Back In The Saddle

I have not been feeling great the past few weeks. I have woken up coughing several nights, have coughed up blood, my mucus seems thicker, my lungs feel tight and my overall energy has been low.  So yesterday I went to my doctors. I was fully intending to have my doctor tell me it was time to go on IV. As I always do while travelling to my doctors on the subway I went through the last few weeks in my head in order to give detailed information on my health. I take an inventory of when I think my health started to go south and what has taken place since that time. I traced it back to about three weeks ago when I started waking up coughing in the middle of the night. Let me tell you, that sucks having to get out of bed, go to the bathroom and have a 10 minute coughing attack. Fun nights. Anyway, it also occurred to me that around that time my prescription for Albuterol ran out and I have been too lazy to get a refill. How lazy, you ask. Put it this way, the pharmacy is a half block away from my house and I walk past it everyday and I still didn’t get the prescription refilled! Come on, it’s been over three weeks! So I tell my doctor all of this and an amazing thing happens. My PFT were just around normal so she says she thinks we should start on a course of Cipro and I should start taking Symbicort for the tightness. She says that usually when I am ready for IV, I look sick and she said I look healthy. Sweet! I took some Symbicort and filled my prescription for Albuterol and began coughing like crazy yesterday. Tons of junk came up, even a few small plugs. Today my lungs feel much better and with a renewed sense of energy(perhaps a bit psychological because I avoided IV) I hit the gym to start training for the New Bedford Half Marathon. So use my stupidity as a lesson, don’t forget to renew prescriptions even if you think the medication isn’t that important, which is how I felt about Albuterol. Oops, I was wrong about that.

As I said in a previous post I am running the New Bedford Half Marathon. Training started two weeks ago, I however did not start training. I have been extremely lazy(See above). Not completely lazy, I have been going to the gym, doing elliptical and the wall climber but running has been nonexistent. Which is kind of sad because the weather in NY has been relatively mild and I should have been taking advantage to run outside.

So today started my official training for the half. There will be a new set of challenges awaiting me for this training. One is going to be motivation. What will be motivating me to get out and train on those days when I don’t feel like running, which I have to say there are many.For the marathon it was easy, I was motivated by the distance, could I conquer 26.2 miles. Well for the half I can’t use the distance because I know I can run 13.1, I did 26.2 for crying out loud. I can’t use speed because I am not fast and never will be fast. So I have settled on my health. I saw a significant boost in my PFT’s when I started training for the marathon so I know it is beneficial to run. I seem to cough more plugs and more crap from running than any other form of exercise. I think the pounding acts as a form of chest PT. It’s like an extended vest treatment without having to sit next to some noisy machine.

The other challenge is going to be that it is winter and most of my runs will probably have to be indoors on a treadmill. I have said it before, I HATE running on a treadmill. Music,  television, it doesn’t matter, nothing helps me to pass the time. It is a mental struggle from the time I push start until the end.

I found today that the same issues were coming back from when I started the training for the marathon. Self conscious about all the coughing I was doing, and not having stamina to run the entire time. It is back to square one, the old run/walk method. When I say square one I mean, run two minutes and walk two minutes. It is exactly like when I started the marathon training. At least I know that if I stay diligent in my training I will build the stamina back. I just hope that starting training so late still gives me enough time to rebuild the stamina and doesn’t do me any harm. Whatever, I will be crossing the finish line in New Bedford no matter what.

More than two months  after running the marathon I am still receiving so many kind emails and comments from people. I just want to say that I have read them all and have been moved to tears. Your kind words and your encouragement is what will push me through on this next challenge I have issued to myself.

CF Sucks!

Thanks for reading