Girl Interrupted - a story of re-birth

 Shifts.  One day your on a run, a run you go on just about every day and the next your swallowing radio active iodine so some tech in a hospital can look at your thyroid to see if you have any growths or cancer on it.   Shifts.  Some feel like the plates of the earth move.  That one did it for me.  Although, after I had some of the facts, I researched what Graves' Disease was, I realized I was a walking poster child for it.  I had pretty much every 'symptom' for more than three years, yet no blood test or doctor or Naturopath I had ever seen ever saw it, nor did I. Or did I??   A lesson I had learned years before, to listen to your body, make mental notes of things that seem off.  I do remember telling doctors I was, or so I thought, always hot, that I couldn't sleep, Ever!  It was more than just insomnia, it was not sleeping more than two hours a night for a month and then crashing on a Sat. when I should have been on a long bike ride.  The worst was a really strong heart beat that would come and go but made it hard to do any workouts.  Test after test said all was fine, until of course, it wasn't.

So training for the NYC Marathon and planning on running with a friend who was a firefighter, who survived 9/11, on what was to be the first race after that horrific event, went from 'on schedule' to 'closed until further notice'.  It was a huge shift.  Resting heart rate of 52 was now 120, all the time.  It was hard to walk up the stairs to my office let alone keep training for a marathon and triathlons.  But I didn't think it was my time to throw in the towel nor was I going to spend the rest of my life on medication, never be able to race or even train like I had before among a slew of other important things.  The meds they had me on, long term side effects were Lupus and Parkinson's Disease.  That's great.  Trade up for two illnesses worse than what I had.  Even writing this now still makes me angry.  Lots of push back from docs who told me nothing I did or eat or do would change a thing.  They were wrong.  They were dead wrong.

But I often wonder if these doctors know about many of the more natural remedies that people would rather use to get well, but just refuse to admit that they work.  The almighty dollar unfortunately resonates louder to some of them than the oath they pledge when they become a doctor.  'At First Do No Harm' or something to that affect.  So much for that.  I will probably never know as far as the doctor I went to is concerned but thankfully there are those who support alternative methods and help in the utilization of them in any way they can and for that I am grateful, because some of them helped me.

Six months after I started the meds, I had no change in my blood levels, which is basically the barometer of how they would check to see if I was responding and 'getting better'.  I was on 10 times the normal dose and a walking zombie.  It was no way to live.  I went for a run one day to try to feel better, get the endorphins firing, get some good, happy mojo back in my body/mind.  I took two steps and I felt this pain in my thighs.  But not in the muscle, it was deeper, in the bone.  I had many aches and pains all through childhood and college playing sports.  Spent most of my college track 'career' (ha) in the training room icing my shins, getting electrical stim on my quads, met half my friends in that training room, so I knew what 'sport' aches and pains felt like.  This was different.  But I remember the first thought that came to me was, 'Wow, this is not good and I can't continue on this path.  So I put my money where my mouth usually is, on something holistic, and jumped in with no looking back.   I met a Canadian doctor who had been in much worse shape than myself, in terms of illness and he got well.  So I flushed my meds down the toilet and went all in.  I found a doctor who would monitor my blood work without giving me grief and lectures about what I was doing 'wrong' in the medical community's eyes and low and behold...6 months later, my blood work was just about completely 'normal'.  But I wasn't out of the woods yet.

Backlash from 9/11, job cuts.  My work/projects in Arch/Design stopped and so company layoffs ensued.   I got laid off my job two weeks before I got the results of my blood test.  There went the funds I was using to pay for all those 'holistic' remedies.  C'est la vie!  We move forward anyway.  Like it says on my 'Road I.D.' bracelet; 'Glass Half Full - Always.  There is always a brighter side, we just have to pull the curtain off the light to see it.   And I did, although for a few years I think I was on a bit of a roller coaster, which of course made getting back in some sort of 'triathlon' shape a bit more challenging.  I learned that the stress I had compartmentalized was doing me no good, so I got into yoga.  Bikram to be more specific.  I loved it.  It actually helped all those old tight muscle injuries I had, got me flexible, to a point, again.  But I realized when I was doing yoga that my overall strength and endurance was not being worked enough, so I started to run again, ever so slowly and not very far.  I think, once a runner, always a runner.  I had to tell myself after a run I went on that was farther than I probably should have gone, that I have to get back, but start out as if I was a beginner runner.  In my head I could run 8 miles, no problem.  But my body wasn't back there yet.  I used to get that 'runner's high' at mile 7 when I was able to run farther.  It would feel like I got a shot of adrenaline and some 'fairy dust' happy feeling and it was propel me another 7 miles, it was just awesome.  There is something about that feeling of just floating.  I wanted that back and I have been working on it ever since.

Now, that roller coaster knows its coming to a final destination and that is coming soon.  The last few years, for many, many, many of us have been challenging in more ways that I could imagine or properly articulate.  I have learned who my friends are as well as who they're not, which at first was hard to swallow.  When you realize that you have invested time into people who just don't give a damn, it makes you mad.  But then you decide to choose carefully who you let into your world.  So my 'back on track' chapter begins with a smaller crowd, but sometimes starting out on your own is the best.  Less drama, just you and the road (water too).  Get out of your head, I tell myself.  Don't think so much, just do it!  So if you're up for it, follow me, if you will, I have some ideas in the works, the website, which is new but growing quickly with new product lines that launch this Spring and this blog, which keeps you guys up on what I am doing and a new training program I am working on which will hopefully get me to Kona someday.  Who knows, I may even qualify at a race I create myself.  (the last of three things I am working on, so stay tuned and keep your eyes open for the Triathleta Race Series, coming to a city near you)  It may take me longer to get there (Kona) but I am working on it.  A constant work in progress...and God willing, I will be working on it for years to come. 

Caroline / Triathleta