I had met my oncologist, Dr. S., before my December trip to Japan. As a fellow cancer survivor, he understood my fears, and I respected his experience and candor.
That said, I didn’t like his initial treatment timeline very much.
Due to my diagnosis, he recommended the most aggressive chemotherapy available: A/C (a combination of Adriamycin and cyclophosphamide) followed by Taxol. The standard course of treatment ran six months, with infusions at three-week intervals.
To give me a chance of reaching Japan in time to complete my climbs on a one-year deadline, Dr. S. gave me the option of attempting a “dose dense” chemotherapy regimen, under which I would receive an infusion every other week, beginning December 27, 2017, and—assuming I tolerated the drugs well enough to receive every treatment on schedule—finishing on April 10, 2018.
Dr. S. described chemotherapy as my first and most difficult mountain, “making your total one hundred and one.” He encouraged me to write about the experience, because my story could inspire and strengthen others if I chose to share it honestly. It scared me to think about sharing pictures of myself as my hair fell out and, even more, to consider acknowledging my weakness (and my fears) so publicly.
Even so, I believed that he was right.
The day after that conversation, I revealed my cancer diagnosis on my blog and social media feeds. In the weeks that followed, I posted photographs of myself in chemotherapy and my “bald baby bird” head when my hair fell out. I blogged about chemo and posted daily updates on my Facebook page, encouraging everyone who read the posts to share their struggles and achievements in the comments too. The outpouring of love and support those posts received sustained me through the crushing pain of chemotherapy. As friends and strangers shared their struggles, all of us felt less alone.
That process changed the horror of cancer treatment into a meaningful experience. It was the first—though not the last—of many lessons I would learn in the coming year: With the proper attitude, shared weakness can become a source of communal strength.
Speaking up had made a difference, and I was grateful Dr. S. encouraged me to be as public with that first mountain as I would be with the ones to come.
Chapter 3
Cherry Blossoms and Liver Spots
March–May 2018
I continued training for the mountains during cancer treatment, to the best of my ability. I couldn’t walk 12,000 steps a day as I had before, but I tried to walk 1,000 steps the day after each infusion, and to increase my total by 2,000 steps each day until I worked my way back to 10,000 daily steps. When I reached that goal—usually by day seven—I continued to walk that distance every day until the next infusion.
At which point I began the painful cycle again from scratch.
My chemotherapy nurses, Jaime and Vickie, made my treatments as enjoyable as chemotherapy could ever be. Except for infusions and doctor’s appointments, I spent my time on self-imposed house arrest to protect my weakened immune system, so—as strange as it sounds—chemotherapy days were the highlights of my month. I looked forward to visiting Jaime and Vickie at the infusion center where, in addition to chemotherapy drugs, I got a healthy dose of funny stories, cat photos, and talks about everything from bicycling to writing books and my plan to climb the hyakumeizan.
After chemo treatments, I felt so sick that I went to bed for the rest of the afternoon. In the days that followed, I set multiple alarms to ensure I didn’t forget to take the dozens of pills I needed to combat nausea during the first few post-infusion days. I had no appetite and struggled to keep from losing weight. The surgical sites on my chest, though healed, often hurt so much I couldn’t sleep.
Most days, I felt like I was dying.
My muscles ached. I was always cold. Reading and writing—formerly the pillars of my life—now gave me vertigo. Many nights I crumpled to the floor and sobbed.
I no longer even remembered what “healthy” felt like.
But through it all, I walked. Each morning I forced myself out of bed to begin the hours of pacing forward and backward across the cold tile floor until I hit my daily goal. If nothing else, I was determined to maintain the strength to climb when this ordeal was through.
I found daily inspiration in an itinerary I received at the end of February from Hokkaido Nature Tours, the company I hired to guide me on the isolated, dangerous hyakumeizan peaks of Hokkaido (Japan’s northernmost major island). When reading made me nauseous, I stared at the photographs of smoking volcanoes, fields of lavender, and bears. I tried to imagine myself in Hokkaido, strong and healthy, but most days it felt like a distant dream that would not come true.
Halfway through chemotherapy, I flew to Japan to finally apply for the one-year visa I would need to climb the hyakumeizan. My mother went along to help and, for the first time in my life, I rode a wheelchair through an airport. On a good day I could have reached the plane on foot, but we had scheduled the trip to thread the gap between my chemo treatments, which meant I departed for Tokyo 48 hours after receiving a massive dose of chemotherapy.
It was not a good day.
Dr. S. approved the trip, but wanted me to take extra precautions; I agreed to wear a surgical mask in public and booked tickets in the first-class cabin to minimize my exposure to other people. Aboard the plane, I was also supposed to clean my entire seating area with antibacterial wipes. My cheeks burned with embarrassment behind my mask as the first-class flight attendant approached and asked if I needed help.
She thinks I’m a germaphobe.
I explained I was undergoing chemotherapy, and inwardly cringed at the sympathy that clouded her face. When she asked about my trip, I told her about my visa and my plan to climb the hyakumeizan after finishing cancer treatment.
Word got around, and several other flight attendants came to chat with me during the flight to Tokyo. They seemed equally curious and amazed by my planned adventure, and while I’d known my decision to break free from “safe” and face my fears was unusual, I hadn’t expected other people to find it so compelling.
In Japan, Mom and I traveled by taxi and ate in the hotel restaurant at odd hours to avoid the crowds. Dr. S. deemed outdoor activities reasonably safe, so one sunny morning Mom and I took a trip to the Imperial Palace gardens in central Tokyo. In addition to the ruins of Edo Castle, the gardens feature many different flowering plants and trees, including a collection of cherry trees that draw enormous crowds each spring when the sakura (cherry blossoms) bloom.
Mom and I had arrived too early to see the sakura—the official “cherry blossom” forecast called for the blooms to begin the following week—but as the taxi carried us through the streets of downtown Tokyo, I wished I could have seen even a single tree in bloom.
I still remembered the kindergarten art project that introduced me to sakura. We blew brown paint through drinking straws to create the branches of a tree, which we decorated with pink and white tissue paper crinkled into three-dimensional puffy blooms. My kindergarten class had a visiting student from Japan, a girl named Yoko whose father was on sabbatical in Southern California. Despite her limited English, Yoko and I became close friends. She returned to Japan at the end of the year, and I never saw or heard from her again, but our friendship doubtless played a role in my love of the country she called home.
Mom and I strolled through the Imperial Palace gardens, enjoying