Week 3: Don't Text and Walk Down Stairs

Hello, supporters! This post will be short and sweet because the past week was a great week for fundraising and a not-so-great week for training!

So, I'll start with the good news -- I am so happy to say that this week I reached the minimum amount of $4,500!! Many thanks to the Trinchere family, who were the ones that made the special donation :) So, as of now, I'm just under $400 away from my goal of $5,000. Chelsea and I have a few ideas in the works for upcoming fundraising.

Fundraising as of 2/11/13

The bad news is that last Monday, promptly one day after I wrote my last post, I sprained my ankle :( I am proud to say that this occurred while tackling a bad guy that was committing one of the many armed robberies that happened at UMD the past week. Just kidding (About the tackle, not the armed robberies-- stay classy, College Park). Unfortunately, rather than that, or even being related to my training, it happened because I was texting while walking down the stairs outside my apartment complex. Hehe. I thought there was one step left but there were actually two, went to put all my weight down on the nonexistent ground, landed on the outside of my foot, and promptly twisted it and fell. I heard a pop :/ It was swollen and really painful for the first 2 days but dramatically improved on the third, and since then has been improving a lot each day. I got x-rays to make sure nothing was broken and the Health Center gave me an ankle brace which I wore for I think 4 days and which helped a lot.

So training-wise, I had to take the past week off. At this point it's feeling much better, but I still don't quite have a full range of motion in it, so I'm thinking I'll do swimming workouts for a couple of days starting tomorrow, and then resume cycling (without the clipless pedals) Thursday or Friday. Running I'm going to give at least another week. I need to be cautious because when you sprain something it is easy for it to happen again while it's still recovering, and my ankle is vital to cycling, because the way you get in and out of clipless pedals is by twisting your ankle! Which leads me to my next issue - my plans to get comfortable with the clip-in pedals over the past week were obviously foiled, and unfortunately it'll probably be another week or so before I feel okay to start trying them. I might practice with only my other foot, but that sounds kind of difficult... we'll see. For now I'm just going to take it day by day, and do what I feel comfortable with. I am lucky that this happened now, early on, rather than later. I've also learned my lesson: No texting and stairs :)

So as depressing as this week has been (it's been really frustrating not being able to work out), I thought I'd share some of the thoughts that the injury has made occur to me. It's actually been somewhat of an eye-opening experience.

First, it was much harder than I thought it would be to get around campus. The UMD campus is not a friendly campus to injuries. Yikes. I had the option of taking the "Paratransit" bus, which is for students with injuries or disabilities, but I felt I didn't need it. I got some looks for walking funny the first couple days, and was passed by a lot of annoyed people when I had to walk up some crowded stairs and was taking them one stair at a time. When my friend invited me to go to lunch, I wanted to go, but said no because walking would make my ankle worse. I was frustrated that I wasn't able to do everything I wanted to do. So for cancer patients, when cancer and treatment drain the energy out of them, all parts of daily life must be such a struggle, and way worse than I experienced with just a sprained ankle. Just getting from point A to point B is enough of an accomplishment, but having to keep up with the demands of their lives must be exhausting. If they are unable to keep up their daily lives, I can only imagine the frustration they could experience. Keeping up a positive attitude is absolutely vital for their recovery-- and it is to this effort that the Ulman Cancer Fund contributes. So I'm extremely happy that I'm supporting this cause!

Second, how lucky I am to be healthy, and how amazing the human body is -- and what a tragedy cancer is. The healthy human body can repair wounds, bones, and ligaments, to name a few, all by itself. Without you consciously doing anything, the body quietly goes to work mending an injury as soon as it happens. The things the body can recover from are incredible. But when you think about all the visible, physical, blunt-force trauma that the body can recover from, and then stop to consider that the body can often not defeat cancer, it gives you an idea of just how terrible cancer really is. How cancer can go unnoticed for quite some time, silently debilitating the body from its core, taking away its incredible capacity to heal itself. Even with the best available care in modern medicine, cancer is one of the top killers in the nation.

So, the week was kind of a bummer, but it allowed me to refocus on why I'm doing this. This week I will be getting back up to speed with my training, and hopefully will be back to my normal schedule soon :)