The Girl In Chucks

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown our your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs, Commencement address, Stanford University, June 12, 2005

I am heart broken. Rest well Steve, we’ll all miss you.

10 Years ago today, I was 19 years old. My alarm went off and I rested in bed, trying to decide if I was going to go to my abnormal psychology class, or instead, play hooky, and go into the city to pick up my copy of “Love and Theft”, Bob Dylan’s new album. My mom kept knocking on my door, telling me to get up and look at the news…but I still didn’t get up right away. She said, “A plane has flown into the World Trade Center”, and all I yelled back through my closed bedroom door was, “On purpose?”

From my LiveJournal, 9/11/01:

“In general, I’m not terribly patriotic. I’m usually damning our government about all of the bad things they do to us, and more importantly to others in the world. Today is the first day in my entire life that I have felt patriotic.

I guess tragedy does that to people. I don’t know. For most of the day I kept saying we should blow the bastards up…take out a country…whatever. This is not Alexa-speak. That isn’t what I believe in. That isn’t what’s right. I do believe that no man who is the cause of thousands of lives lost should be allowed to keep his own, but is it our right to kill others? Does it make it better? Will it bring our loved ones back? No. It’s just more terror. More tragedy. More misery.”

And now may I present the race recap that I started writing nearly two months ago about the race that I ran over three months ago. Um. So sorry?

Although I have only been running for a year or so, there is one race that I have always wanted to participate in. As a native San Franciscan, I knew that I somehow would have to find a way to walk, run or crawl the course one day. Having been so un-athletic and insanely opposed to running for most of my life, I always assumed I’d probably be crawling. Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way at all, as I surprised my family and myself this past May by running the 100th running of the Bay to Breakers 12K footrace.

The Bay to Breakers race is exactly what the name implies. It is a race from the San Francisco Bay across the city to the Pacific Ocean (the breakers). It originated back in 1912 as a way to boost morale in the city, which was still trying to recover and rebuild after the 1906 earthquake. The race is 7.46 miles (12K) long, and the course definitely has some challenging aspects….namely, Hayes Street Hill.

Can’t visualize it? Check out this video:

Awesome, right? Right.

 While I have run several 5Ks in the last year, I was still pretty nervous about B2B. It was a  distance further than I had ever run before and I was wondering if I really had it in me. In the end, I decided to be like Nike and “just do it”. I mean, if there was ever a year to run the race, it was 2011. 2011 marked the 100th running of the race and to celebrate they decided that for the first time ever the race would have finisher’s medals to commemorate the event. What? Did someone say bling? I am so there!

Thus, bright and early on Sunday, May 15th, I hopped out of bed. And when I say early, I mean it. It was 4:30am!

I left the house at about 5:45 (later than I had planned) with a piece of peanut butter toast in hand and headed straight for Church Street station. A quick Muni Metro ride and walk brought me to the entrance of my corral, Corral C.

I think I forgot to mention that people dress up for this race, didn’t I?

I think I also forgot to mention that people often wear nothing to this race.

Don’t worry.

I have no pictures of that.

Just tweets.

Anyway, before I corralled myself, I decided to hit the port-o-potties. You see, at home before I left, I hadn’t had much luck…well..getting things moving. Though I had never had any gastric issues during a run, I’ve read enough to know that it is definitely a plus to get that out of the way before you get out on the road. I still didn’t have much luck, but I wasn’t too worried. I just went ahead and saddled up with my fellow Corral C’ers.

While we waited, we were entertained by the annual tortilla toss. For some reason, people apparently toss tortillas around at the start line. I have no idea why. I am a newbie. I got pelted a few times. It was strange…as were so many other things I saw during this race.

I only had my cell phone with me, so my tortilla photo attempts really didn’t turn out too well.

In between tortilla dodging, I signed up for FourSquare (so that I could check in at the start line, of course!) and spent time taking pictures of myself. Boredom leads to narcissism, you know…cough.

I still can’t believe I had the balls to wear a horizontally stripped tank top. Yikes. Thank goodness for race bibs to hide a gal’s spare tire…

Aside from tortillas a-flyin’, beach balls a-bouncin’ and my impromptu photo shoot, we also had giant speakers relaying what was happening up at the actual start line to keep us entertained. First they counted down the start of the female elites. Then the male elites. We were getting pumped. Then corral A went and the walking started. Then it stopped. And started. And stopped. And started. There were a lot of people to get up and through the start line before it was our turn. We got there eventually though.

The beginning of the race was really surreal for me. I couldn’t believe I was finally running a Bay to Breakers race. Normally I spend Bay to Breakers Sunday irritated as I try to figure out how to get to work for my Sunday opening shift with all of the road closures. It was nice to not have to fight the crowd, but for the first time actually be moving with them!

The first mile went well, as did the second. It was the first time I had ever been in a corraled race, and as it turned out, I really liked it. Normally when I run a DSE race or most other races, they are free for alls. I find that I run so hard at the beginning and I wear out pretty early. Being with people who signed up to run the same pace as I was running made the experience so much more comfortable and pleasurable.

At this point I was feeling good, but as I looked up ahead, I started to get nervous. There it was. THE hill. Hayes Street.

I thought about a strategy…run walking…what should I do? In the end, I just went for it. Run up the hills, walk across the intersections.

And I (along with about a gazillion other people) made it! And got Nesquik! w00t!

I nabbed the Nesquik as we rounded onto Divisidero and then started chugging it as we made another turn onto Fell. It tasted delicious, but turned out not to be all that awesome of an idea. At first it was fine, I ran happily along the Panhandle (my regular route!) and then we got down to Stanyan and entered Golden Gate Park. I was pretty excited to be just about halfway done with the race, but I also was feeling a bit queasy. My stomach was rumbling….in that way that runner’s stomach’s rumble.

Yeah. Ick.

I thought about trying to push through, as I really wanted to finish before 1:30. I slowed down to walk. I thought about stopping as I passed some port o potties. Then I thought about how I wish I had stopped instead of just thinking about it. Luckily, there were tons of opportunities to visit a port o potty this year. You see, due to a decent amount of participants winding up drunk along the way, people tend to start relieving themselves…well…everywhere. They wanted to fix that this year, so they upped the amount of port o potties and they started giving out wristbands to those who “eliminated responsibly”.

I decided at some point between miles 4 and 5 that it was time for me to become a “potty hero”.

Now as I mentioned, people who used the port o potties all got bracelets to celebrate their…achievements.

(I grabbed this off of the net somewhere back when I started this post…I don’t remember from where. So sorry if it’s your pic!)

I figured, well, hey, if I had to become a “real runner” right now and I’m going to lose my time, then at least I will get a bright neon green wristband.

Not so.

There were no potty hero monitors at my stop. I was. so. bummed.

Luckily, Zazzle was ready to remedy the problem:

Well, at least they SAID they were going to. I never got one. Just sayin….

Anyway, I became an unadorned hero and continued on my way, feeling MUCH better.

The rest of the race was a breeze. I might’ve been a little bit tired, but I was having fun and there was never a shortage of things to look at. Once you get to mile 6, there’s a happy downhill to the ocean, which is just how I like it. Plus, you get to see buffalo.

Ah. The ocean!

(Okay, I cheat…this picture is from way after the finish line…but who stops with only .4 miles left to go to take a picture?)

As we turned onto the Great Highway I got pumped. I could SEE the finish line. I tried to kick it up a notch, but I’ll be honest with you, I really didn’t have much left, so I settled for jogging over the finish line with a huge, goofy grin on my face. I had just ran the farthest I ever had run before.

And it was awesome.

My official time wound up being 1:35:22. I was sort of disappointed. I mean, I didn’t make it in under 90 minutes. It was the damn port o potty break that did it.  But then again, I wasn’t -that- upset. I mean, I just ran Bay to Breakers for the first time…what’s there to really be upset about?!

After the race I started off towards “Footstock”, which is a kind of post race party thing that people get all jazzed about. I didn’t have much interest, and wasn’t even going to go, but there was something missing….my bling! I had to head down there to get my medal, so you better believe I high tailed it over as fast as I could make my way through the crowd!

The bling actually turned out to be pretty sweet looking!

I hung around Footstock for a bit, and then I walked (seriously! 3 miles!) home. And ate a huge breakfast. And slept. And it was good.

Anyway, if you ever are able to run B2B, I highly recommend it. I don’t know if I’d do it every year, or anything, but it’s definitely an experience to be had.

Um. Hi.

*insert awkwardness here*

Sorry for the silent treatment. I didn’t mean it. Can we still be friends? Yes? Awesome.

So why have I been so quiet? It’s been a combination of things, but I would have to say that health has played a big part of the situation. Health in the girlinchucks household has kind of been on the  down slide for the last couple of months.

You may remember me talking about Cosie being diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. As I mentioned, the vet had me treating her with felimazole, which is essentially, methimazole…the same medication used to treat hyperthyroidism in humans. At first things seemed to take a turn for the better. She stopped throwing up, her eating and drinking habits became normal, her mood was better and she seemed good as new. Yay for felimazole the miracle drug, right?

Wrong.

About a week before Cosie was scheduled to go in for her hyperthyroidism recheck, she started acting weird. Namely, she started to pee in my closet. Not just a little bit, but a lot. I couldn’t get her to go to the litter box or even into the kitchen. I had to start feeding her in the main room. This went on for several days and I was alarmed, as I’ve had Cosie for 14 years and she has never gone outside of the litter box unless she didn’t have access to one. I called the vet and asked about it and he suggested I bring her in early. The appt. was only 4 days away, however, and I was worried I couldn’t get off from work to go, so I waited. When I took her in, he decided to check her blood pressure to rule out medical causes for the behavior….her systolic was 200+. He explained that cats are supposed to have a blood pressure similar to our own, so this was serious. Apparently, cats can go blind overnight from blood pressures of that level. He sent me home with more medication and instructions to bring her back the next week for a recheck.

Then later the very same day the Dr. called me back with the results of the hyperthyroidism recheck. He told me to discontinue the felimazole immediately…it was killing her liver. He said the damage wasn’t very severe yet, but it was too big a coincidence. Only 2% of cats can’t have felimazole, and apparently, Cosie is one of them. Her two treatment options are radioiodine treatment or benign neglect (just treat the symptoms).

I felt pretty depressed after that and spent most of June the 15th and 16th sobbing about my cat. I wasn’t sure what to do, as radioiodine treatment is super expensive, but benign neglect seems like I’m just signing a death warrant. It didn’t seem fair, given that just a couple of weeks before, Cosie was laying the smackdown on mice. I spent the entire week until the blood pressure recheck struggling with the options before me and then went into the appointment planning to discuss the options with the vet. I felt confident that after that appointment, I would at least have an idea of what I should do.

Wrong.

First of all, the good news. Cosie’s blood pressure was totally back to normal, thanks to the meds. She had also stopped peeing in my closet, so it looks like the felimazole/blood pressure situation had been causing the behavior.

The bad news. The vet had no idea what I should do. He told me that if she were his cat, he’d be struggling with the choices just as much as I was. On one hand, she could have radioiodine treatment and come out of it well and live her full 19-20 years happy, healthy and pill free. On the other hand, she could be one of the 1-2% of cats who either grow the tumor back, or turn hypothyroid or we find out that normal thyroid function doesn’t work with her due to other problems. Then, she’d be sick, possibly die and I’d be out a lot of money. He said there was just no way to tell which would be best.

I thought life expectancy would be a good way to decide….but it turns out she can live quite a while through benign clinical neglect. The worst symptom is hypertension, and since we are treating it already, that should be fine. Also there is heart disease, but it tends to come on gradually…though he doesn’t know how long she’s been hyperthyroid or if any problems are already underway.

Then I asked about cost. Could the vet bills from benign neglect supercede the outrageous cost of radioiodine treatment. Well, they could. Radioiodine treatment costs about $1,300…plus she would need to have a bunch of tests to decide if she were a proper candidate, so it could go as high as $2,000. I am already at $700 with vet bills now and if she continues to have problems, you can see how expensive it could get. However, while she may have lots of symptoms that cause vet visits, she may not have any. If it is just the blood pressure, that only requires a bottle of pills once every three months and the occasional blood pressure check…which all in all is cheaper than if she had been able to tolerate felimazole.

So I left the vet feeling just as conflicted as when I went in. The only positive I found was that at least benign neglect wasn’t necessarily a death sentence, so I could stop sobbing like an insane person. I guess that’s something.

For now, Cosie continues to take her blood pressure medicine, but I can tell the hyperthyroidism is running amok. Her thirst and hunger are crazy outrageous, I’ve seen signs of vomiting and her little kitty allergies seem to be going wild. Otherwise, she seems normal. She’s even playing with toys again, for the first time in 6 weeks:

So that’s Cosie. What’s up with me? Blargh….

A few weeks ago, I started having some issues. At first, I thought it was just feeling stressed out about Cosie, but as time dragged on, I started to be concerned that it was something more. My symptoms, unfortunately, have sort of been vague, so I wasn’t really sure of what was going on. I was suffering from extreme fatigue, muscle weakness, sore throat, joint aches, moodiness, general depression (not serious, or anything, but a major case of the blahs), brain fog, random bruising without trauma and in a few instances, dizziness.

Sounds like a barrel of laughs, eh?

Like I said though, these symptoms could be caused by anything…including nothing. I could just be having an off moment in time where I feel lousy. It seemed to me like a long time to be feeling off though…especially since some of these problems I’ve been battling since before May and they had just been increasingly getting worse. Since I hadn’t had my physical yet, I scheduled an appt. and went in last week to talk about it all with my doctor.

Unfortunately, much like with Cosie, it waan’t all that satisfying. I saw the new resident assigned to my file (my previous resident had moved on to another job). She did all of the normal tests..blood pressure 110/85…good systolic, slightly high diastolic. She took it twice, but didn’t mention anything more about it. We talked about all of my symptoms and then she went to meet with the attending physician before they decided on any actions to take. The attending came in and he told me that I had enough symptoms of hypothyroidism to warrant a TSH test and they would also run a CBC. He went on to say that the majority of people who are tested for thyroid problems ultimately don’t have them, so not to worry. He said they’d call if the results were abnormal and otherwise, things looked fine and they’d see me next year.

I sort of regret not asking them to call me whether the results were in normal ranges or not. I am interested to know what my numbers are. I also am wondering if I should have requested that they check the T3 and T4 levels also, just to be sure. I haven’t heard from them, and it’s been 6 days, so I’m guessing everything is fine.

Except that it isn’t, because I still have the symptoms.

On one hand, I’m overjoyed, as I totally do not want to be sick. I finally have ridden myself of daily medication and the idea of having to go back on something synthetic isn’t really all that awesome in my mind. On the other hand, the idea that this is all in my head and nothing is wrong with me and I just feel like utter garbage for no reason whatsoever doesn’t seem like a good alternative. I know there are other things that could be off aside from my thyroid or iron levels or what not. It could by my psoriatic arthritis latching onto other joints…it can cause fatigue also. It could be an imbalance from going off hormonal birth control (an idea that my doctor did mention but didn’t delve into).

Could be anything.

Or nothing.

For now, I’m just going to try to get back into exercising, despite the fact that it has become incredibly difficult due to the fatigue and motivational problems.

(and the fact that I seem to have sustained some kind of running injury…but this post is long enough as it is…)

I know getting back in tune with that will breed more energy and good vibes…and those are things I currently need in abundance.