A single tree at the front of the garden was in bloom, its branches covered in a riot of delicate, puffy blossoms. From a distance, the tree looked like an enormous fluffy popcorn ball.
The other trees stood stark and bare, without a single bud on their empty branches.
My vision blurred as my eyes filled up with tears. I didn’t know why one tree bloomed and the rest were barren, but I took it as a sign that everything was going to be okay.
When I returned to California, Michael and I put our house on the market, culled our worldly possessions down to nine suitcases’ worth of items (and a few pieces of furniture, which went into a storage unit), and moved to a small apartment near the infusion center, where we would live while I finished chemotherapy.
We purchased airplane tickets for our May departure to Japan and arranged for a six-week rental on a furnished apartment in central Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward (a necessity, because we could not legally enter into a year-long lease until our visas were approved). I prepared the immigration paperwork for Oobie, our tortoiseshell cat—the final step in a complicated nine-month process that would allow her to enter Japan without quarantine.
I finished chemotherapy on April 10, and on April 21 I went for my follow-up CT scan with a happy heart. In three more weeks I would move to Japan to live my dream.
But three days later the dream became a nightmare, when the CT scan revealed a spot on my liver that the doctors could not identify.
It could be benign.
It could also be a metastasis.
I burst into tears when I heard the results, fear and frustration boiling up in heaving sobs that offered no relief. My body felt like an aging automobile, doomed to fall apart a little at a time as I spent the rest of my days in the medical equivalent of the mechanic’s shop.
Dr. S. arranged an immediate biopsy, and my mother flew up from Los Angeles to accompany me to what I hoped would be a routine procedure.
By that point I should have known better.
Due to the spot’s small size and tricky location, and because I needed to follow instructions during the procedure, the doctor (whom I had never met) chose to perform the biopsy under a local anesthetic. The injection numbed my skin but didn’t penetrate into my abdomen, a fact I discovered only when the doctor stuck the biopsy needle—which looked like something you’d use to euthanize a Tyrannosaurus Rex—into my gut.
I felt it enter my side and pierce my liver.
I felt my liver crunch as the doctor carved away a sample.
And I felt pain on a level that nothing—including a double mastectomy and the birth of a child—had prepared me to handle.
Before he started the procedure, the doctor explained that if I moved at all he might not get a useful sample. He made sure I understood that I Absolutely. Could. Not. Move.
So when that unspeakable pain arced through me like a fiery electric shock, I did as instructed. I did not move.
The doctor finished the biopsy and took the sample to the lab. The nurse injected me with morphine, but it didn’t help. In fact, the pain grew worse.
My vision narrowed and I couldn’t breathe.
I heard an alarm but couldn’t focus well enough to process what it meant or where it came from.
The nurse called for the doctor and they raced me down the hall for an emergency CT scan. As they rolled my gurney into the room, I saw them wheeling another patient out—they had interrupted his CT scan to determine as quickly as possible if I was hemorrhaging internally. Ultimately, the CT scan revealed no internal bleeding, and a second dose of morphine reduced my pain. (Technically, I did still hurt, but I no longer cared.) Before I left the recovery room, the doctor sent me excellent news: the CT scan confirmed that he had biopsied the proper spot, and Dr. S. would call me when they had results.
Less than ten days remained until our flight to Japan, but I couldn’t bring myself to pack the suitcases that lined the wall like soldiers on review, or to schedule a shipping date for the ones we weren’t taking on the plane. I couldn’t face the possibility of unpacking if the biopsy revealed I still had cancer.
I did not want to die. I felt as if I hadn’t even lived. More accurately, I felt as if I hadn’t lived enough.
Seven days before our scheduled departure for Japan, the biopsy came back benign. I cried again, this time from joy, and started packing.
Later that night, I received an email from my immigration consultant in Tokyo.
My visa application had been denied.
I had applied for a one-year visa as a journalist, but the Japanese government did not agree that my plan to write a nonfiction book about climbing the hyakumeizan was “journalism.” I spent a terrified, sleepless night convinced that I had ruined not only my life but Michael’s too. We had sold our house and given much of what we owned to charity. I closed my practice and told my clients I was taking a sabbatical in Japan. And, because I hoped to inspire others with what I was now calling the “100 Summits Project,” I had done it all on a highly public stage.
At dawn I asked Michael if he wanted to pull the plug on the whole endeavor.
“And do what?” he asked.
“Re-rent this apartment, find a job.” Stay here, where it’s safe, my instincts screamed. If you go, you will end up broke in a foreign land.
He stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. “We didn’t get rid of everything we own, sell the house, and go through all the rest of this to give up. We’ll go to Japan on a tourist visa and we’ll figure it out from there. Even if we come back in three months’ time, we will have tried.”
For at least the 20th time in as many hours, I burst into tears.
Michael’s faith and trust gave me the courage to go forward. I’d like to say the fear receded at that point, but my worries fed on uncertainty like a pack of velociraptors at an all-you-can-eat brontosaur buffet.
However, as I was beginning to learn, “brave” is not the absence of fear, it’s feeling fear and moving forward anyway.
And so, despite my many fears, I packed my bags and prepared to fly.
BASE CAMP: TOKYO MOUNTAIN TOTAL: 0
Michael and I landed at Tokyo’s Narita Airport on May 15, 2018, with Oobie and four large suitcases in tow. We filled out paperwork to request the 90-day tourist visa customarily granted to US citizens upon arrival in Japan. An immigration official took our pictures and scanned our fingerprints, but instead of stamping visas in our passports, he asked us to step aside.
Two other officials escorted us to a nearby room, where they asked me why my fingerprints didn’t match the ones they had on record from my visit to Japan in March.
I knew the answer. “Chemotherapy makes your fingers peel.”
They stared at me blankly.
“I had cancer.” I removed my hat to reveal my head, which was now completely bald.
Five minutes later, we left immigration with 90-day tourist visas in our passports.
We passed through animal import just as quickly, and two hours after our plane touched down, Michael and I wheeled four large suitcases and a yowling carrier out of the airport and into the Tokyo Metro.
Our adventure had begun.
Chapter 4
You Are Not Prepared
May 20, 2018
From