This month I plan to push my endurance to the outer limits. I rode my bicycle 142 miles in just under 12 hours a week ago. https://twitter.com/rbucks/status/1642743764291846145 A week from now, I will do it again, but with twice the vertical climb. It will be my second year in a row doing the Belgian Waffle… Continue reading An exploration of deep exhaustion
Category: Health
Why I run
I run because I need to. When I don't run, I don't feel great. I need the exercise, I need the exhaustion, but most importantly, I need the time alone. I've found that I don't love running with other people. I'll do it because it makes me better at running and introduces me to new… Continue reading Why I run
A new routine
By Day It starts at about 5:30am. My wife gets out of bed first, her iPhone flashlight leading her way down the hallway. I stretch and look out the window, a soft gray backdrop against the silhouettes of large oak and bay trunks. The sun won't rise for another hour. I lie awake for ten… Continue reading A new routine
Personal, Perceptible, Practical
Some time ago I learned about Susan Solomon, the atmospheric chemist who discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (a.k.a. CFCs) caused the huge hole in the ozone layer. Remember all that noise about this from the 90s? It went away because of Dr. Solomon. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley and she is currently still teaching and… Continue reading Personal, Perceptible, Practical
A few days of radioactive seclusion
Part 1: My Thyroid Got CancerPart 2: My Thyroid Got Cancer: 1 Year LaterPart 3: The Thing That Won't Go AwayPart 4: Here I Go AgainPart 5: And Now A Bit of Certainty The pill is smaller than you’d think. It’s oblong with red and white caps. It comes in a cylindrical container, tapered at… Continue reading A few days of radioactive seclusion
And now, a bit of certainty
If you're new to my cancer saga, here are parts one and two. Part three is coming along in a couple of sittings like these two. It's the part where after I get diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer, get it removed, and carry on with a bit of cloud hanging over my head, the cloud… Continue reading And now, a bit of certainty
Here I go again
It was 3:55 in the afternoon when I got the call. The area code was local to where I live and I rarely got robodials or spam calls with that prefix so I picked up, even though I had a work call in 5 minutes. It was a receptionist from my endocrinologist's office. My heart… Continue reading Here I go again
The thing that won’t go away
This is my third article about thyroid cancer I was diagnosed with. The first two are here and here. Yesterday I got another ultrasound of my neck. Today I got a call from my doctor that the lymph node that the various doctors have been tracking for nearly two years now continues to be a… Continue reading The thing that won’t go away
My thyroid got cancer: one year later
This is a follow-up to my first article, My Thyroid Got Cancer. The ultrasounds are soothing. The whir of the machine, the doctor’s thoughtful grunts as she probes my neck, the crackle of the paper on the examination table. It is very familiar to me now. I relax into it and close my eyes. I… Continue reading My thyroid got cancer: one year later
My thyroid got cancer
My thyroid got cancer some time ago. The doctors can’t say when because there was no way to determine a growth rate. It might have been thirty years ago when my throat was X-rayed during a bout with really bad croup, but nobody knows. On January 29, 2017, a talented surgeon at Kaiser in Walnut… Continue reading My thyroid got cancer