The Guilt and Happiness of a 5K

This morning I ran a 5K for "New Balance Women's Health." I was very happy with my time and more importantly how I felt. As I was running I thought to myself, wow, the only thing really bothering me right now are my knees. How lucky am I? I kept focusing on my lungs and thinking to myself how they weren't bothering me at all. Are they just used to exercise and my running? I kept reflecting (yes, still) on February and the flu and how bad things were. As I was running I kept thinking to myself how lucky I am that my lungs recovered the way they did and how much I depend on running to feel this way.

Insert the guilt part...Sometimes I do feel guilty for how I am able to run. Sometimes I feel guilty recording my exercise on this blog and my accoutability group. I fear people are going to look down on me or think negative thoughts. CF is and can be mega b*tch and I know sometimes others aren't able to run or exercise like this. That makes me ache sometimes. But on the flip side it motivates me. I push myself for the others with CF who I consider to be my friends who can't run. I push myself and run that extra mile not just for me, but for us. This is not meant to be a blah post at all, but It's honestly how I feel sometimes.

I push myself to the limit and know I have a different mindset about things. It's just how I am. I reflect and realize that 4 months ago my life flashed before my eyes and that fear pushes me every single day. So here I am running my heart out and pumping those lungs, making them give me all they've got. I do think we make a great trio If I say so myself ;)

U2!!!!

Wednesday night was one of the best nights ever. We went and saw U2 and it was hands down the best concert of my entire life. I'm still beaming when I think about it. Every song I hoped that they would play they did. The energy in that stadium was amazing and something I hope never to forget. I'm so grateful we were able to get tickets to the show. The opening act was wonderful as well. Florence and the Machine opened for U2 and I adore them. It really just couldn't have gotten any better.

This was my exercise for Wednesday night for sure! My lungs definitely got a fantastic workout too! Those windbags sang their little hearts out for about 3 hours straight. I'm proud of those lungs they love U2 and didn't let me down ;)

7 miles

Yesterday was quite the busy day for us. I feel like I'm saying that all the time lately. After work we headed up to Hopkins to visit our nephew who had his brain surgery on Monday. He looks amazing and is progressing wonderfully. He's definitely not his normal self, as he's in pain and really sleepy, but overall everyone is very pleased.

I had to skip the gym in order to make it to the hospital on time for our visiting slot. So we decided afterwards we'd go for a long bike ride to get our exercise in. We live close to a beautiful park that's right on the Chesapeake Bay. We biked there and rode around the whole park. We rode on a giant fishing pier, stopped at the beach, saw tons of deer, and tackled hill after hill. Definitely a fulfilling ride. All in all it was 7 miles and boy did I feel it ;)

Brain Surgery and stress

What a stressful weekend. It was nice in that it was Father's Day and my Dad is certainly someone to celebrate. I had a nice time with him on his day. Otherwise it was such a busy non stop weekend that by Sunday night my body was physically exhausted at every level. I even started to get chills, that's my sign of enough is enough.

I helped my parents this weekend by cleaning and preparing their house for a cookout. As happy as I was to help, it was a lot of work and it consumed most of the weekend. Top that with lack of sleep (big time) and worrying about my nephew's upcoming brain surgery and that about sums up the weekend. Tiring.

On a happy and more positive note my nephew had brain surgery today for repair of Chiari Malformation. He did wonderfully and is making great progress just hours post-op. That's a huge weight off for everyone. Hopefully he keeps up his resiliance and will be home in a few days.

Today I went back to the gym for a good run. They were closed a few days last week for renovations but the doors were open today! The place looks great, and they have a ton of brand new cardio equipment. I broke in a brand new treamill with a 2.2 mile run! I have to say it felt pretty good to run off some stress ;)

From Toyota to Bowel Obstructions

We had a very eventful, both good and bad last week. The good being that Scott bought his brand new Toyota Tundra and is in LOVE. I'm so over the moon happy for him. He's wanted a truck for so long, and finally treated himself to his dream last week.

Insert the ugly part which is where I thought I may be starting to obstruct while we were at the dealership. I was confident that I was ok since I was able to eat and drink without problem. This is something that doesn't happen with a "normal" obstruction. So after a few hours at the dealership and driving around to show some of our family/friends our new toy I felt pretty good. I even went home and ate a giant bowl of cereal and had plenty of bubbly and gurggly sounds so I was pretty happy.

The next morning I woke up feeling like I was having contractions. Not cool. I was feeling super dehydrated too (classic) so I headed to work had one of the Nurses start a quick IV on me for some fluids. It didn't do a thing for me unfortunately.

I worked most of the day then decided to head home after lunch and just relax to see how I felt. No doubt it was progressing horribly. I called my Nurse at Hopkins and she suggested I go out and buy the Miralax/Gatorade solution and drink the entire 64oz. of joy...(insert sarcasm here). Ok so it's actually not bad at all and I like Gatorade, my nerves were just shot.

So after drinking all of that liquid I thought I was going to explode, correction...I WISH I would have exploded but nothing. Then I knew I was in trouble and needed to get myself in gear for the ER.

We get to the ER and by now I'm just a sobbing mess in so much pain and having so much anxiety over this impending doom of an ordeal. Scott had to go park so I walked in the front door to be greeted by a tiny elderly lady offering me a wheelchair because "you're pregnant and can't breathe" hmm, well you got part of that right little cute lady. My stomach was sticking out so far I really did look about 6-7 months pregnant. The pressure was so bad that It was taking my breath away. Really just not a good combination I must say.

Skip ahead a few hours and lots of pain medication later. I was finally comfortable but the usual tricks of my obstructions weren't working. I got scared. Fast. Then came the dreaded statement that had I not been drugged I may have just lost it..."You need an NG tube" gah!!!!! I had a horrific experience when I was 19 with an NG tube and really wasn't trying to relive those memories but alas I did.

The Nurses were great and so supportive, but still missed and it took 3 tries for the NG (a blood bath horror scene and a lot of vomiting) to be successful. Once it was in about 500cc of fluid came off my stomach. Ahhh. I had visitors the next day but I can barely remember to be honest. I was upset, drugged, emotional, snappy (apparently) and miserable and I barely remember any of it now.

Vaguely I remember a doctor coming in to tell me that they were going to have a surgeon come evaluate me. I've had about 6 obstructions and never had to have surgery. Apparently my small bowel and colon heard those words and got scared. A few hours later I was home free if you know what I mean ;)

Luckily I was discharged from the hospital on Friday after going in Wednesday night. Not too shabby considering how bad this one was, and how bad it had the potential to be. All in all I'm so grateful to be home and NOT recovering from bowel surgery right now. It could have been a lot worse than it was, I recognize that.

After not eating for almost 4 days I'm happily indulging once again, but of course being careful :)

I'm Featured In...

A Baltimore article HERE. It's about those with chronic illness and the use of social networking....Check it out :)

"Take a break Today" well, yesterday actually.

I called Hopkins yesterday since I don't feel like we're making much progress with the Levaquin/Prednisone combo. My lungs have been super tight and we can't figure out if it's a bug, or Cayston caused inflammation this time? Anyway, we decided that after double checking my last culture I'd probably respond better to Bactrim. With all this going on yesterday my CF Nurse advised me not to exercise for the day. Definitely not something I'm used to hearing, but listened to her advice.

I ended up getting in 2 doses of Bactrim yesterday and already see an improvement! Very very happy about this. I also decided to go to the gym today to see how I did. I'm SO happy that I decided to go. I coughed up a lot of stuff that's been lurking in there and feel great. I did 2 miles total on my lunch break today.

Let's hope we continue on the "Up and Up"

8.5 miles biking

After our weekend ritual of coffee on the back deck my husband asked If I wanted to ride bikes with him. I was hesitant at first for a few reasons. My lungs are currently being a little stubborn in dealing with an Asthmatic flare up. Yes, on top of CF I have the asthmatic component. So I was pretty tight this morning but decided I'd still go with him. He rides his bike for miles and miles and miles so I was slightly intimidated by his mad skills ;)

However I decided it was best to go and push myself to my limits and I surely did just that. I was happy with myself because I was pretty much right behind him the whole time. There were plenty of hills to keep me working hard. By the end we had finished 8.5 miles round trip. It felt great, I definitely gave my lungs a mega workout on what is our normal day off.

Here's a pic of the half way point....just outside of the Chesapeake Bay by Gibson Island. I love that we live surrounded by tons and tons of water.

Clinic Visit = :)

I had my quarterly clinic visit at Hopkins on Tuesday. Overall it went very well and I was very pleased with the appointment. This was my first big appointment since the flu fiasco in Feb-March that attacked my lungs so badly. I was told back then I may have suffered permanent lung damage due to that virus. That terrified me as I've said many times before.

However, I knew (THANKFULLY) that I hadn't suffered permanent damage due to my trusty old home FEV1 monitor. I've been tracking my lung function for a long time now and knew I was back at baseline, again THANKFULLY!

I am back at baseline and even a little better. This made me ecstatic of course for many reasons, but also because my Asthma is flared up right now as well. So despite all that I was able to get the wind bags to show what they're made of ;)

I go back for my routine follow up in August. That works for me!

As for exercise this week I went to the gym 3 days and ran at home 1 day. My total mileage for the week is 8 miles. I may jump on the bike this weekend and ride around the neighborhood and down to our beach. Well, that is if the humidity stays away that is.

Happy Weekend!