The Day Before My First Marathon

Saturday, December 10: The Day Before My Marathon

I took myself to a local diner for a brunch of eggs over medium, bacon, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, toast, and apple juice before boarding the DART train to the expo downtown. I stood in line behind ONE person for packet pickup at the race expo and breezed through the whole thing, including stopping to buy GU and to sign the runners’ wall, in fifteen minutes or less.

I had a pretty bad headache by the time I got home, and it was a raging migraine by evening. Having a migraine is a pretty fucking horrific and often traumatic experience even in the best of circumstances. The thing(s) about having a migraine the night before your first fucking marathon, however, means:

• Not laying out your race gear in advance
• Not prepping your hydration pack
• Not packing your race bag
• Not eating a single bite of dinner, which is a pretty fucking important pre-race meal
• Probably not keeping down any of the liquids you had instead of dinner
• Urinating extra lots, further fucking up that hydration issue (common migraine symptom)
• Not taking the hot bath you'd planned on
• Not stretching that day
• Not massaging or rolling out any sore muscles
• Kind of just barely figuring out the math on when to set your alarm, leave the house, and catch the right train and not feeling at all confident in those calculations
• Going to bed early (great!) but probably only getting 4 good hours of sleep
• Knowing you're going to wake up feeling shaky and emotionally hungover (and, of course, physically tired) for an event that requires literally every drop of mental fortitude that you have available on a *good* day, an event that you haven't even wanted to do *at all* for some weeks now
• Just being *extra* grouchy, hurty, and whiney when you've been pretty damn grouchy, hurty, sleepy, and whiney for several months already
• And no crying, because convulsions will make your upset stomach worse, and the facial tension will worsen the migraine pain as well

That said, thank you so much, dear friends, for all your support, excitement, and confidence, especially since I'm pretty much all out my own. I don't know how to convey how much it means to me.

At this point, I just want to be DONE with the GD race; and never wanting to do this again could be the only thought that gets me to the finish line.

I'm not looking forward to it AT ALL. I just want to be done running, done hurting, done training, done being tired all the time, done being grouchy, and done talking about my fucking marathon.

Simultaneous conversations with my self:

Is this you or your depression talking?

This really feels like me, tbh.

*Remember being grouchy like this 6 years ago in Korea and only much later recognizing that as pretty severe undiagnosed depression.*

So is this you or your depression talking?

Would I know the difference?

IS there a difference?

My depression IS me.

Ain't nobody got time for this.

Go the fuck to sleep.

June Journaling 3

I found a list of daily prompts for journaling in June and thought I'd give it a shot.

3. A time when you were frightened:

Since I've had a headache almost all day, I can only think of the time in December that I suddenly woke with a splitting headache early one morning. I took something for the pain and crawled back into bed where I tossed and turned, alternating sweats and chills, sweating through my sheets as the pain worsened for two hours until I phoned my housemate and asked her to take me to the hospital.

(When I have migraines, I will wallow in my own bed in a cool, dark room for up to 12 hours, tossing, turning, moaning, sobbing, and thinking all the while that I should probably ask someone to take me to the hospital, but far too averse to the thought of bright lights and other people to actually ask for it. That should give you an inkling of how very bad this one was.)

I've had migraines since childhood but never so bad that I had to go to the ER, so this was pretty freaking scary. But I was in too much pain to process that. I clutched an ice pack to my chest and wouldn't put on anything more than socks, shorts, and a t-shirt despite the cold, winter weather. When I was admitted, the woman who took my temperature told me I had no fever.

I had extreme nausea despite an empty stomach and was certain I would throw up. I did. They hooked me up to an IV and started pumping an anti-emetic, but the tech was being cautious to give it to me slowly because it made me feel shaky and vertiginous. That done, pain meds followed, and they let me doze in a dark room til they took effect.

The doctor ordered an MRI, and a tech put me in a wheelchair since I'd been too shaky to walk unaided and too photophobic to open my eyes since I'd arrived. The pain was finally abating, and now tears streamed down my face for fear of what these tests would cost me, even with insurance. I was in the ER, helpless and hurting, and I was more frightened of the bill than of the debilitating pain that put me there. Some "health care" system.

I wasn't wrong. I don't know the cost of that single visit, but it happened again 2 months later and was worse since I tried to wait it out longer to avoid the cost. After my $100 ER copay, I owed ~$2,000 and will be paying that off for the remainder of the year, struggling not to panic that I might end up in the ER again.

I guess . . . thanks, Obama?