Jenny, Falmouth Road Race, August 18, 2019
Jenny and Lindsay ran the annual road race in our town of Falmouth this past Sunday (August 18, 2019). For Jenny, this was the 16th consecutive year that she had run it.
The first year she ran the race was 2004. She was very excited when she registered us to run. But Jenny got an infection in her blood that happened suddenly and unexpectedly and almost killed her several weeks before the race. I remember sitting with her in the intensive care unit and watching her lapse in-and-out of consciousness late one night. It was sometime past midnight, and I was thinking about the lab tests that I'd seen for her an hour or so earlier: they pointed to a bad outcome. I knew this because I’d seen the same trending lab results in many patients before, most of whom died. Jenny awoke abruptly with coughing and a look of panic in her eyes. She summoned the nurse, and when the nurse arrived, Jenny, who is a doctor, looked straight at her and said: “I’m developing pulmonary edema. Give me 20 mg of Lasix IV, right now.” The nurse looked at me and asked if she should follow the order. I answered that Jenny was the smartest doctor I’ve ever known, and I’ve never known her to be wrong about anything. The nurse gave the drug, and the coughing began to subside within half an hour. She drifted back into a restless sleep. I watched her breathing while simultaneously struggling with the fear of losing her and marveling at how clear-headed she was even as she was fighting for her life.
After another two or three days, Jenny started to show signs of recovery. By the end of the week, she was ready to leave the hospital. She’d become so weak that she could barely stand up on her own.
Back at home, we started working to regain her strength. The road race wasn't even on our minds. But after a few weeks, she was ready to try a short run, then longer runs. With just a couple of weeks to go, she announced that she wanted to run the race. I was skeptical and tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted she was going to run. I suggested that she let me run with her just in case she got into trouble. She refused; she wanted to do it alone. It was then that I recognized what was happening: She had been near to death and needed to prove to herself that she had indeed survived. The race would be her statement that she intended to live her life on her terms and was not going to succumb to the fear of her experience with illness.
I can still recall the triumphant look on her face when I found her at the finish line of that first race. Later she told me about the start of the race. She was standing in the middle of an ocean of runners who were all fidgeting in anticipation of the start, and when the Star-Spangled Banner played, she began to cry. Under a beautiful blue sky, and surrounded by an energetic crowd, she felt, for the first time in many weeks, that she was alive and life, at that moment, seemed so precious. She’s run every race since that one and plans to keep running them as long as she can.
I like to take photographs of people, especially people doing things that inspire us. Each of the pictures in this small collection tells a different story, but every story is about human beings striving to do the best they can with the life they have. And the picture of Jenny, arms raised and smiling while running the race that has become her victory lap, reminds me of how much she has inspired me throughout our life together. There is also a picture of our daughter, Lindsay, who still comes home to run the race with her mother. It's a tradition that I'm happy and grateful to be able to document with my camera.
Monte