My Brenda Set

I was working out at the gym with a friend of mine.  We had just finished a set of very heavy squats when he was finishing, and I went over to the bar and added more weight and went over to the squat rack to do another set.

                “What are you doing?” he asked me bent over catching his breath.

                “I’m doing my Brenda set.”  I replied as I put the heavy bar behind my neck and completed the set.

                “Who’s Brenda, new girlfriend?”  He asked provocatively thinking that I was gonna give him some juice tidbit of some girl I had met at the gym.

                “Nope.”  I replied and continued my workout.

                We continued to workout me doing my extra set of every exercise that we did the rest of the session.  We were in the locker room changing clothes when I prodded me again about who Brenda was.

                “Brenda was my aunt.”  I said as I finished tying my shoe and gathering my belongings.

                “Okay he asked but why does that make you do an extra set,” he asked as we walked out of the locker room.

                Brenda was my only aunt.  She was my mother’s sister.  She was an active person.  She was running, riding a bike, swimming, doing aerobics, or sometimes she would lift weights.  She was always doing something, and I admired that she was always active.  And her physical body always showed it.  She looked fit and energized.  Brenda was the pinnacle of health, until I saw her one Thanksgiving.  She did not look as though she was in good health.  She looked a little chunky and she seemed tired.  Brenda also did not like going to the doctor.  She was into holistic medicine and she also figured that if she changed the way she ate or worked out a little harder that she would feel better.  This continued for a couple of months until finally she went to the doctor and he gave her the news that all human beings fear.  The doctor told her that she had stage four pancreatic cancer.

                Cancer has been a brooding shadow over my family for a long time.  My brother has had three battles with cancer and has won.  It’s taken its toll on his body, but he is living a good life.  My aunt on the other hand was not so lucky.  Pancreatic cancer is the most aggressive and is almost uncurable.  I don’t know if she had gone to the doctor earlier, would she have lived longer.  I don’t know if radiation or chemotherapy would have helped her, we were told that it may have given her another year but would the pain and illness that come from those therapies would probably not have given her a better quality of life.  I will never know, my parents tried to care for her during her last days, but she was so ill that she had to be hospitalized until her death.

                I cannot imagine the pain and suffering that she suffered or other pain that other cancer patients endure either during their treatment or for those in their final days.  Other than appendicitis, I have never experienced the pain that they have endured or are enduring.  My favorite activity is working out, more especially weightlifting.  I like to think of working out as my anti-cancer drug.  I also like to think that it keeps me out of the doctor’s office, and off the counselor’s couch.  So, I call the extra set when I lift weights my Brenda set because I have expended the maximum effort, and I’m in pain so I expend whatever energy I have left and feel the pain that they endure.  If I’ve done five sets of squats, bench press, presses, or whatever I’m doing, I’m in pain, I’m ready to give up or quit, but I think of them and think, “ A cancer patient can’t quit, they can’t stop the pain they are in, the pain I’m is nothing compared to what they are experiencing so I have to do more to experience the pain and suffering that they are experiencing so that I don’t have experience what they are going through.”

                I know that lifting weights and exercise discomfort is no comparison to what a cancer patient feels, but they may not be able to do what I do.  The pain that I’m experiencing is only a fraction of what my aunt, my brother, and other cancer patients are experiencing.  I’m fortunate that I have not had to experience the pain of cancer or the pain of cancer treatment, but I feel that my working out keeps me cancer away from me, but I know that’s not how it works.  Like with everything, it’s a mindset.

                So, the next time that we worked out together, my partner and I finished a set.  I did my Brenda set and then he went under the bar to do another set.

                “This is my Molly set.  She was my grandma and she died of cancer.”

                So, in honor of my aunt, my brother, and all cancer patients.  I do those extra sets for you.