Where I am

Me for another 23 days

I saw the orthopedist last Tuesday, and the news was not at all what I hoped for. While this isn’t a bad break, he’s said I need to wear the boot until my next appointment—that’s not until June 23.

At first, he said no exercise at all but then relented and said anything that didn’t put weight on the foot was OK. Rowing is not OK, even though I told him I was pushing from my heels. That’s because he said it would be too easy to start pushing with the whole foot. So I have no aerobic exercise option right now because walking is also off the table. Well other than getting around the house.

At my next appointment, assuming things are healing well, he said he’ll put me in a carbon plate orthodic insert and I will be able to walk. I’m hoping rowing will be allowed then too. Running is prohibited for at least two months and more likely three months.

Long story still not so short, I can’t run the Grandma’s Marathon this summer and I won’t be able to rebuild my running in time to run a marathon this year. I’ve suspended my coaching, which hurts because I was making so much progress with him. I told him I will be back assuming I heal OK and remain gainfully employed, and he should look for me again in late July or early August. My goal at that point will be to regain my running fitness and look to run Grandma’s Marathon next June.

(this is related, bear with me)
I’ve been seeing a psychologist through the breast cancer center because having the breast cancer diagnosis and all the various treatments retriggered the post-traumatic stress disorder I have from being a childhood sexual abuse survivor. I met with her two days after I broke my foot and was pretty clearly distraught about this situation. We stopped the cognitive behavior treatment and instead she’s had me focus on staying with my grief, anger and despair over this. That’s very difficult, it’s so much easier to stuff those things back in the closet and slam the door shut. But that’s also not the way to peace and healing for me.

I’ve been writing what I feel and this weekend realized that this is yet another loss on top of already losing things that matter to me. While I haven’t actually lost running, I am concerned that a second bone has just broken while doing the sport I love. Sure, my pelvis fracture was due to too heavy a running load. I don’t deny that. But this foot bone was not. I’ve trained safely and sanely and paid strict attention to any niggles or pain in my body. I had no warning from my foot, not a twinge, at least not until the bone just broke.

When I was in my early 30s, I had a career-ending injury—I was a musician (oboist) and developed a terrible case of tendonitis in my right thumb, which spread to my hand and up my arm to my elbow and shoulder. And when I say terrible case, I mean I couldn’t sign my name to a check kind of terrible. I went through six months of physical therapy and about six months later, tried to play again. The tendonitis immediately came back. I lost something that had been part of my life since I was 10 years old and completely shaped my identity. I don’t know that I ever acknowledged that loss or felt any of that grief, except on the inside.

That’s been my fear, that I will lose running—something I love, that leaves me feeling calm and relaxed and as though I’ve accomplished something.

People keep asking me

Is it a stress fracture?

Which is annoying me all out of proportion to the question. I know why people are asking, they’re genuinely concerned, that’s all. But I got the same question when I fractured my pelvis and so now for Broken Bone 2.0, it’s annoying. Plus I'm cranky because I'm in pain.

Also I didn’t know what the difference was between a stress fracture and an acute fracture. I mean the bone is broken either way, so what difference does it make? Still, I was curious so turned to Dr. Google.

From this article I learned the following:

• Stress fractures usually cause a progressive increase in pain that is worse with activity. This lines up with what happened when I fractured my pelvis. It started hurting a few weeks before that last race, and then boom, I could no longer walk. I think it was breaking for a couple of weeks.
• Acute fractures typically have a sudden onset, with swelling and ecchymosis (otherwise known as bruising). And this is what happened to me on Saturday. I had zero pain in my foot and then boom, I had a lot of pain. Once I got home and took off my shoe, my foot started swelling and it’s still swollen. Normally my feet are scrawny bony things but right now you can’t see a dang bone across where my toes come into my foot. It’s Puffyville all the way. 

There’s a potential for something called a Lisfranc injury of the foot. Two months ago, I went to Urgent Care because of pain and swelling on the top of my foot. It hasn’t fully resolved so who knows, maybe that’s going on too.

And May's running is over

Yesterday at about mile 6 of my planned 18-mile run, my right foot started hurting in the area where all your toe joints come into the foot. I’ve never felt that before, and I hadn’t fallen or tripped or anything. I wasn't sure what to think but honestly, you get little pains all the time while running and usually they just go away, they’re nothing. So I kept going.

But my foot kept hurting. Oddly it hurt more running uphill than down (I love running uphill), and by about mile 7.5 I thought well I’ll get to the house and see if it’s a muscle spasm (my route took me by my house at about mile 10 so I could get a sip of water if needed).

But by mile 9.5 I knew I wasn’t going to get all 18 miles in, I hurt too much. So I got home (which was just over 10 miles total), took off my shoes and started to gently massage the bottom of my foot only I couldn’t—it hurt so much that I gasped and got tears in my eyes. I knew I needed to get it checked so I took a painful shower (hard to take a shower on one leg but I’ve had a lot of experience doing that from when I broke my pelvis) and then Kent drove me to the orthopedic urgent care clinic, the same one I went to when I fractured my pelvis, talk about a bad deja vu.

Long story not so long, I broke my foot; specifically, the third metatarsal. The break was clearly visible on the x-ray and I was devastated because I knew what that meant. I asked anyway, how long do breaks like these take to heal? Six to eight weeks, she said. She put me in a boot, gave me discharge instructions (elevate the foot, ice, Tylenol as needed, the orthopedist will call with a follow up appointment in 10 to 14 days).

So. No Grandma’s Marathon this summer. No more running in May, probably not much in June, and once again I will need to rebuild my running stamina etc.

This weekend has been a real low point for me. I keep randomly tearing up because this marathon meant so much to me and I was making amazing progress. I hope this is just a freaky random fracture and means nothing in terms of the osteoporosis (which by the way, I have been taking meds for) or a possible metastasis to bone from the breast cancer.

April was a good running month

As I’d shared with another blogger, I feel pretty fortunate that I’ve always preferred running alone and super early. That’s been useful during this pandemic—I don’t have to worry about social distancing (I see very few runners out when I go), and I didn't have to get used to running alone.

I’ve been working hard on my marathon training; my coach helps a lot and has been instrumental in me not getting injured. Case in point, I started having left knee pain a few weeks ago and I would have just blown it off, even though it was bad enough I cut short a long run. I shared it with him in the weekly check in (he has a section where I am to list any niggles, pain, etc.) and he immediately had me take a day off from running. Because of that, I got in to see my physical therapist (yes, my clinic is open) and we’ve been working on getting that all sorted out.

All of that to say that I hit several firsts for me: first time running 40 miles in a week, first time running 137 miles in a month and longest ever run of 16.3 miles. I still have doubts that I will actually be able to run this marathon, but that’s more about the mental side of running 26.2 miles all alone.

Last month I also ran the first of two planned virtual half marathons. This was for the Garmin half marathon, and I treated as a long run. I did one this last weekend too, which was for the Running with the Cows half marathon. I doubt I'll be a fan of virtual races after the pandemic is over (if that day ever comes), but these were good mental practice for me, running with no other runners, no support, no people cheering us on and no real finish line. Just my watch as it ticked over to 13.11 miles (I go the extra 0.01 so Garmin counts the damn run).

The ties that bind

I started this blog post a year ago, and saved it in my drafts. I was a little busy going through cancer treatment at the time so this fell off my radar.

What you see is a photo of my granddaughter holding a photo of me as a little girl standing in front of the same piano Alison is standing in front of. I don't remember us not having that piano, and I played it all the time growing up. Oddly, I never took piano lessons although I did become a musician, first on flute and later and for much longer as an oboist.

My younger son and his wife were downsizing before they moved to a much smaller house (moving from Arizona to California will do that to you). They really couldn't take the piano with them so they found another family who wanted one. I like knowing that other children are playing away on that piano and I hope they enjoy it as much as I did and as Ben's kids did.

Have you heard the joke?

Teepee, wigman--two tents (too tense). That's me these days.

You know how it is when you go to the doctor for a well visit, you run in, get your tests or exam and leave. And you never think or expect something might be wrong. That's how I've been all my life. I get the exams, even the icky ones, on schedule, I floss my teeth, brush my teeth twice a day, see my dentist twice a year etc. etc. etc.

For me, it wasn't the breast cancer that changed this mindset for me, it was when I was diagnosed with melanoma in August, 2017.

The only reason I was so faithful about getting my skin checked every year was because a much loved mentor in college died from melanoma, and it wasn't a good death. Because of how he died, I've always feared melanoma even though on the face of it, I have very few risk factors. I had dark hair (color it now), dark eyes, I don't burn easily, I didn't get many burns as a kid and I never really got into tanning beds (I found them boring). So I was gobsmacked to have a melanoma on my back. My margins were clear, which is good. But of course I'm on the six month follow up plan, originally for five years and now my dermatologist wants me to continue for well I don't know how long. I'm a fan of that even though I get very nervous for those checks or when it seems a mole has changed.

Flash forward to May 2018, and I fractured my pelvis, which I also could not comprehend. In fact I told the orthopedist she was wrong when she called to tell me the news. But I had, and I'd done it from over training. And then the DEXA scan showed osteoporosis. Boy did that put me in a tailspin.

That may sound silly, but hear me out. We all have mental images of who and what we are, and mine's all about being strong RAWR I can do things myself. Only apparently I can break my bone without falling or being in an accident. Not the kind of RAWR I want at all.

So then in 2019 when events moved super fast from 3D mammo to come back please to diagnostic mammo plus ultrasound to biopsy. I remember lying on my side while she got things ready to do the biopsy and she said something about 80% of these biopsies are benign and I said yup, I'm sure it's nothing. But then again, I thought the same thing about the melanoma and the fractured pelvis so I'd better get this checked. Sure enough, boom. Breast cancer.

Oh but wait, there's more. Last fall I had a lump removed from my arm that turned out to be an atypical leiomyoma, which is associated with kidney cancer (yes, atypical leiomyomas are usually found inside the body and for women, they're often uterine fibroids but not me, I'm a snowflake). And of course the follow up kidney scan did find a couple of dinky tumors on my right kidney. So there's another thing for the regular follow up list.

Sign on a neighbor's house

While I'm not physically fragile, emotionally I feel tattered around the edges and dislike living with the idea or fear of something coming back. That is such an unrecognized cost of breast cancer and I'm not entirely sure how to navigate through it.

I don't feel so RAWR these days. Next week I'm scheduled for my first set of post-cancer scans. In my case, I'll have an ultrasound on the left breast as it's far too painful still for a mammogram. I have a lot of scar tissue, and frankly it hurts all the time. I'll have a diagnostic mammogram on my right breast.

Now put a big helping of COVID 19 on top of all of that, add in a global economic meltdown and rampant job loss, and you bet I'm an anxious bundle of tension. I'm so incredibly glad I run, otherwise I would probably be a hot mess. 

Yesterday

I made bagels.

With Everything But
The Bagel seasoning

I used a recipe from Skinnytaste (hate the name, but there are some good recipes on her site)—it’s not a traditional bagel recipe. Instead you use Greek yogurt (she is very clear that regular yogurt won’t work), baking powder and then bake, not boil, the bagels. The comments ranged from “best bagel ever!” to “the outside baked just fine but the inside was still doughy” and everything in between.

I followed one tip, I weighed the flour instead of just measuring it. But I had a hard time getting exactly one cup of Greek yogurt because I had to scoop it out of my individual yogurt containers (I have one a day at breakfast, and since they are not quite six ounces each, I had to use one plus part of another—I did my best). I also baked them for about five minutes longer than indicated. Next time I think I’d drop the heat to 350 and bake even longer.

We each had one this morning and they were pretty good. I always slice and toast my bagels and then put butter on it, and that's what I did for ours today. I really like that they aren’t gigantic, most store-bought bagels are so big you could practically use them as spare tires for your car.