This evening I polished off a nice 35-40 minute run which felt GREAT! Well, I mean it was not easy and I did have to push myself to keep going, but after I finished I was stoked!
It has been just over a week since I have run because I twisted my ankle on the unexpected down step of a curb. While my ankle did not look too bad, there was some swelling and puffiness coupled with the feeling of pressing on a bruise. At first when I had the accident, it seemed pretty terrible and was immediately painful. I toppled over onto the pavement and after rolling around for a few seconds I lied there before getting up. I worried just how long it was going to put me out of training. I estimated after being able to walk the remaining 15 minutes to the house that I could be back to training after a week. There was still some soreness over the weekend but today I felt ready.
I have been having a difficult last week on top of it with fighting off an illness, fatigue, migranes, zoning out and barely able to function or stay awake. With that, the vision has been pretty bothersome making driving a prospect you probably do not want to know about.
Back in December I had my followup appointment to recheck my blood labs. In the final week of the month, I was on my way down again with lower iron and red blood cell stats meaning I was starting to slip into anemia again. When it comes on full bore, I get the side effects one experiences at high altitude with lower oxygen levels in the air. At the appointment, we agreed for me to have another iron infusion in January (as you recall from blog post last May, I had 3 weeks of infusions to recover from severe anemia). I sort of put off scheduling the infusion this month but at the end of last week my symptoms were pushing me enough that it was time.
Unlike getting chemo, I GREATLY look forward to an infusion to get a feel better boost! I feel guilty marching into the chemo ward vibrantly among seriously sick patients eager to get hooked up to the IV when I know chemo is just a horrible thing to motivate yourself to go to because you know you are going to feel like crap again. Don't get me wrong, I still HATE needles and the tiring and painful poking process. But the iron infusion is so GREAT that I will grip the chair arm and tough it out in order to get that thing going.
Two pokes today. The first vein collapsed. The sweet little asian RN Dulce felt bad and was very apologetic. I assured her it was ok and that she did a great job. Two pokes is not bad at all and it is really lucky to get it in one which she accomplished on my blood draw in December. I thanked her profusely for a job well done and for making it quick. I have experienced elsewhere with up to 7 pokes and incidents where blood was flying all over. LOL So really this was nothing and I am quite a big baby. Today I was thinking how it would be so fantastic if they invented a mode of transfering IV medicines via a patch that would absorb into the skin. You never know! That could be on the horizon and not such as head in the clouds fantasy!
It felt so good to have my energy levels up again and I know that had I not gotten the infusion today, I would not have been up to going for a run this evening. Now the difficult part will be maintaining my iron levels and not tapping myself out again. So there will need to be a careful balance of nutrition, not forgetting supplementation like I did for a week, and adhering to a proper sleep cycle. It will be challenging not to jump into too much because I have energy. I will have my counts monitored again in the first week of March for my NIH visit and then again out here in May.
For now, I am happily back in the game.
Sign for "game": http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/GAME/161/1
Bonus sign for "run": http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/RUN/4403/1
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