Travel

Travel is a passion of mine, at least to the extent permitted by time, money, and energy. Prolonged medical treatment, for whatever condition, necessitates adjusting one’s schedule to accommodate doctor visits, procedures, and recovery. Diminished energy can be ongoing. For me, consequently, treating kidney cancer has meant curbing some travel, though fortunately not all and not permanently. 

A peripatetic childhood as the son of a career Army serviceman permanently engendered in me a love of travel. Traveling, for all that it can be exhausting in the moment, is wonderfully energizing for the senses. I prize the mental stimulation that comes from encountering unfamiliar people and places. I am never more fully alive than when I take on the role of foreigner, navigating the unfamiliar with my wits stretched to ingenuity.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m actually in another country or merely away from familiar surroundings by only a few miles. There’s still an intriguing “foreignness” in being the stranger. Travel encourages independence and broadens my outlook. Over the years travel has given me many good memories, adventures to be recounted, incidents and characters to be woven into my own writings, and sights to inspire drawings and paintings.

The diagnosis last spring that my renal cancer, to which I lost my left kidney seventeen years ago, had returned forced my then fiancé and I to cancel a planned tour of Italy. Later, in the fall, I had to cancel another trip, this time to Kansas, because of some fairly severe side effects. With that period behind me, however, and with a new targeted therapy regimen in place and working well, I have now cautiously begun to travel again.

Initially I stuck with short, local excursions. There was a convention trip that required a few hotel nights in Indianapolis, only fifty miles from home. That November trip was followed by a pre-Christmas trip to St. Louis in December to visit my daughter. And there have been several day trips. All of these outings were done by car, which served as a kind of security blanket. Whether alone or traveling with my now spouse (we married in mid-August), driving has allowed me a measure of control. Driving on my own has helped to reestablish my sense of self-confidence.

Of course, like anyone with a chronic condition, I travel with my own pharmacopeia, which largely fills a separate overnight bag with the pills, solutions, salves, and devices that treat the cancer, various side effects, and the usual complement of conditions, such as high blood pressure, that seem to come with aging. My rattling bag of pills is a necessary nuisance. I wondered until today if it might cause some holdup at airport security. Happily it did not. You see, I am flying for the first time in many months.

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my sixty-eighth birthday. This trip is an extension of that celebration. I’m writing this post on an American Airlines jet on the second and final leg of our trip south to sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico. Neither my spouse nor I has been to this destination. Technically we aren't leaving U.S. territory, and the Condado Lagoon resort will probably be more relaxing than adventurous. But it’s another step toward reclaiming my passion for travel. My spirit is already soaring as high as this airplane.

Postscript: The getaway was excellent!