Lucky for me, spring break was the week following the marathon. I can honestly say that I’ve never had such a good week “off” than I did this particular week. My recovery went so fast, and I woke up the day after running a hard 26.2 miles with barely any soreness at all. I give a lot of credit to my Base Amino supplement I’ve been taking (I’m going to write a post devoted to Base and how it helped me – please stay tuned), so I took my kids clothes shopping. We were walking around Kohls buying all we could with our 30% off coupon, and the bottom of my right foot started hurting, especially where the arch meets the heel. Yeah, I sense many of you nodding your head, and you know where I’m going with this. We weren’t done shopping, so I continued to walk, and it continued to get worse. What the heck?
By the time we got home, I could barely walk and my foot was throbbing. How could I give myself an injury from one race? And wow, great timing! Thank goodness, really.
I was very careful the rest of the week. I had zero desire to run, which was new, and I felt really good. I had fun with my kids going to the beach, hanging out, sleeping in, getting ice cream, and eating all the food, and I didn’t even go for a walk, just to help the inflammation in my foot.
The following week, on Tuesday, I decided it was time to for a run. It had been over a week, everything felt great, and I had no intentions of running hard, so I figured there would be no harm in that. It was a gorgeous morning full of singing birds, a nice cool breeze, and plenty of sun – perfect.
Three miles into my easy five mile run, when I was two miles away from the house, the bottom of my foot started REALLY hurting again. Instead of walking home, I continued to run, eventually moving to the yards bordering the road, just to take the pressure off my injured foot.
It acts like plantar and feels like plantar, so it must be plantar. But I still couldn’t understand how this could be. I had NO signs before the race (THANK YOU DEAR JESUS), so I just couldn’t get how something like this can pop up out of virtually nowhere. I iced my foot and looked up some information on it. The pain didn’t subside that day, and that night, my heel had a heartbeat. It. Was. Throbbing.
Oh man, I’ve done it now. I freaking BQ’d my way to plantar. I talked to my coach about how to handle this, since I know plantar is BAD, finicky, and is resistant to treatment. I’m off running. No running for me! Just like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld. I felt like I had to be very proactive about treatment for this and be especially careful NOT to do something stupid, like run. So I can’t run.
Except soup is running. Sigh.
Fortunately, I’m in an off-season time, resting up and doing pretty much whatever I want whenever I want to (within reason of course), so I’ve velcro’d on my biking shoes and slapped on my swim cap to get back to tri training. I was going to take it easy and swim, bike and run until the beginning of June, where I will officially begin IMNC 70.3 training, this time for reals. Well, not to be disrespectful to the distance and my prior race, but this time, I have a time goal.
As for my “broken” heart, besides not being able to run for fun during my favorite time of year to run, this week turned pretty rotten. When I was at the bus stop with my son, a little brown dog came trotting by, looking scared and trailing a leash. That was weird, so I grabbed him, thinking his owner would come running by to get him. After looking for a person looking for a dog, posting a few signs, I took him to the vet to get checked for a microchip. Nope, but we did find that he had kennel cough. Yay. I couldn’t have him around my dog, since she wasn’t vaccinated. If she got it, it could lead into some pretty nasty lung stuff, and with all the vet bills we’ve had and two pets with issues that needed to be addressed the next day, I didn’t want to pay for a vet check and medicine for this dog, then risk my dog’s health. Plus, I didn’t have a place to keep him in my house. I did not have a square to spare. Sorry, another Seinfeld reference.
I made the choice to have animal control come get him. Thankfully, they have a very high adoption rate, especially for sweet little dogs. Ugh, my heart hurt for him and I feel tremendously guilty, but I’m planning to check on him after the five days is up to see if someone claimed him.
The next day, I took my dog and cat to the vet – my dog had been itching her ear for a long time, no medicine was helping, so I had her checked. They cleaned her ear out and she was fine. My overweight cat had been losing weight the past few months and had gotten to the point where I knew something was going on. I thought it was due to a change in food, since we had to put them on special food for my other cat, who had “Kaitlyn Jenner” surgery to prevent him from getting blocked anymore. That was a few thousand dollars, and when a say “a few”, I mean a lot. Honestly, I had put off taking this other cat to the vet because of the other bills and we had a lot going on the past month. He was playing, friendly as always, and we didn’t notice anything was off except for his weight, which he needed to lose anyway. His worst nightmare is going in a kennel, and it stresses him out so much, he pees himself every time. Poor kitty.
When the vet started examining my cat named Squiffy, he asked if kitty had ever been diagnosed with asthma. Nope, never. By the time, my cat’s stress level was extremely high and he was panting. You know when you hear “the tone” in the vet’s voice and they basically whisk your animal away? Yeah, this was a first time to me. The doc told me, if I can explain it right, is that he was in a crisis and not getting enough oxygen, brought on by his condition plus the extreme situation and his very high level of anxiety. I didn’t know. I simply didn’t pick up on it. I had no idea my cat couldn’t breathe. This was the kitten we bottle fed, gave meds to keep alive, the one my son picked out of the hundred we fostered during this time seven years ago. My son carried this cat everywhere, and this cat claimed my son as his boy. He slept on his bed every night, and when I would peek in, Squiffy would look at me as if to say, “I got it, you may leave.”. Squiffy had not a mean bone in his body, has never been aggressive, and was always the most playful, sweetest thing ever. We moved over a thousand miles, twice, and we would never have left him behind (although I did want to throw him onto the interstate when he wouldn’t stop meowing – HOURS of meowing – as we moved from Iowa to Texas). He was a part of our family. When I left the vet office, I was confident I would come and pick him back up on Monday, although I cried my eyes out on my way home and for an hour after I got home. I didn’t know he was silently suffering. I just. Didn’t. Know.
Squiffy died yesterday. After he stabilized, he crashed, and the vet couldn’t save him. I know he did whatever he could to save him, but Squiffy was just too sick and couldn’t take it anymore.
I can honestly say that I’ve never felt this kind of pain of loss before. I’ve had to put cats down before, I’ve lost my old dog, but I guess it was different because it was expected or they were old or something. This was a sucker punch to the gut. I wasn’t expecting this. I had no idea he was so sick and was basically suffocating. It’s almost a day later, and my heart is broken and I feel like I’m wearing a veil of sadness. My kids basically fell apart when I told them what happened, and I carry a lot of guilt over putting off the vet visit. It may not have changed anything, but I’ll never know now. My sweet kitty, my son’s protector, is gone.
How do you mourn a pet? I mean, it’s just a cat, right? Ha yeah, whoever says that never loved a pet before. He was part of our family, part of our daily life, and his presence will be missed, tremendously. When I make my peanut butter sandwiches before long bike rides or early morning track practice, who will I get to cackle at the knife making reflections on the ceiling? Who will drag my son’s toys into the hallway when the kids leave for school? Who’s purrs will I hear as I talk to my son before bed? Why did it have to be him? Oh, Tiffy, Squiffy, Big Guy, Filsome, Miff, we love you and miss you.
My heel has a heartbeat and my heart is broken. But we will continue to love our remaining animals just as deeply, just as much. If I do know one thing though, is that I will never, EVER, put off a vet visit again.
Running Boston And Beyond 
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