Monday, September 6, 2004

Running The West Nile

I’ve been taking Ruby to see her mom at work on the river every weekday before I go for my three-mile walk. Ruby loves trees, and she laughs at shimmering leaves. There are parts of the river trail that are completely overgrown, and I love to hear her giggling from her baby jogging stroller apparatus. All this waking is great, but I really want to run again. I’ve been holding off, gradually building up the tendon strength and flexibility I need by walking as fast as I can without looking like one of those goofy hip swaying speed walkers. September was my cutoff point. Last Wednesday, I walked two and a half, and then I ran for half a mile. It felt good, and my foot felt no pain! If you have spent any time with me in the last couple of years, then I’m sure you are sick of hearing me complain about my foot injury. It’s been on my mind. Thanks to Dr. Aramini, I’m really happy to even have been able to run for this half mile. I’m going to take it easy and build up. I hope that by the end of this month I’ll be walking a mile and a half and running back, and then next month, I’ll start running normal distances. I don’t think I’m going to try to rerun the Tahoe or San Francisco marathons for a while. I just want to be able to regularly run five or six miles on the trails behind my house. I miss Gumby and Keystone Canyons.
Anyways, after my first run, I felt great, went to work, and came home. I was a little tired after a long day, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Within an hour, I was shaking like a leaf and shivering from the cold, which was ridiculous because it was well over seventy degrees in the house. I had a fever of a hundred and three, and I could barely move. I felt like someone had worked me over with a baseball bat. I deliriously asked Ani what the symptoms for West Nile Virus were. The next day, I felt no better, and Ani had to go to work. I usually love to spend my mornings with Ruby, but I had absolutely no energy. All I could do was watch her cry and mumble something about how I loved her and how it was all going to be ok. She wasn’t buying it. Perhaps my countenance was a little less than convincing. I don’t know which of us was drooling more. I finally propped her up on the floor with a bunch of toys and tried to retain consciousness while she threw them over her shoulder and screamed. I was so thankful when Ani came home early and helped me out. I got ready for work, and called to give them a heads-up, so that they could put me in a light station. My boss told me to stay home (thankfully), and I spent that night with the exact same degree of fever, but instead of cold, I was overheated. I woke up the next morning in a puddle. Thank God it was just sweat! Ok, I didn’t do a chemical analysis of it, but I’m sure it was just sweat. I don’t pee out of the back of my head. After that, I felt great. I’ve never had a completely debilitating 24hr bug. Usually I feel something like that working its way into my system, and then there is a long period of gradual recovery. Weird.

Ani and I enjoyed a three-day weekend together. We went and saw my Dad, Linda, and my brothers for breakfast on Sunday, and I went walking/running again today! I hope my body doesn’t start to self-destruct again. Exercise is good for you right?