Two weekends ago, Jan and I did a hill workout. In Champaign! (Park Haven Drive, which runs into Kirby Avenue from the south at Hessel Park, is a great training hill.)
We did my usual walk for 10 minutes, followed by intervals of jogging and walking, until we got the base of the hill. Then we jogged up the hill and walked down a few times. On the third up, I completely ran out of gas about three fourths of the way up and had to stop, but I think I was going too fast — in my case, that means something faster than 11 minutes per mile. We did a couple more, with me running more cautiously, and then we headed home.
The next couple of days, I couldn't jog. I'm pretty sure I strained a calf muscle. I didn't think that was possible, at 11 minutes per mile, but apparently it is! The rest of the week I gradually added a little more jogging each day to my walks as I recovered from my overuse injury. By this past weekend, I was jogging pain-free.
This past Saturday, Jan and I did a "long run." The jog-(walk) intervals were
1-(1)-2-(1)-3-(1)-4-(3)-5-(3)-4-(1)-3-(1)-2-(1)-1, followed by 4 1-(1)s, for a total of 29 minutes of jogging. PTPR! (Post-transplant personal record). With the warmup and interval and cooldown walking, the total was 5 miles. At the end of the longer jogs, still around 11min/mile pace, my heart rate gets close to 160. During the rests, it gets into the 120s.
I'm getting out almost every day, usually a mix of jogging and walking. Some days are just walking. One of these days, I'll remember how to run.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Lost in Translation (D+107) (M+25y)
Tomorrow (Monday) Jan and I drive up for regularly scheduled testing: pulmonary function test, bone marrow biopsy, and the usual bloodwork.
Assuming all is well, and I do, the next milestone is D+120, when I start going off the drug that suppresses my immune system.
This past Tuesday was our 25th anniversary. When it comes to "in sickness and in health," Jan has kindly left the physical "in sickness" part to me and reserved the supportive spouse role for herself. It works for us.
I didn't get Jan flowers on our anniversary. One restriction imposed on a patient with a suppressed immune system is no cut flowers. The flowers themselves aren't that bad, but the water they sit in is a breeding ground for mold, and mold is bad. For Mother's Day, we went with potted lilies that we kept on the patio and later planted, but it's not quite the same.
Clever boy that I am, I took advantage of Jan's first business trip since my diagnosis. (I'm not counting the one she was on, outside Las Vegas, on the day I was diagnosed. The conversation that night started like this: "Are you sitting down? No, really. You have to be sitting down.")
After arranging for a lineup of friends to be on call for 24-hour shifts in case of emergency, Jan and her magazine business partner Rich drove to Duluth for the Grandma's Marathon, an annual four-day trek for Jan.
Although we can't have flowers at home, there's no reason Jan can't have flowers at her hotel room. So I called a local florist and arranged to have flowers delivered. The florist was very helpful, working with me to make adjustments to the bouquet when they did not have the white lilies I wanted to go with the roses.
I had worked out a short poem during my morning outing. I was very pleased with myself.
It's clear I am the smarter of us two
'Cause you married me, and I married you
When I talked to Jan that evening, she didn't mention the flowers. I called the hotel and confirmed that they had been delivered, so they must have arrived after Jan checked in but before she returned from dinner. The next morning, I saw I had a text from her from later the previous night, loving the flowers.
When Jan got home today, after being home for a few hours, she somewhat sheepishly came over with the card that came with the flowers. She said she had been trying to figure out what it meant, but she really couldn't. The card read:
It's clear I am the martyr of us two
'Cause you married me, and I married you
Good grief! It's the perfect sentiment for the Dysfunctional Marriage Anniversary section of the card rack, right next to "25? It feels like 50!"
Well, here's to another 25 years of martyrdom, sweetie! So far, so good.
P.S. No need to bring the "in sickness" account into balance.
Assuming all is well, and I do, the next milestone is D+120, when I start going off the drug that suppresses my immune system.
This past Tuesday was our 25th anniversary. When it comes to "in sickness and in health," Jan has kindly left the physical "in sickness" part to me and reserved the supportive spouse role for herself. It works for us.
I didn't get Jan flowers on our anniversary. One restriction imposed on a patient with a suppressed immune system is no cut flowers. The flowers themselves aren't that bad, but the water they sit in is a breeding ground for mold, and mold is bad. For Mother's Day, we went with potted lilies that we kept on the patio and later planted, but it's not quite the same.
Clever boy that I am, I took advantage of Jan's first business trip since my diagnosis. (I'm not counting the one she was on, outside Las Vegas, on the day I was diagnosed. The conversation that night started like this: "Are you sitting down? No, really. You have to be sitting down.")
After arranging for a lineup of friends to be on call for 24-hour shifts in case of emergency, Jan and her magazine business partner Rich drove to Duluth for the Grandma's Marathon, an annual four-day trek for Jan.
Although we can't have flowers at home, there's no reason Jan can't have flowers at her hotel room. So I called a local florist and arranged to have flowers delivered. The florist was very helpful, working with me to make adjustments to the bouquet when they did not have the white lilies I wanted to go with the roses.
I had worked out a short poem during my morning outing. I was very pleased with myself.
It's clear I am the smarter of us two
'Cause you married me, and I married you
When I talked to Jan that evening, she didn't mention the flowers. I called the hotel and confirmed that they had been delivered, so they must have arrived after Jan checked in but before she returned from dinner. The next morning, I saw I had a text from her from later the previous night, loving the flowers.
When Jan got home today, after being home for a few hours, she somewhat sheepishly came over with the card that came with the flowers. She said she had been trying to figure out what it meant, but she really couldn't. The card read:
It's clear I am the martyr of us two
'Cause you married me, and I married you
Good grief! It's the perfect sentiment for the Dysfunctional Marriage Anniversary section of the card rack, right next to "25? It feels like 50!"
Well, here's to another 25 years of martyrdom, sweetie! So far, so good.
P.S. No need to bring the "in sickness" account into balance.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Milestone and Goal (D+100)
Milestone: I am 100 days into my post-transplant life.
According to the protocol I am following, D+100 is when you have another bone marrow biopsy. Mine is scheduled for Monday, eight days from now. There is no reason to expect anything but good news, given how well I have been doing since the transplant.
On the other hand, I am approaching it with slightly more dread than the previous ones. I don't know whether this is because the last one was painful in unexpected ways or because I am simple becoming less brave about pain.
I have also noticed declining bravery regarding my twice daily injections to treat my pulmonary embolism. They don't hurt any more than they did when I started, no worse than a brief pinch. But instead of it getting easier and easier to do, I find myself hesitating more, and using breathing techniques to ready myself, before the tiny stab. Maybe with everything else going so smoothly, I'm less sanguine about even brief and mild discomfort.
Goals: I am going to run a 5K this fall.
Before my diagnosis, I had been planning to concentrate on the 5K this year, though with actual time goals. I felt that with a little speed training on top of my existing distance base, I could break 20:00 early in the year, and then I would go from there. Under the circumstances, my new goal is simply to run a 5K.
It seems premature to worry about speed, based on my current walk/jogs. I have been gradually adding jogging intervals, and I am up to 20 or so minutes (total) out of a 50-minute outing. A couple times this week, I finished a few of the jogging intervals with 30-second runs. When I try to run fast, I feel like a marionette controlled by an unskilled puppeteer. I know my knees and heels are supposed to come up, and they do a little, but not as fast as I am telling them to and without much grace. These "sprints" are at about a 10:00/mile pace, and they push my heart rate to 160.
Fortunately, "this fall" gives me a big window in which to run a 5K, especially if I combine the common definition that starts with September and the astronomical definition that ends December 21.
Next year, I'm looking at a Presidential Traverse. This is an ambitious day hike covering the length of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains. 19.2 miles, nearly 9000 ft of elevation gain. It is roughly 14 hours of hiking, but my vision of it involves a lot of running. (If you have seen the Lord of the Rings movies, and you remember Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running tirelessly along dramatic mountain ridges, then you have seen my vision.)
According to the protocol I am following, D+100 is when you have another bone marrow biopsy. Mine is scheduled for Monday, eight days from now. There is no reason to expect anything but good news, given how well I have been doing since the transplant.
On the other hand, I am approaching it with slightly more dread than the previous ones. I don't know whether this is because the last one was painful in unexpected ways or because I am simple becoming less brave about pain.
I have also noticed declining bravery regarding my twice daily injections to treat my pulmonary embolism. They don't hurt any more than they did when I started, no worse than a brief pinch. But instead of it getting easier and easier to do, I find myself hesitating more, and using breathing techniques to ready myself, before the tiny stab. Maybe with everything else going so smoothly, I'm less sanguine about even brief and mild discomfort.
Goals: I am going to run a 5K this fall.
Before my diagnosis, I had been planning to concentrate on the 5K this year, though with actual time goals. I felt that with a little speed training on top of my existing distance base, I could break 20:00 early in the year, and then I would go from there. Under the circumstances, my new goal is simply to run a 5K.
It seems premature to worry about speed, based on my current walk/jogs. I have been gradually adding jogging intervals, and I am up to 20 or so minutes (total) out of a 50-minute outing. A couple times this week, I finished a few of the jogging intervals with 30-second runs. When I try to run fast, I feel like a marionette controlled by an unskilled puppeteer. I know my knees and heels are supposed to come up, and they do a little, but not as fast as I am telling them to and without much grace. These "sprints" are at about a 10:00/mile pace, and they push my heart rate to 160.
Fortunately, "this fall" gives me a big window in which to run a 5K, especially if I combine the common definition that starts with September and the astronomical definition that ends December 21.
Next year, I'm looking at a Presidential Traverse. This is an ambitious day hike covering the length of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains. 19.2 miles, nearly 9000 ft of elevation gain. It is roughly 14 hours of hiking, but my vision of it involves a lot of running. (If you have seen the Lord of the Rings movies, and you remember Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running tirelessly along dramatic mountain ridges, then you have seen my vision.)
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Hivectomy (D+92)
Medically speaking, all is well. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, and my blood counts are great. My followup appointment is a month from now, preceded by a bone marrow biopsy on June 20.
Perhaps sensing the lack of drama, our house came down with an infection of its own. It started on a Tuesday evening 11 days ago, when Jan noticed a lot of bees outside one of our living room windows. Around the same time, we noticed a few bees inside the house, apparently entering through light fixtures. Once we started paying attention, we could hear bees banging against the first floor ceiling from the spaces between the floor joists.
I called an exterminator that night and made an appointment for the next day.
The exterminator looked around, outside and inside. The bees were entering the walls of the house at the northeast corner, at the gap between the brick covering the first floor and the wood siding of the second floor. Again, we could hear them banging around in the spaces between joists. He was getting ready to describe the extermination program when I showed him one of the bees that we had killed inside the house. Hmmm. Might be a honeybee. He took it out to his truck for more careful analysis.
When he came back in, he told me he could not solve our insect problem. The commercial exterminators are not allowed to kill honeybees. He gave me the number of a local honeybee guy.
Talking to the local bee guy, I learned that I could, if I wanted, kill the bees as a homeowner. However, there are several reasons not to do this:
This past Thursday, Bee Guy 2 comes over with some scaffolding, his bee suit, empty bee boxes and comb frames. He admits he's a little nervous, and he's only done this once before. Yikes! Fortunately, Bee Guy 1 soon comes to join him. Bee Guy 1, who I call the Bee Whisperer, is the one who doesn't wear gloves and only sometimes wears headgear.
In the end, this worked out as well as it could have. They were behind the wood and not behind the brick, the hive was all within arm's reach, the queen and her colony were relocated to a box, and The Rookie got a new hive. Everybody is happy, except possibly the wife of The Rookie.
Perhaps sensing the lack of drama, our house came down with an infection of its own. It started on a Tuesday evening 11 days ago, when Jan noticed a lot of bees outside one of our living room windows. Around the same time, we noticed a few bees inside the house, apparently entering through light fixtures. Once we started paying attention, we could hear bees banging against the first floor ceiling from the spaces between the floor joists.
I called an exterminator that night and made an appointment for the next day.
The exterminator looked around, outside and inside. The bees were entering the walls of the house at the northeast corner, at the gap between the brick covering the first floor and the wood siding of the second floor. Again, we could hear them banging around in the spaces between joists. He was getting ready to describe the extermination program when I showed him one of the bees that we had killed inside the house. Hmmm. Might be a honeybee. He took it out to his truck for more careful analysis.
When he came back in, he told me he could not solve our insect problem. The commercial exterminators are not allowed to kill honeybees. He gave me the number of a local honeybee guy.
Talking to the local bee guy, I learned that I could, if I wanted, kill the bees as a homeowner. However, there are several reasons not to do this:
- Honeybees are valuable, pollinating local crops. I'm a big fan of bees. But not in the house.
- Killing a large colony leaves pounds of dead bees in your house, where they will rot and smell.
- Once the bees are dead, they no longer keep the hive cool by fanning their wings, and the wax of the honeycomb melts.
- The melted wax can stain walls and ceilings.
- The honey, now released from the comb and no longer protected by the bees, attracts ants and rodents.
So, the preferred approach is to move the hive. When the hive is in a tree or under eaves, this is fairly easy. When the hive is inside a house's walls, it can be a major project. If the hive is beyond reach behind the bricks, you would have several unhappy choices: remove the brick (costly); remove the hive from the inside of the house (costly, and you get a lot of unhappy bees in your house for a while); exterminate the bees (bad, as explained above).
Bee Guy 1 couldn't come to the house in the next several days, so he referred me to Bee Guy 2. Bee Guy 2 came out on Friday and confirmed what the exterminator had told me: The bees are building a hive within the walls. We hope it's behind the wood of the second floor and not the brick of the first floor. He thinks he can come out over the weekend to pull back wood siding and see what's up.
But he doesn't make it over Memorial Day weekend, having forgotten about other plans. He is not able to make it until Thursday — beekeeping is a relatively recent hobby for him, and he has a full-time job. In the meantime, the bees are making themselves at home. Fortunately, they are happy with their chosen spot within the walls and are no longer scouting out the rest of the house.
This past Thursday, Bee Guy 2 comes over with some scaffolding, his bee suit, empty bee boxes and comb frames. He admits he's a little nervous, and he's only done this once before. Yikes! Fortunately, Bee Guy 1 soon comes to join him. Bee Guy 1, who I call the Bee Whisperer, is the one who doesn't wear gloves and only sometimes wears headgear.
 |
| The eventual new home for the hive. |
 |
| The Bee Whisperer and The Rookie start to pry off the wood siding. |
 |
| The smoke calms the bees down, for some reason. It seems to bother the Bee Guys, though. |
 |
| Looking west from the northeast corner of the house, behind the siding, they see a mass of bees clustered on insulation. |
 |
| They pull out the insulation and look for the hive. |
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| They dump the first load of bees into the box. |
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| Behind the insulation lies the hive. |
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| You can tell the hive is new because the comb is so white. |
 |
| The Bee Whisperer pulls out sheets of honeycomb (with his bare hands), and The Rookie puts them into the box. They keep checking each comb for the queen, because if you don't get her, your efforts are wasted. The colony will just rebuild where the queen is. |
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| After all the comb is removed, there is still a mass of bees huddled between floor joists. The Bee Whisperer coaxes them onto some newspaper and, thankfully, spots the queen in the mass. The queen is 50% longer than the rest, but otherwise looks like a bee. Good eyes! |
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| Once the queen is in the box, along with much of the comb, the box becomes the colony's new home. |
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Be Careful What You Wish For (D+89)
I don't believe in making New Year's resolutions. I figure that if you have a change that's worth making, why wait until January 1 of next year to start? Of course, I rarely make resolutions at other times of the year either, so I'm really just undemanding of myself year-round.
However, I did sort of have a goal for the year — lose 10 pounds. Over the course of a year, for a guy weighing nearly 200 pounds, that's not very ambitious, and it seemed attainable through only minor adjustments to eating (a little less) and exercise (a little more). I had lost about 10 pounds the previous year, and I figured I could do it again.
And now, only five months into the year: goal achieved! I currently weigh roughly 15 pounds less than I did at the beginning of the year. It's amazing what a few rounds of chemotherapy, hospital food, a stem cell transplant, and an intestinal uprising can do. However, I still think my original plan was better.
Unfortunately, it looks and feels like most of the loss was muscle. My belly button is still more of an inny than it was in my super-fit college track days, so I don't think I lost much fat there. I don't know how much of the muscle loss is atrophy due to disuse and how much is loss due to energies being directed elsewhere. I had been lifting regularly for much of last year, which had not changed my weight much but had traded some fat for muscle. Now, my chest, legs, and arms are noticeably thinner than they were in December. My clothes are baggier. Fortunately, we all know I don't care much how well my clothes fit (or that they match) (or that they are not inside out).
Where I most notice the loss of muscle is on my morning walk/jogs. In April, I started adding a minute of jogging every five minutes or so. It felt hard. In May, I worked up to a 2:30 jog/2:30 walk pattern. Still hard. Today, the first day of June, I moved to 3:00 jog/2:00 walk. The jogging is slower than 11:00/mile, according to my running gadget.
My gadget also tells me that 11:00/mile pushes my heart rate to 155 pretty quickly, which explains why that "speed" feels hard. I don't feel like I could run much faster if I tried. My legs ain't got no giddy-up! I know the speed will come back (mostly), as I keep jogging a little longer and a little faster, and as I add some strength training.
Eventually, I'll make the transition from jogging to running — I don't know what the official distinction is, but I know it when I'm doing it. For me, jogging is like walking, only faster, while running is like flying, only slower.
My mid-term goal is to run (not jog) a 5K this fall. It will be the slowest race I have ever run, and it's going to be great.
However, I did sort of have a goal for the year — lose 10 pounds. Over the course of a year, for a guy weighing nearly 200 pounds, that's not very ambitious, and it seemed attainable through only minor adjustments to eating (a little less) and exercise (a little more). I had lost about 10 pounds the previous year, and I figured I could do it again.
And now, only five months into the year: goal achieved! I currently weigh roughly 15 pounds less than I did at the beginning of the year. It's amazing what a few rounds of chemotherapy, hospital food, a stem cell transplant, and an intestinal uprising can do. However, I still think my original plan was better.
Unfortunately, it looks and feels like most of the loss was muscle. My belly button is still more of an inny than it was in my super-fit college track days, so I don't think I lost much fat there. I don't know how much of the muscle loss is atrophy due to disuse and how much is loss due to energies being directed elsewhere. I had been lifting regularly for much of last year, which had not changed my weight much but had traded some fat for muscle. Now, my chest, legs, and arms are noticeably thinner than they were in December. My clothes are baggier. Fortunately, we all know I don't care much how well my clothes fit (or that they match) (or that they are not inside out).
Where I most notice the loss of muscle is on my morning walk/jogs. In April, I started adding a minute of jogging every five minutes or so. It felt hard. In May, I worked up to a 2:30 jog/2:30 walk pattern. Still hard. Today, the first day of June, I moved to 3:00 jog/2:00 walk. The jogging is slower than 11:00/mile, according to my running gadget.
My gadget also tells me that 11:00/mile pushes my heart rate to 155 pretty quickly, which explains why that "speed" feels hard. I don't feel like I could run much faster if I tried. My legs ain't got no giddy-up! I know the speed will come back (mostly), as I keep jogging a little longer and a little faster, and as I add some strength training.
Eventually, I'll make the transition from jogging to running — I don't know what the official distinction is, but I know it when I'm doing it. For me, jogging is like walking, only faster, while running is like flying, only slower.
My mid-term goal is to run (not jog) a 5K this fall. It will be the slowest race I have ever run, and it's going to be great.
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