Whine Not...

It's COLD!

Where did this cold blast come from? It was getting so nice, and I was looking forward to March, and then we got this wimpy little snowstorm that hardly dropped any moisture on us, all it did was bring COLD air!

This week sort of sucked. I felt super tired after my early in the week runs. I was going to do 15 on Thursday but we had the snow that day and I don't have any excuse other than I wimped out. I know, it's pathetic. But I was tired, and sleep has been less restful this week. So instead of running on Thursday, I took care of personal business, got things like papers for doing our taxes organized, spent a little more time figuring out my upcoming trip to Cleveland/Columbus in April, and basically tried to have a lower stress day.

Then Friday I worked an 8 hour shift, and it started out as a great day. It was relaxed at work, I was busy but not running too much most of the time, had my favorite kind of patient, a first time chemo that goes all day, and all my other patients for the day were "easy". Our massage therapist was hanging around, giving patients massages, and had time to give each of the nurses a short little chair massage. A rare and perfect work day. Except.

My last "easy" patient of the day decided to have a reaction to her infusion, right at the same moment that my chemo patient was finishing up. Damn it. I hate that. I always want my first time chemo patients to have a smooth ride. And it was, except I wanted to be there through the whole thing, to the very end of the day. But that is the life of a nurse. It's always something...

When the "easy" patient went south, I asked one of my coworkers to finish up the chemo patient. As it turned out I didn't even get to say goodbye to the chemo patient because I was on the phone with the doctor. As it turned out the "easy" patient was okay, but when told me she thought her tongue was swelling that sort of threw everything off...

I made her wait while I paged the doctor, and while she waited and I watched her and checked her over thoroughly, I finally determined that her tongue was NOT swelling but not before she was questioning why she couldn't go home right away? Why did she have to wait there while I checked her vitals again, looked in her mouth, listened to her lungs and called the doctor?



Some people are just not all that bright. After I did all the charting on THAT incident, I got out of there. More like 9 hours.

Advice to everyone. If you tell the nurse your tongue is swelling, you're going to be detained. But you do have choices. If your tongue is swelling and you don't want to be detained, go ahead and don't say anything, leave the hospital and collapse out on the street in respiratory arrest. There is one advantage to the latter scenario, you might qualify for a Darwin Award. Nice way to be remembered.

It was a nice sunset and Dennis and I went out for sushi. But I did not run, and I had hoped to after work. I was too fried and tired when I got home, and it didn't seem worth it to deal with rush hour traffic for a little 5 mile run. I wimped out.


As a result I ended up with two days off running, and I had to get my speedwork in this week, since I missed it last week. Twenty-one degrees at the track, and that was when I finished up. It was 13 degrees when I woke up this morning. I did 12 x 400 meters, they were slower than I've been doing recently, but still respectable. I felt like I was freezing in between each one.

When I got home I whined about having to get 20 miles in for the day, and another 20 tomorrow. That is what my plan was. I was having a weak moment again and I tried to justify and rationalize and weasel out of it, I talked to Dennis about it and asked him what he thought, and he told me I was being a wimp.

If Dennis tells me I'm being a wimp, I'm being a wimp. He would tell me to rest if he thought I needed to rest. So I took Iris out for a couple more miles, and I am eating lunch and blogging and I might take a nap, but I will somehow have to get another nearly 10 miles in late today or this evening. Dennis won't let me get away with wimping out.

It is pathetic. All I have to do is get through this weekend and then I am tapering. Two more days of long miles. I've been doing it for 4 months, I can do it for two more days.

Tomorrow I will force myself out the door and go run at Horsetooth with the running club, that will keep me honest. After I get my 20 in tomorrow, it's taper time. I think I've earned it, as long as I finish my miles this week. Whine not.