A Life Diagnosis

I don’t think I’ve ever had a Doctor tell me exactly what I want to hear, that is until Monday. And his diagnosis was like that last sip of coffee where all the caramel has collected—heavenly. I’ve been battling a hip injury for a couple of years now, more so described as chronic pain than an injury because I don’t really know exactly what happened to my hip, but when I run it just plain hurts. And in the weirdest of places too, right above my hip bone and some days it even feels like the pain migrates to other areas. My first few years of college I just sort of ran through the pain; I was just getting started with my running anyway and wasn’t training too intensely just going the distance. However, all of that changed last fall when I started training with the track team. My intensity and mileage upped significantly (and I loved it!) but so did the pain. And because I am so stubborn and tend to have a high pain tolerance, I still ran through it.
Part of my thinking, ok, most of my stubbornness was spent turning the pain into a metaphor and I believed that if I was able to just run through it and keep going, I could tackle the pain in my heart and move past it as well. That was until January hit. By then I’d had probably too many indoor workouts, my body was beaten and stressed, and my hip just gave out. I finally caved to the trainer’s office because for the first night after a run, the pain made me cry. And it wasn’t any outside or emotional pain, it was definitely radiating from my hip. I knew the tears were a sign that I to stop, to humble myself and get it looked at.

To make a long story short—my outdoor season was over because I spent the next few months seeing several doctor’s, getting X-rays, an MRI, and fighting the insurance to figure out what was wrong. And finally, finally I have an answer! I spent Monday morning in a sports orthopedist’s office where my revelation appeared. He said everything looked great, I have very healthy joints and muscles, however when he proceeded to poke and prod at my hip (something none of my other doctors have done) he hit the spot where the pain radiated my entire being. (I might be dramatic here, but it hurt!) And his diagnosis—Iliac Crest Chronic Apophysitis (not near as serious as it sounds) which is deep, tiny muscle tears right above my hip bone that have tried to heal but are now covered with scar tissue because my body has stopped trying to fix itself.
Funny how our bodies are wired to do that. Something hurts, or is sick, or isn’t in sync with the rest of the system and the system fights back trying to synchronize itself once again. It fights off the bad and runs off the pain. And the human body is always like that. When one thing is off be it physical, psyche, heart, or soul everything is off. When we are not whole our lives tend to fall apart because we need inner balance. Our humanity, our life is based on the body’s longing to be whole. I believe that is why I ran so hard even through all of my hip pain. My heart was broken, my soul was searching, and the only healthy way to fix it was to physically run out the pain. Yes it hurt, but I was finding balance.

This stubborn (or Iron as I prefer) does go deep because at some point my body just got used to the pain and stopped trying to fix it. So really, I’ve been running with torn muscles for a while now. However despite the knowing and still feeling the pain, I get to run—doctor’s orders. Basically to heal my hip I have to get deep tissue massage to the area and not the feel good kind either. It’s the kind of massage that will leave me bruised and in more pain because essentially, I have to reinjure the muscle and trick the body so it will heal. And if this therapy doesn’t work, he gets to do some cool injection treatment of my own blood into my hip which will trick my body into thinking there is an injury, therefore turning on healing mode.  The reason I get to keep running and am not sidelined is because this is a type of injury where I need to feel the pain. I need to know where it hurts, I need to work my body to get it better.
So when I asked him, “Does this mean I can still train for the triathlon or do I have to rest and heal for the next few weeks?”

He replied, “You sure can. And in fact, I encourage you too. Go for it. This is one of very few injuries where I can tell you to run through the pain. It will help the healing.”

I ran to be free; I ran to avoid pain; I ran to feel pain; I ran out of love and hate and anger and joy.
-Dagny Scott

Sunday Running

Yesterday’s post was a hard one and I apologize for the tears it may bring to some (Mother…) I had a very hard time writing it, but I deal with my emotions in my writing. It’s who I am. That is why often, my blogs are so long. I say too much. They won’t all be that long, I promise.

Good Sunday morning!! The sun is beautiful here—only a few hours of work and then I’ll be driving in it to the parent’s house for the holiday weekend. I can’t wait, it’s always nice to get away especially to home sometimes. I went on a great 20 minute jog this morning to wake myself up and loosen my muscles from last night’s 10 mile bike ride…a little sun burnt and a little stiff, but feeling good. And, if all goes as planned, today’s run was my last ‘enjoyment’ run before I start training tomorrow for a triathlon.
My run this morning was great though. I’ve moved across town from campus, out East I call it, and I’m learning how nice the city is on this side of town. I have three parks in my vicinity, a great and long bike path, hills, some safe, quiet neighborhoods to run in, a pool and some ponds for swimming, and most of all endless choices for my running ventures. I do not miss the constant two routes I had been running. I like change, variety, especially when I’m just in my running zone. Someday soon though I’m going to get back up to my five miles a day. I have to admit, I haven’t been the runner I would like to have been for the past year or so as I’ve been battling some type of hip injury. I’ll be seeing my third doctor on Tuesday about it so hopefully things will go well and it’s nothing serious. Both the X-Ray and MRI have come out clean so maybe it’s just because I’m extremely inflexible….
In case those who don’t know me are wondering, I’m putting it out into the world that I AM NOT AN ELITE RUNNER, nor will I probably ever be. I wouldn’t even consider myself good yet, I just like to run… but some day I hope to have that constant 7:30 pace down or even better. I was a sprinter in high school (I never did cross country I hated distance then) but quit track to work a job, probably the one thing I regret in my life. When I got to college I realized how much I missed running so I just started going for the distance on my own. To date I have completed two half-marathons and hope to do many more, as well as some full marathons. After last summer’s roughness I knew I had to keep running and so on a whim, I inquired about walking onto the track team because I knew training with other people would keep me going. And that’s exactly what it did last fall. I had a great experience with the team, met some wonderful girls, and even had the opportunity to run in five indoor meets. And by the end of the season, I didn’t come in last on the final two races I ran (I was a 1000m and 800m runner—middle distance). However, in between indoor and outdoor season my hip gave out. It had been hurting for awhile though I just kept running on it, and I think the jump in intense training and mileage was what really aggravated it. So outdoor season was shot but by that time, I didn’t need running as much because my heart was getting stronger.

So now I’m on my way back up. My running slacked some this spring semester though my heart never faltered. Running, as with life, has its good and bad days and I do get discouraged a lot. But I just have to keep going forward if I’m ever going to get anywhere. Probably never the Olympics but hopefully a lot of Marathons and road races. I look at a lot of runners and notice how many are older than me. I don’t have patience, never have, but the great thing about running is your best years are often not when you are young, but the late twenties and thirties. So in my eyes, I may feel like I’m only getting started and never going to get anywhere, but it’s a great time to get started. I have no where to go but forward!

Ps…the ‘Running Reports’ link on the right side of my page, is a place I’ve created where I’m going to keep track of my races and times and all sorts of things. You know, the data and technical stuff, and any running groups I join or organizations I work with, which is something else I’m working on. Currently it’s in blog form because I’m not that html smart to figure everything else out yet. But Enjoy!

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!

“Jogging is very beneficial. It’s good for your legs and your feet. It’s also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed.”
-Charles Schultz

Eulogy for a Faithful Puppy

I called my dad the night it happened because I knew Dolly was his dog through and through. I asked him how everyone was doing. “We’re ok.” I could hear he wasn’t.
“How did…how was… is she….” I couldn’t finish the sentence, but he knew.
“It was pretty quick. The vet came in and gave her a sedative IV to help calm her. She said it would take 15 minutes for her nerves to calm down and the pain to settle. She said she would give us time and come back. We were all there.” I pictured him and my mother and brother standing around a metal table in the middle of a probably white room where Dolly lay, machines and things all around her. “She came back and gave her the shot. Dolly couldn’t feel anything. I was up front by her face just petting her.” I imagine my father, whose love for our dog surpassed the normal master-pet relationship, squatting down at the front corner of the table so he could be face to face with her. Probably stroking her ears like he always did, whispering to her it’s going to be all right Dolly, I love you, you’ll be ok… and even kissing her on the top of the nose a few times to reassure her. That’s when my eyes started to fill. “Her tongue flopped out a little and her eyes got glassy but her face never changed. The vet got her stethoscope and said she didn’t hear anything. She was gone. It was pretty fast and Dolly seemed to be ok through it. There wasn’t any pain.” I tried really hard not to cry during that conversation, afraid that if I did, I might hear it in my father’s voice, but I when I hung up the phone and the actuality had set in, I simply sat down on the couch with my head in my hands and cried.

  Thursday night one of my most faithful and loving best friends died. Dolly Madison was the epitome of man’s best friend. Mostly because she was my father’s puppy for her entire life, but every time I came home from college over the past few years, she would greet me with a little bobble of her head as if to say, “Caitlin, I didn’t think you were ever coming home, but I’m here! I missed you. Pet me!” I’ve been watching her age with hardship as I’ve returned home for holidays and such, but only this past six months has she gotten worse. Dolly’s always had horrible allergies so she was never the bright white of a Dalmatian that she should’ve been, and a couple of years ago she developed a lump on her neck. The vet said it was only a goiter, no cancer. However, about a year ago she started fainting, but more than likely, she was probably seizing. And her soft black ears were turning gray.
Dolly had fluid around her heart and when she would overexert herself, and in these last few month, sometimes that just meant walking up stairs or standing up from her bed, somehow her heart or lungs or something pushed on her sternum bone causing her to pass out. But my mom thinks she was actually having seizures and after seeing one episode, I agree. One day Dolly’s back legs gave out and she flopped over, her legs pushing straight out and her head arching back, her whole body becoming very stiff for a few seconds. Then she woke up, looked at Dad as if to say what happened? and lay there for a good twenty minutes.
My family had to take Dolly to the vet Thursday night because for some reason, she just wouldn’t get up anymore. She couldn’t walk and though we always hoped Dolly would just pass away from old age, she was in pain and they couldn’t let her suffer anymore. I tried not picturing her laying there on her bed, but ironically enough, I just watched Marley and Me Monday night, wondering if and when it was going to ever happen with Dolly.
That when and if came too soon.

I remember the day we brought her home I was eight and excited beyond belief at getting our first puppy. Even if I was going to have to take care of her and clean up poop. I placed a soft towel on the floor of my side of the back seat because I wanted our new blue-eyed puppy to be my friend. I wanted her to be my puppy. She rode home curled up there the entire way.
My father, in time, somehow commandeered her from me. They had a special bond and after those first few weeks with her, I knew she was going to be his forever. I spent all of her life slipping her food from my plate trying to win her over and just in the past few years when I’d be home to eat, she’d always come and mooch by me. Waiting. She knew I’d give her something, anything, even if it was a lick of my fingers. I got in trouble a lot for that, scolded by my mother, but winning Dolly, even for a moment, made it worth it. Besides, she was a sell out. She only loved my father because he’d let her sit on his lap in the couch, or the chair, when my mom wasn’t home. She wasn’t that big of a Dalmatian, but she wasn’t a lap dog either.
The last time I was home I took her on a walk because somehow, I felt it might be the last time I would ever see her and I wanted her to feel the sunshine. It wasn’t a long walk, she couldn’t go far with her enlarged heart and weak joints, but I know she enjoyed it. Dolly remembered our route like she always did, turning before I even reached the corners. And when we got home, she waited by her water bowl for a large drink, a gesture I learned over the years that meant she was happy and had enjoyed the exercise. When she wasn’t, she never drank.
When I left, I kissed her head, letting her growl at me as she did in her old grouchy stage, and told her I loved her.

Mom put the phone by Dolly’s ear Thursday afternoon when I called after getting her voicemail. “I love you Dolly. You’re my greatest friend. I’m sorry I teased you a lot and made you mad sometimes, and never took you on enough walks. It’s going to be ok, you can run all the time now. I’ll see you again. I love you.” I was eight again that afternoon. Not twenty-two. My running helps me endure through life, but it doesn’t prepare me for when life is over. Nothing ever really does except the experience of it. And it is in those moments when you realize the importance of life, of love, even if this time it is just from a simple dog. But they are faithful, and loving, and forgiving, and always there for you they way people can’t be but should be. Dolly was my friend for 10 days shy of fourteen years, and now that she’s gone I realize what it means to be a companion and a friend. One of my clearest and cherished memories is of when Dolly was a puppy. I had lay down beside her on my parent’s blue bedroom carpet and we curled up together in the tiny area between the wall and bed. My head was kind of propped up on her neck and shoulders, my hand wrapped up in her soft, black ear. I don’t know how long we slept but it was that she let me wrap myself up in her, let me get close, and stayed there with me. As if she knew me, a small child, needed a moment away. She never forgot me through these last few years. When I’d come home she was right there, close, wanting my hand to be wrapped up in her ears again. As if saying, “Caitlin, I’m still here. I love you. Pet me.”
And that’s what’s so wonderful about dogs. No matter how much you tease them or yell at them or how much you’re away, they never stop loving you. And I know that in the moment right before her heart let go of life, her heart never let go of us. Even if she knew what was coming, she still thought I love you guys. Just pet me. 

Hope through the Sole of My Sneakers

Here it is world—my mind, my new blog, my life, my run. Hello and welcome!! After a few months of thinking and a little breaking from blogging, I have decided to come back with something new. I know, some of you are thinking she did this last summer. And for those of you thinking that, you're right. J But that's old news and one more project I never completed out the window. However, I promise to stay constant with this one. This is part of me… I can already feel it. It's a race I'm in to finish, and my hope, hope, hope, is you'll run along beside me.

As of today, I am a week and a half into "the real world" having graduated from college Saturday May 9^th. (That's me receiving my diploma on the right and with my best friend Cait on the left. We were both so amazingly happy that day is was ridiculous.)

 
            

Currently I'm in a new phase of life and I want to celebrate by writing! My 'Snapshots' blog is still around, but it is in permanent hibernation mode, or I guess you can say I have retired it. I can't get rid of it; after all it was my first blog-baby. But I do I feel as if I want to mark my entrance into adulthood with something a little more focused and different. I want a theme and a purpose for my writing. I want to contemplate my blog entries and craft them like essays. I long to be a professional writer and I want this to be my starting place. So here it is.
As I sit and write at one of my favorite coffee shops, Starbucks on Wabash Ave, I'm reminded of a letter I crafted about this time last summer before I left for Ireland to study. I was stressed out to the max (which is typical for me) and worried about the direction my life was heading. How I was going to get everything done and was it really the right path? In attempts to let go of the stress, and the questions, and the worry I wrote a letter to make sense of everything and to shift my focus to my trip. I reread that letter a few days ago and came across this: I'm looking at Ireland as a sabbatical (sab·bat·i·cal –noun any extended period of leave from one's customary work, esp. for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc. -adjective bringing a period of rest.) because it is bringing a period of rest into my life. Though it is only a few short weeks, I hope to come back renewed, energized, and ready for whatever life brings at me. I hope this experience changes me and makes me even more faithful, open minded, adventurous, and laid back, but also brings more perseverance, determination, and fun into my life. I hope Ireland turns my mindset to being ready for anything and open to immediate opportunities, helps me understand I cannot always control things, banishes worry, let go of stress, challenges me, makes me take risks, and teaches me to go with the flow. I hope it renews my strength and dignity and helps me to laugh at the days to come. (Prov. 31:25)
Ireland will change me. I know this.
Little did I know just how much it would change me or what I was really asking.
When the plane lifted off on June 28^th, I was a woman with a plan—have a wonderful five week study, return home to my last semester of college, graduate early, get married, and move across the country with my new husband to start my life. Now let me say these weren't just silly girlie hopes that I wanted to encounter—this was my actual plan I was coming home too. But at the end of my trip when I stepped off of that plane onto the ground at the Chicago airport, I was a woman who no longer had any direction or plans in life and only had one mantra running through my mind. Just run. Halfway through my trip my fiancé emailed me saying he no longer wanted to get married and the news threw my world off balance. I have been an organizer and a planner for as long as I can remember—I like having things laid out and in control. Ironically enough though one of my favorite Bible verses is Jeremiah 29:11, 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.' It was what helped transition me from high school into college, and one of those lines I've passed along to friends over the years for reassurance when they were struggling in life. However, sometimes I struggle with believing it myself, which is why I was a big planner my first three years of college. Even though this verse brings peace to my heart, I often found the idea of let go and let God hard to wrap my mind around. But a year ago when I wrote that letter, I had no idea letting go and letting God was what I was really asking for.
The first thing I did the night in July when I read the news was lace up my sneakers and run. I just ran. For about an hour I found myself getting lost in the little Irish suburb of Booterstown and eventually found my way to the shoreline. There I decided no matter how long it took to get through all of the pain and hurt, I was going to run. I had ideas of half marathons and marathons and even the Iron Girl triathlon spinning around in my brain for the next three weeks and when I returned home, heart broken and lost, running kept me sane.
This past year has been a journey for me and it's still a journey I'm running. I've run through mountains and valleys, through mistakes and accomplishments, on treadmills and tracks, and even on a NCAA Division I track team. I've run for friends and family, for time and for distance, for fun and for competition. I've run through happiness and pain, rain and snow, despair and grace. I've run to lose and to gain, to find strength and to re-find my faith, to clear my head and heal my heart—but always, always I've run from my soul and out of hope.
I have a passion for running—since I was a little white-blonde bare footed girl—and a slight tendency to weave my pacing and musings into my writing. Mostly because running not only clears my head and feeds my soul but inspires me. Running gives me empowerment and strength and beauty and hope that all my perseverance will lead me to a glorious destiny. Running gives me a purposeful life. It is my metaphor in life. My God tells me that I should throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles [me], and run with perseverance the raced marked out. (Hebrews 12:1). And though I slip and fall many a time during this race of life, there is a grace inside of me which keeps my pace strong and even, and hope which encourages me on when I'm beaten, broken, and tired.
And that's where the new blog comes in—From Sole to Soul is the inspiration, experiences, journeys, pain, happiness, races, joy, love, adventure, and grace I live out through my soles. Live in hope with me and join me for my run through life.

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.

How do they learn it? They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.
-Rumi