I’m amazed that I’ve actually got a number of people regularly checking out this blog. Thanks to all of you, eh?
Sorry I’ve been relatively remiss in posting. The back thing is getting better, but it got me rather behind on work and stuff, so I’ve been focusing on that lately.
I’m planning to start going back to the gym next week, and expect to have many delightful stories about the culture shock I’m sure that will be.
In the meantime, I did another review for the Mercury. Check it out here.
Just a quick one to let you know I’m alive. Thanks for your well-wishes. This has sucked incredible amounts of suckiness and I’m still pissy that I missed the run, but well shit happens I guess. We deal and move on. In the great scheme of things, this is nada.
So in brighter news, I’ve gone from not being able to move without screaming on Thursday night to just having this one hellish knot right over my right butt cheek and general weakness throughout. A million times better.
It’s taking most of my willpower to keep from overdoing it. I’m mostly sitting still, stretching a lot, and walking/standing as much as I can without it hurting like hell. But I’m trying. I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home most of this week, and I’m trying to do this right.
I’ve got a followup appt. at the doctor next week, and plan to ask about when I can start gently easing back into running. I have this totally sweet idea for something fun to do with runs and the blog….but of course it came to me like 3 days after things hurt too much to run.
Still working out with TNT which Fall race I’ll do with them–it’ll likely be either the PDX marathon or the Nike half in SF–both in October. So we’ll have many more weeks of me bitching about training.
It’ll kind of be like being held back a grade–it’ll all seem so familiar, but we’ll see if I actually learned anything….or if I’m just always going to be the 16-year-old dude in 7th grade.
I should have known better than to make some overarching statement like, “I WILL do the race.” I might as well have said, “I WILL ensure my non-participation.”
So, shortly after signing out on my last post, I went into the longest day and a half that I’ve had in quite some time. I’ll spare you the gory and quite unglamorous details, and leave it at: it was a loooooooong night, hovering largely around the 9 zone on a pain scale of 1-10.
We managed to get me in to see the doctor on Friday morning (the only thing keeping me out of the emergency room at 3am on Friday was a) this appointment and b) no idea how we’d get me down the stairs and into the car without the neighbors thinking Alexander was slaughtering me).
Unsurprisingly, she confirmed that yep, that’s a thrown-out back. But she also confirmed that prescription painkillers and muscle relaxants will do a much better job of managing it than fistfuls of ibuprofen and mouthfuls of shrieks and profanity.
And whaddaya know, she’s right. In the last 36 hours, I’ve gone from dragging my limp corpse-like body around on my hands, to staggering along with a walker, to lurching around with a cane, to verrrrrry slowly making my way around the apartment unassisted.
While I’m optimistic about that outlook, I am not allowed to participate in the race tomorrow, even if I’m able to walk.
Which has me incredibly depressed.
Luckily, TNT is very graciously allowing me to transfer my fundraising to next season, so all hope is not lost. And in fact, it means I’ve got a nice jump on things.
I’m beginning to get a little loopy from the latest round of meds, so I’m signing off. But more later, and thanks for all your support. This story is SO not over yet.
I am beyond pathetic today.
My back is getting worse and worse. I keep trying different things, and I keep getting lamer and lamer. In more ways than one.
Alexander and I are both home today–me because of my back and him because he starts a new job Monday and gets a couple days off in between. So around 10am this morning, I finished up some work at my computer and, whining, collapsed in a heap in the couch.
Around 11, we decided that maybe, if I could just get moving and get things warmed up, I’d be in better shape. We live a couple of blocks from the Lloyd Mall, so we decided to walk over there and take care of a couple of errands, see what new shiny things were on display, and then come home.
Walking even more delicately than my 90-year-old grandmother, I made it to within a block of the mall.
As we worked our way past Holladay Park, I sneezed.
And as I sneezed, my back spasmed, my legs gave out, and I collapsed into a heap. Actually, that’s not entirely correct. The back muscle spasm thing makes it so you can’t stand up straight and you can’t bend–so you’re left writhing in this horrible agony until you find a position that takes the stress off your back and allows you to breathe again.
For me, that was crouched over a low wall that I’m sure has been recently peed on, both palms spread flat against it, holding on for dear life.
This was in public.
This was in public at lunch rush hour.
This was in public at lunch rush hour, and I’m about as comfortable drawing attention to myself in public as I am sneezing and feeling my legs go out from under me.
Luckily, at Holladay Park, I fit right in. A couple of winos looked over at us and nodded, “yeah. been there, sister.”
We spent a few minutes waiting for me to find the inner strength to stand up, and then when that didn’t work, we spent a few Vaudeville minutes with Alexander trying to support me and having that fail. You haven’t lived until you’ve had your boyfriend put you in a half-nelson and try to ease you into a standing position while whispering gently into your ear that he could go get his mom’s walker, if that’d help.
Somehow, we got me standing again and I shuffled home. Immediately upon entering, I called my doctor and made an appointment for tomorrow morning.
This back pain thing just kills me. The absolute inability to move makes for such an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. I’m incredibly stubborn and willful, but apparently the erector spinae don’t take being bullied.
And holy crap, the pain! I feel like such a huge whiner, but I’ve actually got a ridiculously high pain threshold……which I guess might be part of the problem…..I let it go for a long time, and now here we are.
Alexander is telling me that he doesn’t want me doing the race on Sunday. I’m telling him that right now, I’m just thinking about the fact that I have to get up to go pee, and that’s going to suck in about 18 different ways.
I’ve got a strong feeling that running that race on Sunday might not happen. But I’m GOING to go, damn it, and I’m GOING to finish–even if I’m walking.
Now we’ve just got to GET me walking……
The occasional post not enough for you?
Just need to have more of my opinions and general rantings?
Luckily for you, now you can. Periodically, I’ll be reviewing theater for the Portland Mercury. I saw my first show for them last weekend, and you can read the review here.
It remains to be seen whether they’ll ask me back for more beyond this, but we hope so. With a past professional life in theater and yet another as a writer, I gots me plenty to say about it.
Of course, they only give me about 400 words in which to do it, which is really probably for the best.
I’m laughing pretty hard at the ridiculousness of my life right now–making it kind of hard to type coherently. So please bear with me. By now I’m convinced that my effort to get healthier is going to land me in a 6-foot-deep hole.
But of course with my luck, it’ll be a hole they’re digging for someone else–I’ll just trip and fall and end up in it.
So the race is in less than a week. My knee is still giving me grief, but I’m at least getting used to and learning how to work with it.
But nooooooo, THAT’s not enough! Would you believe that I threw my freaking back out?
Me, I wouldn’t believe it. Because it’s just too stupid.
But I’d be wrong.
I didn’t even do anything exciting to throw out said back. I didn’t run away with the circus and mis-judge the leap onto the elephant’s trunk, or get whipped off of the scenic viewpoint by gale-force winds. No, I was just a dumbass who didn’t listen to the signals. I threw it out for the first time about a decade ago, in my tender early twenties…ever since then, I’ve been reasonably good at keeping things in check.
My back started signaling me almost three weeks ago, but I just kept on at my life, such as it is….and by Friday night last week I’m lying flat on the living room floor, legs propped up on a stool, trying to take ibuprofen and drink from a water bottle without spilling it all over my face.
I was incredibly stoked about the Saturday run this week, because it was only going to be 4 miles. Hell, after last week’s 12, that was going to seem like a skip down to the corner store.
But since I could only stand at a 45 degree angle, I opted out. Now I’m desperately and frantically resting (frantically resting. interesting.) as much as I can when I don’t have to work or whatever, and popping ibuprofen like candy, and hoping to hell I can shake this thing before Sunday. I’ve gotten to the point where I can stand, and actually go do things in world without either
a)crying like a wee bairn, or
b)looking like I’m auditioning for a role in The Dark Crystal.
Wish me luck.
What makes all of this even sadder and even more ridiculous is that I just found out that, by the graces of a random drawing, I got a spot in the completely full Nike Women’s half-marathon in San Francisco in October.
Which is great. It looks like a gorgeous run, it’s a great excuse to visit SF, and it’ll be good to have something to work toward in the fall. Especially if it turns out that I’m a total cripple this weekend.
The sad part about it is that it’s about exactly one month before the weekend that my entire job rests on. All of my work for an entire year comes down to one weekend–and pressure builds steadily as it gets closer. It’ll probably be very healthy for me to get away and have this race a month before it all comes to a head, but I’m also shaking my head at myself and thinking, “so you couldn’t have entered a race even a month earlier, huh? It HAD to be 30 days before the most frantic part of your year?”
Genius, that’s me. Limping, hobbled genius.
I woke up this morning thinking about negativity and positivity, stasis and motion, choices and paths. I don’t remember the dream that set me up to be thinking about all of this, but when I shifted in bed and moved my leg, my aching knee reminded me of yesterday’s adventures. So I applied my thoughts to running.
There are a lot of reasons why I started running:
-a disdain for team sports
-a desire to control my widening rear view
-a disdain for sports that require a lot of new equipment
-a desire for a physical activity that I could do pretty much anywhere, anytime
But the least practical reason, and currently the most compelling one,
is that I just wanted to see if I could.
…
For a living, I make things go.
In the last decade alone I’ve worked in theater production and management, in publishing, in museum production and fabrication, and (currently) in non-profit and event management. Despite the varying industries, my jobs have always had the same through-line:
People hire me to take a system that wasn’t going, and make it go.
It’s generally interesting, usually difficult, often bizarre, and incredibly rewarding.
And I’m very good at it.
But I was looking for an external metaphor I could apply to my work: something unrelated to my job, in a totally different arena, that I could engage in and examine for more insight into my work and life. Something to get me out of my head, where I spend most of my time, that would force me to pick up another perspective.
From what I’d seen and read and heard, running in general and endurance running in specific seemed to fit the bill pretty well. I’d been dabbling in short runs and races for a year or so, but this spring I decided to go ahead and really give it a shot.
This blog is my report on this venture, and I set it up as much to help me process it as to make you giggle.
…
There is a point here, so bear with me.
…
The reactions of my friends, family and associates to this endeavor have been really interesting, and indicative of the windows through which they view the world.
Admittedly, the person I was 5 or 10 years ago was not a person who would have trained for a half-marathon. So I do understand the psychic break that might cause for some folks who haven’t seen me since then.
But reactions have generally been distinctly supportive or distinctly not supportive, regardless of the reactor’s degree of incredulity.
There are many people who can’t imagine me without a cigarette in my hand and 3-inch stack-heel boots on my feet who have been startled, but surprisingly enthusiastic about my undertaking.
There are plenty of others who’ve known me as I started to make this change, who have been skeptical about it at every step.
…
We all make choices about whether or not to be positive, or supportive, or understanding, of the people around us. Even if we don’t agree with, or care for, or understand, what they’re doing.
As we do so, we make choices about whether or not we’re going to be a part of “making things go.”
…
When it comes to making my legs go, instead of just my head, it’s been a real challenge for me. But a positive one, that I’m glad I’ve taken on.
And I just wanted to take a second here and thank all of you who’ve been supportive of it, whether with well-wishes, financial contributions to TNT, or both or other.
I really appreciate it. Not just because it helps me keep going, but because you are making the choice to do so.
I’ve heard a lot of negativity, even if the people giving it don’t realize that’s what it is.
So to all of you who have said, in your own way, “Go,”
I say Thank You.
It really makes a difference.
