All clear!!

I'm back from the doctor, and I have the medical all clear to train (yeah, I probably should have gotten the all-clear BEFORE I started training, but whatevs). My blood pressure is awesomely low (104/64 - I might be a zombie), and my cholesterol is good. Well, my "good" cholesterol is a little low (about 30, it should be 40), but my "bad" cholesterol isn't high. It's normal. It's likely that the cholesterol numbers that need to improve (the "good" one) will improve dramatically at the end of this race!

I am RARING to go. I've got my diet plan all researched. I'm going to walk to stuff in town that I would normally drive to - like choir rehearsal, the drug store, etc. Yeah, church is 3 miles away, and the drugstore is 3.5, but that's a nice brisk hour walk, right? Right!

The only thing I have to keep an eye on is my bum arthritic knee, and my messed up back. But careful stretching, icing and heat will go a long way to minimizing the negative impact of those two. Did I ever tell you the story of my back? It's a fun one. A few years ago, I was having agonizing pain in my lower back, so I went to see an orthopedist who ordered an MRI. The MRI showed that two of my lumbar vertebrae (L4 and L5)were oddly disintegrating ("bony erosions"), only on the right side. I was tested for every auto-immune disease in the book, and all the tests came back negative. This 1st ortho sort of threw up his hands, said, "You've got some unknown degenerative disease. Here's a prescription for anti-inflammatories. Call me when you have nerve pain - I'll fuse your spine - what's left of it."

I didn't really like the idea of having some unknown degenerative disease, so I went to a second ortho, who spent 45 minutes staring at my films. I mean staring. As in not really blinking. After those 45 minutes were up, he turned to me and said, "what were you doing when you were 9, or 10?"

"Ummmm - playing with my Barbies?"

He asked if I had had any trauma - any falls, any bike crashes, any sledding.....SLEDDING ACCIDENTS!! I HAD!! When I was 9, I had a massive wipeout on Micare's Suicide Hill, where I careened off a jump, slammed into a tree, and bounced into a frozen-over creek. I was taken to the hospital, got my lip stitched up, was cursorily examined and told to go home and don't be stupid and go sledding again.

I remember EVERYTHING hurting for two weeks after that. Every single bone. Every muscle. But I got better. Life went on.

Flash forward to my staring ortho. He zoomed in on the L4 and L5 vertebrae. He pointed at what seemed to be a fuzzy line on each vertebrae, and said, "do you see how those edges don't line up? You broke your back. You broke your back, the bones knit back together badly, and these things that they are calling "bony erosions" is actually arthitis setting into your old trauma site."

Wow.

I broke my back!! And I walked it off!! I RULE!! Well, except that I have to take cox-2 inhibitors for the pain, but whatever. I walked off a broken back! I had no idea I was such a badass little kid!

Things have been good since then, for the most part. Like I said, I've got medicine (I love you Celebrex!) that reduces the arthritic inflammation in both the knee and the back, and now I'm good to go!