Cognitive Dissonance...

Cognitive Dissonance.. I've always liked the term. It has a cool sound to it... "dissonance" especially sounds like a sound. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, I've been struggling with a bit of cognitive dissonance recently. A struggle between my image of myself as a healthy person (a marathoner who generally takes care of herself), and this new experience of being a person who goes to the hospital "a lot". By "a lot" I mean more than never. Or more than visiting others who are in the hospital. Before 3 months ago the only time I was in the hospital for me was the birth of my daughter, a happy, healthy, planned event. Tuesday, December 16, 2008 all that changed.

I feel sorta selfish taking up the bits to type out this whole thing, but its been bugging me and maybe writing it out will help. So skip if you want... or read on if you like.

The weekend before was somewhat typical. Run 10 miles Saturday, manage a software release Saturday night (that took a lot of extra time due to system problems), get up early Sunday and run 17 miles in the forest. Breakfast with friends, chew out the husband for not being healthy because he had been to the hospital a couple times with various unknown and undiagnosable ailments over the years and now his leg hurts just from being alive. Get a bit of rest and go to work the next day. Work the next day is supremely stressful (as normal). And I'm hurting pretty bad and taking a lot of ibuprofen (also normal after running so much over the weekend). Pick up my daughter from school, get bad Chinese food, bring that home, eat the bad Chinese food and drink wine to try to relax. Sleep.

Tuesday, wake up early for a 7 AM con call. My stomach and back hurts, I figure the stomach problem is from bad food, back problem probably from running. So I have some tea, pop some tums, eat some oatmeal and wait for it to go away. It just gets worse and worse. But stupid me, I keep working, keep calling into conference calls, etc. Stomach and back keep hurting, ibuprofen doesn't help. Then the nausea starts... I throw up, but its not blood, so I figure its not urgent. Keep working, keep puking, finally around 3PM after I delay a con call and then have to drop off a couple times to throw up, I figure maybe I should stop working and try to rest. I call my husband and ask him to bring home some pepto and chicken soup as he picks up the kiddo from school. He gets home some time after 6 and it keeps hurting more. Finally I figure, maybe I should do something about this. I call the nurse help line, describe the symptoms and she says I should head to the ER. So we pack up and head to the ER. I figure they'll tell me I have indigestion and to go home.... we get there around 8:30, they actually "see me" at 11:30. I'm admitted to the hospital at 1:30 AM Wednesday with a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis.

So I spend the next day and a half in the hospital on IV drip and no food, letting my pancreas rest and recover. They do ultrasound and MRI and various blood tests. They suspect gall stones, but can't find any. The other common cause is alcohol abuse, I don't drink that much but gladly decide I'll not drink for a very long time. While they do the US they find something they think is a mass on my kidney. Hmmm.. not related to the pancreas, but they strongly suggest I do something about it. I get out of the hospital on Thursday the 18th. Fly to Denver on the 19th, have my first ever bout of heartburn on the 20th, watch the Bronco's play with my dad on the 21st, more heartburn on the 21st and from that day to this, if I'm not taking strong PPI drugs (Nexium is the one I'm on now which works great) I have the worst heartburn and chest pain, no matter what I eat.

Anyway, back to the timeline, hospital, trip to denver, a day at work, visit doctor to get a referral for a CT scan to see if there's really a mass on my kidney, christmas, trip to new mexico to meet my sister's lovely baby, back home. CT scan is finally done after new years eve. The CT is fine, nothing found. No mass, nothing. But heartburn continues, daily pain, nothing seems to work, I try all of the OTC stuff and nothing seems to help. My doc says I may just have to live with it for a year. But she does refer me to a GI doc to followup on the pancreas thing and talk to them about the heart burn. Oh yeah, somewhere in this timeline I run Goofy's race 39.9 miles in 2 days in FL and turn 39.

Go to the GI doc who saw me in the hospital. She is surprised that I haven't had a re-occurrence of the pancreas thing. And she says the heart burn isn't normal. She's also surprised about my blood pressure, it was 150 over 100something. She asks if I'm stressed.. of course I'm stressed. Its crunch time at work. I was working 56 hour weeks not counting commute. She asks how my kid is doing. I say "Oh she's great!" I was wrong. Anyway, she prescribes Nexium and three outpatient procedures to find out about the heartburn and the pancreas.

So the next day I find out the my kiddo is not doing well in school. She's skipping homework assignments and not paying attention in class. I had been so busy with work, that I totally ignored her needs. That's the final straw. I tell my boss I'm not going to be working those hours anymore. And he supports that. Husband and I focus on working with her every night and she seems to be doing better now.

Getting closer to present day... this last week I went in for the outpatient procedures. Tuesday was an EGD (tube down the throat with a camera to look around the insides) and they implanted a Bravo chip to monitor the pH in my gullet and relate that with my heartburn symptoms. For this procedure it was IV sedation. I will hear the results of that in a couple weeks. Thursday was another tube down the throat procedure... an Endoscopic Ultrasound. They did general anesthetic this time. THIS ultrasound found "sludge" in my gall bladder. This sludge could be a cause of acute pancreatitis but its not abnormal to have in the gall bladder. And as a result of all of the sedations, etc I haven't run in a week. I've been feeling a little ill since the last test.. could be my period, could be the anesthetic, could be coming down with a cold.. could just be tired. Who knows? but it sucks.

Anyway... I need to go to the doc again in a couple weeks and find out what she suggests. In the meantime, here's the cognitive dissonance. I'm a healthy person... I run marathons, I never get sick.. I have hundreds of hours of sick time. But here I am, doctor's visits, hospital visits, not feeling good, not running. Daughter needs help in school. Part of me wants to be laid off from work so I can rest.. another part knows that if I was I would be even more stressed because of finances.

I feel like if I accept this as "reality" it means I'm an unhealthy person... I'm afraid to be unhealthy. Afraid to be sick. Or maybe the fact is just that I'm human and sometimes humans break down a bit.

I'm writing this note from a hotel room in Novato, CA. My hubby and daughter are out for dinner with some good friends of ours. I've been feeling too crappy today to go out. This weekend is a race weekend, NASA is the organization that we've been racing and volunteering with for almost 9 years now. Tomorrow may have 5" of rain! We're looking forward to it. Even more I'm looking forward to Monday. Its a day off and we don't have any plans. Perhaps I can sleep. I'm looking forward to next week when I can start running again. It does add to my busy schedule, but as they say "running is cheaper than therapy" and.. I'm hoping to PR in May, I doubt I will, but I'll take being able to run another Marathon as a large victory... and being able to run this week as a small one.

That's a story for another day... and I do feel better after writing this. I guess its OK to admit I'm afraid.

The benefits of a good run...

This morning I did a 17K trail run with about 2,000 ft of climbing. And the amazing thing was, it went much better than expected. I ran with a bunch of people in our training team. They've all been doing much more hill running than I have in the last 3 months. I certainly wasn't the fastest, but I didn't finish last either, AND I found most of the hills runnable.

I haven't had a great run in a long time, and a great run can make the whole day potentially great. Which is a great thing... work has been crazy, I have two DR appts coming up this week that are a bit scary. So a good run makes for a good day.

Yes I will post about something else some day.

Coincidence? or way of life...

Been a while since I blogged. A LONG while... (July 2007 to Feb 2009 long) but just recently I did another one of those go-to-an-amusement-park-to-run-a-long-way things. This time it was Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge. January 9 & 10 at Walt Disney World parks in Orlando, FL. It was called Goofy's Race because you have to be Goofy to do it. You run a half marathon one day, then run a full marathon the next day. The 5 hours walking around the parks the day of the half is the "Goofy Stupid" option according to my hubby. I did very well actually, all things considered. I didn't really train very well for the race. I had a series of strange illnesses between my prior marathon and the Goofy race including a trip to the hospital and a week of "no running allowed" on doctor's orders following the hospital visit.

What was the race like? Well, the half was nice. I planned on running a 12 minute mile pace which for me is a relaxed, mellow, not in a hurry and enjoy the scenery marathon pace. I ran along a bit too fast until I caught up with someone else from my training group. She was running the race on hurt feet. So I ran with her the rest of the way and ended up doing almost exactly as planned. It was fun and we stopped for pictures with the disney characters.

Then comes the full... I was dreading this part of the event. Worried about the possibility of whatever happened to me the last time I ran a 10 miler followed by a 17 miler and ending up in the hospital. I was also not too happy about having spent the afternoon walking around DisneyWorld's Magic Kingdom the day of the half. Adding insult to already sore feet. But, I started anyway... with thoughts of "This seemed like a good idea a year ago" running through my head. It wasn't near as hard as usual for me to run "slow" I quickly "achieved" my target pace of 13 minute miles and cruised along. I ran alone, my friends were all in corrals in front of or behind me.

Everything went well until about mile 15 when my right foot started hurting bad, then the left foot did, the knees got into it on and off.. but it was mostly the right foot. That foot has been giving me problems for months, still does today. The pace quickly fell towards 14 minute miles.. but in the last 6 miles I was sick and tired of running and hurting and picked up the pace instead. I limped my way to the end of the race faster and faster, just wanting it to be OVER. Then I finished right next to a guy in mickey mouse ears. But at least it was over. And it didn't hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would! (Which brings to mind the obvious question.. if you thought it would hurt worse, why did you do it?) :)

In the end I did the half right around 2:30 and the full at 5:36, both right at my target times. Not too shabby for an out of shape runner who turned 39 the next day... 39.3 miles before the 39th birthday.

So, coincidence or way of life.. my two blog posts so far are about running races in Disney parks. Honestly, I don't like Disney... so Disney is not the way of life.. but running is. So get used to it. You're likely to hear quite a bit about it.