Some Taper

Sorry it's been awhile. Besides the fact that last week was interesting, to say the least, I never want to force anything here. Going to a blog where things may be posted daily but they are just a recount of daily chores is nothing but boring.

I am five days out from NYC. Am I excited? Not like I should be. My immunity has been beat up since September. I posted about how I caught an upper respiratory illness in September that really hampered my training. Well, I think that I wasn't fully recovered upon embarking on the quick Hawaii trip. I also commented how I lose a full nights sleep on the flight back from Hawaii.

The week I got home, my son Ryan came down with a small stomach bug. It lasted just 18 hours with him and then he was fine. Kids are so resilient. With my weakened immune system and coming off of the trip, I must have picked this up. Last Sunday, I went for a long run in the morning and felt pretty good. While bringing Ryan home later that day from soccer practice, I began to feel achy. I tried ignoring this and went out to work on the trail I've been making in the woods in my back yard. Coming in for dinner, I felt worse, so I skipped dinner and went to bed. That right there should have told me I was in for a ride. Me skipping a meal AND on top of that, going to bed early... The writing was on the wall.

Monday was spent in bed, nauseous and shivering one minute, sweating the next. I drank fluids but ate next to nothing. Around 12:45am on Tuesday, I awoke sweating and feeling really nauseous. I started getting that tightness under the chin in the throat region that you get before hurling so I jumped out of bed and the next thing I know, Lisa was in a panic, waking me up from blacking out on the bathroom floor. The cold tile felt better than my bed did and I lay there a moment, disoriented and still feeling nauseous. I got up and bam, my eyes rolled back and down I went again. I awoke to hear Lisa dialing 911. I told her not to - that i'd be fine. I'd passed out once before - when my back went out almost two years ago. I know that if you have a very low resting heart rate and resting blood pressure and that if you have been lying on your back all day and suddenly jump out of bed, you'll bottom out and down you go. As we waited for Monroe EMS to arrive, I teased Lisa about her itchy trigger finger and dialing 911. I mentioned that I won't be able to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without her calling 911.

It must have been a slow night in Monroe because soon enough, four EMT's were standing in my bedroom. The head guy was giving his spiel as I interrupted saying stubbornly that I understood his reasoning, but that I wasn't going to the ER and that I had a virus, stood up to quick and just felt a bit dehydrated. I'd pound the gatorade all day and be fine. Then I thought that I had the marathon in less than two weeks and that an IV may do me some good so the next thing you know, I'm in St. Vincent's ER in Bridgeport. It was a quiet night there, relatively speaking, so they hooked me up with an IV right away.

Talk about perspective; this woman was in the "booth" next to me, us being separated by a sheet wall. The noises coming out of her - I thought she was snoring, however she was wide awake. Her breathing was making me more nauseous. A small Asian woman doctor goes in to interview her. She has been in and out of three hospitals in the last month. She has severe emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. She still smokes, down from three packs to one per day. She is divorced with two kids. She was laid off from Walmart a year ago, she gained 100 pounds over the last year and, oh yeah, she was a crystal meth addict and still sees a meth clinic daily.

Soon, I received my second IV as my current neighbor was issued to a room in the hospital and I received a new one. This one was a guy who came in with his wife, 56 years old from Westport, feeling nauseous and dizzy. Every time the automatic bp cuff pumped up around his arm, he whined like a little school girl. Besides prozac, the only other med he was on was a Cialis he took over the weekend.

I never saw any of my ER neighbors, nor did I want to. I did though get started on a third IV and some anti-nausea medicine. Oh, and I hadn't pee'd yet. The doctor on call finally came in and looked at me and said that I had a bad virus, it's been going around and that I was dehydrated, and needed to let the virus run it's course. I was released at 5am but had to wait until 8am for Lisa to come get me. Tuesday night my temperature hovered around 102 for most of the evening. I didn't sleep that night as well, other than 20 minutes here or there. Wednesday, the temperature was back to normal. I was just really achy and still had no appetite. And I still had this intense frontal headache that made it hurt to see. Thursday, I finally began to come around.

I waited until Sunday to run again, and it felt like crap, but I was running again at least. I had a lot of time to reflect back on how I let myself get so depleted. Basically it comes down to the fact that you are vulnerable if you have young kids in school, work hard, train hard, and don't get enough sleep. Throw on top of that some hectic travel and you are a green light for virus's and germs. I also know that if I had been training for Hawaii, I would have been paying much closer attention to sleep and nutrition - and I don't need another wake up call like this anytime soon to reiterate the importance of these two things.