Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Morning Run as Lesson In Humility ~ Take 2

If you read my last post, you are pretty much up to speed in my running world.  If you haven't, well, either go back a step, or continue on and try to keep up.

The Run Like a Girl event is just around the corner, and I am registered for the 1/2 marathon.  According to my self-designed-due-to-injury running schedule, I was due for a 10-miler.  Having just returned from a 4-day retreat where I spent the most of the time sitting, my foot was given a lengthy rest and was feeling pretty decent.  I wanted to attempt this last long run on pavement, since that is the terrain I will be traversing during the 1/2, and quite frankly, I am sick to death of my treadmill.  I planned my route as a 5-mile loop to run twice.  Strategic parking allowed for the passing of my car 3 times during those 2 loops, allowing for the possibility that I may need to cut the run short, and there are several other access points to the trail from neighborhoods it passes through, providing easy access to anyone who may need to come to my rescue.  I texted my husband as to my whereabouts, mostly to give him the heads-up in case I did need rescuing, and set off down the trail.

The first 1.5 miles went well.  The foot was holding up and my pace was promising.  I came to the first turnaround point and headed back.  Not long after that, I felt a stab in my knee.  Knee pain is nothing new to me, and sometimes if I slow the pace but keep moving whatever is going on in there will work itself out.  A few steps later I realized this is not familiar knee pain.  This felt like bone striking bone.  Still, I was hopeful that if I kept moving, it might work itself out.  On level ground, I felt nothing.  But the slightest incline or curve in the trail that caused a change in my heel-strike resulted in a stab that nearly buckled me.  By the 4 mile mark, I was just praying to make it back to the car.  At 4.5, I couldn't run another step.  Angrily, I resigned myself to walking the last half-mile to the car.

This, folks, was a "come to Jesus" experience.  And come to Him I did ~ with every once and iota of frustration, anger, and upset I'd harbored during the last year and some change.  I dare say this was one of my darker moments as I cursed God.  It is a cruel irony that He has given me a strong will trapped inside a fragile body.  And I promise I will bitch-slap the first person who refers to Matthew 26:41 or Mark 14:38.  I am well acquainted with these verses.  MY will is not HIS will.  Miraculously, my body seems to hold up just fine when it's regarding HIS will.  Only when it's regarding MY will does my body seem to fall apart.  Way to be fair, there, God.  I am strong enough to do what YOU want, but not what I want?  Thanks.  I must have looked like an utter loon walking down the trail crying ~ more from anger than pain ~ and talking to no one who was visible.

More than once over the last year, in conversation about the physical quirks I live with, it has been suggested that I may have a "non-specific" autoimmune disorder, or possibly EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome).  From what I have read, EDS results from a chromosomal mutation and can be inherited.  Since I have inquired of both sides about family members who may have dealt with hypermobility and come up with bupkis, if EDS is the culprit, I apparently have the dubious honor of beginning the lineage of damaged genes.  Go me.  And considering that both of my boys are hypermobile, it seems also that I have passed on my broken chromosome.  Sorry guys ~ truly.  The only severely tarnished silver lining to EDS is that I have found nothing to indicate that the syndrome is progressive ~ unlike an autoimmune disorder.  Generally, with an autoimmune disorder ~ for example, rheumatoid arthritis or HIV ~ one's own immune system continues to attack their own cells.  In other words, the damage that has already been done is only the tip of the iceberg.  If an autoimmune disorder is at fault, my connective tissue will continue to sustain damage, more than likely to result in increasingly lax joints and possible damage to vessels and valves of the cardiovascular system.  Oh, the possibilities!!

As I came to Jesus after that failed run, I also had to come to terms with the physical defects and limitations I have been denying for years.  As I have witnessed my own body deteriorate with increasingly numerous and frequent dislocations, sprains, strains, and circulatory hiccups, I have refused to believe that my body was weak in any way.  Since the mantra of my life seems to be "This, too, shall pass", I believed that I could overcome every new ache, pain, or injury by sheer determination and will.  That belief is beginning to waver.  But what is more is that I have lived the last few years in constant fear of injury.  Already there are so many things I want to do but do not for fear of re-injury, now I need to worry about injuring myself at all?!  Why bother getting out of bed in the morning?  Why give me the desire without a way to obtain the means?  Again we come back to the cruel irony.

Someone once accused me of having no tolerance for weakness.  The comment caused me a moment's pause to decide whether or not it was true, and what I determined was that I have no tolerance for weakness in myself.  And yet, here I am, trapped in what I perceive to be a weak body.  The ultimate humility.

Some might remind me that there are scores of folks in the world who have it far worse than I, and that I should leave the pity-party-of-one, put on my "big girl panties", and be grateful for what I do have.  True.  And I am grateful.  But please remember, that you do not live inside this body, fight these internal conflicts, or war with these demons.  Each are my own, and the battle tends to make one weary.  So as I wallow in the weakness of my body, please forgive me the momentary weakness of my spirit.  I promise I'll be back to my cast-iron bitch self soon enough.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

A Day Without Pain

Strong-willed.  Bull-headed.  Stubborn.  Italian.  I prefer "determined".

Call me what you want (as long as it's not derogatory, if you actually expect me to answer), but the simple truth is that once I set my mind on something, few things short of an act of God will keep me from it.  For example, at age 16 I knew I wanted the man who is now my husband, and I spent a year chasing him.  Yes, I pursued him.  Were there others guys more easily accessible?  Probably.  But I didn't notice, nor did I care, because I knew who I wanted and set my mind to making him mine.  In my 20's, I ended up with a cracked shin bone and crushed cartilage in one knee.  When given the all clear from the orthopedist, I asked if I could go back to tae kwon do, kick boxing, and running.  I was advised that in order to stave off knee replacement for as long as possible, I may want to consider lesser-impact alternatives.  Though I was willing to give up tae kwon do and kick boxing, I was not willing to completely give up running.  It took several years, and enough setbacks to discourage a weaker spirit, but I ran my first half marathon last year.  Clearly, there are some instances when being persistent pays off.

In the spring of 2013, my sanity took a temporary leave of absence, which allowed me to register for a 10 mile running event.  In the process of training for this 10 mile event, my sanity went on another unauthorized vacation when I came across a promo for a women's only 1/2 marathon.  In my insane state, I thought, "If I can run 10 miles in September, surely I can run 13 in October," and I registered.

On August 28, 2013 ~ 11 days before the 10 miler and 5 weeks before the 1/2 ~ I took a tumble down my front steps and landed rather gracelessly on the asphalt driveway, resulting in a bruised tailbone, and then went backward against the steps, knocking both of my sacroiliac joints (where the spine and hip bones come together) and L2 vertebrae (mid-back-ish) out of place.  In non-anitomical terms, I thoroughly jacked up my hips and back.  Not exactly the most conducive condition for running.

Though hindsight is usually 20/20, I knew even as I was doing so that continuing to train was not going to speed my healing.  To be honest, I knew that continuing to train would be detrimental in most respects.  But, being "determined", I pushed through the pain and continued to train.  And it was only by the grace of God was I able to run and complete both events.  But not without ramifications.

The injuries sustained during that fall caused much grief for many reasons.  Pain aside ~ though, make no mistake, there were huge amounts of pain ~ living with a condition known as hyper-mobility makes recovery from dislocations (even partial dislocations, or subluxations) a very long, arduous, and frustrating process.  My hyper-mobility presents as abnormally loose ligaments (the bands that connect bones to bones within a joint) which, therefore, results in abnormally loose joints.  Not only do loose joints tend to dislocate much more easily, they do not hold very tightly or well when realigned.  When I dislocated a rib in 2008, it took 2 years to stabilize.  The wrist dislocation in 2010 took 18 months.  So the fact that my L2 is still not quite stable 12 months later is really not surprising ~ frustrating, to be sure, but not surprising.

But it was the SI joints that were the real pain.  I have battled hip and sciatic pain since I was a freshman in high school, so one would think I would be accustomed to having a permanent pain in my ass.  Yet, this was a new level of pain and aggravation.  It started in my low back, which makes sense since that's where the SI joints are located.  Then the pain moved to the groin area, which took me a while to figure out.  It eventually occurred to me that one of the muscles that crosses the SI joint attaches to the front of the thigh bone, and it was probably working overtime trying to keep the subluxed joint stable.  Yea.  Once that was under control, the pain moved square into the (very) fleshy part of my rear.  Lucky me.  It was the end of March 2014, 7 months after the fall, that the pain reached a tolerable level that no longer interfered with my daily life.

Then ~ wouldn't you know it? ~ in April, I injured my foot.  Are you kidding me??!!  Not sooner had I gotten the back and hip pain under some sort of control then the newest malady presented itself.  At first, I wondered if there was a connection between the foot pain and the uneven hips that resulted from the fall.  Maybe I was striking that heel harder when I ran.  Then it occurred to me that the foot pain began when I transitioned from running on a treadmill to running on the trails.  Could it have more to do with the uneven running surface? 

Being "determined", I pushed through the pain to continue to train for the 1/2 marathon I'd already committed to run.  Ice and ibuprofen became my best friends.  Then, on one of my trail runs, 4.25 miles in and less than a 1/4 mile from the parking lot, as it hit the ground, a searing hot, stabbing pain shot through the bottom of my foot.  "That's not a good sign," I thought.  I tried a few more steps and said, "Nope.  Ain't happenin'," and then I limped the rest of the way to the car.  The next morning, I limped into the office for an adjustment and was informed that I had a significant sublux between the heel bone and another that it works with, probably resulting in a sprain of the ligaments between the bones as well as the tendon of the muscle that connects there.  When I hurt myself, I go all out.

So here I am, just passing the one year anniversary of when it all began.  It dawned on me that I have not had a single day without pain for the last year.  Admittedly, a wounded healer is more effective and empathetic than one who has never experienced sickness or pain, and this experience has definitely given me new appreciation for people who live in far worse pain than mine.  But as my husband once observed, I don't like being restrained, and in that regard this pain has been a maddening and frustrating experience.  On the other hand, it has also been an incredibly humbling experience as it has required me to rely less on my own capabilities and more the the grace of God.  In spite of daily pain, I have still been able to accomplish a few rather significant fetes.  Sometimes we need to be broken down in order for God to build us up.  At least, that's the hope I'm holding onto through the rest of this healing process.