Saturday, June 30, 2012

Just gotta get well now

The end of this week saw a heady combination of bad news and good news. To get the bad news out of the way - my current contract ended with my employer, so I am now looking for new work and even a new direction. My work colleagues were unbelieveable kind on my last day and got me a fantatic leaving card and presents. Two of my gifts were very much centred around the running and sport that I do, which was perfect.

The good news, get with the good news... the good news is that my chest x-ray came back clear and so the chest problems of the last 5-6 weeks do not appear to be anything more sinister or worrisome. From the examination I had the doctor concluded that I am improving and that potentially I have two more weeks or so before I am back to 'normal'. I had to keep giving exercise the miss until all symptoms have cleared, trust me I asked when I could get back to running (I am climbing the walls for a run!!).

Again I was asked during my examination whether I am (or was ever) a smoker. I have lost track of the number of times that I was asked that question, leaving me wondering if the doc even believed that I don't and can't smoke. Truth be told I have a huge mental wall around the subject thanks to heaps of medical knowledge and an anti-smoking message instilled in me when I was a kid, in fact I only tried twice whilst so drunk I was utterly suggestible (both times I was reduced to tears through uncontrolled coughing that it induced).

The information I offered as my current best theory for why I contracted acute bronchitis was that I'd trained for a marathon, run one in a storm (weather storm not a super amazing 'storming' time), given blood about ten days later, and gotten back to training near enough as soon as the muscle soreness subsided. At that point the doc rubbed their chin and tentatively agreed that I might have "opened the door to an infection". Here and now I buy my theory and so have taken a few important pieces to knowledge away from it. Primary amongst my personal take home notes if to watch out for signs of over-training syndrome and for signs of ill health during and very much after peroids of huge effort.

Some totally of the previous three paragraphs, I am getting better, I can't wait to go running and I hope I am now a fair bit smarter. If you are running this weekend - run well, if you are unable to - I hope you get to run real soon.

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