Anna's Training Update

I promised to keep my posts honest- including the good, the bad, and the ugly... well, here's the ugly one:

This last 4 mile run I posted about was actually the last run I've been on. And other than it being hotter than I'd prefer, I really felt good- which is why I wouldn't have guessed that within 6 hours of finishing that run I'd end up in the Emergency Room. :( What I had thought was some annoying back pain the few days prior very quickly got much worse after that run, accompanied by some horrible sickness. It turns out the pain and "off" feeling I'd been having a while before that was not the result of an overdue chiropractor visit (as I suspected), it was a kidney infection and kidney stones. Hmmm.... this was definitely a surprise and something I'd never experienced before. WOW! I have a whole new respect for anyone who's ever had to endure this situation before. The last 2 weeks or so haven't included much more than hospital and doctor visits and lots of pain medication. Normally I'm not such a big fan of high strength pain medication if there's any chance a few extra Tylenol and "just suck it up" pep talk will suffice. I've had several people tell me the pain of kidney stones/infections is similar to that of childbirth. While I, for one, am not qualified to make that comparison-- I will say that I pretty quickly learned to set my pride, Tylenol, and pep talk strategy aside in exchange for some drugs that actually work. And fortunately, they do work very well-- for which I am very grateful.

Since it seems I don't just have one or two kidney stones, but rather 2 kidneys that are full of them-- the challenge now becomes figuring how this situation came about, and how to avoid it from happening again. And in the mean time, how to function as normally as possible on this much pain medication. Yuck-- not the challenge I was hoping to have at this point in the training season.

I will say that as often as I've said that this fundraising experience is "not about the running", the last few weeks have just been another example of that. Thanks to some amazing friends I've gotten to know through running, the last week or two has been so much more endurable. You just can't say enough about what it means to have friends like that in your life.

So it appears that when I'm hitting the running trails again is not the most immediate question on my mind this week. Goal #1- figure out what's going on with my kidneys and make it stop! Once we do that, I may have a little mental hurdle to overcome in that I've now associated the pain of my first kidney stone with finishing a good run. I'm honestly not sure if one had anything to do with the other at all-- but either way I'm going to have to work on mentally separating the two.

There is was...the 'ugly' update as promised. :) Here's hoping future updates to have much better news!

Thanks again for all of your support! It means the most during weeks like these.