Twenty Days of Silence

My last blog post was 20 ago, and so much has happened since then. Well, OK, nothing exciting. But lots of little things. I will only write about three tonight. Deal with it.

I graduated physical therapy. After several appointments and consecutive days without pain, I had my final appointment. They didn't officially discharge me in case I need an additional appointment or two when I start running again, but I have no more scheduled appointments. As much as I enjoyed those 30-minute torture sessions, I'm happy to have a little more free time in my evenings and return to regular workouts. On that note...

Because I'm accident-prone, my therapist and I agreed it would be best for me to participate in their bridge program. Where I go to PT is actually a dance studio, a PT office, and a personal training center all under one roof. Therefore, I can start working with a personal trainer who has direct access to my PT records and my therapist, who is right there in case something starts bothering me during a session. And even better, my insurance covers $150 of the $200 fee which gets me eight 30-minute sessions or four 60-minute sessions. I opted for the eight, and my first session was supposed to be last Thursday...

Except last Thursday, I started feeling horrible. I didn't get to work until 10:30 because I felt so awful, and when I did arrive, I was soaked through my clothes in a cold sweat despite driving with the windows down in the 30-degree weather. Clearly I had a fever and had no business being at work. I wrapped up a project and left around noon, and proceeded to die for the next six days. I thought it was my 17th sinus infection, but it just kept getting worse. I had every symptom imaginable - sinus congestion/pressure, sore throat, runny nose, headache, fever, chills, fatigue, body aches, cough, no appetite. I spent the entire weekend in bed. But when I woke up on Monday, the pain was also in my chest and that worried me. So I made a doctor's appointment and fortunately it turned out to be from the coughing - my lungs were completely fine. She said I have the awful viral infection that's been going around and that antibiotics would be useless. I told to keep doing what I'd been doing - Sudafed, Mucinex, ibuprofen, cough drops, Vicks VapoRub, vaseline on my Rudolph nose, and lots of rest and fluids. I woke up this morning feeling like hell, but was finally able to get myself going.

I finally returned to work this morning at 10 (mornings are hard when you can't breathe for the first two hours after waking up). I had no itention of working the whole day but I started to feel a lot better as the day went on. I am now stuck with a runny nose, brutal post-nasal drip and thus a mucus-y cough, but otherwise feeling much much better. However, I originally rescheduled last Thursday's training session to tomorrow, but I don't want to end up sick again this weekend, so I postponed it until next Thursday. Let's hope nothing comes up then!

I normally feel really guilty when I miss work, but not this time. This is the sickest I have been in a long time, and I knew I needed to take care of myself. I can work through a cold or when I'm really tired, but this was a lot worse than that. It doesn't help that everyone has been really negative at work lately, so I honestly didn't want to go back. But I did want to feel better, so there ya have it. I am so looking forward to a four-day weekend this week. Thank you, Easter Bunny!

Speaking of the Easter Bunny, I gave up meatless Lent 10 days early. Yup. I don't give something up for Lent because I'm a practicing Catholic (I'm not anymore). I give something up because I like to test my discipline  And well, five weeks of no meat was long enough. On the first day I ate meat, I had antipasto salad and buffalo chicken. The next day, I had a gourmet cheeseburger. And the rest is history. I still don't eat meat every day (I follow meatless Mondays), and I usually eat salad for lunch, either with tuna or no meat, and I'm usually so tired by dinner I eat something small. So it's not like my carnivorousness (carnivorism?) is out of control. I just got sick of not eating meat when I like eating it, and usually make healthy meat choices. I can't wait to indulge in some bacon this weekend.