The difference a month can make is pretty incredible. In my March training recap, I opined that all month long, I was hoping that things — running and life in general — would continue to feel like normal and that I could put all the “stroke stuff,” for lack of a better phrase, behind me. A month later, now heading into May, I am ecstatic to say that as far as I am concerned, life is — and feels — normal.

A mental shift occurred sometime this past month — fortunately — because until then, as irrational as it is, I often entered each weekend feeling a bit anxious and scared and just stewing on the fact that OMG X number of weeks ago today was the stroke. X number of weeks ago was when everything got upended. It was as though I was dreading each Sunday because it was on a Sunday that the stroke happened, as though somehow, Sunday rolling around each week again was going to put me at a greater risk for future strokes (irrational, right?). (Imagine what it must have felt like to drive back to Sacramento, on a Sunday, for a race in early April, since that was the same setting just a handful of weeks earlier when I actually had the stroke). Anyway. Sometime this past month, some sort of transition happened. I went from sorta fearing the weekends to a couple days ago, on the last Sunday of April, actually looking at a calendar and realizing oh. It has been 12 weeks, three months in a few days. Okay. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this mentality shift, but I have a hunch it’s pretty damn important for my post-stroke psychological recovery. It’s beginning to feel less like it happened and more like it was just a weird-ass, very life-like dream.

…that is, until I talk to insurance each week. The insurance company and I have this completely ridiculous song-and-dance routine that consists of me calling them each week, usually on Thursday, to find out the status of a bunch of outstanding claims. I am literally on a first-name basis with two different insurance reps at this point, women who are “handling” my “case” while things get “investigated” or “researched.” Eyeroll, eyeroll, eyeroll. As you can imagine, I satisfied our family deductible pretty quickly by being in ICU for a week, but because of some mistake somewhere — honestly, what I’m guessing amounts to someone’s clerical error — insurance thinks that I’m going to pay in the upwards of $15k out of pocket for costs that they are claiming were out-of-network but weren’t because of that whole emergent care detail that supersedes everything else. Yeah, nope. 

I am usually pretty excellent about compartmentalizing my life — be it family stuff, school stuff, Girl Scout stuff, stroke stuff, running stuff, whatever — but my weekly insurance call is the one time that I can’t *not* think about the fact that yeah, no, that stroke thing apparently wasn’t a dream; it actually did happen. While I luckily don’t have the physical repercussions from it, I still get to deal with insurance bullshit until The Unknown Person(s) gets their act together and fixes things. It’s so very annoying.

There was a time not that long ago when talking to insurance each week would wreck me and leave me pretty emotionally distraught; friends, let me assure you, you haven’t lived until you’ve cried on the phone with a health insurance company because you’re so enraged over someone else’s incompetence. I could go so long without thinking about or ruminating over the fact that this bad thing happened to me, but lo and behold, every week when I’d make this phone call, reality struck me in the face and reminded me that it wasn’t all a bad dream. In fact, for many weeks post-stroke, it would take the better part of the day the work up the gall to make the call to find out WTF was going on. Honestly, sometimes I’d only phone in if I were having a shitty day in the first place because talking to Those People all but promised to put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. These days, fortunately, the tears have turned more to the direction of action (and anger, for better or worse), compelling me to stay on the phone on hold in the upwards of an hour+ if need be so someone, anyone, The Unknown Person(s), can get this crap straight. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we’re put on hold, gang!

This whole ordeal is so, so frustrating and infuriating, but if bitching about insurance 3 months after having a stroke that could have ended me is the only thing that I’m complaining about, then I have it pretty good. It angers me to no end though that this is what we apparently have to do in the United States in the year 2018. There is so much that is so profoundly wrong with this situation.  

In other random bodily systems news, with our insurance switch in 2018 came all new providers, and included in that mix was a new GI for me. Long story short, she completely refuted my former GI’s microscopic colitis diagnosis, so in the past month, I’ve begun another battery of tests to figure out WTF is going on with my insides at any given time. So far it sounds like my intestines are about on the same level as that of a newborn; basically, my guts are just hyper little bastards that don’t ever apply the brakes when they should, amounting to a vicious eat-then-poop-eat-then-poop cycle all the time. You’re welcome. More tests throughout May should help elucidate things a bit.

But in the running compartment of my life — which is what we’re all here for, anyway, right? — April was really good to me. I posted just over 180 miles for the month (183), raced at the Sactown 10 miler, the Silicon Valley half, the Food Truck 5k (taking third!), and started building my long runs in earnest (on trails!) with Janet as she ramped up her MTB training. Meeting and running with Meb was as awesome as I had hoped it would be, too. Nestled in the mix of all my own running this month was my eldest daughter’s Kids’ Race at the Food Truck 5k as well as her first triathlon of 2018 this past weekend (RR forthcoming!), so suffice it to say that weekends were fairly busy, yet super gratifying, in mi casa.

 

The end of April and beginning of May also marked the beginning of SF Marathon training, which is pretty exciting. I feel like I’m in a good place physically and mentally at this point and look forward to training and to seeing what I can do this cycle. Marathon training cycles can often be great teachers, and I’m just elated to begin the grind again.

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Reading: There’s a lot of really good stuff out there right now. I really enjoyed Endure and wrote a recap of it earlier in the month. Tara Westover’s Educated was also really good but also incredibly sad and pretty disturbing, if you ask me; honestly, I was pretty pissed most of the time I read the book (but I’ll refrain from saying anything so as to avoid spoilers). I’ve gotten through most of Meb for Mortals since Meb signed a copy for me and like it a lot as a solid resource for training, though it’s not exactly something you’d read all the way through as you would a regular book. In the past couple days, I’ve also started Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run, which I’ve really enjoyed and will likely recap sometime in May. Maria Shriver’s I’ve Been Thinking has been satisfactory so far, and I’ve really liked Enlightenment Now, though I think I’m going to have to renew it several times before I actually finish it.

Life: Lots of running but also lots of fun and exciting family and home stuff was the norm for April: enjoying spring break with the kids at home; getting new floors and replacing our beat-up carpeting; flying down to LA to see my childhood BFF for about 18 hours; following along from afar the craziness that was Marathon Monday; and surely more that I’m forgetting. April was the beginning of the end of the school-year, and I think it just made everything feel as though it was moving at light-speed at any given time. Experience has taught me that if I think April is fast, just wait until May…

Listening: Every post-Boston podcast I’ve listened to was just awesome, particularly with Sarah Sellers, Boston’s 2nd place woman finisher. I still haven’t made it through all the post-Boston episodes, but I’ve really liked those I’ve heard so far. I love how so many non-professional runners just owned the day and ended up finishing on some of the biggest stages of their lives. That’s just an incredible storyline.

Racing: April meant the inaugural Silicon Valley half and Food Truck 5k for me and the Kids’ Run for my eldest, as well as the Sactown 10 miler for me. I was going to run another PA race, the Stow Lake 5k at the end of the month, but opted to stay home and run long instead, which I think was the right decision, even if it meant missing the fun social opportunities that race day provides. Right now, I don’t have any racing plans on the calendar for May, just good ol’ fashioned marathon training. It’ll be great. Do I write weekly training recaps, now that I’m beginning training? Or just keep it in this monthly format? Does anyone even care? Decisions…

Watching: Anytime I include this section, it just makes me realize exactly how little TV I watch or how infrequently I see movies. It’s sorta pitiful. I am, however, looking forward to Deadpool 2 (is that even what it’s called?) coming out in May, and we already have double feature date night tickets.

Writing: A fair bit here last month with all the race recapping and book reviewing, plus a healthy volume of freelance stuff. It’s all feast or famine with the latter, and it seems to be freaking Thanksgiving right now, luckily.

Anticipating: Everything. It’s that time of year.

Dreading: An obnoxious and super restrictive GI test I get to have done at the end of the month. Basically, if I understand it correctly, if I have diarrhea at all in the weeks preceding the test, that could alter my results (ok, so that’s already surely strike one against me). For about 2 days before the test, I can only consume plain white rice (and a bunch of meat and poultry that I wouldn’t eat) because … something about results getting skewed otherwise … and then the day of, I think have to fast for about 12 hours prior to the test. This will be after another test I get to do that’ll have me at the doctor’s office (with my two year-old in tow) for a good 3+ hours doing various breath tests to test for … something. I’m not even sure, to be honest. Sounds pretty rad, right? I swear I’m keeping the medical establishment in business.     

May!