Training for a Half: week 4

No you didn't miss all the other posts about the Half marathon I have signed up for. I've been bad at keeping the commitment to myself of blogging once a week. I think maybe it's the day/time I scheduled always got overtaken by other things. I first had it scheduled for Friday afternoon, when work was winding down and I was not likely to be interrupted, but then someone scheduled a meeting for that time. Then I tried putting it on Saturdays after I got back from Food Not Bombs, but by then I am so motivated to clean the house or do other chores that opening up my computer was the last thing I wanted to do. I'll work on finding the right time.

In our first year here (2014), I signed up for and ran a 5K race alongside the Salt Lake City Marathon. They continue to send reminder emails years later for past participants to sign up for something for the next race. When the reminder came in early January I decided now is the time, I'm finally going to do a half.

I did a 10-day juice fast over Christmas & the New Year and lost 6 pounds. I was lighter than I had been in more than 15 years, I decided I was ready to start training. I have a treadmill too, so I really have no excuse (such as weather) to not run.

I'm a big fan of health and fitness apps. I have a fitbit and check my fitbit app constantly to see where I am in relation to the people I am fitbit friends with. Back in December 2010 I discovered the newly released LoseIt! app and have been charting my ups and downs with that for more than five years now, it's so gratifying! I love my Nike+ Women's training app that combines dumbells and other equipment with cardio segments. When I signed up for this Half, I went to the "coach" section of my Nike+ running app, plugged in the date and length of the race I want to train for, and then 12 weeks of training plan was laid out before me.

The plan includes four days of running - two light (3 miles), two heavy (one longish run, one longer and longer run). It also includes one day of cross-training (so I use the aforementioned Nike+ training app) and two rest days. My main goal is to get through this training and race injury-free, so much the better if I can reach my goal weight while doing it.

A funny thing happens though when you are trying to reach a goal weight and then start an aggressive fitness program. The weight remains the same as you burn fat and start building muscle. I can't get discouraged by the number on the scale (but I sorta do) because the way my clothes hangs is totally different. I have to keep reminding myself that since moving to SLC just over two years ago, I have lost 35 pounds. That's no small feat! And now I am training for a race, a half marathon, something I have always wanted to do. Even if I never do it again, I will be pleased.

I am still juicing every day, sometimes twice a day. After doing that 10-day Reboot, I have a really hard time eating anything that has been fried, processed foods, or bread. It's been really interesting seeing how my body is adapting to this new regime in our house - Dan and I hardly eat meat anymore as we move to a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle. I am now one of those people who buys a 25-pound bag of carrots for juicing.

I digress. The race day is April 16, two weeks before I finish my second Master's degree, and a few weeks after my 42nd birthday. I'm looking forward to my training as it will give me time also to catch up on audio books and podcasts! 

my first encounter with the health care system in the United States

Some of you may recall it was February 4th, 2013 that I entered the United States. While it seems like it was only a blink of an eye ago, we are actually coming up on three years. Can you believe it? I am less than four months away from being eligible to apply for US Citizenship.*

One of the things that scared us about moving to the United States is health care. It's a very confusing system from the Canadian perspective, so navigating insurance and then what to do once you have insurance and need care was really daunting. It was only in the last couple of months that I bought health insurance for myself, despite the Affordable Care Act, because it just seemed like too much of an expenditure for something I may not even use.

I'm pretty healthy, see. I exercise, I eat really well, manage my mental health, etc and don't have any outstanding health issues that require care. However, I work in health care and I acknowledge I am aging. It's also been four and a half years since I had a physical so I had no idea what my numbers were. Getting my student health insurance sorted out and making an appointment at a clinic was just on my to do list.

And then I had a health scare a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a big one, but I know just enough about anatomy and disease to be worried when I had pain in my chest and shortness of breath. Pain in my chest where my heart is. My grandfather died of a heart attack at 67, though he was morbidly obese. Anyway, this freak out was the kick in the pants I needed to see a care provider, that very day.

Wouldn't you know it, there is a student health clinic just half a mile from where I work and they are all hooked up with my student health insurance. I was able to get in that afternoon to see my new primary care provider, who is a Nurse Practitioner rather than a physician. That's something I have no experience with (though I think we do have NPs in Canada, they just aren't as common) but I do have a friend who is a nurse and wants to become an NP. She explained to me that NPs are the ones you want to go to for preventive and maintenance care. Doctors do the diagnosing. Ok, got it.

The visit to the clinic was mostly like any other clinic visit. The New Patient Intake form asked a bunch of questions I had never encountered before ("How many sexual partners have you had?") so that was interesting. Giving urine samples has gotten to be really sophisticated. The blood pressure machine had me at 132/86 which of course worried me.

I spent an hour with the nurse practitioner, gave her my full medical history and all the family medical history I know. The physical itself was just like every other one and thank goodness she said I'm not due for another one for five years (in Canada it would be every two years). She did strongly encourage me to get a mammogram, which I am extremely opposed to (I don't have a family history and I'm not convinced they actually help with early detection).

I wasn't expecting it but we talked about my acne, how I had done the 5-month course of isotretinoin in 2007 but my acne has returned. She can't prescribe that drug (only a dermatologist can) but she did give me a script for a tretinoin cream which I'm hoping will help. (I'm leaving in a week for my industry's biggest academic conference and I intend to launch my job search there, so I really hope it's gone by then!) They checked my blood pressure again at the end of the visit and it was down to 113/73.

The best part about this whole experience (aside from the assurance that I probably just pulled a chest muscle because my heart is just fine, and the potential for clear skin) was that this visit was free. I couldn't find information anywhere on the health insurance website that said how much this visit was going to cost and when you are worried there is something seriously wrong, you care less about cost and more about getting well. And it was free! My first visit is free, any subsequent visit is only a $10-co-pay. I mean, my insurance cost me $190 per semester, but still, that's way better than I was expecting.

For my American readers, I'm sure this is all no big deal but I confess I was really worried about accessing care because I thought it would be so complicated. It was for the same reason I delayed getting dental care but that ended up having a happy ending too - I thought because it had been several years since I'd had a cleaning that I would have a number of cavities but no! All clear, thanks to my nightly dedication to flossing.

*so I have more or less been planning to apply for citizenship, but I think it would mean renouncing my Canadian citizenship. That hasn't been a really big deal to me, since I had no intention of ever moving back. Mostly because we can't afford to live in the places where we want to be that also have work in the fields we want to be in. There is just so much more opportunity for me in the United States in my career (by the factor of 100x or more) so why would I go back north? Well, given the recent political developments in both countries, I am now not ruling out a return to Canada (oh gosh I'm saying this publicly). I say that because of the crazies currently running in the Republican primaries but also because of the amazing thing that happened in Canadian federal politics recently. Someone from my generation with my values is now the Prime Minister of Canada. The other day when Justin Trudeau was sworn in, afterwards he took questions from reporters. I was listening to the live webcast. A reporter asked why it was so important for him to have half of his cabinet be women, and his response "Because it's 2015" - I swear to you I nearly cried in my office. He took a solid and public position not only for women in Canada but around the world, and I've seen the reverberations in the aftermath. I believe he will make Canada great again and do more than repair the damage Harper did. I have never been much of a nationalist but in that moment I have never been more proud of my country of origin. 

turns out, I just need to eat more or, the embarrassment post

Well I am embarrassed.

I saw the doctor on my birthday. Went on about how I got sick and never felt like I recovered, still coughing, sore throat, etc., and oh yeah I've lost 24 pounds in the last three months. She looked at me. BINGO. (She didn't say that. Doctors don't know what bingo is.) She figures the reason my body wasn't letting me get better was because my body wasn't getting enough calories to recover. That certainly explains my high level of fatigue. She also pointed out that I'm probably cold all the time too (why yes!) So there it was, my doctor told me I should eat more cake on my birthday, and that I should slow down my weight loss program (from two pounds a week to a pound and a half or just a pound).

On that note, a couple of pounds ago I came down into the "normal" range of the BMI. That sure feels good. I have a growing stack of pants I can't wear anymore. I told a friend on Skype today that I'm shrinking out of my bras. We commiserated that the breasts are always the first to go when we lose weight. I also have more and more clothes I can fit into.

Here is something else that is a bit embarrassing. When I was doing laundry yesterday (I have energy to do laundry again!), I realized that I have five lime green tops. Five. I knew I liked this colour, and to be fair, two of them were gifts, but gosh it sure still seems like a lot.

LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt

Yes, that was a total non sequitur, but LouiseJHunt seems to be mentioning me on every podcast (more embarrassment) so perhaps I should respond in kind by mentioning her in every blog post? Louise's podcast, by the way, is the Caithness Craft Collective Podcast out of northeast Scotland. It doesn't seem to matter what Louise talks about, I just like hearing her talk in the Caithness dialect. Thanks for the birthday wishes Louise! (btw, the word you were looking for was not 'humbleness' but humility, I think) (Okay I am listening to the Sneeze episode as I'm writing this post. Total multi-media junkie am I).

Tomorrow Dan & I will hit the road at 5am to reach French Creek for an 8am offload. Oh yeah, I still work at my fish counting job! There is a fairly large offload they need a hook-and-line validator for, and they need a second person to tag the halibut, so Dan and I will go. It's a long way but we'll be paid for our time and per kilometer (.43/km) as well as the time we are working. Working with My Sweety! A road trip! A trip into Town! Depending on how tired we are, I might be able to convince Dan to stop in at the Port Alberni Hops Festival on the way back (sorry, can't seem to find a website to link to).

Last bit of news: I am on sock #5 - I was shooting for seven before Cookie A comes next weekend but it was just too ambitious a goal. That's okay though, that means I'll have only five partners to knit after the retreat and that means I can move onto other projects. As ever, I have a long queue of things I want to knit!

Something is Seriously Kicking My Butt

Well hey, you all wanted to know about my health, right?

I'm now in my eighth week of work at the hospital. My shift is 8:00-2:30, Monday to Friday. It's a pretty sweet shift, really. I have to drive 41km from Ucluelet to Tofino, which on a good day takes me about 35 minutes. During the past few months, however, the tree service guys have been out holding up traffic while they shear the side off the forest, lest it should get blown into a power pole during one of our winter storms. There have been several crews out, which means no fewer than four sets of flag people with their "SLOW" or "STOP" sign.

So this delay means I have been leaving around 7:15am to get to work, getting home around 3:15pm, give or take. It makes my work an eight hour day. My job is also pretty physical: I'm walking around a lot, up and down stairs, lifting boxes (with correct posture, I might add), moving supplies and equipment. Nothing I can't handle, but it is physically demanding.

Because I hadn't worked in so long, starting a new job and a new routine took some adjusting. I was in my third or fourth week of work when I got sick, had to take two days off work. It was around this time that Ellie asked me (it was before I got sick, I think) if I would be willing to take part in the relay team for the Edge to Edge marathon. Add to this my self-imposed committment to knit as many Cookie A socks as I can before the retreat. Not to mention housework.

The Saturday after I was sick and unable to work, I had a bit of a relapse. I was feeling achy and fatigued, didn't feel like I would be safe to drive much less babysit that night, so I had to cancel.

That was a few weeks ago now and I have to admit I still don't feel like I'm getting healthy. I still have tightness in my sore throat and a productive cough.

I have a history of depression. Not really bad, but I was on quite a cocktail of antidepressants for a few months several years ago. In the spring and summer after we moved here to Ucluelet, I had several depressive episodes, probably springing from our uncertainty about what our options were at the time.

I've been knitting a lot and writing a lot and typing a lot and otherwise using my hands/arms/wrists a lot and I am forced to admit that they hurt. My hands, arms, and wrists hurt. I should be taking it easy and not breaking my neck over some self-imposed challenge of knitting so many socks.

This past weekend Dan & I took a trip to Powell River, to check it out. (That's fodder for another post). We left on Saturday morning around 8:30am, got home around 9:00pm on Sunday. While it was tremendous good fun, it was also exhausting. It meant I didn't get time to rest, rejuvenate, or clean the house like I usually do on the weekend.

I have a number of health issues that have been creeping up on me. I'm not going to go into them here, but I did make an appointment to see a doctor in Tofino. We've lived here a year and I hadn't gotten around to finding a family doctor yet. Well I finally chose one (based on the ones I met while working at the hospital) and I'll see her tomorrow. I'll go in to talk about my sore throat and the fact that I don't feel like I've gotten better from that cold.

Tomorrow I turn 37, and while I don't want to be melodramatic or paranoid, I have real fears I might be admitted to the hospital I work at. I am feeling absolutely depleted, physically and mentally. Doing laundry seems to take the piss out of me. I even like doing laundry. I feel like I can't get anything done and because I have a mountain of things that need to get done, the list grows. Is my immune system giving me trouble? Am I having another depressive episode? Is this the early onset of menopause I was told to expect?  I eat well, I take vitamins, I usually get enough sleep, and if it didn't exhaust me I would be exercising. I'm at my wit's end. I'm used to being physically strong and full of energy; I am a generally happy person and often all I need is a coffee go perk me up. But now... the coffee just kills my appetite and I go to bed hours later with nausea and an empty stomach.

I think about some of my favourite podcasters that have recently had major health issues. Dr. Gemma and Susan Dolph are the ones I am thinking of. We pushpushpush ourselves because we believe that what we are doing is so important and at the end of the day, our energy stores get depleted. I forget sometimes that I need to recharge my battery. The problem is that I don't know what that looks like right now. I still have to go to work, but perhaps I will take the weekend off of everything, laundry and vacuuming be damned. I might even have to take a break from my weight loss program - two pounds a week is agressive and it means that at the moment, I am allowed only 1166 calories per day (not counting any exercise I do, which increases my allowable intake). It's been going so well and I am pleased with the results, but shrinking sick me isn't as good as healthy me.

the week that disappeared

Um... hi.


Where did this week go? Has anyone else seen it?

I worked my one and only day at the college library on Tuesday, had an offload on Wednesday, taught the last knitting session to the little girls on Thursday, snuck into Port Alberni on Friday, puttered around yesterday, and here I am now. Wondering where the week went.

I sort of hesitated to line up the training with the college library, because I was fairly certain I would be offered a job at the Tofino Hospital. But I went in anyway. It was perfectly straightforward, a library is a library after all. I have combined five years experience in libraries, I can check out books in my sleep.

The next day I had a boat to validate for and that was perfectly fine too. I like the plant, the people, and the guys on the boat were nice. The weather was good and the work easy.

Thursday we found out that the job Dan had been waiting to hear back from had hired someone else weeks ago and forgot to let him know. Nice. Unprofessional much? What is it with these flakes in Tofino? That very afternoon I got the call from the hospital, offering me the job of Inventory Assistant. Monday-Friday, 8:00-2:30. I get to wear scrubs! I start on Monday.

Suddenly my brain was working in different ways. It's not very often in my life that I've had work that was weekdays. It has almost all been shift work, evenings and weekends, casual. But to have a regular schedule and a steady paycheque! I spent an awful lot of time imagining. I had to call the college and let them know I was no longer available for them.

I remember from my time at the library that when I was living alone, my life was very orderly. My home, rather. I am hoping that my work at the hospital will insert some of that orderliness back into my life at home here, my craft room could sure use it!

So we took a spontaneous trip into Port Alberni on Friday. I need scrubs, and the Vancouver Island Health Authority will reimburse me. They were willing to lend me some until I got my own, but really I am just too excited. I got two pairs and discovered how comfy they are! Everyone says they are like wearing pajamas. I wore my scrub pants yesterday and was delighted.

I heard yesterday that my father has spent some time in the hospital where he lives, in Alberta. That he was coughing up blood, that he was there for four days. My sister and I were not told about this. Why? He hasn't been answering or returning our calls.

I have been doing knitting and crocheting too. I finished a scarf, finished a sock (have started sock #2), and have worked on the test knit for a new designer. I'm way behind where I want to be with my knitting but that's okay.

I've been exercising. I have an iPhone and have found a few great exercise apps that lead you through workouts. One, Body Fate, develops workouts for you based on what equipment you have. The NikeWomen app has a huge variety of workouts and they are easy to follow. I'm flipping back and forth between the two and am enjoying them both. Afterwards, I log my exercise into my LoseIt! app, the same place where I have been logging everything I eat since December 19th, and I have so far lost 12 pounds. It's good. I have never made a concentrated effort at weight loss before, but I was getting dangerously close to 200 and I was tired of feeling frumpy. Fitness, here I come.