Sunday afternoon musings - hopped up on chai and sunshine

What have I been doing these past five months? Clearly, I haven't been writing. I was working and hiking and running and backpacking and wedding-ing (my brothers'), and generally doing lots of things that were not writing. I have also been trying to heal. As I alluded to in my last post, my body was in sorry shape, earlier this year. I went to Italy in January, and on my return, everything seemed to spiral out of control for me, health-wise. I started losing weight because I had chronic diarrhea and extreme fatigue. I was falling asleep at my desk at work and Lord knows I couldn't run. By May, I had met with a naturopath and was trying to not eat grains and not eat sugar and slowly get back into exercise and gradually get over my fatigue.

The thing is, my health seems to operate as one of those Whack-a-Mole games. You can only whack one mole at a time, and as soon as you do, there's another mole waiting to be whacked, and another and another and you inevitably miss one or two and then the game is over and you may or may not have hit enough moles to get a few tickets spat out at you that can be redeemed for something Made in China. But I digress. My gut is healing (*Knock Wood!!). It no longer starts bubbling after every single thing I eat. I have gained five or six pounds, so I'm about back to a normal weight. But the moles: my hemoglobin count is falling.

Yesterday, I went for a pretty stout hike, and the mountain nearly broke me. My generation has embraced the notion of collecting experiences versus things, and we share everything cool with everybody who follows us on social media. Don't get me wrong - I do it too. But yesterday, it occurred to me that if I posted the selfie I took after finally making it to the saddle between the mountains, as the sun was setting and the mountains and the plains were both glowing, if I shared that moment with my social media world, it would be wrong. It would be a pretty picture of me almost on top of a mountain seemingly celebrating four miles and 2,500 feet of vert! Totally badass! And yet, that was one of the most brutal hikes I've ever forced myself through. I did it, but only because I would have felt even worse if I had turned back. But for four miles and 2,500 feet, I couldn't breathe; I felt like I could barely move.

I've come a long way since the end of May, but all the sneaky moles that pop up keep reminding me that I am sailing uncharted waters. None of how I feel is normal, and I haven't yet found any sort of precedent for these sicknesses. But it is all I can do to just keep pushing onwards and upwards. Even if I have to take a break to let my heart rate chill out every few minutes; even if I have to remind myself to drink water and stay fueled. I am not ready to turn around or just quit because if I have learned one thing from my years here, the view from up high is Always worth it.

Here's to another five months of living!!

And... I'm back again

On a grey, unsettled, chilly January day in Denver, I have retreated to an eclectic coffeeshop with the students, the self-employed, the unemployed, the musicians, the artists.  And me, falling somewhere in the middle of it all.  I remain undefined while consuming some of the best tomato/spinach soup I have ever had, all creamy and tomato-y and cheesy without having any actual cheese in it.  I am scalding my tongue and the roof of my mouth, thanks to a nice barista who seems to be chronically undercharging me.  Maybe I already look destitute, in my mismatched pink and navy flannel shirt and fleecy purple plaid scarf and jeans ripped clear across the knee.  I'm pretty sure no one ever has paid only $8.35 for soup, a large almond milk chai, and a giant chocolate chip cookie (Giant).  The price is still boggling my mind.  Don't worry, I tipped my newfound best friend.

As of January 10, I am fully and so weirdly unemployed.  In the middle of November, my boyfriend and I took a week-long trip to Virginia to visit family, and I decided I couldn't come back to Denver and continue working at Starbucks.  I was done; it was time.  The Philadelphia Marathon came and went, and it didn't include me.  I spent September and October fighting a sickness I couldn't shake until finally, a week before the Marathon, I crumbled, called in the antibiotics, and called off this marathon I was supposed to have been training for.  Who knows if there's a correlation, but my training started suffering and my health started failing right around the time I started opening at Starbucks consistently.  Opening, for me, meant falling out of bed around 4 a.m. to bike 3 miles to work by 5 a.m., including a few sub-zero mornings.  School, caffeine, fatigue, constant coughing or sniffling or "coming down with something..." I couldn't do it.  My body paid a wicked price, and I wasn't able to join my friend in her very first, amazing marathon.  My boyfriend and I are still dealing with the after-effects of the prednisone the doctors put me on for a second time this year.

So here I am, sitting in a coffee shop, worrying about health care come February 1, sipping chai, not yet doing anything to find employment.  I have skiied a lot and all over since leaving the Bucks - Copper Mountain, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, A-Basin, Steamboat Springs, an impromtu, ridiculous weekend trip to Jackson Hole this past weekend.  Needless to say, I'm ripped, now.  (Sort of kidding, but no, not really kidding.)  Skiing is a whole lot different from running, especially the slow, long runs I'm used to.  Skiing is short, intense, and quad-thrashing.  Ski in powder, and it becomes all of those things amplified plus the sensation of floating down the mountain in silence.  There were a few runs I found myself alone in trees, snow sparkles drifting all around while the lower sun illuminated my life, and the lactic acid disappeared, and the heavy powder disappeared, and the wrench in my knee disappeared, and it was just me, floating in a forest of crystals and sun beams.

I have learned and believe that nothing lasts and everything changes.  Life, changes, and you can help it change how you'd like it to; you can adapt to the changes; or you can drift along and watch everything shift and grow and die around you and remain encapsulated in whatever bubble you've created of fear and comfort.  I've been doing the latter for over 4 years, although I started tearing down my bubble and finding my footing when I moved to Denver on a whim and a prayer.  Now, it's time to kickstart my life, to jump in and make my own changes.  To finally embrace everything I am and the person I am growing into.  I am so many things, and while I was a barista for a while, I want to be so much more.  2013 sucked pretty badly in my world.  So, okay, time to make a giant change.  Time to ski and run and sip chai and eat delicious, gluten-y cookies and heal.  It is time to Live.  Here we go!

How to be a bad-a**

Wake up every day with some kind of a smile; bike to work; try to maintain that smile despite inexplicably entitled and disgruntled customers; laugh with your coworkers; make your coworkers laugh; make a customer laugh; smile at the sunset; bike home; run 3-5 miles after an 8-hour day on your feet; make something delicious and kale-based for dinner; sleep like you live a gratifying life.  Repeat.

How to be a bad-a** cancer survivor: do all the above while ignoring constant sinus infections, interminable GI distress, chronic fatigue from B-vitamin deficiencies.  Most importantly, live every day and appreciate every day for its very existence.

As part of our lives, we encounter setbacks - some small, some more significant, but always, something that gives us pause.  There are always situations and events that cause us to reevaluate our outlook and our approach to living.  I have been sick for So Long.  Without fail, just when I think I've kicked the immune deficiencies, that I am fully embracing my potential badassery, I regress.  Just over five weeks ago, I ran 10 miles.  I crushed 10 miles, running.  Training for the Philadelphia Marathon, I felt so incredibly powerful, invincible once more.  Two days later, my friends and I hiked La Plata Peak in Colorado's Sawatch Range.  It was a burly hike, at roughly 7 miles round trip and 3400 ft. of elevation gain.  There were sections I felt we were climbing practically vertically.  Not really, but it was a stiff hike.  Despite leaving the trailhead at 10:30 a.m., we powered through those 7 miles and made it back to the car just as the hail began to fall, around 5 p.m.  We were all aware that attempting a 14-er that late in the day was a dangerous endeavor, and I consider us lucky that we avoided any crazy weather when the clouds were building all around us.  But we did it!  Crushed this mountain, and the next day, my appropriately crazy boyfriend and I did a bit of off-roading leading to a little trail we could have potentially followed to the top of another 14-er.  We decided not to go through with the full hike, as it was even later in the day and still pretty sketchy weather.  But he and I did do the first portion of the hike: roughly 1/2 mile and 1000 ft. vertical.  Once again, incredibly steep.  It was rough.  The weekend was hard on both of us.  But being as bad-a** as we are, we conquered mountains.

Following our outdoorsy extravaganza, both my boyfriend and I got sick. So much for invincibility. Now, five weeks later, he is recovering well, and my body has pretty much just stayed in this sickness trough.  My marathon training has stagnated.  There is a constant party in my gut.  Not the awesome, aww yeah, we're having a great time! party, but the one where the frat house across the street is Blasting dubstep at 3 a.m. and drunk co-eds are shrieking in the streets while brahs exchange barbs and blows after way too much Natty Light.  Nobody's happy, and nobody's sleeping.

I don't feel like a bad ass right now.  I feel like a half-ass, and it is bothering me to no end.  I was rejected from yet another job I should have been qualified for, rejected with absolutely nothing to go on besides they went with a candidate with "more experience." Period.  Frustrating!  These setbacks are incredibly frustrating.

I can't help but feel that I will be confined to a coffee shop forever, slinging lattes and grin-acing through the day, not actually helping anyone or living up to whatever potential I might have to be an influential member of society.  I can't help but wonder if I will ever be able to train for a marathon or an ultramarathon and remain injury or sickness free, if it is even possible for me to conquer each and every mile.

I am pushing through every day.  Pushing through because I love each and every day.  I love that I can run, even if just a little bit, that I can make people laugh and laugh, myself, easily at so many things.  My life does not have any more setbacks than anyone else's, in particular.  Maybe some people have it easier...  There are those who can straight up run marathons without training any substantial amount.  Others have the right connections and social aptitude to have a fulfilling, engaging career.  I know these individuals exist, though I can't help wondering if they truthfully smile at every sunrise, laugh uninhibitedly at the sheer, glorious magnitude of this world's beauty...  Do they even know how lucky we are?  We are Alive.

While I am disheartened, frustrated and upset that parts of my life are not what I wish they were, I am Overjoyed every, single freaking day that I am still here, that I am still lucky enough to live in love with life and the wonderful people in my life in this beautiful world.  And physically, sure, I have a ways to go, but my perspective makes me a Bad Ass.  Nothing will take that away from me; nobody's rejection can tamp my appreciation for cheese and cider and being outside surrounded by Awesome.

Setbacks, road blocks, giant, gaping dilemmas with seemingly no resolution - these things do not a Bad Ass break.  Keep moving forward, keep laughing despite it all.  There are always the little things, and maybe, just maybe, someday, the big things will work out positively.  Meantime, I guess it's just going to be another slow marathon and a few more lattes to sling.

Thanks for checking in, checking back.  What makes You a Bad Ass?

This game.

I hate this game.  I hate the one rule of this game dictating that whenever I finally start to feel healthy and normal and happy with my life and my level of activity, I get sick.  Some random virus is constantly lurking in the wings, waiting until I am least on my guard and probably a tad stressed.  It waits until the most inopportune of times and then, BAM, comes and kicks me in the teeth. 

Six weeks before a marathon is not the time to be dealing with a cold or the flu or whatever the heck is going on right now.  Six weeks before a marathon is when you're supposed to be running 18 miles on Saturday morning, eating lots of lean protein and complex carbohydrates, and rolling out that pesky IT band.  Six weeks before a marathon is where I find myself right now, wearing two sweaters and not running on a 60-degree day in Denver.  I am so frustrated!  I honestly thought I could do this, could train and stay healthy and rock the Boston Marathon.  That last goal is becoming so much less likely, and I am left wondering why.  Is this all my fault?  Shouldn't I have powered through all this medical B/S from the past few months, forced the miles out of myself knowing that I had no other choice?  Earlier this afternoon, I had the thought that perhaps I expect too much of myself.  Perhaps all these lofty goals of marathons and health are just mirages I conjure in order to set myself up to fail.  Perhaps my mental expectations and my physical limitations are just so disconnected that there is no way to reconcile the two.

Funny story: this past Tuesday, a week after my so-much-fun colonoscopy and endoscopy, my GI doctor called me with the news that I have celiac disease.  My intestinal villi are extremely damaged, and I am no longer properly absorbing nutrients, so hey, happy day, autoimmune disorder most likely brought on by my lowered immune response these past few years!  Cancer just keeps on giving.  So all of the intestinal issues that were limiting my runs (har har) these past few months are a result of an inability to absorb and process gluten.

Okay, great, celiac is manageable, nearly curable.  All I have to do is completely eliminate gluten from my diet.  Beginning right now, six weeks before a marathon.  I acknowledge that being a celiac and an endurance athlete are not mutually exclusive, and, especially around Denver, many people run for hours at a time without ever consuming gluten.  But it hasn't even been a week yet for me, and I am still in shock over the whole thing.  I am still saddened every time I consider Chicago-style pizza or Colorado craft beers.  The other thing is, though I have already begun living gluten-free, it will still take time for my body to heal.  I guess there is a substantial bit of damage to my intestines, and while living gluten-free will eventually allow that damage to heal, it takes time.

So, like I said, I am just frustrated.  I keep getting confirmation e-mails from the Boston Athletic Association, keep plugging away at my fundraising, and keep questioning my decision to sign up for this in the first place.  Regardless of how well I have (or haven't) trained, I am going to be at the start line in six weeks, and I will do What Ever It Takes to get to the finish line in Boston.  I just wish I was more confident.  I wish I didn't have a cold right now; I sure wish I didn't have celiac disease.  BUT.  Here we are, and life keeps coming at me.  These are my realities, along with the reality that I just don't have a normal immune system.  That's just what is up.  I would apologize for all the griping, but I am legitimately at the end of my rope with all of this, and I set this blog up to chronicle my running adventures, and this is one hell of an adventure.  So, if you have any advice for a runner six weeks out from a marathon who hasn't gotten in any significant long runs (I comfortably ran nearly 10 miles 2 weeks ago...?) and suddenly has to change her diet and get over a cold at the same time, I am open to anything!

Thanks for checking in.  P.s., the fundraising is still going!!  If you haven't donated to this crazy, stupid challenge, now might be the time.  Or tell your friends or go drink a beer for me or both.  Right.  Going to try and make it through this week...  Good luck to you all as well.  Peace.

What limits?

Are you a cancer survivor?  A trauma survivor?  Have you gone through something in your life that has inherently changed who you are and how you view the world?  Sadly, I know too many people who can say "Yes" to any of those questions.  Yet the thing about (some) traumas, it is possible to come out on the other side and be thankful for the experience.  It is possible to survive something that literally breaks you down until you can feel nothing, that strips away your essence and the person you had spent years assembling.  It is possible to experience that and somehow, find a way to rebuild yourself.  You won't be the same person you were before; I am nowhere near the person I was five years ago.  If you are lucky, though, you might actually like this new person better.

When I was back in school and only receiving maintenance therapy, I spent months trying to deny the fact that I had cancer, that I was no longer just like every other student on my college campus.  I cracked multiple times in my attempts to act like nothing had ever happened to me.  Finally and fortunately, I recognized that I was not taking care of myself and my lifestyle was not sustainable.  I started seeing a psychologist who helped me work through some old issues and a lot of new issues brought on by the cancer.  A "breakthrough," for me, came in the fall of 2008, right smack in the middle of my first battle with the facetumor.  Basically, I had an assignment due for a class that I hadn't finished.  Between barely being able to speak, not eating, and all the uncertainty surrounding whatever mass was growing in my sinuses, I was completely out of my league.  My academics weren't quite suffering, but I was struggling just to get everything done.  The deadline for this paper - I don't even remember what it was about - was growing ever-closer, and I had few ideas and fewer words on paper.  There was a constant weight in my stomach and a pressure on my chest as my stress increased because I had to finish this thing!  I didn't want to admit to my professor, much less myself, that I was sick and needed time to finish the stupid essay.  And yet...  I had spent the past few months working with a therapist, listening to her tell me that it is OK to accept that you are sick.  It is OK to ask for help.  People will understand, and you need to take care of yourself First.

This professor, this stalwart of the communications department, terrified me.  Yet I knew I wasn't going to have the essay finished on time.  So maybe a few days before the deadline, I visited him during office hours.  I walked in and said, "Hey, do you by any chance have a minute?"  I proceeded to tell him in as few words as possible that I had been in the hospital pretty much once a week for the past month and a half, and I was actually quite sick and basically, I am so sorry, but I hadn't finished his essay and there was pretty much no way I was going to have it in on time.

Of course.  Of course, he was Completely Fine with it.  He told me to "take as long as you need; don't worry about it; I hope you feel better soon!"  And that was it.  I thanked him profusely, probably saying too many times that this is highly unusual for me, and I really appreciate his understanding.  I walked into the hall, up the stairs, out the door and promptly started crying.  Pretty much hyperventilating.  It was not a big deal to anyone but myself, but to me, it was a huge deal.  I was taking care of myself first, and others were helping.  Long story shortened: I did finish the essay.  It wasn't my best work, but I got an A- on it...  And I am certainly not asking any questions about that grade.  My face tumor melted away; I graduated on time with my friends and a solid GPA.  I came out on the other side of cancer-based college stronger for having gone through it and much more willing to take care of myself, to occasionally ask for help.

Life is funny, sometimes.  You go through all these little experiences every day, and you have no idea if or how any of them will affect you.  The big, life-changing events you can't know in the present tense how they will affect you down the road.  That's for self-reflection and retrospection months and years later after you've hit the bottom and slowly, haltingly and painfully allowed yourself to regrow and discover who you are meant to be.

Long post, I know.  Basically, I've been sick this past week, and it's lame, but I have worked hard not to overdo it.  It is still a relatively new concept for me, that whole "take care of yourself" thing.  People will understand, and the marathon is still 152 long days away.  Allowing myself to fully heal, to embrace myself and drink as many liquids as possible, will only benefit me in the long run.  Only good things can come from acknowledging your temporary limitations and working with them to come out stronger, healthier and ready to go.  Thank you for reading and bearing with me.  Happy Tuesday, sad toad.  Life will necessarily get better, and if it's great, I hope it stays that way long enough for you to enjoy it.  Here we go.

...oh well.

No run, just a lot of chocolate, a lot of reading, and one indie film from 2005.  Oh yeah, and a face full of sinus congestion.  So much sinus congestion....  That whole "not being able to breathe" thing will really do you in.  So I am heading to bed very soon, and hopefully this will all be over shortly.  Hooray late-winter colds!