Me hiding behind clown make-up in 1981 — Photo by Nancy Bronson — Owned by Gentry Bronson
I used to run and I loved it. When I was seven years old, I watched the very first televised Iron Man on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The race was broadcast from Hawaii, and after I watched Dave Scott swim, bike, run, and win, I wanted to be a triathlete. It was February 1980 and my young, skinny body started training like Dave.
When I was eight and nine years old, I competed in several marathons and was a long-distance runner for track and field events at Westforest Elementary School. Running also helped me escape the various bullies that came after me on the playground and after school. My legs — and using them like a gazelle escaping a leopard — were my salvation.
My legs carried me over the narrow Minnesota farm roads that led to and from the haunted hippie farmhouse where I grew up. Over ice, through rainstorms, battling snow and hail, and against the brutal and constant wind that swept across the flat fields.
I ran until I was 14 years old. Then I was forced to stop because a miserably ignorant doctor gave me a terrible triple diagnosis. He told me I had a heart murmur, scoliosis, and kidney disease, but the foolish quack was wrong about all of it and I suffered the consequences.
The doctor’s ignorance and lack of compassion caused me a lot of pain, but it sent me on a search to end my suffering and discover the joy of the water and the ocean.
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It was my freshman year, and I’d just transferred to a new high school. I was an innocent kid with a mullet I’d grown out an inch down my neck to resemble Kurt, the fastest member of our cross-country team. I joined the team that summer and started running with them in advance of the school year to get in shape.
My heroes were all the older runners, and they coached and encouraged me while we ran.
One runner might call out, “Hey, Bronson! Lookin’ good, hey!”
And Kurt would coach me by saying, “Get on your toes more when you come in for the sprint at the end!”
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When summer ended, I needed to get routine tests to let the school know I was healthy enough to run on the team. My birthday had just occurred and classes would begin soon. I was spritely and naive. A round-faced boy, only beginning to gain a chin, and also to recognize girls and the crushes I had on them.
That late summer day, I walked down the concrete campus and into the doctor’s office to get the results of my tests.
“Come in. Sit down, young man,” the bespectacled doctor said. He seemed to have a humped back under his smock, and his hair was parted in one giant lop combed over to cover his bare, white scalp. “I have some news. News you might not like here today now.”
I was alone and his words came out stilted. Cold. Emotionless. With a dull, aching accent straight from the heart of the Northland.
“Son, you have a bad heart, a bad curve of the spine, and kidney problems. Not good. Not good, all of it. You’re going to have to stop running, And you’re going to need to get more tests. You might need dialysis.”
It was like he was reading a verdict. My death sentence.
Then, he handed me a medical document in triplicate. White on top, then pink, and yellow on the bottom page.
He pointed at the document and said, “You’ll need to have your parents sign this. Then, you go follow up with these specialists here. Your parents will do that then, okay?”
I nodded, took the papers, and looked at them. There was my barely legible name on top and below that, his scrawl read:
Scoliosis. Heart murmur. Probable kidney disease. Diagnostic testing required. Not permitted to run or exercise.
Under that were various specialists’ names, phone numbers, addresses, check boxes, finger smudges, and a signature.
My heart dropped. My blood raced. Anxiety shot through my body like a machine gun was firing from inside my head. Whatever else the mad doctor said didn’t register because I was in shock.
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I left the office and trudged to the school bus stop, then I rode home numb and wordless. Quiet in my horror as teenagers flirted and yelled and laughed together.
When I arrived home, I didn’t give the paperwork to my parents. Instead, I went for a run.
I laced up my sneakers and started down our quarter-mile driveway that hooked off to pine trees and paved country roads. Dirt crunched under my heels as I pounded each foot in the early evening humidity and heat of late August.
As I usually did, I began to count the telephone poles as I ran past them. I let each pole magnetically pull me toward it, letting each stride take me further away from home thinking maybe I can keep running.
But I knew I couldn’t run away from this. And I knew I would not get to become like my heroes Kurt or Dave.
I ran five miles and turned around to go home, but while I was gone, my parents received a call. They didn’t need to receive paperwork from me. The doctor called my school administrators, and they called my parents. Now everyone knew about my health issues.
When I returned, I was forbidden from running. Testing would soon begin.
There I am, number 1604, running a marathon at eight years old along the Mississippi River — Photo by Nancy Bronson — Owned by Gentry Bronson
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The tests quickly ruled out scoliosis; my spine actually had a natural curvature. So, the humped doctor had missed the mark on health issue number one.
Then, tests determined my heart murmur was a sign that I had a very healthy heart instead of the bad heart I’d been diagnosed with. Doctor Quack had misdiagnosed that one in the opposite direction, too.
The problem was my kidneys. Tests confirmed that something was wrong but they weren’t sure what it was. The words disease and dialysis echoed and pinged in my brain, bouncing like racquetballs through my mind and nerves. Those words made me scared.
My problematic kidneys needed to be tested further in The Cities. The Twin Cities. Minneapolis/St. Paul. Where the specialist doctors with the technologically advanced machines were.
Going to the Twin Cities felt like going home when I was a kid. For a strange little hippie child like me raised on carob and government-issued commodity cheese, the city was where I wanted to be. Where the kids dressed cool and there were Target stores everywhere. Suburbs and freeways and Thai food and punk rockers and culture.
But that urban wonder changed rapidly when going to Minneapolis meant entering a laboratory and being prodded and pricked like a lab rat.
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My first test was to quaff a large amount of radioactive liquid that tasted like purple Kool-Aid mixed with metal shavings. Then, I was required to sit very still and straight up in front of a large, round, buzzing machine. While I watched my kidneys and bladder fill up on a green, pixelated computer screen, I desperately needed to pee, but I was forced to stay in one spot for two hours. Then, I was allowed to relieve myself.
It was uncomfortable, often excruciating, and embarrassing, and it was a test that I needed to endure over six times.
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When the doctors said I needed to collect my own urine in a plastic bottle all day, every day, for seven consecutive days, embarrassment became a pattern. I had to carry a bottle with me to the restroom at school, collect my own waste fluids, keep the bottle in my locker, then take it home, and do it again the next day.
Making friends and getting a date at my new school became a little more difficult after that.
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There were a number of other tests that invaded holes, drew blood, caused bleeding, and also caused severe embarrassment, but they always caused fear. Fear that, eventually, they would find something very bad.
Finally, after a full year of testing and bodily investigating, the doctors determined that I had a birth defect in part of my urinary system. It would require major surgery and eleven days in the hospital, but it was not — and had never been — kidney disease. Three strikes and the good Doctor Quack had struck out. He was wrong about everything.
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After the extensive surgery and by the end of my ordeal, I began to suffer from chronic pain. It began in the place where the doctors sliced into my body. They left a long, ragged scar. And next to it, a swollen, smaller scar where four feet of rubber surgical tubing had been inside and used to drain me of fluids.
Because of both scars and the resulting scar tissue, I couldn’t run anymore. The pain was too much.
But it didn’t stop me from living life in radiant color. Shimmering green, turquoise blue and foamy white became an essential part of my life. The colors of the ocean.
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As soon as I turned 18, I moved to the West Coast, and there, I found the sea and taught myself to surf. By the age of 26, I was paddling out into beautiful twelve-foot waves at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, catching gorgeous walls of water at Salmon Creek in Sonoma County, and riding long, smooth swells at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz.
I left the landlocked world of running behind and became a waterman. Living among the elephant seals and otters. Dropping in on waves where dolphins play. Letting kelp pods tickle my feet while I scanned the horizon for the next set.
If I had continued to run on the land, I know I wouldn’t have found the wonder of riding the ocean.
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For the last seven years, my home has been in the magnificent city of New Orleans. Here, I paddle my stand-up paddleboard down the bayou, through City Park near the ancient oak trees, always keeping my eye out for gators. I swim laps at the University of New Orleans, flip-turning and backstroking and freestyling next to college students.
And I still surf. Florida is only a couple of hours away, and I celebrated my 50th birthday on Kauai dropping in on epic waves.
I may not be able to run like a gazelle anymore, but I can move through the water like a fish.
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My kidney scar is a war wound and a mark of resilience. A reminder of life lived.
I tell people it’s a shark bite. When they believe me, I smile.