Hi, I’m Briton from Rad Mom Cool Kid, a lifestyle blog where I share a little bit of everything! Travel tips, photography, recipes, beauty…if you dumped out Mary Poppins’ bag, that would be my blog! I’m excited to share an experience with you today, one that still stings a little but I’m glad to have experienced.
9 years ago I found out I had stage 2 malignant melanoma. For those not familiar, melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer. That’s the bad news. The good news is if you catch it early, you have a pretty high chance of survival. My chance was 49-75%. A bit dicier than I would have preferred but it was completely removed with one surgery! Because it was right below my knee I couldn’t bend it or my fresh scar would pull open. Have you ever just not used one of your bendy parts for that long? You don’t all-of-a-sudden get full range-of-motion back. It took several more months of work to be able to kneel down or hug both legs tight to my chest. Did I mention that was 7 months pregnant when the cancer bomb was dropped? So there I was, one seriously hormonal, emotional whale of thing, hobble-waddling through life.
6.5 years ago I was pregnant with my second child. It was a really crappy pregnancy. I was sick the whole time, I had extreme exhaustion (I would just fall asleep, for hours, every day), and the worst part was not being able to walk because the joints in my lower back were so loose that I could feel them moving. I physically could not stand on one leg to pull my pants on. Some days I couldn’t walk at all and would crawl to the kitchen to get my son snacks and meals. Emotionally and physically I was having another hard spot in my life.
5 years ago I turned 25. I was pretty jazzed because 100% surviving a 49-75% chance of surviving is something to celebrate! I cut my super long hair and donated it to be made into a wig for a cancer patient, I participated in a fund-raiser for a local non-profit that helps cancer patients pay for non-medical related expenses while they are going through treatment, and I signed up for a triathlon because the proceeds went to the cancer treatment center my oncologist was associated with. Pretty freaking rad right?! Did I mention that I had never participated in a race of any kind? So there I was, high on life, LIFE!, with a few months ahead of me to train for my race.
I didn’t have a bike so I borrowed one, shoved my babies in a bike trailer, and started riding around my neighborhood. I took spin classes at my gym, ran laps around my alley, and took a few open-water swim classes. When the day of my race came I was really nervous but I was physically ready. My swim was strong but the bike portion was a nightmare. I rented a road bike for the day and the gears were sticky. It got stuck in a really hard gear so for several miles I was the absolute last racer on the course. There was a truck following slowly behind me, picking up the orange race barrels. I felt defeated and embarrassed and I just wanted the truck to speed up a little and put me out of my misery! At the top of a particularly gnarly hill, that I walked my bike up, I saw an angel (disguised as my neighbor) and he hurried over to help me muscle my bike into the right gear. After that my training kicked back in and I was able to pass a few people before getting back to transition to the final leg- a 5K run. This was the first time in the race that I felt alone with just my mind to keep me company. The first leg I was focused on getting going and my adrenaline played a big part, the second leg was so physically hard that I was just reminding myself, “I can do hard things!” The last leg was where it became emotional for me. I was about to finish something big. Here I was, totally alive, running. My knee was bending, cancer wasn’t eating away at my skin cells, and my family was just a few miles down the road waiting to cheer me across the finish line. I cried a lot on the run, filled with gratitude for my many, many blessings. Then I crossed the finish line and scooped up two of the biggest blessing of them all.
The next day I was swollen and sore but really happy and patting myself on the back kind of thing…until I heard this:
“Why did she enter a race if she didn’t know how to ride a bike?”
Somebody else at the top of that gnarly hill was not impressed with my performance the day before and couldn’t keep it to themselves. I let the pain wash over me. I couldn’t hide how hurt I was so I went home and ugly cried for hours. I was ashamed that I entered the race with a bike I was unfamiliar with. I felt stupid for trying something out of my comfort zone. Worse, I felt angry that someone would be mean to me after how hard I worked.
5 years later I’ve learned to stop comparing myself to other people and focus on how I’m progressing along my own path. Some days I’m more flexible at yoga than the week before, some days I run a little further without feeling the tug in my lungs, some days I take pictures that are an improvement to the ones from last month. The person who gossiped about me didn’t know me and my trials and on the surface, I have to give it to him- it looked like I signed up without knowing what I was getting myself into. (That doesn’t mean he needed to say it but that’s a different ballgame!)
Moving forward I have learned a pretty great lesson: to not pass judgement on others because I have NO IDEA the things that they have risen above.
If you’d like to read more about my journey with melanoma click here.
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