CopLand 3

For a moment, and it was only a single, terrible, nerve-shattering moment, it was chemo all over again.
I was tired. Not lack of sleep tired, but weak tired, as I had been most of last year. During physical training, I found it hard to raise my arms for various exercises, hard to keep my legs moving when we ran, hard to catch my breath beyond anything other than a shallow, slightly anemic breath.
It was the kind of weakness that had, so many times that month, simply invited me to gently pass out.
It was mostly, but not completely, physical that day. Other things played into it, dragged me down physically. LuAnn, the woman who absolutely did whatever needed be done during that last, awful year, was hurt. She’d slipped on the ice, cracked her tailbone, was home alone trying to run the household and the bookstore and I couldn’t do anything to help. I stressed about that.
The first exam was looming here at the academy. I stressed about that.
Desperately, I miss my wife and my mutts. I stressed about that.
And then, later in the day, I got cold.
Not just an external cold from standing at the shooting range, shooting in 30 degree weather, but the scary, internal cold that typified so many days when the chemo seemed to thin my blood or slow the flow of blood or whatever it was that left me freezing in a house baked to 80+ degrees in sweats and under a comforter.
So that moment, when I held my Glock .45 semi-automatic pistol hard out in front of me, my right elbow locked, my knees slightly bent, my right foot back and turned about 45 degrees off perpendicular to the target, when it all flooded back to me.
For that handful of heartbeats, for that single breath, I was back in chemo.
And then I shot the shit outta that target.
Better than 100 rounds and not a single one went anywhere near outside the ten ring.
In other words, absolute dead fucking center.
Shooting the cancer?
Maybe. I know I have a tendency to deal with things on a delayed basis sometimes.
Back when LuAnn and I first started dating, we bought a mutt. Max, we named her. She was a great – though flighty and high-maintenance – dog. Eventually, she got sick and we had to have her euthanized. I never really came to terms with taking her to the vet in the morning and having her killed in the afternoon.
A couple years later, I toured with the David Taylor Dance Company as tech director and we hit Reno for a seven day stand. In the middle of that stand, I had a dream and in it, Max came along and said, “That was me, telling you goodbye.”
I cried like a titty-baby for a week.
Yeah, yeah, sounds like crap, like liberal touchy feely bullshit, I know. But it happened and those of you with pets will absolutely understand that and those of you without pets never will.
So I have a tendency to deal with some things way after they’re done. Maybe feeling the chemo in the day’s events was part of that.
And maybe I’m just filling up space on the blog to say I wrote something.
But I do know this: I am a million miles further up the road than I was last year at this time.
March, 2006, I was just days away from discovering my biological father had died of cancer. I was in the middle of the toughest month I had because the chemo needed to be adjusted. I was barely able to make it through some days because of all the bullshit.
Now, a year later, I’m doing half an hour of physical training every damned morning, Monday through Friday. I’m three weeks off doing a power test in which I ran a mile and a half in 14 minutes, 31 seconds, benched 80 percent of my body weight (which was thankfully low because of the chemo diet!), did 30 sit-ups in a minute, and stretched some odd inches beyond my toes.
And I’m doing it as the oldest 40-year old you’re ever gonna meet.
I definitely ain’t no ironman, but overall, I’m feeling pretty good right now. Even that day when it all came back to me and I was snapped back to ChemoLand, I knew it was temporary. I knew it was a few bad days piled on top of each other.
I knew it would pass.
Not in months or weeks or days, but in minutes, maybe hours.
I knew, just like I knew when I took that last fucking chemo shot, that I was going to be good.
And something else: I don’t really spend much time thinking about all this crap. Corn-pone as it sounds, I don’t really have time because I spend too much time thinking about tomorrow and next week and next month.
Actually, truthfully, all I’m thinking about right now is friggin’ graduation day at the academy. May 10th, and not a moment too soon.
‘Cause after that? I get my own squad car.
With lights and sirens and everything.
Cool.