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.)
Great vision for the Presidential traverse! I think we could come up with some "lembas" cakes to keep you going as well! You know, the special elf food that never goes bad and sustains everyone indefinitely....
ReplyDeleteGo Joe!
Deborah
I know what you mean about the changing difficulty of sticking a needle in yourself, even when you know rationally that it doesn't hurt much. My own experience wasn't a trend toward getting harder, but just an unpredictable variability: one day it could take me 5 minutes to get up the courage to do it, and the next day it could go back to being nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteGarrett recently needed eye drops and eye cream for pink-eye. He was ... not happy about it. (I mean he would scream bloody murder even before they went in, and kept saying he was ready then saying, "No! wait! wait!" as Kate approached.) What he finally worked out was a routine of saying outloud, "3, 2, 1, Ready, set, go, Ready, steady, go," and then he would almost always let Kate do what she needed to do.
Inspired by him, I recently discovered that a ritualized series of moves makes it easier for me to jump into cold water, something that otherwise could take me 10 minutes to finally do.
Good luck with it.
Love, Karl
I'm actually more concerned with a vision drawn from a Tolkien movie, but that's for another time. 5k sounds like a solid goal - achievable and broad enough to allow you to surprise yourself but not so steep as to drive you to damage yourself just to achieve it. I think eating fresh berries is another good goal (not to mention doing so where a whole bunch of them grow...).
ReplyDeleteI know that I wouldn't be looking forward to the biopsy, and I never enjoyed giving myself shots for a few years. I think part of it is the hassle, part just wanting it to be over, and the biggest part was just thinking or anticipating too much, period (I know it's been fine the first hundred times, but...; or, I'm focusing on what I remember most, which is the pain). If it's any comfort, I hear that pain and most other sensory perceptions tend to weaken some with age...
JNR