Life Without Running

     I would be lying if I said I was completely happy with my current situation, but I have decided all the stress and anger I have spewed the last month was just a waste of time.  While it felt really great at the time to rant about my situation, all it did was deepen my depression for the situation.  I was so down I started to question my resolve and wanted to just give up the whole thing.  In my last post, I even looked to find blame with my doctor and his handling of things and even sought out a new doctor expecting that would solve all my problems and the insurance company would just magically fall into line and allow the surgery.  After a few days I came to accept what is my current situation, drain away all that angers me about the situation.  I've been told that "you only get one life, so live it" and going through it angry just wastes what little time I have with this life.

     So what have I been doing since I haven't been able to run?  That is a good question.  First it has allowed me to spend more "together" time with my wife since I don't have any training runs to go do or races that keeps me busy for a couple hours while she hangs out and cheers for me on the sidelines.  Also, a couple of weeks ago I started my physical therapy which has gone great.  I see her twice a week doing strength training followed by some stretching to increase my range of motion.  I have four more weeks before I am to see the doctor again.  At that point, I assume, we will discuss if we will petition the insurance company again for the surgery. 

Some GREAT news to finally report amidst all that has transpired with my injury I forgot to mention that I was asked to return as a race ambassador for the 2016 MercyHealth Glass City Marathon in Toledo, Ohio.  This year's race will be the 40th anniversary of the marathon and the organizers are working tirelessly to make it one to remember.  My goal, post surgery, was to work hard to get myself ready to at least run and finish the race, however that goal may be in jeopardy with each day that passes.  So, I will heed the advice of my doctor and PT and do what they suggest in this situation, If I only have enough time to get ready for the half marathon or the 5K race than that is what I will do.  If things work out that I won't even be ready for the 5K then I will work the course as one of my fellow ambassadors did last year when an injury sidelined her a few weeks prior to the race.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was my weight.  I have struggled with this recently and I am trying to rectify it, without letting it run my life.  Just as my injury took place back in early July my weight has seen its lowest ever with a 169.5 on the scale.  Without running to continue my calorie burn, the lack of ambition to find a suitable replacement, and my depression fueling my binging habits my weight has crept up to 181 pounds.  I have managed to try really hard at getting back on track with my eating habits and have managed to drop a couple of pounds, but without that vehicle to burn some calories I feel a little like I am hanging on the edge of a cliff by nothing more than my fingernails.  In an effort to keep myself positive, I have told myself that I haven't resorted to my old habits of eating the greasy shitty food, I just have been increasing the volume of what I have eaten.  I just have to get back to watching my calorie intake and I should be in good shape.

Surgery Update WTF

     Yeah so I would love to say I just haven't been posting everything because of my recovery, but that just isn't the case.  So when I last posted it was the start to the Labor Day weekend and I was told by the doctor's nurse that he would contact the insurance company Tuesday and she would call me with an update.  Tuesday came and by late afternoon I hadn't heard anything, so I called them.  After being put on hold for several minutes I was informed that the doctor would be calling tomorrow, the day before the surgery, because he wasn't in the office today.   I thought, "Really?!, but ok."

     The next morning I wake up and anxiously awaited the verdict.  I received the call around 10ish letting me know that the surgery has been canceled.  The nurse stated that the insurance company would not budge on their position that this surgery is exploratory and that with a procedure such as this requires medication, rest and alternative treatments before they will authorize the surgery.

     Of course it goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I was SUPER PISSED and extremely disappointed.  I proceeded to call my insurance company and vent my frustrations, which got me passed along from one person to another who could supposedly help me, I was finally transferred to a voicemail where I left all my info while thinking there is no way in hell anyone will call me back.  Little did I know that I would get a call back several hours later.  The conversation with the nurse for their medical staff, basically went back and forth just like a tennis match.  I could tell she was getting a pissed off with me because I wouldn't give in and kept on till after 20 plus minutes she finally said what the real reason they denied it.  Basically, Anthem has different procedures that no mater what have a list of things that must be tried before a surgical option will be explored.  Them denying my surgery wasn't because their doctor disagreed with my doctor its because of their policy and my surgery fit this bullshit policy.  So instead of doing what is medically necessary their policy has me jumping through hoops till they say otherwise.  

     After the conversation with the insurance company I called the nurse at my doctor's office to let them know what the ins company had to say, and that is when things start to get a little "funny" for me.  The nurse says that she is calling in a prescription to my pharmacy and will be mailing me a prescription for physical therapy that she will mail me.  I hang up and call it a day and instead of going back to work for the week, I decided to use the rest of the week to spend time with my wife, my family who were in town and for myself to just relax and decompress.  Friday my wife surprised me with a tattoo appointment because she wanted something to go right for me this week.  Only those that have tattoos and really enjoy the act of getting one just as much as the artwork involved know what I am talking about when I say that it was just the thing I needed to relieve some stress.  Wow did I feel so much better after we were all done. 

     So, fast forward a few days and this is where my head is at.

     I am beginning to think my doctor and his staff don't know what the fuck they are doing.  Sunday, a full four days after the nurse stated she was calling in my script, I stopped by the pharmacy and to my surprise there was no prescription waiting for me.  I thought to myself, maybe she meant she was mailing the script along with the PT prescription.  When Wednesday came and still nothing I decided to see just what the hell is going on.  I had to return the recovery medical supplies that I had received prior to my surgery that I wrote about here.  

     The medical supply company is located in the same office as the doctor and since I still haven't received my prescriptions for my meds and PT I thought I would kill two birds with one stone while I was there.  When I asked them about the medication and PT no one seemed to know what I was talking about.  The nurse I spoke with asked me to sit and wait till the doctor got out of a consultation so she could talk with him.  I was close enough to them that I was able to listen in on some of their conversation and when she asked him about the medication he said I don't care whatever we usually give.  After the doctor walked away, she called me back over to get everything taken care of.  After the nurse asked me what pharmacy I wanted the meds called into, she still ended up calling them into the wrong place.  I mean come on Dean, cut her a little slack, Right Aid and Walgreen's sounds exactly a like.  But I digress.  Oh, and the nurse on the phone from last week, the one that was taking care of all this, told me the insurance company needed me to have PT for 3 months and Wednesday the doctor only prescribed 6 weeks of physical therapy. WTF!  Doesn't anyone know what is going on?

     After today, I am on the fence about seeking a 2nd opinion and wondering if some of what the insurance company was blaming on the doctor was, in fact, true.

Where the Hell Have You Been

   
     Well it has been a little over a month since my last post and I want to apologize for not being more active for you all.  I have just struggling to feel any sort of being or purpose lately when it comes to my blog.  Every time I think "that would be a good topic to write about" the desire just hasn't been there for me to do it.  Ever since I was told I needed surgery I have been down in the dumps with the whole "why me" argument.  I am sure the lack of exercise that my body is use to is having an effect on my mood, but when you add in being inundated all day every day on Facebook and other blogs about others that are hitting these great milestones, running some great races and just plain enjoying life doing what they love while you can't doesn't help the situation.  Don't get me wrong, I am so happy and proud to see so many people making healthy changes in their lives, but it is hard not to fight that feeling of jealousy and anger at my situation, and I think I have let it get to me so bad that I have been disengaging from almost everything in my life.  More and more the idea of just coming home from work, sitting on the couch and doing nothing but watch Netflix has become my norm, and I don't like it.

     Since I can't run I have dusted off the bicycle and given cycling a shot.  Mandy and I have gone on a few 2-3 mile rides together, but she likes to just relax and enjoy the view when she rides, which I don't mind since we are spending time together, but to me that is the equivalent of walking vs. running.  I have managed a 9 mile and 13 mile rides at a brisk pace, which felt pretty good, despite my ass getting sore. (#) I would like to get out there more, but really the only time I have to ride, other than my day off is in the early morning when its dark, so until I spend some money on lights for the bike, that is out.

     Time to change the attitude and think more positive about things.  I am sure the last thing anyone once to read about is my fucking pity party on how I can't run right now, when there is so much more going on in the world to deal with.  I have to admit, what you are reading now is the third time I have written this post, and before deleting most of it, I think typing those previous drafts really helped.  How you ask?  Well when I read it back to myself, all I heard was a guy that wants something to come easy to him, feels like he is owed something, wants others to feel sorry for him and say it is ok to be like this.  I know this feeling well, and you know what this feeling has gotten me in the past?  I'll tell you  142 POUNDS OF PURE WASTE OF SPACE!  That's right, the last time I felt this way was before this journey ever started and when I didn't want to put in any of the effort, but gain all the results.  

     My plan for the blog's future is to do a daily or every other day post about my surgery experience and recover, but until then my post will be few and far between and may have absolutely nothing to do with running. There is a little more than three weeks till I have my surgery, so until then nothing but living life and concentrating on the positives in life! 

GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon Training Week 5

    

     This week has been a bit a of a struggle for me mentally and physically.  I keep trying to get back to my pre-marathon form with my dedication and my nutrition, but sadly I keep failing myself.  Last week was a little rough and I told myself it is time to make a change, and when I did it lasted a couple of days and petered off.  I think a lot has to do with my current frame of mind.  I keep feeling like I don't have enough time in the day to get everything I either need and/or want to accomplish.  You would think with the weather changing I would be in better spirits and ready to get out and run, but lately that hasn't been the case.  Plus as you may have read from my Thursday post my food intake has become a bit of a problem as well.  I don't want to say I feel depressed because at the end of the day I don't have any real problems that warrant me feeling depressed, but I just kind of do.  For example I woke up early to get my workout in the other day and I looked for every excuse to skip it and go back to bed, or I would tell myself I can get it in after work and by the time I get home that is the last fucking thing I want to do.  I just can't seem to get myself on a schedule that agrees with me and it is aggravating the shit out of me.

 

     Back in the day when I was fat overweight Dean I would try to lose weight and get in shape, and when I'd get started I would be totally focused and disciplined to my goals.  Then after a month or two in I would get sick or something would come up that would sideline me for a short time and I would lose all focus.  I would start to pull the same crap that is happening to me now.  This was my first thought is because I was sidelined for so long due to my injury, which makes total sense, but I worked so hard to get through therapy, so what is the issue?  To answer my own question, I think my priorities and my schedule or lack of a schedule is all out of whack.  My Therapist wrote me a great training plan for the GCM Owens Corning Half Marathon, but I have failed to properly organize it so it fits in with my work schedule.  I really need to sit down and take some time to map out a schedule to get the second half of my training program prioritized along with my other interests.  I mean I only have a little over 40 days till I run the Owens Corning Half Marathon at the Glass City Marathon.  So maybe going back and reviewing the goals I set for this year will get me inspired to bring back pre-marathon Dean.

     So I guess you were wondering when I was going to actually talk about my training for the week.  I am sure you can tell by the picture above and my long preamble above that, that should tell you this week wasn't that great.  I only got 3 days of running in, one cross training day, one strength day and zero yoga.  To most that might sound like I got a lot done, and maybe I am being to hard on myself, but I skipped part or all of my workout on 3 of the 4 days I had something scheduled.  

     My tempo run on Tuesday went fine, but my long run on Thursday could have been better if my legs were not so tired from my strength training on Wednesday.  I started to have some mild knee pain from my IT band in the last two miles and my hamstrings were sore for a couple of days after that.  You can read more about that run here.  Because I skipped Friday and Saturday's workouts I told myself that there would be no excuses, just running.  I had to work so I couldn't do my interval and hill workout at the gym so I ran the intervals on the bike path and used a highway overpass for my hill workout.  I decided to take the long way back to the house and throw in a easy tempo run to do it. Here is a selfie from high above the world on a midwest mountain!

     I saw this quote today and I think it says exactly what I needed to hear right now!

  

Wednesday Weigh In / The Shame Of It All

     Merry Christmas Eve everyone!!  Today is going to be a very busy day for me as I am working 9-2 then I am heading to my sister's for a Christmas Eve get together.  I went ahead and wrote this up last night because I knew I wasn't going to have any time today to write it.  I did however wait till this morning to do my weigh in so I can stay consistent with what numbers I report.  Thank God I waited because if this is what I saw this morning, just think what it would have said if I did it last night.  So lets just get this out of the way right now.

12/24/14 official weigh in

179 lbs

Change: +3.5 lbs

Total loss from heaviest: 138 lbs

Current BMI: 28.0 (overweight)

Change: +.5

      I have debated whether to write about this or not, but after seeing what the scale had to say I think it warranted a truthful response.  So on December 19^th we had our company Christmas pot luck, which is always bad for us food-a-holics because of the smorgasbord of food available.  The pot luck took place during work and being the manager of my department I decided to let my employees go ahead and eat while I covered the department.  I felt that was the right thing to do, but what it did was gave me almost an hour to wait to eat so I was extremely hungry when it was my turn to dive in.  Now of course I was going to enjoy myself, it was a holiday party, so I filled my plate with a sandwich, some chips and cheesy potatoes.  The cheesy potatoes were really good so I went back for seconds, but didn’t over do it. 

 

     Now this is where things went all kinds of wrong.  By this time I was all by myself in the lunch room with a bunch of cookies, brownies, chocolate covered pretzels and buckeyes.  I told myself I could have one cookie and one buckeye, well all that did was start that little tiny snowball rolling down hill.  With no one around for me to feel embarrassed for gorging myself and before I new it I was 5 heavily frosted and sprinkled sugar cookies and 5 rich chocolate & peanut butter buckeyes in.  I had that disgusted ashamed feeling, yet I couldn’t stop myself.  I had to physically walk out of the lunch room to keep from eating any more and yet it was all I could think about.  More! More! More! is all my brain would comprehend.  I started chewing some Extra gum to try and keep myself from going back once the minty flavor of the gum kicked in.  The trick worked, but the damage had already been done.

     Now add to that, Saturday my parents arrived in town for Christmas and the family all met at Fricker’s to eat dinner.  There is not one healthy thing about Fricker’s, but boy does it taste good.  I ended up eating cheese fries and greasy breaded wings like it was no big deal.  Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but because I haven’t been running or getting any exercise recently I am not burning the calories to allow this kind of behavior.

     I have no reason to think this is the beginning of the end and I will slip and slide all the way back to 300 pounds, but it sure did scare me how easy it was.  Especially considering how hard I have worked to get to where I am.  I wasn’t going to write this because it is really fucking embarrassing to admit, but it’s the truth and this is what I struggle with. 

 Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

1000 Miles and Depressed

     Today's run was my first back in two weeks due to my continuous IT Band issues.  I went out without using the IT band isolator strap.  My ultimate goal is to get back to original form so I wanted to see how I would do without it.  I headed out keeping my pace quite slow and just trying to concentrate on my form.  Somewhere around the mile and a half mark I was starting to feel the tightness in my knee with some minor pain.  I hit the turnaround and ended up stopping so I could stretch out the IT band.  I walked for maybe 20 yards and then got back to it with no problems.  As I suspected The pain crept back and I ended up stopping again to stretch things out and walk it out.  Again I was pain free for a little while, but like I was expecting, pain came back.  once I hit the 3 mile mark I gave up and walked the last mile home.

     When I got home I was feeling frustrated and depressed, and realized I was only 1.1 miles away from hitting the 1000mile mark for the year.  I finished my stretches and thought to myself, I am not going to run again for the rest of the year so fuck it I am gonna go out and at least hit the millennium mark for the year.  I geared up and headed down the bike trail for a half mile and turned around to head back.  The whole time I was thinking this a stupid idea to continue to run, but I wanted a victory of some kind today.

  
     Now where do I go from here.  I am officially done for the year.  I have a tattoo apt in a couple of days and combine that with the knee issues I am just going to hang up the shoes till January.  I am also going to seek professional help in the form of a sports physical therapist.  I found out today that in Ohio you don't have to see and get a doctor's note before you can see a SPT, you can go directly to them.  I am going to contact a couple of places and see what I need to do to get started.