Friday, October 26, 2012

Hey, Hey What Can I Do?




So what do you do when you do when you are in peak condition and then land flat on your face?  You get back up and deal with it.  I've watched too many people in my circles run from problems and learned at a young age that facing issues head on is better than looking back and trying to figure them out  (or fix the bigger problems that accumulated)later on.
Today, we go to the net, Pinterest, and remember who we are.  We remember that we are still that person, just slightly broken and ready to heal with great vigor and determination to be better.  We go through phases of recovery, somewhat like an alcoholic:

  1. Anger
  2. Denial
  3. Depression
  4. Acceptance
  5. Depression
  6. This goes with my damn straight!
    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh490q5lgD1qft6eto1_500.jpg
  7. Determination

We flip through these overly generalized phases over and over again and just continue with them until we are back in our addiction.  Our run, our solace.  Our life...  I'm sure my husband would love to argue that I have a few more phases, but I'm back in the determination phase and you don't want to upset a determined person, do you?  He knows these phases very well, knows when he can mess with me, and when he needs to ask the boss to stay at work.  Other than my down time from my car accident a few years ago, I've suffered minor hiccups.  Trivial injuries that provide for minimal down time.  This will be my longest downtime, even more than the wreck and when I come back it will only be after weeks of physical therapy and thankfully I have the doc convinced that we should throw in gait analysis.  I'm no Kara Goucher, but it keeps me sane and I plan on continuing to run for a long time after this hiccup.

All of the sudden the most simple of tasks are made so hard it hurts to think about attempting them.  Have you have tried to paint your toes while you cannot move your toes???  It is ridiculously difficult!  I ended up with maroon polish all over my foot.  I'm not talking a smidgen here and there, I'm talking the whole third toe was painted maroon!  Alas, you must paint your toes on the homecoming of your 7-0 team.  Which reminds me, WE BELIEVE 8-0, #HailState !!!  We play Alabama this weekend and hoping to finally get some respect in the SEC.  We have been put down too many times, short changed, bad calls because we were not the favorites.  I digress back to difficult tasks at hand...  Getting to work, not the driving part, but actually through the doors.  I've always appreciated the extra amount we must walk to get into work, however the idiot who designed this building (and won an architectural award) never had to walk on crutches.  It is nearly 1/3 mile from the garage to the moment I an plop my butt in my chair.  There is no place for handicap (or injured folk) to park that is closer, no back door, and unless one of my friends comes in at 0600 to just be sweet, they cannot park my car for me.  Let's not even talk about showers... The only time a bath is acceptable is after a hard run, then it will be in ice followed by a detox bath the next day.  Detox bath's have become my go to, and my Runner's World Collection (which needed some good reading time) is starting to dwindle.  There's just something nice about a shower, about standing up and not being in your own filth even if it's after the bath, standing up, IMHO you just feel cleaner.  I've tried getting my husband to bring me glasses of wine, but who can blame the man, he's afraid if I have too many I'll fall in my attempt to slip out of the tub using the side to slide my butt out without using my left foot at all and hit my head.  Then he has to explain how we don't have stairs in our house and yes, his wife really is this clumsy.  Poor guy he has to put up with me, however, once I hit the couch all bets are off and wine it is.  LOL!  Another thing, unless you are sitting or laying down any bottoms CANNOT come on or off.  It's crazy how much you need both arms and both legs.  I'm sure I could get good at the one leg hop into my pants but I'd rather not require more stitches trying to accomplish this task.  There are some tasks I am ok not perfecting.

Slightly swollen.  Anyone want to paint them for me???
As far as fertility goes, we planned on moving forward with a new doctor and a new plan this month.  Funny how life says, no, you need to wait a second.  Maybe it's hope, hope that we don't need medical intervention.  Maybe it's just a royal f-you.  Who knows.  Only the future will tell the truth.  I'm not going to worry about the future.  I plan, yes, I plan about what things will happen if I do plan X vs plan Z, but I just plan for the best scenario.  I cannot account for everything (otherwise I would have taken whatever step it was that I took wrong and avoided a stress fracture of the 2nd metatarsal or discovered a cure for stupid).  I can only account for what I have seen,  I can only do so much. So as I suffer through the withdrawals of injury recovery, hang in there with me.  Ovulation isn't that far off and maybe, just maybe what I need is the I don't give a rat's.... attitude that I have right now.  Smack me around if you need to, I'm also willing to listen to stories of hope and I always love a good laugh so throw them at me.  Being a little broken is not the worst thing that can happen, I know that.  I just like being active, I love the feel of the cool air (which is just moving in now) and the feel of the mist from the fog on my skin.  I love knowing that while everyone else is sleeping in on Saturday, I have watched the sun rise over the trail, I have accomplished more than some will in weeks, I have nurtured my muscles and my mind, I am a runner.  I might be slow, but speed is not why we do this, we do this thing called running for the rush, for the joy, for the sheer fact that we can, that we can go farther than we ever dreamed we could.  We run so that we can show our children that it's not about winning but about helping those who are down, about supporting a friend who needs us, about giving a damn.  Yoga download had another quote posted on their Facebook wall:  "Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along."  Nothing is so true.  Being broken stinks, but the personal lessons you should learn from these hiatuses are there so you do just that, LEARN.