#27- Baby Steps

November 27- Today I am grateful for small victories in what feels like the longest injury in history.

It has been almost 2 months since St. George Marathon.  Ugh... I don't even want to talk about that because that means it has been almost 2 months since I had a good run.  Saddest statement of the century.  (Did I ever tell you I'm good at being overly dramatic?) The good news is that I have been very compliant with taking time off from running and allowing my body to recover from my silly knee injury.  Speaking of silly knee injury, I don't think I ever told the exact reason I got injured.  It's so embarrassing I don't even want to say it.

Ready? I got it from a blister on my big toe. There! I said it.  After St. George, I had a massive, painless blister on the bottom of my big toe (from a tiny rock in my shoe rubbing for 26.2 miles).  It was gigantic but didn't bother me at all except that it looked ridiculous.  I decided, being the wise PA student I am, to do the one thing I always tell my patients to avoid doing: I popped that son-of-a-gun.  It felt great until I ran the Nike Women's Half the following weekend. Then... it went from healing to infected. The blister re-accumulated; except this time it was with pus.  YUCK & OUCH.

Note to self: Take care of blisters.  You won't regret it.

At that time, I was also in the middle of the hardest and most stressful rotation of my life where I was in closed-toe shoes and on my feet for 15 hours per day.  Needless to say, I had to walk strangely to avoid limping which in turn  ended up pinching the peroneal nerve on the outside of your knee.  Yep.  That's it.  A silly blister.  I wish I had a better story, but if you can learn anything from my story... DO NOT POP YOUR BLISTER.  It is a natural bandaid and will heal if you let it.  If anything, use Epsom Salt and learn from my mistake.

Okay.  Enough venting over my lame injury story.  The fact of the matter is that all of the hard work and ridiculous training flew out the window approximately 5 weeks ago.  At that point, I realized the most important thing is to be 100% healed to avoid a difficult training season for Boston Marathon in April.

The baby steps started on Sunday when I tried my first run/walk.  Started with 1 min run/2 min walk for about 5 minutes... then since I had no pain I increased it to  4 min run/1 min walk until I finished.  I did that for 3 miles and guess what? NO PAIN. Yippee!  And no pain the next day either!  So today continued with the walk/run combo with my awesome running buddy, Carrie.  We did a total of 5 miles; with probably 3 miles of that running.  Felt great- and surprisingly I wasn't as slow as I thought I would be.  I guess that annoying elliptical and my deep-water running have paid off.

I don't know if you can quite grasp the significance this has in my life.  But... if my lack of sanity in the last 2 months is any indicator, you can imagine it's pretty life-altering.

It's a Wonderful Life

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Grandma Update:  She had a HUGE day today!  She walked down the hall and was discharged from the hospital!  She'll be staying in San Diego at a Assisted Living Facility for about 2-3 weeks to get stronger before making the trip back to Salt Lake.  My Mom and Dad are also staying, so I feel very lucky to get this extra time with them, even if it is under these circumstances.  Grandma said she's feeling better tonight, but she is still struggling with nausea.  I'm praying she can get off such heavy pain meds soon so that she has more of an appetite.  Each day it's baby steps for her too...!!