Saturday, August 29, 2009

Nothing like a little forced downtime to inspire you...

Ricks' surgery was yesterday afternoon. LATE yesterday afternoon. I felt for him. No eating after midnight. No water, no nothing. His surgery was at 3:30 pm. I can barely go 2 hours without some sort of snack. I am pretty sure I would have perished of starvation right there in the office. I spent the morning ferreting away food upstairs like Oliver Twist with a morsel of bread that he didn't want his cronies to see. I figured out of sight, out of mind on the food part for Rick.

As you might recall, his leg was looking a little something like this:



Now it looks a little something like this:




I love that they write on the leg to make sure the surgeon cuts on the correct one:



As with any good party, the guest always leaves with a goody bag. Rick's included the hardware he had been carrying around in his leg for the last couple of years. Not really as good as a girly bag or makeup samples but he was thrilled with the gift.



Rick has never been a fan of anesthesia as it always makes him pretty sick. Apparently, when you are a modern day Evel Knievel you have been under anesthesia more than most and know if it makes you sick. His anesthesiologist yesterday did an excellent job. He wasn't sick at all and really has felt pretty decent, all things considered, post surgery. I will say, they waste no time in kicking you out of the hospital. Rick was in surgery until 4:30. We were in the car on the way home at 5:45.

With all that waiting around (we arrived at the hospital at 12:30), I had PLENTY of time to catch up on magazines and plotting out my marathon training. For those of you doing the math, YES, I should have plotted this out weeks ago. Some of you probably don't even plot it out you just go with the flow. I am an organizer. If it isn't penciled in week by week in my calendar it does not exist. I may never reference the calendar again after the planning session but the fact that it was written down somewhere makes it real. Crazy, I know.

I do believe for the Disneyland half I just might qualify for one of those "Running Stupid" shirts. You might have seen them at the race expos. They say something like "Running Stupid: I didn't train for this race". I might not be that bad but I definitely don't have any long runs going into the race which is next weekend. Yikes.

My plan for Disneyland is to put it on cruise control and run/walk if I have to really slow it down. I am pretty sure I will be stopping for pictures with the Disney characters so there was not going to be a PR anyhow. On the bright side, after the hald next weekend, I should be able to catch up and be just about on track for the Nike Marathon in October. Both of these two races are "just for the experience" type races so as long as I finish, it is all good. :)

If any of you all are into magazines like I am, I have pretty much decided that Women's Running is probably the most useful to me. I can find good information that applies to me in most of the articles which is unusual to say for a magazine. It is an every other month read so you don't end up with a stack of them if you can't find the time to read on a regular basis. They are also the sponsor of the Women's Half in St. Petersburg in November.

I felt so much better leaving that hospital yesterday! I really got inspired by catching up on my reading and putting the plan in motion. Rick felt great and all was right with the world. Don't you love days like that where all the gunk that seemed to weigh on you is just washed away and your mojo returns?

3 comments:

Hua said...

Hey,

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Hua

Director of Blogger Networks

Karen said...

Thanks for the tip, I will check it out!

Lindsay said...

glad all went well with rick's surgery, especially that they operated on the correct leg. scary to think about those pieces being put in and taken out of his leg! shivers.

i was going to ask if you were still planning on running disney! i wanted to... mostly for the "coast to coast" medal you get for running in disney world too, haha. but, my running compadres chose va beach instead so i will miss out on that extra medal. have a fun trip and definitely take the race easy!