More (small) challenges
Three trips to the doctors this month have delivered all kinds of profound diagnoses.
Regarding the shoulder issue I told you about recently: Six weeks of physical therapy proved remarkably helpful in reducing pain and returning my ability to make it through a swim workout. Yet an occasion ache remains and certain movements continue to hurt. This prompted my orthopedist, Dr. Michael Repine, to schedule an MRI. That test showed a two centimeter tear in my labrum, the topmost tendon of the rotator cuff.
The good news is that it can be fixed. The only option to do so, as supported by Dr. Sharon Wetherall, is a complete detachment and reattachment of the labrum.
The bad news is that recovery time is four to six months for normal daily activity function. A year before full strength is returned.
The second piece of medical news started off a positive note. Since I began running on a prosthesis sixteen years ago, Stumpie has suffered from what I’ve come to consider a circulation issue, causing me to stop and dangle and/or reboot to subdue the pain and restore blood-flow. Though four different prosthetists have built me run legs over the years, the pain has been relatively consistent and I’ve always presumed the problem was some sort of fit issue; perhaps Stumpie is oddly shaped or constructed and, hence, a difficult fit…or something.
My current prosthetist, Erik Shaffer of A Step Ahead Prosthetics and Orthotics, proposed the problem could be vascular insufficiency. No one, professional or otherwise, had ever mentioned this possibility, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind.
Sharon highly recommended Dr. Nelson Mozia for a consult. He prescribed a CT angiogram to inspect the integrity the veins and arteries in Stumpie. The initial results were just what I was hoping for: both the veins and arteries are severely occluded. This is good news because we’ve finally found the cause, which means we can do something about it!
Well, after Dr. Mozio consulted with an interventional radiologist and a CT radiologist, they concluded that the occlusions were so severe and widespread that a fix was out of the question. Angioplasty will not work due to the severity and a surgical procedure could result in an above knee amputation if it were to go awry. I ruled that one out immediately.
The one non-surgical option is a blood-thinning medication called Plavix which might help much needed oxygen reach those little Stumpie muscles. In the short term I’ve opted to give this a go. I’m told it takes ten days for full effect—on Sunday’s 23 mile run, day 7 of the medication, I dangled and rebooted many times. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
In the meantime, I’ll be getting a second opinion.
The final trip to the doc was not for me but for the family doctor—Sharon. The ultrasound showed that there is indeed an embryo growing in her womb! Unquestionably the biggest challenge of the three.
Run 56 miles?
Yep, that’s what I’m gonna do…
I was asked to be part of a team of athletes headed to South Africa to partake in a staggering fund-raising effort to benefit African children. I would be expected to generate 100 sponsors willing to commit to a child for the next five years. To prove I was serious about the whole thing, I’d have to run the world’s oldest and greatest ultra-marathon, The Comrades Marathon: a 56-mile jaunt started 80 years ago to honor the fallen comrades of World War I.
My initial response was an emphatic “no,” the whole “run 56-miles” thing was a bit of a turn-off. Eighteen hours later something had shifted around in the cranium and all of a sudden I was anxious to start training and called back to commit.
It must have something to do with the enticement of a challenge, one I can’t say I was expecting anytime soon. Not surprisingly, such a task requires some serious training for most of us mortals. So on Saturday I ran 13 miles then ran another 20 on Sunday. Looks like I can expect similar workouts—just longer—for the next five months.
And you can expect that I’ll be looking at all avenues to gather the sponsors I’ve committed to generate. On that note, if you’re reading this, please consider. I’ll have more information available soon, but it’s something to the affect of $35/month to help an African child get an education, some food and clean water, and some clothes on his or her back.
Perhaps you can get a group together willing to sponsor as a team. Perhaps you can get your company, your fraternity brothers, your family or your basketball team to pool funds and commit with me.
Please come back to this site in the next few weeks for more information about how you can help. I know that the suffering I’ll experience on May 30 (not to mention the many, many miles and the many, many hours of preparation) will pale in comparison to living without the means necessary to live the lives we’ve been blessed with.
Still more info can be found at www.comrades4thekids.com and www.worldvision.org.
