I suck at blogging

Yea verily, truer words were never spoken.

Holy shitsnacks, I have been BUSY.  My first year of nursing school is done (it was all prerequisites, so hold your applause), but I held onto that 4.0 GPA for both semesters and made the deans list.  I took "advanced algebra with into to trigonometry" and walked in expecting a firing squad.  Would you believe I actually fucking enjoyed that class?  I had people in this last semester's psychology class telling me they'd already earned one degree and this was the hardest class they'd ever taken, EVER, and I had no trouble with it.  I feel like I'm on a roll.  I feel stupid for being so scared for so long, when even though it's a lot of work, it's not as scary and awful as I thought it would be.

Never did manage that half marathon, though.  My longest run was 8 miles and then my heart gave up.  No really, it did.  I woke in the middle of the night with palpitations so bad I thought "this is how i die" and it lasted for the longest fifteen minutes of my life.  I'm ashamed to admit that I wanted to pretend like nothing had happened, but the thought of Spagett finding me dead was enough to motivate me into going to the ER.  No pulmonary embolisms, no heart attack, nothing off on the EKG.  Was referred to a cardiologist.  I love this guy.  I really do.  He's a shit-talking little Indian guy who makes me laugh even though I'm sitting in his office with a fucking heart problem.  I've done a stress test and worn a Holter monitor and taken magnesium supplements because I had low mag, and the general consensus at this point is that I have some kind of arrhythmia, most likely AV node re-entrant tachycardia.  But we are waiting to see what another specialist, an electrophysiologist, thinks.

Oddly enough, even though this is my heart we're talking about, I'm not as freaked out by this as I was by Sid's neck mass (FYI, it was totally a thyroglossal cyst, the surgery went fine and you hardly notice his scar).  At any rate, the cardiologist has me on Toprolol to help with the arrhythmia and I have noticed a huge difference.  The side effects are kind of wonky: I have headaches a lot, and not the kind you normally think of as a headache, but an "oh my god, everything is going to hit me in the head" kind of headache.  And the weird-ass dreams I have on this medicine are sometimes goddamn terrifying.  I wake up like "oh thank fuck that was just a dream..." quite often now.  Even though the idea of undergoing an ablation procedure to treat the arrhythmia scares the shit out of me, I think that, long term, it would be a better option than this medication.  I will do it if I am offered the option.

I've been told "gentle cardio only" so no interval training, no massive jumps in mileage.  I run 2 miles sometimes 3 times a week and do a "long run" if it's not hot as balls.  By long run, I mean 3-4 miles.  It's whatever.  I'm just glad I didn't have to stop running entirely.

But, swear to shit, someday I'm fucking running that half.

edit:  I totally forgot to mention the (to me) worst part of this whole arrhythmia thing.  The wooooooorst.  Coffee.  I had to give up caffeine.  Oh yeah.  Yeah, it was not pleasant.  However, I like feeling like I'm not dying, and I like not having to deal with coffee headaches, so overall it was a good thing.  I drink a bottle of water in the mornings instead of coffee: I tried tea but I felt like it was a weak replacement.
All or nothing, baby!  I've adjusted, and I treat myself to decaf coffee or regular tea if I feel like I need a pick-me-up, but usually it's just water for me.  How blah!  Why starky, I do believe you are becoming a bore!

sweet relief and a zombie run

While we still don't have solid answers, the MRI results are in and the doctors are saying the mass in Sid's neck is most likely not cancer, but a benign thyroglossal cyst.  While it will require surgery, from what I understand, it's a fairly simple procedure with minimal scarring, and the likelihood of it coming back is fairly small.  Sid also does not have MS, but a cervical osteophyte: in layman's terms, he's got a bone spur in his neck.  We are so relieved.  I can't even tell you how it feels to not have the weight of that worry constantly bogging me down.

So I ran my zombie race on Saturday unburdened by personal bullshit!  I actually didn't run much of it at all, the ground was way too rocky, uneven, and muddy.  The times I was running, I was full out sprinting and trying not to slip and fall.  I pulled something in my right ankle, which I totally didn't even feel until after the race was over, and my back got wrenched pretty well when I did some hard twists trying to keep my balance in the slick clay mud.  Overall, I enjoyed the shit out of that race and definitely intend to come back again next year.  It was worth every fucking penny: I had the time of my goddamn life out there, belly crawling through stinky mud, getting shocked, and crawling through mucky water up to my neck.  Dirty as hell at the finish, but so much fun.

being brave

The Mansons are facing some tough times right now.  Sid has a mass on his voice box, and is about to undergo testing to figure out if it's cancer.  His doctor is also testing him for Multiple Sclerosis, after years of weirdness.

Maybe it's not cancer (but maybe it is).  Maybe it's only benign nodules (but maybe it's not).  Maybe it's not MS (but maybe it is).  We'll have answers soon enough, and I think knowing has got to be so much less scary than this uncertainty.  I can't speak for Sid, but I know I'm going about my daily business feeling like I'm waiting to be hung: the noose is around my neck, and I know the floor is about to drop out from under me, but I don't know when.

Right now, running is what is keeping me sane.  What I've learned while outside sweating and plodding are keeping me from losing myself in anxiety, and until now, I had no idea there was anything at all to learn from putting one foot in front of the other, but that itself is the lesson: all you can do is put one foot in front of the other.  Keep moving, and eventually, it will be over.  It feels like it will last forever, but it ends.  It will end.

Plus, The Zone.  Oh, The Zone.  Fuck a runner's high, The Zone is where it's at.  There's nothing at all but the silence.  Nothing else.  No worries, no doubts, no voice in your head telling you shit you don't want to hear.  Just the rhythm of your breathing and your feet on the pavement.  I call it my brutal meditation, and it is glorious.

Sometimes I have to remind myself, I am doing this.  I am running, I am going to nursing school, I am going to sit in the waiting room while Sid has his surgery and wait to hear what the doctors say.  I am doing it.  I am brave, I am strong, I am doing this.

And it helps.

big changes at Manson Homestead IV

No, I'm not pregnant.  Good lord, perish the thought.

I'm starting nursing school in September.  This is a big deal!  HUGE!  This is something I have wanted to do for ages and couldn't work up the courage to go through with.  Because, you know, it would be difficult.  And maybe I wouldn't be good at it.  Just trust me when I say there were myriad reasons why I constantly talked myself out of taking the big step and actually applying.  And every single one of them was my anxiety talking.

The fact that I recognized it and talked myself out of being afraid is another big deal.  Because lets face it, I am a huge ball of worry.  I don't have full blown anxiety attacks anymore, but I still manage to give myself palpitations over silly shit.  In this instance, I had an epiphany.  There really is no other way to describe it.  I realized that I was letting my fear rule me.  I was letting my fear dictate the course that the rest of my life would take.  And goddamn if I didn't sit down that very day and apply to nursing school, because you know what?  Fuck that.

Another thing I went ahead and did even though the thought made me vaguely nauseated is sign up for a Run For Your Lives race.  I'm gonna be chased by zombies!  On an obstacle course!  A couple of my friends have done it and said it was a blast, and I have planned on doing one for ages but never did because Landwhale.  Fuck that, too.  I've lost 15 pounds, I'm lighter than I was when I got pregnant with Spagett, and I'm in way better shape.  Still slow as fuck, but getting better.  I'm training for a half marathon, for gods sake, I can handle a good ol' fashioned apocalypse.

making progress and hitting roadblocks

When I started running, I was horrible at it. I mean, really, really horrible. And I slowly started getting better, but Sid felt like I wasn't getting better fast enough, so I started the Couch To 5k program.

I had no trouble running nearly 3 miles today, okay? I've gotten better. I ran my fastest mile today. I've gotten a lot better. My average pace is definitely a lot faster than when I started. I've really gotten a lot better.

But I'm still slower than Sid. That doesn't bother me, though it seems to really bug him. My ultimate goal is to be able to run a half marathon, 13.1 miles, and today I did just under 3 miles, so the goal is still out of reach, but I'll get there eventually. I want to focus on distance. I don't care how slow I am, as long as I get there in the end. But Sid wants me to focus on speed. Who gives a shit how slow I am, if I can run 13.1?

Maybe I should just focus on speed for a while. It would be great to be able to go running with Sid, and keep up without difficulty. But he walks faster than me all the time, anyway, so why should I have to move faster than I'm comfortable with, just to keep up with the pace he sets? I do that all the time as it is. But I run to slow for him. The pace I set makes his ankles hurt. BITCH, THE PACE YOU SET MAKES ME HORK UP MY LUNGS. Needless to say, it's coming down to the moment where I am going to have to make a decision on what to work on next, because I'm a week away from finishing this Couch To 5k thing. Part of me wants to continue on with my own goal, and part wants to make this effort for Sid. But what if I work my ass off, run faster, and it's still not good enough? I would not be a very happy Landwhale.