The Hardest Mountain

I used to think I was pretty tough because I had climbed some big mountains and gone on some pretty wild adventures. I took on Grand Teton in a rainstorm that never let up. I conquered Kilimanjaro with altitude sickness that had me retching and unable to stomach food for 3 days. Harder than that was Mount Rainier; a hellish four-day trudge up glacial snow, carrying a 50-pound pack. On each one of those climbs, reports came in that another climber had died on the trail just ahead of us, but I had lived, and with that came the false sense that I, and my friends, were a little stronger and a little smarter than some other climbers. That I was more prepared to handle whatever life threw at me. Then came the night of October 8^th, 2017.

For reasons still unclear to the medical community, I awoke in the middle of the night with stabbing pains in both shoulders, insane nausea, and the pinky and ring fingers in both hands twitching uncontrollably. My body was ice-cold and when I tried to get out of bed, I couldn’t take a step without the room feeling flipped upside down. I was pretty sure I was dying, but just to make sure, I sat there at the edge of the bed for two hours to see if it would pass. It didn’t, so I woke my wife up to take me to the emergency room at 3AM.

At the ER they found a blocked kidney, but didn’t think that was the problem, so they gave me some meds to calm my system, ran a bunch of tests, and then cleared me to leave without any explanation for what happened. Six days later, I was back in the ER again, this time because pins and needles developed throughout my entire body, but most alarmingly in my head. They thought I was having a stroke, but all CAT scans came back normal. Then they thought I had pancreatitis, but I hadn’t been drinking. Whatever was happening, my entire nervous system was going completely haywire. After going on a precautionary liquid diet, I slowly introduced food, but it couldn’t be done without pain, nausea, or the pins and needles coursing their way through my body. Ever since that day, I haven’t had a single day when it hasn’t hurt or caused me nausea to eat.

Over the last 2 years I’ve seen a whole host of “specialists” from some of the best hospitals in New England, many of whom didn’t think my symptoms were real, but a manifestation of some mental health issue. The allergist I saw thought I was crazy, it’s all in my head. The neurologist I saw thought I was crazy, it’s all in my head, but would love to do some experiments involving electricity. No thanks! I don’t need to be a guinea pig! One nurse suggested I was just having anxiety and that all I needed was a good book to read, but I’ve never been an anxious guy. I had no thoughts of cancer or dying when this all started. I had gone for a four-mile run the day before my first trip to the ER, and hadn’t even lost my breath. I was going to live forever! Hell, a few months earlier I had just finished climbing the 4000-footers in New Hampshire, all in one year. I was in the prime of my life.

Every doc I went to listened to my story, said “weird”, and then suggested I see someone else, and probably a psychiatrist. Wondering if this was really all just some weird panic attack, I started meditating. The mantra “I am a river” popped into my head, and I repeated it over and over again to get myself through each day. With no medical help to turn to, I found myself praying to God to please just give me another ten years so that I could get my kids to adulthood.

The tingling in my head felt like something was eating my brain. I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time, and often woke to find my body shivering. The worst was every time I ate, these stabbing pains would hit me in the shoulders like someone was sticking me with a knife. Some nights the pain was so bad it brought me to tears, but I couldn’t take anything for the pain because that would increase the pins and needles in my head again. It felt like I was caught in the world’s worst catch-22. Night after night, I watched hours of bad movies on Netflix as I researched the internet for answers.

While waiting for kidney surgery, there were some really scary nights where my body wouldn’t stop shaking and I thought I was going to die. One GI doc suggested probiotics might help, which shockingly led to abnormal heart palpitations and of all things, a bloody tongue. I was scared. When the first ER doc told me about the “large, cystic structure” inside my kidney, forty years of life plans flew before my eyes and time stopped. I was reminded of how tenuous life is. As my father used to say, this whole thing we call life is a “crapshoot”. It’s not fair, it’s not uniform, and it’s not to be taken lightly. But what was happening to me was more than just a kidney problem: my body was rejecting every kind of medicine being thrown at it. Watching blood trickle off my tongue, I believed the end was near. And in those moments when you are scared about losing your life, you dwell on what you would do if you had another year of health. Another week of it. Another day.

When I was climbing and in all the years before it, I felt a great deal of responsibility to be the best man I could be for everyone around me. But now I didn’t feel the need to be the man anymore. All I wanted now was to spend time with my family and friends, love them, and share experiences with them. It no longer mattered to me if I was strong enough to take care of all of them;  it would just be enough to be with them, and enjoy them. Life was no longer about how much I’ve done, or how many mountains I’ve climbed, but how much time can I get with my family? Can I get more time? Can I get more quality time? Will I ever have a day without pain again? Forget climbing mountains, it would be enough just to look upon them.

For the last 824 days I’ve been inching my way up the hardest mountain I’ve ever climbed, one foot in front of the other. After getting surgery for my kidney, the pins and needles and the sharp shoulder pains went away. So much for those symptoms being all in my head, assholes. It took a lot longer to figure out why it still hurt to eat – I can’t tell you how many days it hurt to even drink water – but I finally found a doc who determined I had nerve damage in my esophagus. Even with the right diagnosis, the medication they gave me didn’t help (some made it way worse), so lately I’ve just been moving through each day, without meds, eating what I can, patiently waiting for the day when it stops hurting to eat. I’m getting closer to being the man I was before my first ER visit, but of course, I’ll never be that guy again.

Recently I read Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. In it he makes the point that we are all dealt crap in life we’ve got to deal with, and that while we may not be at fault for it, we all have to take responsibility for it. During my ordeal, I kept putting all of my hope into doctors to tell me what was wrong, and to fix it, and they had nothing for me. Scores of “the best” doctors money can buy, and they had nothing. It took me awhile before I realized that Larry Bird wasn’t coming through that door. Nobody was coming to help. That for me, there was no normal answer to solve the riddle of my pain, because everything that the doctors gave me, made the pain worse. All I could do was take each day as it comes, own my condition, and look at things through the brightest lens possible. And eventually, when I did that, things did start to get better. Slowly, but they did.

I’m not all the way back, but can feel it coming back, and that’s enough for me to feel very grateful going into the new year. Maybe I’ll have a day without pain again, and maybe I won’t. But I’m alive, and I’m sure as shit happy with that. I don’t tell this story because I want sympathy or claps on the back. I wouldn’t wish what I’ve gone through on my worst enemy, but I don’t want your sympathy either. Shit happens. Weird stuff happens. It took me a little while, but eventually I realized that no matter how bad I felt, I could always have it much worse and have so much to be thankful for: a great wife, great kids, a great job, expensive health insurance that could help me afford all these shitty doctors who couldn’t help. Focusing on such positives helped me to stop dwelling on the lost time I was experiencing, and reminded me that if it did all end today, it’s been a great life.

When I did finally look inward, and took sole responsibility for my health, and the time it would take to recover without anybody else’s help, I wrote down a bunch of things on my closet door to get myself “up” each day for the people I love, and rally past the pain. They’re simple, and maybe a little stupid, but they continue to live in my closet and have helped me a ton. If you’re going through any pain, or need some reminders that you are not alone in whatever pain you’re feeling, try not to laugh, but these helped me when I was in a really dark place. I wish you all the luck in the world as you face whatever is trying to hold you back. Keep climbing.

• People have got bigger problems than you
• Lighten up
• Give yourself a laugh
• Tell your family you love them
• Don’t worry about the future or the past, just do today
• You can’t stop living, just because you feel like shit – LIVE NOW!
• Today is another gift