Damaged Goods

This past week I’ve pined to join the ranks of those I have little tolerance for, and whine for just a minute… Whining, like worrying is generally a waste of breath. We play the victim blah...blah...blah... then we feel like we emotionally got hit by a truck. Yet here I am doing the injured athletes version of Russian Roulette—whining and fretting and hating myself for it all the while. Go ahead—pull the trigger.

This past May I had to pull out of a race for which I had trained well due to problems with my heart. Now I am facing a similar predicament—pulling out of my upcoming Antarctica event—due to a failed body part. More damaged goods. (whine, whine, whine)

After a thorough review with my sports medicine doctor of an Achilles tendon MRI, we’ve discovered I have a partial tear to my left anterior Achilles tendon near and above the attachment. About half of the area is still "healthy" while the rest looks like the page that Jon Stewart frantically scribbles on in The Daily Show intro, with a big messy ink blot at the base. The blot is fluid on the bone and bone inflammation.

I’ve deliberated over the upcoming event for many days and sleepless nights trying to find an opening that makes it feasible for me to race—and moreso to validate my really great fundraiser for The Conservation Alliance. But no matter how the MRI is sliced the fragmented scribble marks hang in my brain. As advised by my doc, I need to make the decision not to race and begin a very long rehab on my leg.

The end of the earth is a long way to travel to just check out the penguins and watch every one else run (can you feel the self pity building…). So the bitterness of deciding not to go hangs in my nostrils, kinda like after being hit in the head by a stray seagull turd. The repeated gull dive bomb is that I'm looking at several months or a lot more of modified training to get this thing healthy again.

Please don’t say, “it could be worse" - I'll get there in due time. I fully realize that I have a really great life and that I have in fact dodged true tragedy such as—a suicide bomber showing up on my mothers doorstep, my dog getting hit by a car, or someone telling me after my next speaking presentation that I remind them of Sarah Palin. But right now this feels like it really sucks and I just need to be in that and be pissed off at myself for not being nicer to my aging body. Right now I just need to whine a little. Knowing myself I’ll get over it very soon and be back at you with some more refined perspective. Wink ;)