Meeting Goals

Inspirational song: Living in the Past (Jethro Tull)

Usually I lump all of my photos at the end of my stories. Today, the photos really tell the story. Of course, you know that I have words as well, but I need to put in lots of illustrations this time.

I started this morning as I spent much of yesterday, shoveling literal tons of rock into wheelbarrows. There were more people recruited to help this time, and four wheelbarrows to work with. Things went much faster. I stayed at the rock pile, and filled every cart put in front of me. The whole time I was amazed by my ability to keep going. And of course, I had that perfect deadpan line from Mystery Men running through my head:

"Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."

At one point we got ahead of ourselves. All four wheelbarrows were full, but the ground was not fully prepped to receive the rocks. We waited while they dug out some more ground, smoothed it, and put down weed barrier. It was then that I realized, if nothing else, we managed to slow down traffic on that stupid raceway of a street, in the two blocks between the stop sign and the traffic signal.

I was careful to stay in the shade and keep hydrated. By late morning we had stopped with that project and showered (in very cool water, on purpose), and we took our postponed trip up to Estes Park. The traffic in yesterday was hideous, I learned from a friend, so I am glad we ended up waiting a day. At the turn in town to go up the main drag up to Rocky Mountain National Park, Mr S-P was in the wrong lane and ended up going straight through the light, toward the Stanley hotel. He almost turned around to go the other way, when he remembered we could go in the Fall River Road entrance. It was still a bit of a cluster to get through the toll booths, but far better than the main entrance. While we were on that side, he asked whether I was up for taking the actual Fall River Road steep climb up to the top of Trail Ridge Road, where we were headed anyway. He said it was a dirt road, but a good one, so I agreed to take my little car up it. The road was far better than I expected it to be, and while we drove we tried to remember the last time we took this route. We are pretty sure that it was when the girls were little and my parents came to visit, to spend one night in the Stanley and a week at a cabin in the woods. My dad took a rental minivan up this road, and it did just fine. Except for the part where we had to pull over, so daughter number one could barf on the side of he road. At least that's the way I remember it. I think it was that drive, but then, for the first several years of her life, she had a startling habit of getting violently carsick almost every time she was in a car with my dad at the wheel. We all felt so bad about that. Never did figure out what the connection was.

My main goal for getting to the Trail Ridge visitor's center was not to go buy RMNP sanctioned souvenirs. What I wanted to do was climb to the top of the ridge, like I had done two years ago when we first arrived from South Carolina. That time my sea-level-adjusted lungs did very poorly, and the climb took forever. Last year, the one time we were there, the trail was closed for weather. This time, I was bound and determined to prove my progress after living at 5000 feet of altitude for years.

Those tiny lines along the top of the mountain are people, climbing the trail.

I was thrilled to note that once we parked and started up, the clouds had completely taken over, so I didn't have to worry about being cold and having the sun burn my skin at the same time. The UV rays were still coming through, but the pain wasn't there.

The first stopping point was still quite a ways from the 

top, but I made it farther in one shot than I expected.

It was about this point that I started repeating the same phrase in 

my head, like a mantra: "I am stronger than my disease."

"Beware of false summits," says Mr S-P.

It wasn't until almost the very top that I started getting a twinge of a headache. I was a little thirsty, but not nearly as dehydrated or loopy as I was two years ago. It took very little time for me to regain my breath at the top. I could not have been more thrilled.

We had to wait in line -- yes, wait in line -- to get to take a photo with the altitude sign. There were that many people crowded into the top circle. But even knowing that I have gained 30 pounds since October, there was no way I was going to hide from a camera. I made it there, and I wanted proof.

On the way back down, I started making goals for myself. I am not ready to climb Longs Peak yet, as it is a very advanced level 14er. But it is the closest one to us, so I am itching to make some attempts at it. First, I want to work up to being able to be on it at all. In conversation, we broke the climb into sections. My first goal is to be able to hike in the valley on the north side, eventually reaching the Chasm Lake cutoff. (I think that's what it was called. I made notes in my phone and apparently didn't save them.) Eventually, I'd like to make it to the boulder fields. If I make huge progress physically, someday I'd like to traverse the boulder fields to the keyhole. I am not sure I will ever have the strength and the lack of acrophobia to make it to the summit, but if I do, I will have conquered the entire mountain.

Long's Peak is the highest point, about two-thirds of the way over to the left.

To achieve all of these goals, I have to start with the basics. I haven't been walking since last fall, when I started getting sicker and heavier. The main hope I had with the new medication for nerve pain was to feel well enough to start exercising again. That means walking around the neighborhood after sundown again. When Mr S-P announced he was walking up to WalMart for a tube for his flat bike tire, I decided there was no time like the present to start. By car, WalMart is just over a mile from our house. It's a little more direct walking straight up the street we live on, that dead ends with no car access to the big road one crosses to get there, and it's a steady but gentle uphill the whole way. I used to walk up this way several nights a week, so I knew it wasn't hard. I didn't know how it would go, after shoveling rocks for an hour and a half, and then hiking at 12,000 feet in lieu of taking a lunch. I was a little slow a few times, but I think that was because I'm not used to the new meds yet, and I was zig-zagging a little, like a drunk or a toddler. I didn't have to stop, and I had no trouble shopping and coming back down. As I sit propped on the pillows on my bed, I can feel that I used my muscles, but other than a warm sensation in one knee, absolutely nothing hurts worse than on any normal day. This is the most encouraging sign yet that life after lupus is still possible.

I Am Stronger Than My Disease.