Chapter 1: The End of the First Half

On October 14, 2012 I ran the Baltimore Running Festival Half Marathon.  I had followed a strict training plan which proved to be successful, because I beat my own estimated finishing time of 2:15 and set a PR of 2:03:34.  Not too bad for my first half marathon, even many of my running friends said so.

But this story isn't about how I became a runner or about the trials and tribulations of finding my pace or discovering my actual love for the sport.  It isn't a story of how I plan to beat my PR or raise money for a special cause.  Nope, this isn't that kind of story at all.

This story actually begins one week later, on October 20, 2012.  I had taken it easy after my half marathon.  It seemed the most logical and fair thing to do; to let my body recuperate after all I had put it through over the past 10 weeks.  I had started training late in the game, so I made up for lost miles by squeezing them in on longer runs.  My body needed the rest.  My mind needed the rest.  My family needed the rest.  It was well earned.

I woke up on that Saturday morning with memories of lost sleep and a pain in my chest which, in the midst of my attempted slumber, I labeled as heart burn.  I had probably had a couple too many glasses of red wine the night before at Kristen and Brent's house which tends to happen when we get together and play Catch Phrase.  But even as I woke, I felt a little off.  I decided to "run it off"- yes, those were my exact thoughts, "I must have had too much wine.  I'll go run it off."  I do sometimes wonder if other people's brains' work the same as mine.

My standard loop around the outskirts of my neighborhood is a perfect 3.1 miles.  I gasped for breath and thought to myself that I'll never take a week off again as I pushed to finish in an acceptable amount of time of 27:03.  It wasn't my best, but it was acceptable.  Everyone has good days and bad days, but I've never regretted going for a run.  It's better than the alternative- not going for a run.  Running always makes me feel better.

Except today.

The dry cough wouldn't stop.  I felt like I just couldn't get enough air in my lungs.  I figured I was coming down with something and went about my regular Saturday business.  The next morning, I woke feeling the same.  I remembered waking in the middle of the night.  Moving around trying to be comfortable.  Taking deep breaths and trying to make the pain go away.  I decided NOT to run it off today.  Maybe I was coming down with an upper respiratory infection or something.  Better not to push.  There's always tomorrow.

By Monday morning, I realized that I had to tell William.  He is the worry wart of our family, always sure that something bad is going to happen to one of us.  His anxiety about illness is the ying to my yang in our relationship, since I'm the exact opposite.  Blood, flood, or fire, I always say, anything else is just an annoyance and everything is alright.

"I think I'm going to take a sick day today and just relax," I tried to casually say to him.  It didn't work.  His head whipped up from his phone and he gave me that intrusive look.

"Why?" he asked the question as if he had already decided that he wasn't going to believe my answer.  He was going to have to drag this out of me and he knew it.  But I was too scared to make this painful for him.  I told him of the chest pains over the past 3 nights.  I told him that I wanted to see a doctor and just make sure I was alright.

I saw the doubtful arch of his questioning eyebrows turn down to a make a worried line in the middle of his head.  I suddenly wished I hadn't said anything at all.  "I'm sure it's fine.  I just want to check."

Of course nothing I said made him feel better.  The appointment was made for the afternoon.  We laid in bed and spent the day catching up on Breaking Bad.  It was relaxing, but the pains didn't stop.  They shot through to my left shoulder sometimes.  I tried not to let him know, but he could tell by my breathing.

Google wasn't any help.  We had diagnosed my symptoms as 3 or 4 different conditions, all of which lead to heart failure.  All of the jokes about William's Google search settings being set to "worse case scenario" weren't very funny at this moment, since anything related to heart disease had heart failure as the worst case scenario.

We had decided exactly how the appointment was going to go down.  My PCP wouldn't find anything, but she would refer me to a cardiologist.  I'd schedule the first available appointment which would be 2 or 3 weeks from now, and we'd have to wait it out for answers.

On the contrary.  My doctor, who is also a runner and knows of my half marathoning,  found an irregularity in my ekg.  I was restricted from any exercise.  Any and all forms of caffeine were removed from my diet.  She made me an appointment with a local cardiologist for Wednesday and she wanted me to stay home from work until then.  This was serious.  This was scary.  This wasn't heart burn or an overly stressed body.

I spent the next couple of days getting a good medical history of my family.  Come to find out, my maternal grandfather died of a heart attack at 42 and my paternal grandfather died of a heart attack at 52.  Suddenly all of my fears became too overwhelming to bare.  For the first time in our relationship, William was comforting me, reassuring me that it was going to be okay.  I was Super Woman.  When I got in the car accident where the 1987 Ford truck t-boned me in my 2005 Toyota Camry, I came out with bruises and the front end of the truck appeared to have run into a brick wall.  I was tough.  It was going to be okay.  I had just ran a damned HALF MARATHON!  My heart was healthier than anyone I knew.