I never thought my walking stick could support my head, but it did one day, six times. I have used a saguaro cactus rib for 26 years as a walking stick, 1 1/8” rubber stop at the end, so when the rubber has to be changed out and removed, the part above the protection is much thinner than the rest of the stick. The stick and I have traveled over a thousand miles in fourteen states.
Near the summit of the Butte, I reached the top of the first two groups of steps, 13 now in the first, due to subsidence, where there were once 12, 14 in the second, where the trail made a right hand bend and my respiratory rate of nearly 50 per minute became insufficient. I was beat and stopped, putting my forehead down on the stick and wished I could lasso my breath because I didn’t see any other way to catch it. My legs were complaining, too, in a way that I really didn’t understand. I’ve had tired legs, but I had weird buttock discomfort, too, which I haven’t had.
After a short time, I budged then nudged forward a little, trudged a bit more wondering if I could fudge the idea of getting to the top without holding a grudge against the trail. I hiked up the next group of steps, stopped, waited, and then budged. I then hiked, rested, nudged, hiked, rested, and budged until I had used my walking stick as a forehead holder six separate times. My seventh and final stop was still well below the top just before the big tree. I saw a convenient rock and sat down. My prior time up a few days before, I had to stop once. Two times before that I didn’t have to stop. This looked like a bad trend.
I hadn’t felt great all day prior to the hike. The radiation therapy was affecting my bowel, since the pelvis is deep—I mean in women a baby fits in it—but even in men it is deep enough, and my 27 cc size prostate—an ounce, give or take—was at the bottom. Worse, I had a node that appeared to be involved, so that area as well needed the photon beam, which encountered plenty of bowel in between the skin and the node. At the time I had 18 treatments. When I began the hike I didn’t feel right—well, I’ll be honest— I felt crappy. But even crappy now felt different from crappy as I had known it. Finally, I made the top, seven rest stops to finish less than a quarter mile distance climbing 190 vertical feet that I once did in under 5 minutes.
At least I no longer felt crappy. I just couldn’t breathe. I began to feel fine after the first five minutes’ hiking. I can’t find the right words for what I felt. Radiation and hormonal mismatching mischief have made my body-speak another language, and I don’t learn languages easily. I thought I was doing fine until the steps.
I descended without difficulty but worried that this profound weakness was a sign of radiation-induced fatigue, which might even worsen for the next two months before slowly remitting. But I wasn’t convinced. I could walk 4-5 miles a day on flat ground with no significant effort. I had been chemically castrated for four months and doing trail work during that time. I wasn’t great, but nobody asked me what was wrong, either.
Five days later, I went back up Spencer on a cold, foggy day. I got up the first 26 steps, and the walking stick remained a walking stick, not a head support. When I reached the fiftieth step, I punched the air with my fist. I wasn’t normal—and I may never be normal again; I am at peace with that possibility—but I was able to get to the top using the walking stick only for which it was designed. Mind you, I still have 4 solid weeks of radiation ahead, and side effects may increase after radiation stops. But the operative word here is “may,” not “definitely” or “will.” And a great deal of radiation is behind me; actually, it’s in me.
Boreal B[l]og 