Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Three years ago, I had surgery to reattach the retina in my right eye and a subsequent
laser procedure to repair a tear in the retina in my left; we caught that one before it de-
tached. My eyesight has never been much to brag about and it is now fuzzier than ever.
I've worn glasses for nearsightedness since I was six and once had an optometrist try to
persuade me to wear contact lenses and glasses at the same time.
This spring I was diagnosed with cervical spinal stenosis—a narrowing of the spinal
cord in my neck, which pinched a nerve and sent throbbing pains into my left shoulder
and upper arm. It was treated with steroid injections—cervical steroidal epidurals, in
medical parlance—and, knock on wood, it feels better.
The standard joke is that I'm both perfectly healthy and falling apart, and my doctors
have pretty much confirmed this. The eye surgeon told me that nearsighted people are
seriously at risk for retina detachment after fifty.
I asked the doctor who helped me with my neck problems what caused them. Gravity,
he said. Most men my age are at risk for stenosis. He's exactly my age and he has it, he
said.
Last month I went to my long-time internist for a full physical, just to make sure a
cross-country bike trip was only a little crazy, not entirely insane. I said I thought I'd
had an unusual string of irritating problems, and she laughed.
“It's a short list,” she said. “Believe me.”
What about the bike trip? Did she want to talk me out of it? Would she?
She laughed again. No such luck.
Before I go, I need to mention two people who have been close to me for decades but
who have only recently, and with startling urgency, become part of the story of this trip.
The first is Jan Benzel, whom I met in the
Times
newsroom twenty-five years ago,
but who is now, remarkably, suddenly, my girlfriend. I guess it happened over a long
time—you know what I mean by
it
—but it also happened all at once, on a trip to
Provence (yes, on bicycles) that we took together in May. I can't believe my luck.
The second is my oldest friend, Bill Joseph, whom I've known since we were ten-
year-old Little Leaguers and who is dying of cancer. I went to see him last week in Los
Angeles, where he is being cared for by his ex-wife and suffering in front of his young
children. I can't believe his luck.
Sigh. I suppose every midlife reckoning story is implicitly about the idea of imper-
manence and teeters between the poles of love and death. I didn't plan mine to be literal
in that regard, but I'll be bringing both Jan and Billy with me, of course.
