Archive for March, 2008

Last spring/summer when I started training for the marathon, I had a typical route that took me from my house, across dupont circle and down to the banks of the Potomac where I’d run up to the Jefferson Memorial and then head back home, i often ran it late at night when the weather was cooler and traffic was less burdensome.

A particular stretch along the bank of the river just past the Kennedy Center is rather dimly lit at night.  I’d literally be running in near darkness, only able to see a few yards ahead of me.  It’d also be about 2-3 miles into the run, and when I was just starting out, that’d be when my initial energy would fade, and I’d start gasping for breath, my footsteps would stumble, and the dark shadows of trees would hang menacingly above me, cold and impersonal.  After a while, I came to term it the “dark mile“.

The dark mile was both physically and mentally challenging, because I’d be starting to doubt whether I’d be ready for the marathon, whether I’d have the gumption to do it, if I was running out of steam after only two or three miles, how could I hope to do 26.2?

But I found that if I forced myself to keep going on.  I’d pick up a second wind.  My body would become accustomed to the pace and my breathing, circulation and rythm would settle down and I’d be able to leave the dark mile behind and continue to finish out my route.

As I became a stronger runner, that dark stretch along the Potomac no longer was the point where I’d start feeling fatigued, but rather, miles later on.  But the term stuck.  Whenever I was pushing my limits, a new distance, and I found myself struggling, I would remind myself, “this is just your dark mile.. and it too, will pass“.  It was a powerful mental tool for me to just keep pushing, even when things seem their worst.

And why do I mention this now?  Most of you can probably guess it has something to do with me breaking my foot.  I woke up this morning, nearly suffocated with depression and anxeity.  My online research on heel bone fractures revealed many stories about long, difficult recoveries, and with Gabe leaving Bishop, I’d be completely on my own.

My mind kept flashing back to that terrifying moment when my foot slipped, seeing the ground rushing up at me, and realizing at the very last split second that I was going to miss the crash pad, then that awful crunching feeling in my right foot, the pain and rage I felt.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I rolled out of bed and went in the kitchen and had some cereal, but it just made me feel worse.

I felt nearly crushed this morning by feelings about my recovery, and those flashbacks to the accident.

I need to remind myself, this is the dark mile.  I need to stay strong and look ahead.  It too, will pass.

I was looking forward to seeing the orthopedic doctor today, I wanted to get the whole diagnosis and the “cure” out of the way so I could start looking forward to being healed.

The ortho doctor came in and after some preliminary questions about how I broke my foot, he said the x-rays from the ER were inconclusive so they’d have to do some of their own, and we’d start by removing the splint.   The nurse started cutting the wrap off and I peered over to take a look.

I had expected my foot to look puffy, black and blue and generally all disfigured, but what I was NOT expecting were those huge hideous looking blisters encamped on my ankle.  I turned to the nurse with a horrifed expression on my face, and she nodded and said “fracture blisters”, those are quite common with your kind of injury.  I pulled out my iPhone to take a picture.  I’m not going to post it up here because it’s quite gross, so I’ll just post a link here and you can click at your own peril.

See Timmy’s foot, four days after the incident.

I told the doctor to take care of that thing growing off my ankle, and he’s like “well I can drain it if you’d like, or leave it alone and it’ll pop on its own.”  I had a vision of me lying in bed and feeling warm blood running down my leg one night.  I locked gazes with the doctor and said “drain it now”.

So the doctor nodded to the nurse who came back with a cart.  The doctor sat himself down opposite my foot and took a needle and stared intently on it.  He reached forward with the needle, and I swear here, I’ll swear on a stack of bibles, that he just like barely touched it before it split open and dumped a whole gallon of pink fluid on the table.  The nurse turned to me and giggled.  I made a nauseated face, but I was relieved that it wasn’t painful or anything.

The doctor said they’d do some x-rays on their own, so I was wheeled into the x-ray room where they took a couple snaps and then put me back in the other room to wait for the doctor to come back.   Doc comes back and puts up the x-rays and points to some white blob and says “thats your heel bone”, then pointed to some places here and there and said “those are fractures”.   I honestly wasn’t seeing anything.  He turns to me and says, “We can’t determine enough from this x-ray, so we’ll have to do a CAT scan.”

You just can see the dollar amounts of this whole medical epsiode spinning up crazily.  Thank god I have insurance!

So, I’m due for a CAT scan tomorrow, then meeting with the doctor again on Monday, and hopefully we’ll know whether surgery is needed.

Then they fitted me with this big plastic foot brace.  I believe Mr. Climbing Narc summarized it up the best – The Boot of Doom.

After the visit to the doctor, Gabe took me to the food store to stock up on a couple weeks worth of food since I’ll be pretty much on my own after he leaves tomorrow to head back to San Fran.

Upon arriving at the food store, I scored myself a sweet little ride, the grocery shopping cart/scooter!  And I could putter around the store like the little smug bastard I am, because I HAVE A BROKEN FOOT.

So there are some perks.  :)

When you have just one good foot to get around on, the stuff you took for the ordinary takes on a whole new appearance.   A brisk morning walk of 3 blocks to get your morning cup of coffee becomes a very log walk on crutches.  And how do you hold your coffee while using two crutches?  I haven’t figured that out yet.

Around the house, I’m now using a Nalgene container to carry around my water.  I can use a finger to hold it by the loop while I crutch around.  Mabye I’ll have to fabricate some sort of loop to attach to my coffee cup?

I’m also learning how to pee standing up on just one leg.  It’s not really the standing part that is the problem, but it seems like the bladder is very reluctant to let go if you’re not completely stable.  So I’m standing on one foot, trying to stand very still so I can pee.  I know I can sit down to pee, but I’m trying to keep things interesting, and I do enough sitting around already.

Cooking and dishes on one leg also becomes more of an effort.  You want to minimize the moving around you have to do, by pulling together everything you need to start with and keeping them within reach.

And today I’ll need to do laundry.  The laundry room is in the building next to my cottage, so I think I’ll have to load up my backpack with clothes and the laundry soap, then crutch on out there.

I also wanted to thank all of you who stopped in to comment, either here, or on facebook, or via email.  Its really a big help to my spirits to hear from all of you and one thing I also noticed was how many of you told me to keep on taking pictures.  I definitely am going to try to do that as soon as I feel more comfortable in crutching around…

I see the doctor today at 2pm.  I’m crossing my fingers for no-surgery!