Friday, March 6, 1998
Copyright 1998 Anchorage Daily News
Redington runs his own race
Musher's toughest trail lies beyond Iditarod
By Frank Gerjevic
Daily News Reporter
Joe Redington sipped a can of Ensure through a straw and rocked gently in a chair at his Knik home. He wore gray winter overalls and light gray lobben boots. The 81-year-old musher, who's known wind chills of more than 100 degrees below zero, should have been too warm, but he wasn't.
"No insulation," he said.
After January surgery that removed his esophagus and the cancerous tumor growing in it, Redington has lost weight. Fully clothed, he weighs 137. He figures he's 20 pounds under his racing weight of 150.
He lost his voice for a while, and it's still thin. He lost a rib for keeps.
His stomach is higher in his chest, thanks to the surgery. He's got a tube attached to his intestines, there for feeding in case he can't keep anything down.
"It's annoying," he said.
He's due for more chemotherapy after he recovers from the surgery and gains weight.
But Redington's smile is the same.
He finished the food supplement and glanced at the can.
"They don't go down as good as they did after about the hundredth one."
It's a far cry from steak and silk pies, which were on the Father of the Iditarod's trail menu when he ran the 25th anniversary race a year ago. The day after he left the hospital after his surgery, he tried barbecued ribs. "But it wasn't what my stomach wanted," he said. He hasn't repeated that mistake.
He'd come in from the cold this sunny Monday afternoon before the 26th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to the warmth of "his corner," as his wife, Vi, called it.
With a wide swivel rocker and footstool, it was easy to drift from conversation to drowse.
It had been a good day. Joe was strong enough to drive with Vi to pick up 1,500 pounds of dog food, get a truck serviced and walk a few minutes in his dog lot. There, the mushing life went on. Handlers Judy Hamilton and Goran Bostrom fed a steaming mix of food to Redington's reduced kennel of less than 200 dogs.
Melissa Garrison, a young handler who has run four Junior Iditarods with Redington dogs, came after school to help address and mail dog-food bags for Redington's Iditarod Challenge, a guided trip on the same trail at a slower pace.
Redington won't guide the group this year, but he's making the Iditarod Challenge resemble the race by having the mushers, not guides, cook their own dog food and feed their animals.
"It's a lot more exciting for 'em," he'd said earlier.
Redington's kennel continues to outfit other mushers' dreams. But he has plans of his own, too. "I gotta get a good team for the year 2000," he said.
If Redington runs in 2000 he'll have some familiar company. Neighbor Joyce Garrison is a fellow musher, mother of Melissa, and a registered nurse for 20 years. She's helped the Redingtons since Joe was diagnosed in early December. She stayed with them in Anchorage for the first round of chemotherapy and helped explain medical terms. Now she visits twice a day to irrigate the feeding tube and "just to be there, to listen."
"Between her and Vi I've had good care; couldn't ask for any better," Redington said.
"I think Joe gets a little frustrated because he wants it to go a little faster," Garrison said.
Both Joe Redington and Garrison said they never doubted the treatment and surgery would work. But right after the surgery, "There were days he had so much pain he didn't think he could handle it," Garrison said.
"I think he's starting to get his life back," she said.
Redington still faces tough odds. "The prognosis for esophageal cancer is not good," Garrison said.
Although the American Cancer Society reports that survival rates have increased since the 1960s, in 1992 the survival rate was 12 percent for whites, 8 percent for blacks five years after diagnosis. Garrison has no illusions about the disease, but she has faith in Redington. "If anybody can beat it, he can."
By late afternoon Monday, Redington rested. He looked at the Denali Elementary School get-well banner that graced a wall with its dozens of scribbled signatures. There were cards from Iditarod and Finger Lake schools. "I gotta go down to the school before school is out and thank 'em."
"With all those people helpin' me, how could you fail?" Redington said.
In the rocker Redington smiled as he recalled his reputation for toughness, earned doing wilderness rescues long before the Iditarod. He remembered a trip with two other men when he'd end a day's work by saying, "Let's call it a day.
"Then one of them would speak up, 'Jesus Christ, let's call it two days.'
"I don't feel very tough right now."
Sleep called, but Redington didn't answer for awhile. He talked about past Iditarod races, the race coming up and his own trail ahead.
Redington counts 58 dogs in his kennel who are just a year old. "Out of that 58 I'm gonna get a good team," he said.
As Joyce Garrison said, "He's got things to do."