Steep one ahead

Monday 11 September
The plan was to have a bit of a lie-in, devour a hearty brunch, hit the Ironman Wales awards ceremony, pick up my Hawaii World Championship qualification ticket, give my body a break from the sport.

I'm not sure if it was bad luck or bad planning but life got in the way. With less than a week of hard training remaining before the race, I was pushing hard to peak strongly. Cue a nasty bug. Game over, at least for this season.

A new plan emerged: brain surgery. As I've said before, physical surgery has long been an option. I'll say it again--I've been feeling as strong as ever (bug aside!) and the doctors don't all agree the preemptive strike is really necessary right now. The reason: 'excision of lesion of tissue of brain' is risky. My neurosurgeon is most concerned about personality and memory loss (but at least he's confident I'll be OK). 

Risky business
Why risk it? In short, for the same reason I decided to bail on the Ironman this time round: I don't just want to finish, I want to race!
 
I've been very fortunate to make it this far on a relatively light medical regime. Alas, the tumour has been acting up a bit in recent months. I want to take it down while I still have the chance. Or as much as possible; extracting 100% is impossible without generating brain damage.

Surgery will also open up a new treatment option: concoction of a promising vaccine (DC-Vax) that will 'train' my body to fight The Terminator. The alternatives? Wait-and-see or (toxic) medicines. 

'If by God they arrive'
Induce sleep, drill the head open, inject a fluorescent dye, cut out a chunk of brain, pray for the best--it's a scary thought. Oddly I'm not feeling terribly frightened. Why? Most obviously, I don't really feel I have a choice. Ingrid and I have a lot of confidence in my neurosurgeon. I've also been blessed with an incredibly loving, supportive team. Maybe it just hasn't hit me yet. My bad-ass-biker-cum-poet Dean puts it best:

'When one is trying to perpetuate forward on a sustained 22% grade one is withdrawn deeply in the moment. The next moment and the ones after that will be confronted as they arrive, if by God they arrive.'

Earlier today after measuring my exceptionally low heart rate, the nurse at a pre-surgery physical asked slightly nervously if I was about to faint or if I just do a lot of sport. 'Yeah, I train a bit’.

I had a wry smile on my face. 'I just didn't realise it was all to prepare for brain surgery', I thought to myself.

Let's go climb this beast!
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