One Year

As I sat down to write today, it dawned on me that this post might come off as a touch self-congratulatory. But then I realized that an entire blog devoted to oneself is, by definition, rather self-congratulatory, isn’t it?

One year ago today was the single worst day of my life. If you’re reading this, it’s rather likely you know why that was, so there’s no need to rehash the facts.

I was convinced life was over. For the first time, it was reasonably possible that I would die, my misconceived veil of immortality having been ripped from me with just a few words from my neurologist. And if I didn’t die, I was certain that life with an inoperable brain aneurysm – or life after surgery if it were operable – would leave me a shell of my former self, both physically and cognitively.

While many of the events of that day have been mercifully blocked from my memory, one thing I remember quite vividly was a phone conversation I had with my dad. Ever the blind optimist, he assured me that one year from that day, the aneurysm would just be a memory. Impossible as it may have seemed at the moment, life would again be exactly as it were before my diagnosis, he promised.

I thought he was full of shit. This wasn’t a problem with my knee or ankle or shoulder. It was my brain. Injure your brain, and you’re impacting the fundamental core of what makes you, you. I use my brain for a living, and it’s a living that’s gradually earned me the flexibility to reside in Aspen and enjoy the kind of life I’d always dreamed about. And that life is anything but sedentary. Here was my father, promising me an uninterrupted career and a return to a life of hiking, running, climbing, skiing…all at altitudes in excess of 8,000 feet. As much as I appreciated his positive attitude, it simply wasn't meshing with what Lauren and I were finding in our research. We quickly learned that the majority of aneurysm stories ended very badly, with 70% of ruptures dying within 24 hours and those surviving surgery to repair an unrputured aneurysm left with a lifetime of physical pain and neruological deficit. For obvious reasons, I left that conversation doubting the wisdom and dismissing the confidence of my dad.

As usual, I was wrong. And my father, as usual, was right.

Though to be fair, my dad’s prediction wasn’t entirely accurate. Life isn’t exactly the same as it was once was. It’s much, much better.

While cognitively and physically I’m the same person I once was, enjoying all the athletic pursuits I had written off as gone forever, I’ve also spent the past year learning to play the guitar. While that may not sound like much when compared to say, walking and talking, it had been a lifelong dream of mine to achieve the modicum of skill necessary to annoy friends at a campsite. With the recovery from surgery providing me ample time to learn, I can now rest assured that I’ll someday have the joy of embarrassing my children with a slightly off-key version of “Brown Eyed Girl.”

As you might expect, I love my wife much differently than I did a year ago. I believe that an experience like this will either strain a relationship beyond repair, or forge a bond of love and respect so strong that a husband and wife can handle anything that life may throw at them. I’d like to believe our experience has been the latter. Lauren is my hero, but there’s more on that later.

And of course, Lauren and I are due to meet our first child in roughly seven weeks. That, more than anything, puts things in perspective for me. One year ago, we were facing eight hours of brain surgery and an uncertain future. I kissed my wife goodbye that morning not knowing if it would be our last. Thirteen months later, we’ll be welcoming our son into the world. Miracles do happen.

They say the only value in an experience is what you learn from it. And that, more than anything, is what I wanted to write about. My intention is not to pat myself on the back for the miracle I’ve been blessed with but to share some of what I’ve gained from the past year of my life.

So what have I learned?

First and foremost, I’ve learned that I know nothing about strength. Prior to this experience, I’d fancied myself as strong in a mental and emotional sense.

It’s funny which life experiences people who haven’t faced adversity use to measure their fortitude. By overcoming challenges at school, or work, or in the last five miles of a marathon or final 1,000 vertical feet of an ascent, you begin to perceive yourself as “tough” or “strong.”

Then life deals you your first real hardship, and you quickly discover just how weak you are. Despite all the blessings I’ve experienced since the surgery, the predominant theme in my life for most of the past year has been fear. Fear of dying. Fear of widowing my wife, or of never getting to meet my son. Fear of never again being the man I once was. That unrelenting fear made my recovery infinitely more difficult that it needed to be, as I’ve experienced first-hand the debilitating physical and mental repercussions of stress and anxiety.

Meanwhile, my wife, who I initially feared would struggle with the pain of watching her husband face his mortality and the burden of nursing him back to health, has shown me just what strength is. What she has been through has been unimaginable. While others would look at me in September, with my scar healed and hair re-grown, and assume the worst was over, Lauren’s struggle had just begun. For a year she’s had to deal with my panicked response to every ache and pain, every anxious wait for test results, and each bad dream that’s raised me from my sleep. As a consequence, her first pregnancy, while not an afterthought, has not received nearly the attention it deserves. And for that I’ll feel guilt for the rest of my life.

Admittedly, much of my fear has been the by-product of pushing the physical side of my recovery. There have been countless days where I’ve been running or skiing while a silent war waged in my brain between the excitement of “It feels amazing to be out here doing this again!” and the fear of “Should I be out here doing this again?”

Over time, I’ve resolved this conflict by realizing that the answer to this question is an unequivocal “yes.” Life doesn’t stop; certainly not at thirty-three years old. While the natural inclination after something like a brain aneurysm might be to completely reconfigure your value system and give up on much of your old life in favor of self-preservation at all costs, you have to resist that urge.

There are many people, some very close to me, who feel the things I used to do need to stop. No more endurance racing. No more backcountry skiing. The risk simply isn’t worth the reward, they say. But that’s faulty logic. We take risks in all we do in life, from negotiating traffic on the Garden State Parkway to eating sushi from the supermarket. And if there’s one thing I learned last spring, it’s that none of us are promised tomorrow.

Perhaps by avoiding risk we can live to see ninety. Or maybe we’ll get mowed down by a drunk driver while crossing the street, with nothing to show for it but a lifetime of overly-cautious decisions and missed experiences. But one thing is certain: by avoiding all risk, we also willingly forsake one of life’s greatest feelings: that moment when you redefine your self-imposed limitations and surprise yourself by what you’re truly capable of. Not to sound cliché, but we do only get one shot at life. How much do you want to leave on the table?

My sister is running her first marathon this coming weekend. She's got three kids, two bad knees, and not one compelling reason to run 26 miles. She's doing it solely because she wants to know if she can. To experience it, regardless of the inevitable pain and suffering it will inflict. Many people will never understand that way of thinking. But after next weekend, Karen will never have to wonder again. She'll have learned something about herself that she may otherwise have never known. How do you accomplish that without risk?

I can’t change the fact that physical pursuits bring me a joy and sense of being alive that I find difficult to duplicate. And while I’m fairly certain having a child will relieve the need to do some of these things and forever alter my risk tolerance, I’m also fairly certain that my children would rather not see their father sitting on his ass on the couch all day. What kind of message would I be sending them if I used this experience as an excuse for all things from this point forward? If I never moved on from the one bad experience in my life? Who wants to explain to their son, “Daddy had to quit living out of fear of dying?”

Earlier this week, I had a moment of doubt about whether I’d been irresponsible with some of the things I’d been doing post-surgery, so I called my mom to get her opinion. Midway through my question, she interrupted by telling me, in a way that only an Eastern European mother could pull off, that she would “kick my butt” if I didn’t get back to living my life to the fullest. And I love her for that more than she can ever imagine.

But if you take nothing else away from my story from the past year, take away the understanding that happy endings do indeed exist. Sure, life can seem cruel and unjust at times, but every once in a while, it can go the other way too. Life can be beautiful. Life can be just. Life can smile upon you, handing you miracles you never thought possible.