Finding the Pandemic Fire

 She's living in a world, and it's on fire

Feeling the catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away...

                                                                                       - Alicia Keyes

I suppose you could say in the weeks, albeit months, that led into my vacation a few weeks ago it did feel a bit like the world on fire.  There were swarms of patients for COVID testing, navigating my way through virtual summer school for my youngest, all while trying to entertain kids who literally were tired of looking at the same walls of the house day in and day out since March.  Beyond all of that I was trying to hold my own feet to the fire as I fought to stay fit with races still on the books, without the help of my gym family and trainers.  For the kids as much as myself, I carefully announced the count down until we were leaving every day.  We marked the days off the calendar and somehow knew life would be just a little bit better flown away from here for a little bit.  

In the midst of all of this prevacation hubub, a crushing blow that Spartan cancelled the whole season.  Everything I worked so hard for suddenly erased in one email.  My foundation cofounder and my son, who is my social media director, had planned for the Tahoe Spartan Beast as our secret team bonding race for 2020.  The quintessential Spartan on rough terrain with the best of the best.  I had trained for a year for this, counting the months, training the inclines, lifting the weights, I was going to be ready pandemic or no pandemic.  As if COVID has not robbed society of enough, now even my personal goals were taken from me.  I suppose you could say this huge loss had me a little lost as to how to pick up and move forward.  

So, I did what I always do. I threw myself a big pity party with the only exercise being done the week I was gone was a 9 mile bike ride one time.  I whined and complained to my accountability partner.  You see it was hot where I was, so why run?    A few days off?  So what.  No races anyway.  Oh yes.  I had hit the mother load of negativity.  Which for someone who is a motivator by trade, is probably not the best head space to be in.  I fought hard to try to put that aside and spend my days on vacation with some much needed reconnection  time with my children.  We swam in the pool, watched the dolphins in the ocean and even played with a school of jellyfish.  All of this was well and good, but as the days wore on I knew where I was headed.  Right back into the fire.  

With an eleven hour car ride home, I had a lot of time to think about the roaring blaze that was coming at me faster than I wanted.  Something had to give.  No races.  No big hairy goals.  Crazy life.  What was I going to do?  My gym had just opened for outdoor workouts.  I was on the fence about paying for burpees on the pavement in scorching heat but a friend talked me into doing it anyway.  Well if she could, I could I guess.

Oh, we got our feet on the ground

And we're burning it down

Oh, got our head in the clouds and we're not coming down

Here I was one week ago.  It was 87 degrees and humid out. I was under a huge canopy which had converted a parking lot into a makeshift studio.  I was sitting on a piece of equipment  I have had a five year love/hate relationship with.  The rower.  Hello my old friend.  As I stared down at the familiar footplates and drum of water, suddenly, I had nothing but love for that thing.  There was one of my trainers, right there in person.  Another person I knew was across the way from me.  People.  My people.  There was music, familiar coaching, heavy weights and 45 minutes of the most normal thing I have experienced since March.  Oh yes.  Here's my spark, right where I left it.  I was drenched, tired and more excited than I have been in months.  Since that time, I have gone nearly every day.   I have open blisters on my hands from rowing, as my calluses that existed in March are long gone.  I have firm reminders that although I never stopped working out on my own, there were maybe some muscle groups that have had some neglect in these months making difficult this week to sit down at times or even lift my coffee.  One thing is for sure, I would not trade one single thing about it as I am suddenly fanning the flames of the old me that existed before the monster that is COVID sent the world into a tailspin. 

This girl is on fire,

This girl is on fire

This little tiny bit of normalcy has given me the opportunity to bust out of the oppressive pandemic mindset and begin to brightly look ahead in ways I have not been able to recently.  I suppose all of us got a little lost in the pandemic with the cancellations of major events, and the emotional battles over the goings on in the world.  However, I think the trick is to find that little spark.  That little speck of prepandemic normalcy, fan those flames and come back as the whole damn fire. Only in the glory of the giant blaze will we see the best is yet to come.

Life Lessons from the Mama Bird

Last night, I took my children to the beach as we are on our annual, albeit socially distant, vacation to the Outer Banks.  I assured them if they just sat still, they could watch the crabs run around as they tend to do at night.  Sure enough, when we got there, there were holes all over the place, with plenty of crab tracks.  However, as with most things, this advice was ineffective.  A crab would pop out of his hole and my youngest two would go running with excitement screaming,"Look!  I see one Mom!"  I reminded them over and over, sit still, be patient and you will see way more than one.  This was to no avail.  The excitement was too much and like most forms of wild life, the big bad humans were just too scary and it was time to flee.

With this in mind, imagine my surprise when we discovered a completely different scene when  we returned to the rental house.  A bird had formed a nest on the supports of the back patio and was patient and unwavering in her guarding of the eggs she was surely perched upon. It was not just any bird actually.  It was a dove. No amount of excited squeals or vibration from children on the patio caused her to do much more than blink.  It would seem that her concern for her babies far outweighed the big scary humans invading her space.

As a mom of five children of trauma adopted from various places in the world, I can honestly say, this simple mom instinct is one I know well.  It's the setting myself aside to champion the fight to have the outside world understand the unique make up of each of my children.  I was quick to take on teachers and school boards who could not understand how spending three years in abject poverty on the side of a mountain, with English not being their first language, could make for a very different kindergartner than the affluent children from the suburbs occupying the same classroom.  I took on friends who could not understand that various orphanage behaviors based on living in "fight or flight mode" in the early years did not constitute simple rebellion, it was a deeper seeded issue that needed understanding.  I disregarded even some family who were not so sure five adoptions, including children of color, was the greatest idea I ever had, but so be it.  I was the mama bird, strong and unwavering.  No amount of noise or discord would stand in the way of me championing the causes of my children.

As far as we know that bird has been there at least 48 hours without moving, anxiously awaiting the magical arrival of her babies.  Studying this aviary symbol of hope closely makes me wonder about how many times we stand in the way of our own fears for everyone else except ourselves.  How many times do we let the slightest vibration, the slightest set back, cause us to give up and flee?  How many times do we let comments or behavior of other big scary humans knock us right out of the nest before the magic happens?

Maybe instead we need to realize we all have a little mama bird in us.  We all possess the ability to look fear and past failures in the eye and peacefully stand our ground to cultivate our proverbial life goal eggs until they can burst open and we can witness the magic that lives inside.  How do we know?  We do it for everyone else.  It just may be time to give ourselves the same priority.  I have a feeling if we do that we will learn the best is yet to come.

Biting the Dust on Dog Water

Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this?

Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

Out of the doorway the bullets rip

To the sound of the beat

Another one bites the dust

Another one bites the dust

It's fairly ironic that this would come on as I made my maiden voyage on the stepper today after being sidelined for a week.  As the song played I relived the reality of last Tuesday night.  Here I was fresh off my latest insane work jag, and crazy speed training schedule.  It was late and I was spinning around doing odds and ends in the house before finally calling it quits and attempted a simple trip from the kitchen across the tile headed to the bedroom.  I had missed the water that existed outside of the dog's dish, I remember the sensation of the slip, the slow motion loss of balance, the flash as my face hit the pantry door and the sickening sound of my left knee hitting the tile.  I would get up, pace around, try to inspect my lip in the bathroom mirror as I knew it was cut.  Shit.  Light burned out.  I would then walk around the dining room assuring myself my knee was ok and once again, try to cross the same damn floor, only slower this time to my own bathroom within the bedroom.  It was then I noticed it.  There was blood on the floor.  There was a lot of blood on the floor.  I felt my lip, cut but not bleeding, knee already turning purple, also not bleeding.  Hmmmm.... I slowly became aware, my left index finger hurt.  I looked at it and found it was bleeding, and surely the nailbed doesn't normally look like that.  I would wrap it up just as the 14 year old would come down and trace the trail of blood to me.  I assured him I was fine, just a little cut, no biggie.

When I got up in the morning it was clear it may be a bit worse than I thought.  A band aid was not going to do it.  It had bled all night until I found myself in the midst of training two people at work that morning, asking a colleague to look at it.  By the time he was done, I found myself having a small procedure I won't get into, as it made me a little queasy, and some xrays.  The reality was I had an open fracture courtesy of my pantry door.  I had a purple lip too but thanks to the magic of COVID, I am in a mask all the time and nobody could see it.  Honestly?  I wasn't sure if I should be sickened by all of it or downright pissed that I can manage to run 14 Spartans with no injury, but walking across the kitchen was clearly a problem.  Yep, I bit the dust on dog water.

Are you happy, are you satisfied?

How long can you stand the heat?

I guess you could say in the days that followed I would have a little PTSD, as I now refuse to walk on that floor barefoot and every now and then my mind wanders to the flash of my face hitting the door. Every day I find other splatters of blood in places I had missed with the initial clean up.  Today?  Said light switch in the bathroom where the bulbs had been burned out now replaced and illuminating my blood perfectly.  I further had cause to hit the pause button on my training schedule.  I was not going to run and risk elevating my heart rate as my finger already had it's own throbbing heart beat.  I put in 60 hours of work in the week that followed my tumble seeing crazy numbers of COVID patients which was completely annoying as my finger did not fit in a glove easily.  When I finally took a day off, I was completely overwhelmed with the things to do at home and was having anxiety over paused race training.

So I did what I always do, checked in with the accountability partner, and when I say check in, I mean whine about my finger and how it is getting in the way of everything.  I committed to walk that day to see how it went.  It was clunky with the bulky splint on my finger but I even managed a light jog.  Following that was a successful trip to the hand surgeon, and other household errands.  Then it happened  I got a difficult challenge.  As I was busy complaining about the million things that had piled up on me when I was busy with work, I was challenged to a night off.  No work, no bills, no blog, hence this is days late, just breathe.  Oh ok.  A night off?  I wasn't sure I could do it.  I had charts from my work days, I had bills to pay, taxes to prepare, a blog to write, business related things to do, get my kid ready for his summer school calls the next day, laundry......and, and, and.....  a night off?  Damn accountability partner was killing me, now I was just going to be further behind, but I was doing it.

I would find myself on my back patio talking to a friend, admiring my flowers, and enjoying the cool breeze with an adult beverage.  Yes.  I felt guilty.  Yes.  I had so many things undone, but to take the time to be present, I found I suddenly could breathe.  I would later go to bed and find myself getting a full night's rest that night which is definitely a rarity for this card carrying insomniac.  In the day that followed, yesterday, I would break company records in actual number of patient's seen, and not even miss a beat.

Today, my finger was settling down and my lip is nearly healed so I was back at it.  Three miles on the stepper at a sub 8 minute pace, renewed from the simple act of taking the night off.  It makes me wonder how many times its going to take for me to learn the lesson.  I tend to live life at 100 mph.  I am driven to be the best I can be at all times at home and at work often pushing so hard I forget there are cool breezes, good friends, pretty flowers and this crazy renewal thing called sleep.  I suppose I should be thankful for biting the dust on dog water because it helped me to see that sometimes pushing hard is simply too hard and if I am not willing to slow down, surely the universe will find a way.

As for tonight?  I think I'll go sit on my patio again.  I will take a second night off in the same week, crazy, I know.  I'm pretty sure out there I will begin to see that sometimes biting the dust on dog water clears the way to see that the best is yet to come.

Lessons from an Upside Down Turtle

I guess you could say the turtle was my mom's spirit animal.  She always loved the ocean, and living in Florida, she took the plight of turtle nesting season to heart.  She would send newspaper articles from the Florida newspapers outlining that season's plan to protect her favorite creature.  In fact, the last time I saw her she was excitedly showing me the turtle nest that had cropped up on her own lanai.  I believe she thought those eggs held her very own children.  Unfortunately, she would pass away suddenly shortly thereafter and miss the excitement of her brand new babies.  I suppose that is why running on the Mohawk Hudson Bike Trail these days is usually comforting.  That trail is lined with turtle nests this time of year and nearly every day I can spot turtles wandering around, or in the case of one particular turtle I see a lot, simply four turtle feet sticking straight up in the air out of a sea of mud.  It is truly a hilarious site.  In fact, I have seen that turtle enough that I am beginning to wonder if it can even survive like that.  Nonetheless, running right there is like having mom right there with me as I go.

Friday I decided to go hang with my turtle friends for a simple four miler.  I texted my accountability partner with the plan.  A simple,"two out, two back."  Yeah, I had that.  I set off on the trail feeling strong.  I had my virtual running coach coming through my headphones reminding me of my form, my breathing, my cadence.  I was in the zone, the sun was shining, and I even saw two friends I have dearly missed as I have not seen them since before the pandemic.  Oh yes, strong mile one.  Pretty soon the tide began to change.  Yes, the sun was out, in fact it was beating down on me.  It was 85 degrees and some obnoxiously high percentage of humidity.  I pushed through mile two trying desperately to maintain focus, but the reality was I was hot.  I was thirsty.  I was being dive bombed by these Kamikaze deer flies that seem to have taken a liking to me.  Not to mention the turtle nests that were normally so comforting, instead were reminding me that in a week it will be the three year anniversary of my mother's abrupt exit from this Earth.  

By mile 2.2 I would find myself walking.  I was no longer listening to the coach.  Instead, I was attending to the wave of grief that hit me all at once.  In fact, I found myself walking the remainder of the distance,  looking at the baby turtles along the way.  I was a bit relieved the deer flies were leaving me alone, as they are territorial and tend to attack when you are moving quickly. However, I was mostly wondering what life would be like if my mom was still here.    At the end of it all, I came to realize my head space had completely interrupted what I set out to do and I had to report the epic fail to my accountability partner who would assure me it was alright to grieve. 

Yesterday, I had to think long and hard about what it was my mom would have actually wanted from me in a time like this.  She was a strong independent woman who didn't take shit from anyone.  She would want me to pick my head up, take control and move ahead.  It seemed like a tall order, but as I often dish out the,"fake it til you make it advice" I supposed I had to get to it.    I was afraid I would let my accountability partner down again, so I didn't want to commit much there.  However, with that notion, I found myself asking a new question.  What if I made a promise to myself and followed through?  Historically I have not been good at this sort of thing, but what if I did it?  Seemed a bit on the terrifying side, but I was willing to try.  Besides, nobody would know if I failed but me, a free pass loophole from my usual commitment to accountability.

I ended up ghosting my accountability partner, committed to six miles on the stepper and got to work.  Point 4 mile intervals with heavy upper body weights in between.  Off I went, with the first few miles strong, and the last ones stronger.  Even the weights got heavier as I went.  When I hit mile six, I tossed in another .2, because 6 miles was just so damn close to a 10k, why not finish the job and be better than I planned?  I ended the workout with a PR, drenched, free of the grief that overtook me the day before and the air of a surprised satisfaction knowing I was much more capable of trusting myself than I ever thought.  

I ended up doing some reading on that crazy upside down turtle.  As it turns out, turtles do that to slow their metabolism down to barely existent, take on life giving oxygen from the surrounding water and simply recharge.  You know, I'm beginning to think those four feet sticking out of a sea of mud were not ridiculous after all.  Maybe that turtle had it right.  In fact, it is entirely possible my run on Friday was not the epic fail I made it out to be.  Maybe when life dive bombs you with the vengeance of a deer fly, the thing to do is slow down, stop the attack, lean into the hard stuff, trust your own abilities and don't forget to look for the turtles.  In the end, my mom may have missed her own baby turtles but it would seem she has sent plenty for me to enjoy to serve as a not so subtle reminder that the best is yet to come.

Speed Training Meets Old Demons

Anyone who knows anything about me and my wellness journey knows I come from a lifetime of obesity.  Honestly, the landscape was quite different growing up in the 70's and 80's.  There were no electronics until the advent of Atari. While we are on the subject, I was quite skilled at Donkey Kong,  there was something about smashing barrels with a large sledge that gave a certain satisfaction, ahhh.... I digress.  Anyway, as a result kids were healthier.  There was nothing to do but play outside until night fell in the summers.  Consequently, come school time, you would see the emergence of the token fat kid.  The one kid who stood out from the rest.  The one picked last in gym class, or if the gym teacher felt sorry for them, they were made team captain and did the picking.  Let's just say, I was that kid.  I remember the uncomfortable picking when I was made team captain.  The mutterings by the other kids just a bit too loud,"Not me.  Don't pick me."  There was the complete lack of eye contact as I stared down the row of children hoping someone wouldn't be angry with me because they wanted nothing more than to be on another team.

Following the school yard antics of elementary school, came the horrible timed runs of PE class in junior high and high school.  There was the Presidential Fitness mile run.  Each time I was forced to do this, it always ended the same way.  I attempted to run, where I never did outside of these godforsaken events. I wouldn't get far before  I would end up an obese, wheezy mess, finishing at a painful walk well behind everyone else, left with facing the rest of the class at the finish as I tried to just make it all go away. A humiliation I would not wish on anyone.

Oh, I have plenty of blog entries on this very subject.  I often talk about taking on this race or that, crossing a finish, getting a medal.....  oh yeah.  From obese bullied kid to Spartan racing badass.  Yes this is historic underdog crap.  I even have standard phrases I use when people talk about my racing, 14 Spartans, 2 Dopeys, 5 half marathons, countless10k's and 5k's....  People complement me and as I admittedly do not handle compliments well, I end up explaining,"I was obese my whole life.  I didn't start running until the age of 45.  I am 50 now.  So, yes, I have done a lot of races, but I'm slow.  I won't break any speed records, but can run a long time.  I'm just glad to be able to be out there at this age."

What follows this conversation is usually something on the order of,"if I can, you can," and yes.  I believe this is true with every fiber of my being, and inspiring others on their journeys is something that matters a whole lot to me.  However, there is something I must rat myself out on here.  "I'm just glad to be out there at this age."  That right there?  The biggest bullshit lie I have sold to myself in some time.  Yes, running at 50  That's cool and all, but you know what's cooler?  The thing I never would dare to think about?  Running fast.  Yet, I never seem to get all that much faster despite years of training, and as a result the,"I can't" on this subject is quite loud in my head.

 "I can't because I have never been a runner and at 5 ft 10 and large framed, I'm not built for it."

 "I can't because in a year I have put on 15 pounds of muscle and that will slow me down. "

"I have proven I can't because in years of training everyone else got faster but me, and I train hard."

"I can't"

"I can't"

"I can't"


And so it goes, the self rationalization that leads me back to,"hey, I'm just glad to be doing it."  Round and round it goes.  I suppose everyone on a journey like mine should have an accountability partner.  You know, the guy you love to hate.  The one you promise stupid crap to, hate him every moment of doing it, than appreciate it when the tasks are done.  I was talking about this very thing to him recently.  He kept saying,"you can run fast.  You just don't know you can run fast."  Again, that guy is full of crap, but let me prove to him how much.  He suggested a running coach.  Oh right.  That's what I need.  Someone to observe my slow running up close and personal to remind me how slow it actually is and telling me I am doing it all wrong.  Sure, that's a great idea, it's like junior high all over again.

As the discussion with any good accountability partner goes, the subject never seemed to die.  Over and over with the,"you can run faster.  You just don't know you can."  I decided I would show him he didn't know what he was talking about by hitting a happy medium.  I took on a speed training app with a virtual coach.  Saved the in person humiliation, and I didn't have to talk about it anymore.  I took on my first speed run a couple weeks ago. In trying to run fast for the first interval, I realized I was anxious.  I held my breath.  I couldn't breathe.  My chest felt tight.  I was moving my legs as fast as I could and it felt out of control.  It was all the things of the junior high mile, and my head screamed at me to stop.  It was then I realized I wasn't listening to the coaching at all.  I would take the first recovery to reset and vowed to be smarter for the second interval, as I had many more intervals to do.  Why did I do this?  This was going to be as awful as I thought, but then I started really focusing on what the coach was saying.  I needed to run relaxed and strong.  Control my breathing.  Yeah, none of that took place the first time.  I was sure I was slower but thought well, let me start someplace, and at least that didn't feel so bad.  The virtual coach repeatedly reminding me to relax, and each time he did, I realized the anxiety of it had crept back in.  This was going to be  a challenge for sure.  I couldn't see my interval paces while I was running, so it was a bit of a surprise when I was done and I would see I ran some of the intervals at a 9:30 pace.  I'll be damned.  I guess I could maybe be faster than I thought, as my last 10k was a 13 min pace and my last few 5k's at nearly a 12 min pace.

Since that time I have done a lot of other speed training runs, with my last PR of 7:22 for that same interval a mere two weeks later.  I guess the question is this.  Did I discover some miracle app that made me two minutes faster in two weeks?  If I did, I'd sure like a piece of that.....  No.  I had the realization that all those demons I so carefully thought I slayed along the way never totally went away.  In fact, if anything I had become firmly anchored to them, allowing them to dictate my speed to avoid the discomfort instead of learning what this new version of myself was actually capable of.  I have decided that 2020 will be my year of speed training.  Each run I get a little more confident, a little less anxious and faster than I ever thought I could be and, in case there was a question.  Yes, I did go back to my accountability partner with a cleansing post 7:22 pace,"I was wrong.  You were right.  I needed a coach and to believe I could be faster."  Damn that guy is annoying, and if I am truly being transparent, he's not the first guy to tell me I could run faster.  Off hand I count four others in recent years.  Anyway, this experience makes me wonder how many times do we unknowingly hold on to the things that slow us down, sugarcoating the contentment of the situation, and ignore the people in our lives who see our potential when we cannot see it ourselves, because let's face it, demon slaying is hard work, running slow is not.  I have a sneaking suspicion I will get faster this summer, and look out post pandemic racing.  My best is yet to come.

Learning Balance from the Stress of a Hibiscus

I suppose you could say COVID has changed even my daily life despite being a healthcare worker.  During the height of the pandemic something very unusual happened for me.  My urgent care was not busy.  Coverage was cut and I found myself with strings of days off.  Kids home.  No school.  Vacation cancelled.  No place to go.....  attacking the laundry list of home projects that had piled up during my year on the road for work it was.  I attacked these like I do anything else, 100 mph of throwing shit away, scrubbing nooks and crannies and replacing old broken crap.  I think I truly frightened the children, as they feared they would be tossed out next.  With the biggest of the projects finished it was time to turn my attention to my yard.  If I am being honest, my other half's heart surgery two years ago coupled with me on the road for a year for work, had left my yard in sorry shape.  With little else to do,a few weeks ago, I would find myself frequenting the garden center.  One trip adding lilies, another hanging baskets,  and multiple trips later to get a total of 82 bags of mulch to finally get my yard to be presentable.

I have to say, I don't really have all that much experience with this sort of thing.  In my adult life, if I had flowers it was two things.  It was typically something in the bulb family or hanging baskets.  I found bulbs to be simple plants that are fairly hardy, tough to screw up and come back year after year with very little effort.  Hanging baskets were similar.  Simply read the label, consider the placement and see how much sun they need..... and done. 

In the past couple of weeks, work has been very busy with the start COVID testing, so simple watering here and there was all I really needed to do to keep things going in my yard.  This week though, I took the leap.  I found myself with an unexpected few hours off.   A little time on my hands had  me wondering what I could put in on my newly appointed outdoor space brick patio (It had been power washed, redone and fire pit added on a previous pandemic boredom day).  A simple trip to the garden center and I would find myself with two braided hibiscus trees, a peach one and a pink one, well according to the label.  Neither had bloomed yet.  What exactly did I know about hibiscus trees?  Not a damn thing, but the braided trunks looked cool for sure. 

So, I did what I always do.  I bought some dirt designed for trees and shrubs and plopped them in that and watered.  Easy peasy.  Then it happened.  In the days that followed, the peach one would have a few leaves turn yellow.  Then they began to fall off.  I would pull off the dead stuff and the next day there would be more.  The pink one did not have that problem.  In fact, it had a bloom.  A simple consultation with Google would tell me my poor peach hibiscus tree was "stressed."  Ok.  A stressed tree?   It gave me multiple different explanations as to why.  Too much water, not enough water, too much sun, not enough sun, some variety of spider, the PH was wrong......  and go.  It was my job to figure it out.  Well crap.  I have clearly left the simplicity of bulbs and premade baskets and entered the deeply emotional world of the hibiscus.  However, I like a challenge and was not ready to let my little tree die. 

Multiple times a day I found myself babysitting my hibiscus tree as if it were my own child.  I test the soil.  No, it's moist.  I let it dry out a few days, as maybe it was too moist, no change.  Soil PH?  I got nothin'.  More leaves falling, no blooms.....  Now I'm stressed right along with my little tree.  Was my tree going to make it?  Yet here's the pink one on flower number three, with a few yellow leaves that were there when I planted it.  Yesterday, before my shift, I found myself just staring at the trees.  I was determined to figure this out.  What was the difference?  Same soil.  Same water.  Same flower food.  It was then I noticed it.  The peach one was placed in a corner.  It made sense to have one on either side of the patio door for the sake of symmetry.  Then I realized, that same symmtry meant far less sunlight, so  I moved it next to it's sibling.  This afternoon, just 24 hours later, I would walk out to no new yellow leaves and the most beautiful bloom I have ever seen, with new growth on all of the branches and my tree was back in the game. 

All of this shuffling around and concern for my stressed out tree has me thinking about how many times I take life at 100 mph.  I carefully balance working the long shift, taking on school for the kids, home obligations, running a business and race training.  Every minute of every day snatched up with a list of tasks so large I could never possibly get it all done in the time I have.  I'd love to say it doesn't end up for me the same way as it does for my stressed out tree.  I'd love to say I don't have insomnia or that there are not times that clumps of my hair come out in the shower much like my stressed out leaf shedding tree.  As my work hours have ramped up lately, I can neither confirm, nor deny that has been the case as of late.

However, this weekend I had on my list a virtual 5K.  A race put on by some friends who always support me, and as it was a good cause so I had registered twice.  So, yesterday, I found myself at the trail head staring down the 10k with a bit of anxiety as most of my long runs as of late have been cut short due to other obligations.  I would set out on the trail and run solid for an hour and 18 minutes.  Along the way, I found bright sunshine, cool temps, even splits and even saw a gigantic turtle.  At the end, I would see a good friend running the same race and she would cheer me on to the finish.  All of my other friends did the run as well and posted their results in a community effort that felt like the first normal thing this spring.  In the shower that followed, there were no hair clumps and last night, despite my mild sunburn from a glorious run,  I admittedly slept a bit better for the first time in a while.  I suppose we all need to pay better attention to the times our own proverbial leaves are falling off, and our blooms of progress are no longer present.  We need to see that at times, although the design of life appears to be logical and symmetrical, strictly adhering to it at 100 mph can leave us in the dark corners of stress actually achieving very little balance and stunting our own ability to move forward and grow.  Maybe the trick is to find those people in our lives who can help us to pump the brakes a bit, pull us from the dark to join them in the light so that we can once again find balance and  burst into full bloom just the way we were meant to.  It is only in those moments we will see the best is yet to come. 

Doing the Awful Thing

When I graduated from NP school, I had two jobs to pick from.  One offered to me in an elevator on the fly one evening as I headed to the ER for one of my last RN shifts, and the other a formal interview and vetting process.  Me, being me, went with the on the fly offer and hoped for the best.  It happened to be in neurosurgery with a doc I had done some stroke research with and was regarded as the greatest local surgeon of that time.  He was an iconic member of the medical community and the most well respected guy around.  I suppose that's why the late night elevator offer seemed perfectly reasonable.  Besides, I kinda knew the guy so that made it easier out of the gate.

I would start my eight years there with no idea what I was doing.  Dr. B patiently took me under his wing and taught me just about all there was to know about the nervous system and the various pathologies that existed under the realm of surgery.  There were disc herniations and brain tumors.  Hydrocephalus and traumatic bleeds.  As for me?  I grew to love every minute.  There is a certain order to the body's wiring that clicked perfectly with my fairly linear brain.  Besides, I had a mentor that had a love for fast cars, which went perfectly with his work life which was pedal to the metal, 100mph at all times.  Coming from an ER background, and a self proclaimed adrenaline junkie, this suited me just fine.

Over time we developed sort of a dance we did.  On surgery days, I handled the office, hospital rounds, and the ER, and he would catch up with me between cases to handle pressing things.  Those calls always went the same way.  I gave him the rundown of the day, and ultimately would present cases waiting in the ER.  Early on I tried so hard to be prepared, ready to answer any question, preferring not to get stumped by the master.  I had my facts straight, like "62 year old male anticoagulated on plavix with a right sided subdural hematoma with 4mm of shift...."

Oh yes.  I had this.  That is until he would stop me,"Amy...."

"Yes?"

He would ask,"Did you do that awful thing?"

"Um..."

He would then ever so gently say,"Go look at the patient."

I learned early on that he had been trained in an era there was no CT scan, no MRI, no fancy lasers or 3D imaging.  There was him and a patient.  Period.  He would teach me that your patient will always tell you what is wrong with them if you ask enough questions and do the right neurological exam.  The only reason to get imaging is to confirm what you already know. As he would say,"we don't treat films, we treat people."

I would come to learn that very often the patient did not look anything like the scan.  They were talking when they shouldn't be or unconscious when the studies did not necessarily support that and the studies we had were not capturing the problem.  I would also come to learn that his practice style was unique in an age where limitless imaging was available at our finger tips.  I would see other physicians ordering bunches of tests.  I asked him one time why they would do that.  He said this,"It's like this Amy.  If you fire a rifle into a tree full of birds, eventually you are going to hit something."  In other words, searching for a diagnosis without really listening to your patient.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately.  How many times do we look at our own health and get so desperate for an answer that we get wrapped up in the diet plan, the number on the scale, how fast our mile time is, counting macros and a million other measurements? I am wondering what would happen if we put down the proverbial rifle, walked away from the tree full of birds and did that awful thing of really spending time asking ourselves the hard questions to see where the root of our health failures lives.  Is it late night snacking?  Is it relying on past failures to hold us back from trying one more time?  Is it not trusting ourselves to be successful?  or a support system that really isn't all that supportive?  Only by working through these things are we able to systematically take control and figure out which of those birds in the tree it truly will take to make the changes lasting.

I have come to learn that Dr. B was right on a lot of things.  Nineteen years later I can honestly say he made me the provider I am today, and taught me a lot about life.  I was proud to call him mentor and friend.  Dr. B passed away today, leaving a hole in the hearts of thousands of patients and colleagues, not to mention his family.  Thank you for all that you taught me, RIP old friend, and I hope I continue to do you proud.  Don't forget to always drive fast and stay in your lane as the best is truly yet to come.