Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Oh well

I may have spoken too soon. I ended last week with a super fun spin class, but which turned out to be so not fun the next day. I sort of knew that was going to happen since, sometime towards the end of the class, I could feel the sciatic nerve being pulled. Anyways, that's that and I'm having to get back on the cross trainer. Which honestly isn't so bad once you've figured out the interval and hill programs, and the fact that you can make it as hard as you want it to be. I had a great 1 hr interval session this morning on the AMT machine at the gym and was mighty pleased with how hard I pushed myself!

Some other things I discovered this week that don't work well for me...

  1. Wine on a weeknight. I had one glass of red on Sunday night and woke up the next morning feeling dehydrated and really sick! I think I might be getting too old to do this stuff...shites. No more drinks during the week for me.
  2. Licking yogurt off the cup. Yes, for some reason, I just cannot do without licking the yogurt off from under the foil cover, but I cut my tongue real bad today and spent the next five minutes spitting out a LOT of blood. Yikes!

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The dermatologist saved my leg

Yes, I know this sounds crazy but that is exactly how it happened. Well, let me start be recapping my sob injury story. I’ve been dealing with acute piriformis syndrome, along with excruciatingly painful sciatica that would often cause my right leg to go ‘uncomfortably numb’. Also, as I discovered a few months ago, another trigger point was the right groin muscle that would hurt like hell every time I rolled it out. Needless to say, I have been put out of all sorts of running action for the past…10 months! 10 freaking months of pain, popping ibuprofens through the day, missing work on occasions, no solid answers from any doctors or therapists, and dealing unsuccessfully with rapid weight gain (I’ve figured that when I don’t know how to deal with pain, I eat).

So then, a few months back, to my great horror, I found out I was losing hair. Not just a few here and there, but they were coming out in bunches every time I showered or tried to comb them out. Great, now I can be fat AND bald. Sadly, this was the time I had to give in to my hairdresser’s advice: go short so that the lack of hair isn’t so obvious. While I tried my best to enjoy the new do, sadly my hair problems were getting worse. My head got real itchy and I had this crazy funk coming off of my scalp! That was when I made the trip (roughly 1.5 weeks ago) to the dermatologist who, well, saved my leg.

After examining my scalp and striking all infections off the list, the dermatologist decided it’s probably an iron/B complex deficiency. Really, her treatment is a trial and error one and she wanted to eliminate an iron deficiency before moving into other tests. So after that visit, I went home with a strip of iron and B12 capsules and a Rogane-like solution. What happened over the next few days is nothing short of a MIRACLE for me.

After only a few days of taking those capsules, the sciatica vanished! As in ‘gone’, ‘disappeared’, ‘not here’!!! AND it arrested like 70% of the hair loss. AND I don’t feel exhausted every morning and miss gym. AND I last through the day without coffee. AND I want to cry because life feels so darn good right now, I’m having a hard time believing it.

So now, since something isn’t right about this hair loss and sciatica, of course I had to go Google. Turns out, B12 not only helps to form red blood cells but also maintain the nervous system by metabolizing fatty acids found in the myelin sheath (the nerves coverings). This is why it is often prescribed for sciatica and other nerve problems. Which of course makes me wonder why the neurologist I went to didn’t think of this possibility…?

And that’s how it all happened. After 10 months, I finally fee almost 'normal’ again and I don’t quite know how to react to it. Strangely, being normal is sort of weird to me now and I’m just about trying to get used to it. And trying not to get to excited, you know, just in case…*fingers crossed*

So what now? Of course I’m already thinking of race training and other such utterly wild things! But first up is getting rid of the last bit of lingering piriformis pain and losing all the excess baggage I’ve collected over the past months. I can finally exert myself enough to see some positive results (my weight is exactly the same as I mentioned in my last blog). After that, there’s Chicago 2011… :)