IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE AN IDIOT

I have no idea but for whatever reason, I've been off by a day all week long.  Monday was actually Sunday.  Tuesday was Wednseday.  Wednesday was Tuesday.  And by week's end I was ready to commit myself.  That is, if the rest of the pueblo didn't commit me first.  This is a Three Act Drama so be patient.

ACT 1:  Set in the middle of Calle de los angeles in front of Mohammed, the lone Morrocan guy's, discount shop.  Keke (track coach and sometimes firefighter) rolls up to Village Idiot (played by me).

Keke:  Hey!  How's it going?  We've missed you at RunClub this past week, everything alright?
Village Idiot:  We're hanging in there.  We've had a house full of sick kids.  Nothing major, just a nasty cold but it's knocked everyone out.  That, and then there's the car.
Keke:  The car?
Village Idiot:  Well, our car has finally arrived at the port but now it's a matter of how long it will be tied up in customs.  Joe will likely be heading to Valencia early next week to pick it up.
Keke:  That's great, isn't it?
Village Idiot:  Well yeah, except it means I'll probably have to miss one or two more practices. 
Keke:  Oh, don't worry about it.  You know where to find us.  We'll look forward to seeing you towards the end of the week.  Are you running today?
Village Idiot:  (Thinking he's referring to the race in Sevilla that actually occurred the night before)  Me?  Oh no.  I can't, no car.  Remember?
Keke:  (Looking quizzically) Uh, yeah.  Right, no car.  Well, we'll see you later in the week.  Take care...
Village Idiot:  You too. Oh and have a great time (referring to last night's race in Sevilla)!


ACT II:  Set about 200 meters down the block from the encounter with Keke.  Fellow teammate, Miguel, and his family drive by, honk and wave to Village Idiot.

Village Idiot:  Hey (waving spastically)!  You guys heading out now?
Teammate: (smiles) Yeah.  We're on our way.
Village Idiot:  Well have a fantastic time!  Good luck!
Teammate: (pauses, smile fades) Uh, yeah.  Okay. 
Village Idiot: It's gonna be great, you'll see!  Take lots of pictures for me, okay?   Bye!!
Teammate:  (nods and waves) Adios...



ACT III:  Set at the Village Idiot's house later that afternoon.  Paqui drops by for a quick visit.

Village Idiot:  So what time are you heading out?
Paqui:  Heading out?  For where?
Village Idiot:  For Sevilla.
Paqui:  Sevilla? 
Village Idiot:  The race, silly.  Aren't you running tonight?
Paqui:  You mean 'ran'.  The race was last night.
Village Idiot:  But I just saw Keke and Miguel heading out of town.  We just talked about it.
Paqui:  Well, I don't know what you talked about but I'm telling you that the race was last night.  I was there, trust me.  And so were they.  I rode in Miguel's car for crying out loud.
Village Idiot:  Then where were they going if it wasn't the race?
Paqui:  Someone died, a mutual friend I think.  They were on their way to the funeral.

Close curtain.

PAN FRANCISCO TO THE RESCUE

You probably know Europe by the quaint little streets that wriggle through her sleepy towns; spidery veins crawling up a lonely widow´s bony arm.  Hundreds upon hundreds of twisting and winding cobbled streets just waiting to turn a tourist´s ankle before swallowing the poor fellow whole in its labyrinth.  This is my new version of suburbia since landing in Córdoba some two weeks ago.  And this post, an homage to suburban bikepath runs of the past...


Our fouth day in Córdoba was fast approaching and my running shoes were still nestled snug in the suitcase.  I´m usually a 7 day runner, not wanting to miss even a day so the fact that the third day had come and gone without me even logging online to map a run had me in a funk.  I was completely off schedule, so much so that I could barely manage a complete sentence, let alone a complete thought.  You see, here in Spain the rules of time are far different than back in the States.  And down here in the inferno that is an Andalusian summer, well everything and I mean EVERYTHING revolves around the apple green numbers of the farmacia´s digitial clock that brags 35 degrees (that´s Celsius, folks) before the churchbells toll noon.  If I was going to do this first run right, I had two choices:  dusk or dawn. 


So on day 4 I laced up at 4:30AM.  To most Americans, this is an ungodly hour to even think about working out and to a Spaniard well, it´s nothing short of sacrilege.  As I headed out on my first Cordoban run I was passing by throngs of twenty, thirty and yes, even a few forty somethings who were heading home from the bars. Here there are just two entities awake at this hour:  the pub crowd and the panadero.   The beginning and ending of every good day:  beer and bread.  Or something to that effect.  Anyway, back to the story.  I hadn´t even tried to map the run and instead focussed on running for time.  I committed to running an 8 minute square which I would repeat til I hit the hour mark. Above the white washed walls and orange roof tiles of the barrio San Andrés I spied three different church belltowers.  These would be my reference points in case of the inevitable.  And so I set off for my first ever run in Cordoba, Spain.


It was cool for the Spanish morning, maybe 60 degrees or so.  The run felt great.  My whole body was applauding every step.   If you´re not a runner I can´t explain this feeling to you.  I just felt like I was getting cleansed from the inside out, as if crystal clear cool water were pouring through all of my veins and washing away the garbage.  And whenever I run, no matter how far I go, there´s some point during the run, maybe a minute or maybe a mile, that I think about what it feels like to run when you have CF.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Keep going...


Alas, just as I had feared, some twenty minutes into my square I was getting bored.  I had passed the same homeless guy asleep on his bottle three times and woken him twice.  It was time to branch out.  I headed up the hill towards the plaza area that we had taken the kids to the previous day.  The sidewalks up there were bigger and I could add some distance on the straightaway before heading back to finish up on the square.  Up and up and up I ran, careful to make mental note of the fountains, signs and street names as I passed.
 
San Rafael
Santa Ana
San Pedro
Santo Domingo


After the fifth saint, I scrapped the street name idea and just focussed on monuments.


Big shooting fountain with naked man.
Little shooting fountain with naked man.
Naked man on a horse.
Naked man beside his horse.


You´ve seen one naked man statue and you´ve seen them all.  It was time to turn back. 


As I swooped back down into the mouth of the labryinth, I took a deep breath and hoped that I would get back home on the first shot.  The first few streets flew by and I relaxed a little bit but coming up was a split in the road.  Funny, but I hadn´t noticed this at all on the climb up.  Left or Right?  Right or left?  Shit, I had no idea.  Everything was white washed.  Everybody had the same wooden front door and black wrought iron bars on their windows.  Where in the hell had those belltowers gone?  I didn´t stop running though.  No way.  What would that have solved?  Not only would I be lost but I´d be pissed off that I had ruined a perfectly good run.  No way, Jose.  So like an idiot, I just kept running.  I began zig zagging up and down, in and out of every single callejón.  Once I tell you my philosophy on this you´ll realize why I´m no brain surgeon.  I just figured that eventually one of the narrow streets would spit me out where I needed to be - the question was, could I outlast no better, could I outrun the labryinth that is the historic district?


So I ran.
And ran.
And ran.
And ran.
And ran.


And then I saw him.  He may as well have been Moses himself, parting the Red Sea.  The wave of diarreah that had taunted me since the split turned to a wave of relief.   My compas rose: the panadero.

It was the same little white delivery van with its carefully scrolled magenta lettering that was loading up the fresh loaves from Pan Francisco´s shop at the begining of my run.  Forget you, San Rafael.  You too Santo Domingo. San Pan Francisco is my man.  I fell into step behind his van and followed him all the way back to the bakery; the bakery which happens to be about 50 meters from our flat.  And this first run, this first misadventure taught me my first two important lessons:


1.  There is no one more important to the mistress of the house than a good, reliable panadero.

2.  In the end a  maze is just that,  maize.  When lost in the Iowa cornfield, just keep walking the line in the same general direction and you´ll find your way out.  When you´re lost in the labyrinth of streets of the historic district do the same; head in the general direction, stay the course and you´ll find your way home. 


Eventually.

DOWN BUT NEVER OUT

How fitting that my last post, some 6 months ago, was titled On Hiatus.  It must have been my subconscious writing that day as I really did have no immediate plans to abandon my blog.  Apologies aside, I'm back.  Now let me catch you up to speed...

Basically, I was feeling like real crap.  Crap with a capital C.  The kind of crap that you just can't put your finger on so you ignore it, chalk it up to getting older and trudge forward dragging one foot at a time.  I knew something was off but I just couldn't quite pin it down.  Was it Joe?  Was it the kids?  Was it work?  Was it CF? Was it the house?  The dog?  The yard?  The bills?  Uhm, no dumbass it's YOU!

Once I made that startling revelation, I grabbed the phone and made an appointment for a complete physical, something I had neglected to do since turning into a human incubator for the past 5 years.  While on hold with the receptionist it dawned on me that I had serviced my car more frequently than I had my own body.  The girl who had once been so responsible about getting a yearly physical, had taken a hiatus on her own health, servicing only her vagina for those nasty postpartum checks once every eleven months.  Vagina be damned.  Enough was enough.

As I drove to my appointment the following week, I was nervous - sweaty palms kind of nervous.  I knew that the scale was not going to be kind and the doctor even less.  Let's face it, 4 pregnancies in less than 5 years does not a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model make.  I thought back to the old me - the me who had taken up running 8 to 10 miles a day 'for fun'...what had happened to that girl?  I was trapped inside a body that wasn't mine and absolutely everything ached.  Doing the math, it was not hard to understand why either.  Since Charlie's birth nearly 5 years ago, I had put on 160 pounds yet had only managed to shed half as much.  By the time Henry was born I looked like Jabba the Hut, tipping the scales at 239 pounds.  Everyone kept feeding my ego about the pregnacy glow - yeah, it was a glow alright...a red hot mess of a glow.  

Dr. K walked in, asked how I was doing and I burst out in tears. 

"Not, good..."  I snorted.  "Not good at all."  Between sobs I told her how tired, how depressed, how frustrated, how completely spent I was.  I told her about how stressed out I was about cystic fibrosis and how I felt like I was always waiting for the roof to cave in, the other shoe to drop...basically, for the shit to hit the fan.  I had practiced on the drive in to work the converstation of me being completely open and honest with my doctor.  And for the first time in my adult life, I was.  If she was gonna bill my insurance for this visit, she was gonna earn every penny of it, dammit.  No more feigning Mrs. Good Patient.  I was coming clean.

I'm not one to break apart so easily - at least I like to think so.  Evidently, though this is not the case.  It was kind of like a breach in a dam; once the leak was sprung, everything came spilling out.  She listened, I bawled.  She listened some more, I ranted.  A little blood work, some urine and a few tissues for the road and I was done.  As we say in Spain, pis pas no más.  I was out the door.

Life went back to normal - whatever that means and I waited for her call that labs were back and it was time to consider Prozac.  Instead, I got a personal invitation to come back in to go over the results.  I had a sinking feeling wash over me.  Breast cancer?  A brain tumor?  Schizophrenia?  I was a mess.

"Well, we have your labs.  Quite interesting really..."

Great, I thought.  I'm dead.

"Remember how upset you were at the last visit?  How you complained of being so tired, so depressed?"

My throat, dry a as a bone, I barely managed a "Mmmhmmm..."

"Well, I checked your thyroid.  Kelly, a normal functioning thyroid will score in the range of 3 to 4; high being in the teens."

Oh God.  It's over.  I have cancer. 

"Your thyroid came in at 136.  It's the highest score I've ever seen in more than 15 years of practice."
GASP.

"It explains everything, Kelly.  This is why you have been feeling so down.  Your thyroid has been underperforming and so your pituitary gland has been dumping excess hormone levels into it in hopes of kick starting it.  But what's happening is that it's flooding your system, causing you to be overly tired, lethargic and yes, even depressed."

Screwed yet again by bad genetics.  Dammit.

"I'm putting you on a thyroid medication, and a daily dose of vitamin B.  We'll follow up in six weeks to reassess and if need be, tweak the dosage."

That's it?  No chemo?  "Uh, okay."

That was in how my conversation ended with Dr. K on August 17th.  Now, 4 months and over 150 miles later, I can say, erh...I can shout,  "I'M BACK.  THIS BITCH IS BACK!"

At last appointment, my thyroid, cholesterol, and weight were all within normal range and I feel like ME again.  Is it the meds?  Well yeah, they definitely helped to get things under control but I don't attribute everything to them.  I've been working out daily and working out hard core, like I used to.  The treadmill that once mocked me, now winces when it sees me coming.  The .8 of a mile that nearly brought me to my knees is now a cool 10 mile run, balls to the wall as I like to say, with NO pit stops.  I hear Ronnie Sharpe pushing me with "...you can do anything for just one more minute, can't you?"  I hear CysticGal pounding that treadmill and baptizing those new lungs of hers as HERS.  I hear Maylie's fit of giggles as she jumps higher and higher on that trampoline out back. I hear Charlie coach Lola to "take a big breath, hold it as long as you can and let's see who can stay under longer."  And the mommy guilt that once was no longer is.  I decided that in order for me to be a good (insert noun), I have to lead by example.  How can I ask my kids to adhere to an hour or more daily health regimen if I myself can't even maintain one?  If I want Charlie, Lola and Henry to love the feeling of a good workout then it's my responsibility to show them; not just talk the talk but walk the walk.  I traded my 5AM drive into school to work on lesson plans that may or may not get rave reviews for a 5AM drive to the YMCA.  I kept "21 days to make a habit" as my mantra knowing that if I could stick with it long enough, it would be a need not a just a seemingly intangible want.  I tuned out the excuses and plugged in to those who were leading by example; mainly my friends on CysticLife. 

Then, almost by dare, I took it up a notch.  I signed up for my official comeback.  March 20, 2010 I will be running my first half marathon since gosh, I can't even remember how long its been.  Of course I'm running for my cause, CF.  One of the many rock stars of the CF community, Emily Schaller, has organized a virtual race, Out Run CF.  The concept is so genius - sign up to run, pay your twenty bucks (all of which goes to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation), pick your distance, then no matter where you are on 3/20/11, RUN IT. 

I am running to raise funds and awareness for cystic fibrosis.  I am running because I have two strong legs, two great lungs and two awesome kids who are chasing good health.  I am running because I want to show my kids, all three of them,  that comebacks are the norm not the exception.    I am running because I can.

I am running for me. 

And I invite you, my long lost friends, to do the same. 

RUN.  WITH.  ME.