Frustrated beyond belief

June 4, 2008 at 8:00 pm (Rants and Vents, fitness)
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Today has not been a good day. I am disappointed in my body. As they say, the mind is willing but the body is not.

I’ve managed to do something to my left quad. On Monday I ran for the bus. Nothing new there – thanks to the TTC, I have to run for the bus every afternoon. But on Monday, halfway across the road, my left quad cramped up. I limped to the bus and still managed to make it through training, just without doing any quad work. So no squats or lunges or step-ups.

I felt okay yesterday but due to dinner with the ex, I didn’t get to the gym.

Tonight, I had completely forgotten about it. I got to the gym, despite my asthma playing up, and warmed up on the recumbent bike for 38 minutes before starting my training session with J. I did 15 lunges on my right leg, no problem. Got onto my left, did ONE lunge and almost started crying from the pain. Oh my god, it was SO painful, like a sharp, shooting pain up my left quad. I was winded from the shock. There went another session without quad work. Plus I started to get a freaking major headache halfway through the session and then my right ear blocked up. Nice.

Thanks body. Nice to know you’re falling apart on me just before my 28th birthday.

So I’m sitting here with a heat pad on my leg and waiting on the Extra Strength Ibuprofen to kick in. I’ve booked in for a physio appointment tomorrow night which will have to go onto the credit card since I only get paid on Friday, so hopefully they can clear this up before my training session on Friday morning. I’d hate to have to avoid squats and lunges for the entire week. I’d also hate to feel like a freaking invalid for my NYC trip.

Bah humbug. Any suggestions?

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The beauty of breathing

June 4, 2008 at 1:10 pm (Rants and Vents)
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This is not a metaphorical post about the joys of taking a break. No, this is about the actual beauty of being able to breathe properly. You know, the act of inhaling and exhaling that oxygenates your blood and helps your heart pump and therefore gives you life? Yeah, that breathing.

I have asthma. I’ve had it all my life really (I supposedly had pneumonia as a baby but when my asthma was properly diagnosed, the doc said it was probably my first asthma attack) and have been hospitalised a number of times. That said, I’ve thought I was going to die once and that was at the mall during work about 9 years ago. I felt disappointed that my life didn’t flash before my eyes but I was only 19 and I really hadn’t had much of a life to flash. Anywoo.

Flash forward to today. My asthma is generally well controlled – I take Advair every day, twice a day and as much as I would love to stop taking it, every experiment has been a failure. Breathing techniques are all great but when your symptoms sneak up on you anyway, it feels like a waste of time and you’re still reaching for the Ventolin. In addition to my lovely asthma, my lungs are also scarred from walking pneumonia, undiagnosed by a stupid doctor who told me I was being a hypochondriac and I should accept that my persistent cough – which was never a symptom of my asthma – was just asthma. I now have bronchiectasis, which means my persistent cough will be with me for life in some form or another, unless I want to add another daily steroid into my life and thanks but no thanks to that.

My symptoms are not usually immediately obvious to me. A usual “attack” starts slowly. I start getting really tired and needing to nap. A lot. A full night’s sleep is not enough. I take longer to recover from workouts and I can get a little low. It usually takes my mother’s light bulb moment of “how’s your asthma going?” to make me sit up and click. I don’t live anywhere near my parents anymore so it now takes me even longer to click.

This morning was my lightbulb moment.

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