Thursday, May 8, 2008

Potential



(Thanks to my baby daddy for the great picture above, I'd link to his website but I don't know that he wants to give up his anonymity here)

I’m awash in potential, I’m bathing in it. It’s glorious stuff, the whiff of promise, the heady scent of possibility. I finally scratched a scratch ticket that I’ve been carrying around this morning and found I much more enjoyed carrying around the possibility of having won than the proof that I hadn’t.

My apologies for the very very very long absence. I imagine the handful of folks who subscribed way back when will be the only ones to see this for awhile, I’m sure I’ve dropped way off the bookmarks tab of most folks who were regular readers. I have reasons that are legitimate mixed in with a dose of laziness to blame.

Among the legitimate reasons is the same one I’d asserted before, so much of my focus has been on details of my personal life that I didn’t want to share in such a public forum. And since I’ve stopped doing bootcamp or running its been hard to come back here and type in black and white that I’ve stopped doing bootcamp or running.

I had an injury, I let it go longer than I should have, I attempted to run the ING Half despite it even though I’d dropped way off my training and then found myself in significantly worse shape afterwards.

I DID finish the ING Half, I just had to walk the last 4 miles in a lot of pain. So it wasn’t so much a half marathon for me as it was a 15K race with a 4 mile cool down. Since the half I haven’t done ANYTHING significantly physical and I’m slowly but surely regaining weight. For a little while I was over indulging as a way to sooth myself for the near constant pain and discomfort, I’m starting to reign my diet back in and I’ve probably only gained 5 lbs but its still hard to face. Easier to just lose myself in more pleasant thoughts and distracting activities.

I start physical therapy tomorrow and I had a procedure 2 weeks ago that has significantly helped though not completely eradicated the problem. I’m probably about 60-70% myself again, no longer taking pain meds except at night, but I still have trouble with some types of movements and don’t feel up to anything significant involving my left leg. We’ll see how the PT goes and I may opt to redo the procedure (an epidural shot). I think a picture speaks most clearly, here is an image from my MRI in the week after the ING:




The prolapsed disk has been significantly putting pressure on the nerve root that connects everything from my left lower back all the way down to my left foot. Therefore I get pains of all sort throughout my left foot, leg and hip and, disconcertingly, the left leg and foot fall asleep regularly or just go numb completely. Once we get the disk back into place then hopefully with PT I can work towards preventing it from happening again but it will always be a potential, and not the sweet smelling kind. Doctor says I can be active but that it could happen again while working out or while just picking up a bag of groceries. I may need to seriously consider some lower impact cardio. I’d like to start running again, but maybe not push towards a marathon. My whole life was turned upside down by the pain and it is terrifying to feel so controlled by something within your own body that you just can’t push past or ignore.

Blogging about my fall from the runner’s high was also difficult to face because of the CNN Interview. Yep, after Tim was interviewed back in the winter, CNN asked Operation Bootcamp to nominate another story, this time one that was more focused on a typical weightloss goal and the benefits beyond weightloss. So I got profiled. I was followed by a camera man through a workout and then interviewed in a sit down interview. The link is here.

I actually felt very good about the piece (except for the scene where they are filming from behind while I’m doing High Knees and the mike pack is pulling my pants down) but seeing the commitment I made on camera juxtaposed with the significant amount of time I’ve sat on my couch since then is painful, and hard to own up to, injury or no injury.

In other news, I’ve changed jobs, and moved to a new house, a rental that we’ll be in for at least a year.

[I've edited out the rest of the post for now. We throw words out toward each other and miss completely, or wound inadvertently. When those words are verbal, there is no way to even symbolically withdraw them. When they are written in a web for others to read, they can be withdrawn, at least from further wounding. I want to breathe somehow without exhaling]

4 comments:

paz y amor said...

Whew that's HEAVY. Not all your readers have flown the coop. Welcome back!

Joanie said...

Phew! So glad you are back. I have been hopeful that you weren't gone from the blog for good. Hang it all out like laundry!

Anonymous said...

You do indeed look marvelous -- but even better, you have an upbeat attitude and you're talking about all the potential in your life. I think that's even sexier than the way you look!

(Thank goodness for using Google Reader and knowing when people have FINALLY updated again, huh?) :)

Unknown said...

Shannon - I saw you hadn't posted in while, was catching up on some of your other posts that I hadn't read...and came upon that CNN interview.

You look so awesome! I know injuries can be depressing and difficult to bounce back from, but dude, that video made it look like it was all worth it.

Blog again. Not everyone has stopped reading.