxycontin to help with the pain, but I never filled those prescriptions. Pride, I guess. I thought I could gut my way through it.

I underestimated how tough it would be.

One night, I was alone in the house, nauseated, feeling like crap. Every bone in my body felt broken. I felt like I was two hundred years old. My pee was rust colored. It was like that all the time during the chemo but I noticed it even more on this day. That was the only time I thought, game over. This is it.

That was my lowest point.

And I didn’t even have any Vicodin to ease the pain. I thought about smoking some of the pot, but I wasn’t sure if pot helped with pain and I also wasn’t sure how you went about smoking it. Finally, I remembered that Deborah had a nice bar in her house, so I poured myself a glass of scotch and hoped that would help.

Even though I was feeling like crap, feeling sorry for myself, deep down I knew it wasn’t over for me. It wasn’t my time to die. I had unfinished business. Things that needed doing. I’m sure that most people have exciting things on their bucket list. Jumping out of airplanes, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, a romantic week in Rome. My bucket list, on the other hand, ended up filled with weird shit.

On it, in no particular order:

I wanted to go to Alaska. Mostly because I’ve been to every other state, along with many countries around the world, but for some reason I’d never been there. The completist in me wanted to check it out.

I wanted to own a Ferrari. Like I said, I’m not a money guy, but damn those Ferraris are nice looking, don’t you think? Or maybe they just look that way through my Italian eyes.

I wanted to know if I’d ever been in love. To be clear, I wasn’t wishing to fall in love, although that would have been okay if it happened. I mostly wanted to know if I’d ever really been in love, because I wasn’t sure. Hell, I couldn’t even understand why most people would like me, much less love me, much less have me love them back.

But, most of all, I wanted to finish the Furnace Creek 508. It seems crazy, but if Ahab had his white whale, I had the 508.

And that’s what I was thinking about as I waited to see if the chemo had done its job, leaving me cancer free. Or if it had failed, leaving me even sicker than before.

I wouldn’t know the answer to that for six long weeks.

* * *

“Vinnie, right?”

I stared at the girl behind the reception desk at Dr. Anne’s office, wondering how in the world she knew my name. It had been over two months since I’d been there. Did she have some sort of photographic memory and just knew the names of all the patients she met?

I glanced around at the people in the waiting room and noticed how old they were. Did she know me because I was one of the younger guys there? As I tried to figure it out, the receptionist turned to one of the other women behind the counter and said, “By the way, that’s the John Wayne that doesn’t need anesthesia for a bone marrow biopsy.”

The other woman looked up at me, curious. “That’s
the
Vinnie?”

I don’t know if I’m
the
Vinnie, I thought. I’m sure there’re other Vinnie’s.

Hearing my name, Dr. Anne leaned out of her office and gave me a little wave. “Hey, Vinnie!”

I walked over to her and smiled. “What a warm reception I’m getting around here.”

“Oh, you have no idea. You’ve become a real celebrity in the office. Everyone knows the story of the guy who did a bone marrow biopsy with no anesthesia.”

I laughed pleasantly but inside I was dying a little because I realized what that meant. I was about to have to get another bone marrow biopsy … without anesthesia.

Couldn’t disappoint my fans.

Aside from the terrible pain, the procedure went off without a hitch. Anne got the bone marrow she needed and sent it off to the lab.

While I waited for the results, I went back to training my clients. I was optimistic about what I thought the tests would show. Physically, I felt great. Better than I’d felt in a long time. My sex drive had returned and, to top it all off, I only needed eight hours of sleep as opposed to the fifteen I’d required at the height of my sickness. I was certain that when the results came in, I would have a clean bill of health.

Which is why it was such a shock to discover that the leukemia was still there.

“You’re showing improvement,” Dr. Anne said, looking at my chart. “We’ve reduced the amount of cancer in your system, but we haven’t gotten rid of it completely. We don’t know if the remaining leukemia cells are dead ones being flushed out of your body or live ones that the chemo didn’t kill.”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“Well, we give it another six weeks and then check again. It’s possible that, by then, your body will have flushed the rest of the cancer cells out of your system and you’ll be in the clear.”

“And if not?”

“Then we need to put you on another round of chemo and start over.”

Shit, I thought. But I wasn’t upset about not getting a clean bill of health. I was upset about having to get another bone marrow biopsy—the John Wayne way.

Six weeks later, that’s exactly what I did. Oddly enough, by then I’d gotten so used to them that I was able to tell Anne when she was deep enough in the bone to strike marrow.

“You’re not there yet,” I said while she was grinding through my hip with the steel tube.

“You can tell?” Anne replied in disbelief.

“Yeah. There’s a different kind of pain when you’re on the marrow.”

I’d become a connoisseur of pain.

Anne turned to her assistant. “We never get feedback like that, do we?”

“Nope,” the assistant said with a shake of her head. “But that’s probably because everyone else is unconscious.”

So Anne took the marrow sample and, once again, the waiting game began. Three days later, I got a phone call. It was Anne.

“You’re cancer free,” she said in the same tone a mechanic might use to let you know your car is ready. “You can resume your normal life.”

“Resume your normal life” was a good way to put it because one of the hardest things about the whole ordeal was how abnormal my life had become. I wasn’t used to being so passive, to sitting back and watching while my destiny was determined by something I couldn’t control. I thanked Anne for all her help. Her kindness and steadiness had helped make everything much more tolerable.

But it was time to resume my normal life.

Truth be told, I’d already resumed my normal life a few months earlier. I couldn’t help myself. I was desperate to get back into training mode, because I was only truly happy when I was active, when I was pushing myself to the limit. That’s a phrase I’ve always detested, by the way, mostly because of that last word.

Limit.

It’s so … limiting.

In the 1968 Summer Olympics, Bob Beamon broke the world long jump record with a jump of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches. Records in that event are usually bettered in increments of half or even quarter inches, but he had nearly jumped an astonishing two feet farther than the previous world record. In fact, he’d jumped past the measuring equipment at the Olympics because, at the time, no one contemplated that a jump of that distance was even possible. People thought that the human body couldn’t take such an impact, that an athlete’s knees would explode upon landing.

Bob Beamon redefined what everyone always thought of as the limit.

His record wasn’t bettered for over twenty years.

Back in the fifties, people thought that running a mile in under four minutes was crazy talk—until Roger Bannister did it in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. These days, a sub four-minute mile is common.

Roger Bannister redefined the limits.

Up until the late seventies, doctors, scientists and mountaineers were all certain of one thing. Reaching the summit of Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen was a physical impossibility.