Capital isness

Doc's 60-day prognosis: I'm 90% grafted to my brother's marrow.

"This is what it is with a capital isness."

I used to love GQ magazine. Anything to learn more about men -- real men. A lady like me doesn't mix well with boys. We're like oil and water, myspacers on facebook, Oprah and gravy. You get my point, the combination is not a good look. Then a good friend of mine told me "GQ" is for my gays but "Esquire" is for real men. I saw "the 66 men worth emulating list" on their website:

#14 Charles Barkley. For what he said to the cops.
#32 Nicolas Sarkozy. Cigar smoker, star-fucker, president.

While reading the list I couldn't stop laughing, or learning, and I immediately switched my subscription. 4 magazines in, I can't put it down.

I've read about Façonnable's new creative director, Eric Wright, a black man from San Francisco, how to order drinks over 4 hours (max at 5 if beer, 4 if anything mixed with tonic and only 2 if martinis) and why its still better to invest in crude oil and not alternative forms of energy. My personal opinion: any magazine with the 2010 E550 coupe on the back instead of Eva Longoria in false lashes gets my vote. Dude was right.

But no matter how many issues of Esquire or blogs on Thrillist I read, I'm still all woman. I'm still the simple yet complicated girl from Aberdeen who will wait for the booth to avoid the table, who will never really care for a Ben Stiller movie and who will try really hard to show you how effortless my lifestyle is. Some credit for knowing who I am? All of this to say that still, I will never know what it means to be a man.

Are you also one of those people that has wondered what something on the other side of the fence feels like? The rich versus the poor, the beauty versus the beast, the skinny versus the biggum. I used to wonder what it would be like to be healthy. To jog without going into crises. To not have to build up to it and just get out there and go. I drilled my sisters before the bone marrow transplant, asking "What will happen if you go jogging"? Like really, what's the worst thing that will happen? My sister Beth replied "Sports induced asthma?". We laughed - she can be a nut sometimes. Then I thought laugh all you want but in my 3 month window of being sickle cell free, I'm going jogging.

Well I had my catheter removed on Monday and doctors orders were to wait until it was removed to exercise. That only gives me 30 days. You understand that after 90 days is the real deal? I'll either keep producing my brothers marrow or I'll go back to producing mine. The catheter was in my chest for 60 days so that gives me 30 days to live Sickle Cell free and be able to exercise. The countdown began on September 24.

Monday. catheter. gone.

By Tuesday I was up and running (pardon the pun) and I think I discovered what it felt like to be normal. (Insert Rocky theme music) The first time I was so scared! But no crises, just really sore thighs. I'd cry if I wasn't so excited. And the music I'm listening to has me so hyped after these jogs I feel like I could do anything. (BTW, if you have not listened to Raekwon's Cuban Linx II yet go download it immediately). I can't believe this is what I've been missing my whole life, an ache or two in my thighs and my shins. It's so much simpler. All of this was worth it; the chemo, the first 3 weeks of physical hell, the emotional duress -- all of it was worth it for these moments of being normal. I can only pray with all my heart that this lasts forever and I'll be cured.

Then on Sunday I became too comfortable with this sense of normalcy and while we were filming for the documentary, I didn't wear my mask around my sis, who has been battling with a cold for several weeks. Now I feel awful. I thought I was being careful but when my immune system is this immature, it's difficult to adjust.

I did, however, receive permission to go back to work part-time so, in addition to my documentary project, I'll (hopefully) have something to be a part of again.

"I know these things don't come without a cost. I know that there's no insurance you can buy on this. I know how the thing that's restoring you can wind up killing you. ...How did all that get there? Then I remember. Got there because I'm alive again. Because I'm back in the tornado. Because this is what it is with a capital isness."
— PHILIP ROTH, The Human Stain

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/things-that-make-you-happy/philip-roth-human-stain-1009


Thank you for reading.

Peace and blessings,

Christina Madry