Running Record

Logging when I'm not too tired and not too forgetful afterward.

13Mar2010, 5 miles! First time in over 20 years! Did it in under 50 minutes, on a treadmill, starting with a run of over 5 minutes at 9 mph, but had to slow to a walk a several times. As usual, did it with asthma medicine, several minutes of stretching first, and running in my wonderful Vibram 5-finger KSO shoes.

1Mar2010, new personal best for 5K: 24:34, on a treadmill. This was after learning a new technique my timing my asthma medicine. Worked pretty well!

25Feb2010, personal best for 5K: 25:26, on a treadmill. Goals for 2010 (no particular order): break 25 minutes in a timed 5K race, run for 5 miles without any walking, and run 9mph for 10 minutes.

22Feb2010, <gasp>Ran for over 4 minutes at 9 miles per hour and discovered how valuable my asthma medicine is, since I had forgotten to take it first.</gasp> <wheeze>Yesterday I ran 3 minutes at 9mph at the beginning of a 5K run and finished with another minute at 9mph, all on a hit of Advair an hour beforehand.</wheeze> I definitely prefer breathing while I run.

15Feb2010, 5 miles in just under 50 minutes. That's the first time I've been able to run/walk 5 miles in more than 25 years. The first 5K in less than 29 minutes. Treadmill, with varying incline. I'm looking forward to the first time I can run 5 miles again without having to walk any. My distance and speed are only improving very slowly, but at least it's improving and not declining!

2Feb2010, 5K in 29 minutes flat, on a treadmill, with varying incline.

2Jul2009, some distance, in some number of minutes. I've been going on fun runs around the neighborhood, so I don't track how far, and usually don't track how long, though I'd guess in the 20-40 minute range. I learned 2 things while running tonight: 1) I'm not fast enough to outrun mosquitoes; and 2) Lightening bugs are as awesome now as they were when I was a kid!

6Jun2009, 5k Race for the Cure. I finished, and I'm happy with that. It was perfect weather, not too hot, not too cold, slightly overcast, but not too humid. I was less than perfect. As the race began, I was in a porta-pottie with "the runs." Got done and there were so many people, it took awhile before I could even get to the starting line. This also meant that the entire crowd was in front of me, and it stayed crowded the entire time I was running. The RFID tag on my shoe should give me an accurate time whenever they post it, but I got anxious and once I got started, I ran on the outside much faster than my usual pace. Faster than usual meant I was certain to have to stop and walk some, and I did. During my first slow-down, I started feeling like I might have to barf, so I made a conscious decision not to push myself. I know the timer at the finish line was 42 minutes and something, but I have no idea how long it was between the official start and my start. I'll find out in a few days, I guess. So, I'm a survivor of the race, though that's a different kind of surviving than those wearing the pink shirts...

The results are in: 30m 31s
50-54 age group, 74th out of 186
All men: 1446 out of 2762



5Apr2009, Cherry Blossom 5k Run/Walk from near the Washington Monument to the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery and back. I finished in 27 minutes and 13 seconds! The best time I've ever run 5k since my thyroid problems started causing leg problems. [Correction: 2nd best time.] And somehow I ran the whole way - no walking!

Didn't get much sleep on the 12 hour trip home from Hawai'i, Carla & Niah picked me up at the airport, went home, changed clothes, and off we went to the Metro station. We got to the starting area with just a few minutes to spare. Niah & Daniel ran with me, and Promise went with us to hold our junk. Carla and Rebecca weren't feeling up to going with us.

I easily got up to the front of the crowd, the starter counted us down, and off we went. That's when I learned there's a notable disadvantage to starting in the very front: there's no one for you to pass, and plenty of people that might pass you. And a lot of people passed me. I did okay the first 1/2 mile or so, and then started thinking I'd have to walk some before I hit a mile. But I got to a mile, and then I figured I'd try to make the half-way point at 1.55 miles. I made it and that got me jazzed up a bit, so I tried hard to make it to the 2 mile mark. I made that and heard my time and did a little pondering on what my final time might look like depending on how much walking I had to do before the end, but I soon realized I was on the last mile, so I decided to try to keep trudging along a little bit farther. Then I started trying to recognize where the end was. Sometimes when my pace gets too hard to continue, I can actually keep going by speeding up, which changes my stride, and changes how I'm using my muscles a little bit. With about a half mile to go, I sped up just a bit, and it was enough of a change. Then I estimated about 1/8 of a mile to go and tried to give a final kick. I kicked okay, but started losing breathing control, and then realized the end was farther away than I had estimated, and I had kicked too soon. I was about 50 yards away and about to slow down to a stagger when I remembered they'd have cameras taking photos as people approached the finish line. Well that was excellent motivation. I gave up on breathing control altogether and sped up to a gasping sprint to cross the finish line, stumble over to the grass and collapse. Promise and a race volunteer kept an eye on me to make sure I didn't need a doctor or something. I just needed to pant awhile until I got my oxygen balance back.

I finished 70th out of 410 men, and 3rd out of 20 in my age group. Not bad, eh? Well, I'd feel a lot better about it if I hadn't been trounced by Alexander Van Valkenbu, a nine-year-old who finished in 24:45. And after I had asked him nicely before the race not to make me look too bad. ;)

28Mar2009, 3.1 miles in just over 38 minutes. First 2 miles in 18m3s, but then had to walk a lot. Home treadmill, 1/2 degree incline. Cherry Blossom 5k in 8 days. My return flight from Honolulu is scheduled to arrive at 6:19 AM, and the race starts at 8:40 AM. If the plane's not too late, I should be able to get there, but not sure how much energy I'll have.

24Mar2009, 3.1 miles in 30m3s. Went 2 miles in just under 19 minutes before having to walk a bit, on home treadmill.

22Feb2009, 1.75 miles in 17m2s, home treadmill.

20Feb2009, running delayed due to bruised ribs, just ran 1.5 miles in 13.5 minutes, no walking, treadmill.

2Feb2009, 1st mile in 9m, total 1.75 miles, ~17m, hotel treadmill, Seattle

27Jan2009, ~1 mile, ~12m, 29 degrees, outdoor IN THE SNOW!, gently rolling terrain. (Last time I ran in the snow, 30 years ago, I ran a distance of 5 miles, but probably ran about 10 miles counting all the slipping and sliding!)

19Jan2009, 1 mile, 8m35s, treadmill

6Apr2008, Cherry Blossom 5k Run/Walk, 28:47

7Jun2008, Komen National Race for the Cure - 5K, 26:23

Command Performance

Some time ago, I wanted a photo-viewing program and couldn't find one with the features I wanted, so I wrote one myself. It's called Command Performance, and I've just tweaked it and posted it as freeware. If you want to try it out, you can download it here: http://www.exabyte.net/ElfInkSoftware.

I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Ciao!

Being God's Pockets

From an article in the NY Times: The paramount moral challenge... in this century, is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Regardless of whether you like the NY Times or not, regardless of whether you can think of other serious issues to give your attention, this is certainly an area where the Body of Christ can and should make a difference in the world. We're familiar with the idea of being God's hands and feet by being missionaries and personally going overseas to preach the Gospel. But you can also stay home and give money to support other people who work as missionaries. And you can also provide very small no-interest loans to desperate people around the world, through organizations like Kiva. You don't have to do this instead of contributing to missions, you can do it in addition. As little as $25 can make a huge difference in people's lives.

That's why I've tagged this NY Times article. Read the first page and you'll see how a mere $65 changed the life of a Pakistani woman named Saima, who was in a very nasty situation. And you'll see how the effect of that loan grew to help other families through Saima.

Typically, multiple people each put up a small portion of a loan, sharing the risk. Note making zero-interest loans is not a way to plan for your retirement. But it is a way to help improve lives and make poor societies more stable, and therefore likely to produce fewer terroristic maniacs.

The more financially stable families there are in a country like Afghanistan, for instance, the less power groups like the Taliban have. So please consider making a loan to a hard working, but poor person, just because you like helping people, or to make the world a little safer place for you, your family, or for the missionaries in those countries.

My Famous Disease...

Hey, if you're gonna have a rare disease, especially if you're a guy and 85% of the people who get this disease are female, at least make it a famous disease! And Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD) just made the front page of the Wall Street Journal! Dr. Olin, my specialist for this particular problem, is quoted. Cool, huh? I go to New York to see him again in a few weeks... and I've thought of some new possible treatments: an arterial transplant, a whole-body arterialectomy, and if those don't work, Teflon-coated chain-linked carbon nanotubes artery liners!

Paradise...

Paradise isn't a tropical island. Especially when the island in question has traffic problems, employment problems, housing problems...

I'll say this for Hawai'i, nowhere else have I seen rainbows so frequently, so complete, so large (very wide from red to violet and the ends miles apart), or glowing so vibrantly.

Paradise, however, is in our hearts and minds. It doesn't matter whether we're in a mansion, a cozy home, or a tent. What matters is who we're with, and how much we appreciate each other. It doesn't matter where.

Ok, so I finally did the 25 random things about me...

I've been tagged for this by multiple friends, but nothing's truly random, so I'll jot down 25 miscellaneous things about me:

1. I'm an adventurer.
2. I was born 5 miles north of Booger Hollow, Georgia. (Booger Hollow is unincorporated) (very unincorporated).
3. I have Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD) (which has cost me about 5% of my right kidney so far), hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, peripheral neuropathy, an enlarged prostate gland, back problems, blood pressures problems, lots of chronic muscular tightness/sore spots sometimes labeled as fibromyalgia, but as long as I can run, I consider myself healthy.
4. I earned my bachelor's degree in my 30's for less than $1200. Got it so I could check the box on job applications.
5. I have degrees in Economics, Education, Electronics Engineering Technology, History, Literature in English, Psychology, and Sociology, but I've never used them for an occupation.
6. I've had jobs as "high" as a corporate President and as a Chief Technology Officer.
7. I've passed more than 60 I.T. certification exams by at least 6 different companies.
8. I had poor grades in high school, but I had a lot of great friends.
9. I've read many college level textbooks just for fun.
10. I have a lot of books. Many, many, books. Hundreds and hundreds of books.
11. I wish they would put vitamins in chocolate-chip cookies.
12. I ruined a car engine by running it with the oil drained out. On purpose. As part of an experiment.
13. A good friend and I rode bicycles over 1200 miles on a trip from Georgia to Virginia, where my bicycle was stolen.
14. I owned a Kawasaki 440 LTD motorcycle (belt-drive!), and enjoyed giving rides to friends on it.
15. My Scoutmaster, Bill Ergle, saved my life. He rescued me from downing.
16. A good friend, James Stanley, saved my life when I had been bench-pressing alone, had passed out with the weights on my chest, and had stopped breathing.
17. I know that it is possible that there is a realm of existence that may be unmeasurable (and possibly undetectable) by scientific means, commonly referred to as a spiritual or supernatural realm.
18. I believe that a realm does exist that is currently beyond scientific scrutiny.
19. I believe that God exists, and I believe that he loves us.
20. I believe God is a loving God despite the pain and suffering in the world, and that his long-term, universal perspective allows him to weigh our short-term emotions and physical difficulties differently than we usually do.
21. I've witnessed a few things that I haven't been able to develop an explanatory hypothesis for based on science alone. And I'm really good at developing at least somewhat plausible scientific hypotheses.
22. I believe people have spiritual aspects to our existence, but I have no idea of how the physics of that facet of existence could work. I keep pondering it, though, and am currently toying with an interesting quantum theory.
23. I talk to God a lot. But I don't listen very well.
24. I believe God has silently communicated directly with me a few times, and I believe God has communicated to me a few times through other people regarding future events which those people could not have predicted. Subsequent relevant events were consistent with the possibility that those ideas originated from a benevolent, omniscient God.
25. I have uncountable wealth. The love of my wife Carla makes me the richest man I know. Add to that my children, the parents I had for too short a time, my brother, my relatives-in-law, and my friends... it's no wonder I smile so much.

Working & Running = Happy!

Wow. 6 weeks without a post. I hereby nominate myself for Worst Blogger Ever. My sporadic writing is why my blog has sporadic readers. Although you can always use a "reader" to "subscribe" (for free) and then the reader will notify you when I've posted something new.

Anyway, I've been back at work full-time for awhile, and doing pretty well. Pretty well means I've started running again! The biggest source of pain I have right now is a frozen shoulder. I never heard of a frozen shoulder before, but it's apparently fairly common, though they don't know what causes it. It's painful, but not too much to keep me from working. Or running!

Whatever...

Got out of the hospital to finish recuperating at home. Clindamycin burned an ulcer into my esophagus and messed up my entire GI track. I seem to have a lot of trouble with side-effects, starting with Tetracycline (an antibiotic) that stained my teeth yellow when I was a kid.

Well, they got me stable, taking 2 mg of Dilaudid every 4 hours for pain, plus lots of other junk to restore my digestive system. Another week or two to fully recover, they project.

So, I get home and my left arm starts swelling up around the elbow, turning red, getting itchy and hot. An infection from an IV that was plugged in there. That happens less than 2 tenths of 1% of the time. How do I keep hitting the rare things??

Another Medical Problem

I've been in the hospital the last couple of days, was mostly irrational a few days before that. I'll probably be here at least a couple more days. The side effects from taking the antibiotic Clindamycin started bad and got to the point where I was in constant severe pain in my gastro-intestial track. One small swallow of anything would amp the pain to writhing in bed for 30-60 minutes. I'll explain more later.

FMD Update 5

What a nightmare. I developed a bad toothache a few days before going to see the specialist in New York. I had put off going to the dentist for a couple of years because I was so disappointed with my last experience... my dentist had put in 2 crowns in the back on the same side and they were too short, ruining my bite. Well, this toothache was bad enough that I couldn't procrastinate any longer, but I found a new dentist. He gave me several options, and I chose to have him remove this tooth in preparation for a snap-on-smile. I could always get an implant later, if I want to.

Well, the root of a tooth is normally inside the jawbone, but in this case the jawbone had an indentation and the root was outside the jawbone. So, when the doc pulled the tooth, he mixed some of my blood with some bone graft material and spackled it in the gum and sutured it up. It was supposed to hurt for a day or two after the Novocaine wore off. It didn't. So the doc put me on penicillin in case there was an infection. It felt a little better for a day, then got worse and worse. I was hurting a lot when it was time to leave for NY, but I didn't want to postpone that trip. The trip was very unpleasant due to my gum.


Well, on the trip, Dr. Olin, the FMD specialist, had trouble reading my angiogram. The software on the CD for showing the images does a poor job of cacheing, so it was very slow. He said he'd review them later on a faster computer. Based on the images he did see during our visit, he said that the stretch of right renal artery looks very much like FMD. However, he didn't see any other arteries that looked like they had FMD, so that's a puzzle since FMD normally affects more than one short section. There is, however, a test available that I had not heard of, one that combines an angiogram and ultrasound, and gives the most accurate picture possible of an artery. Since my case is still a mystery, a friend of Dr. Olin's down here in DC may do that test.

So, I get home from the trip, and my mouth is killing me. I call the dentist in the middle of the night and leave a voice mail. He didn't call back right away, so I went to the emergency room. All they could do was put me on a stronger pain medication (hydromorphone) and tell me to go back to my dentist. Actually, the ER doc, who did not examine my mouth at all, said that I needed a root canal on the jaw where the tooth had been. I asked if there could be an infection that might be resistant to penicillin, and he said no, there was definitely no infection. I get home and talk to the dentist (cells phone signals are suppressed in the ER). The dentist walks me through some steps while I look in the mirror, and I push on my gum and some whitish-yellowish liquid comes up out of a hole in the gum. He says it's definitely infected and obviously resistant to penicillin, so he tells me to stop the penicillin and calls in a scrip for clindamycin.

My blood pressure was highly erratic all this time, but my temperature had always been normal. After starting the clindamycin, my temperature started going up and down and the pain got worse. Finally, last night, my fever came down to stay, and the mouth pain has diminished significantly. Just in time for the onset of severe heartburn, a side-effect, apparently, of the clindamycin. Another call to the dentist, who called a pharmacist, and he called and told me to use Mylanta to deal with the heartburn. It doesn't get rid of it, but it makes it a little more tolerable.

Oh, I almost forgot one thing. One afternoon after a trip to the dentist, with my mouth full of Novocaine, I felt no pain anywhere, my blood pressure was great, my mind was clear (well, you know, as clear as my mind gets...), and I was full of energy. That was extremely delightful. Perhaps my mouth has been part of my blood pressure problem. If so, that should be remedied soon.

I see my dentist tomorrow morning, and my general practitioner tomorrow afternoon.

Update

FMD update delayed due to dental emergency...
Pain and blood pressure out of control. Don't feel like writing...

Thanks to all...

I haven't been keeping up with email, which makes me feel guilty, but I'm probably not going to do better unless and until I can get my pain significantly reduced.  I'm takng a lot less Vicodin than I could in order to avoid getting addicted and to avoid my body becoming so used to it that it doesn't work as well. Unfortunately, that means I hurt more and feel like doing very little, and it makes it hard to sleep until I'm exhausted. That means I've been costing Carla a lot of sleep also.

I've been surprised at how many people have emailed encouragements, even strangers from around the world. Wow. So if I haven't replied to an email from you, please know that I read them all, eventually, and I really do appreciate them.  -- John

FMD Update 4

Well, it was a long, but interesting two weeks, with lots of pain, lots of high blood pressure (measured as high as 195/110) and several new developments.

First, I met with a local interventional radiologist who recommended that he go in and angioplasty my right renal (kidney) artery and look around at all the other arteries in the area, but he wanted to discuss it with my kidney specialist (nephrologist) first. So, I got a call later from an assistant of the radiologist who told me the radiologist talked to the kidney guy, and that the kidney guy wants to see me before the radiology guy does the plasty thing, so I should call the kidney guy right away to get an appointment. So, I call the kidney doctor's office, and they tell me I already have an appointment in 6 weeks. Yes, I explained, but now there's a more urgent matter so I need an appointment right away. Okay, they put me through to the doctor's assistant and I left a voice mail. The next day the assistant called me back and I explained everything, and the assistant said she would talk to the doctor and call me back. That was over a week ago, and they have not called me back. Grrr.

Okay, so the first instance of a major symptom immediately prior to the eventual discovery of FMD was on Sunday, July 13, with lots of abdominal pain, which later localized around my right kidney. I tried to tough it out and went to work as usual on Monday, but the became intolerable and I left after working 7 hours, feeling pretty lame that I couldn't hack just one more lousy hour. Monday night was horrible, and I didn't sleep much, and went to my general practitioner (GP) first thing Tuesday morning, and it didn't take long before she called an ambulance to take me to the hospital. They checked me for kidney stones and gall stones and junk like that, which were all negative. They found a suspicious wedge shaped thing in my right kidney that would need further investigation, and gave me pain meds and sent me home. It wasn't until July 30th that I finally ended up getting an angiogram that revealed FMD in my main right renal artery for sure, and showed a complete blockage in a smaller renal artery that had resulted in the death of 5% of my right kidney, and another partial blockage right next to it. However, no one mentioned the FMD to me, with the possible exception of the radiologist right after the angiogram while I was still stupid from the drugs. Stupider than usual, that is.

Well, this last paragraph is to give you dates, so you can fit this in: In the first week of August, I started noticing a pain in my right shoulder, and it kept getting worse and worse. So I went to my GP about, and was referred to an orthopaedist for a possible tear in my right rotator cuff muscle. Except how could I have torn a muscle? I hadn't been doing anything! Well that led to some big news this week. The ortho doc said all the symptoms fit a tear in the right rotator cuff muscle, gave me a shot in the shoulder and told me to come back in 3 weeks. Did that, and my shoulder was hurting worse, and that wasn't all. The shoulder had only hurt when I moved certain ways. It hurt really bad when I moved it those ways, but when I was a good boy and didn't move it those ways, it didn't hurt. ["Doctor, when I do this, it hurts." "Okay, don't do that."] But in the meantime, my right bicep had started hurting, all the time. So ortho doc sends me for an MRI of my shoulder and I have to wait until yesterday to see her and get the results. And... there's no tear. That's good, right? There's clearly some tendinitis in my shoulder, and some fluid around the joint, and the MRI doesn't show down my arm. The problem is that the tendinitis doesn't explain the severity of the pain.

Now, there's this version of FMD called intimal fibrosis that occurs in less than 10% of FMD cases, but it can cause problems in any artery anywhere, like in a shoulder. I had thought of this a few times, but the odds were really, really tiny. Until I find out I've got no tear. Now those very tiny odds only seemed like tiny odds. The odds my have been tiny, but they were, like, moving in the wrong direction, you know what I mean? So I start thinking too much about it, pondering life without my favorite right arm, and so on. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a better theory. A much more likely theory. A highly probably theory, that lets me keep my arm solidly attached to the rest of me. Very Tense Muscles. Just hold on, it'll make more sense in a minute.

I went to my GP early this week for a comprehensive review of The State of John, with all the test results, trips to the emergency room with high blood pressure, etc. And as part of the catalog of complaints, the doc noticed my muscles were very tense. I said they had been that way a long while, and I knew it, I just hadn't been able to successfully convince my muscles to relax. It's apparently a reaction to the pain. Or possibly space aliens, but I'm going with pain as the primary culprit. So doc suggests some muscle relaxing drugs. Hey, I'm a basket case, what's one more drug to test? Well, I started taking methocarbamol (generic for Robaxin) "as needed" and pow -- it knocked my blood pressure way down, and reduced my average pain significantly. I hadn't realized just how tense my muscles were!

Now back to the shoulder theory. Tendinitis and tense muscles -- muscles acting like they were constantly doing isometric exercises. What's the treatment for tendinitis? Rest. Don't use the muscles, dummy! Except my muscles were using themselves without permission from the rest of me. So instead of taking the muscle relaxer only when my blood pressure goes high, I'm going to take it regularly for while and wear a sling to remind me not to do anything with my right arm (other than blogging), and I fully expect my right arm to thank me in a week or two. One less source of pain would be a very good thing.

By the way, I had been down to a thyroid medication and pain patches for my feet as my only medications when my kidney blew up. Now I'm on the those, plus 2 blood pressure medications, pain pills, blood thinner, and muscle relaxers. Phooey. By the way, at home, I take the generic version of Vidodin for the pain. They gave a script for Percacet, which is supposed to be stronger, but it does nothing for me. Not only does it not help the pain, it doesn't even give me the intoxicating effect that most people get. Tried it 2 weeks apart, just in case the first time was an anomaly. This, I have no explanation for. Yes, I still have an almost full bottle of Peracet. No, I won't sell it to you. You'll have to get your own malady for that.

For now, it's 11 days and counting until I see Dr. Olin.

FMD Update 3

I haven't mentioned it before, but the reason I'm posting my story of learning about FMD is in the hope that it might help someone else learn about it. Since it's rarely covered on the evening news. And even if it were, people rarely watch the evening news these days.

So, on with the story. I had a duplex Doppler ultrasound of my carotid arteries Friday morning, then Carla dropped me off at the train station and I worked about 4 hours, but on the way home I started hurting a lot worse. On Sunday, my left kidney started hurting, but not as much as on the right side. My blood pressure was bouncing around, going as high as 145/105, even though I'm on a blood pressure medication.

I had an echo cardiogram this morning (Monday), then went to the office, but it didn't turn out well. The train ride increased the pain a bit, and that apparently triggered my blood pressure to go up again. It kept going up despite a double dose of blood pressure medicine. The building I work in has a health clinic, and a nurse there put me in a dark, quiet room and called my doctor. After awhile, my BP stabilized, then went down to about 135/85, which is still too high. Then my family picked me up, and my BP went up again on the way home. After a few hours in bed, it's finally back down to the safe range: 120/80. Unfortunately, I didn't get much work done.

FMD Update 2

Worked all day today for the first time in almost 2 months. I was tired and hurting a bit, but I worked the whole day. Even walked to the train and back home. And I got an appointment with Dr. Jeffrey Olin on October 1st. He's the director of vascular medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and has written more about FMD than anyone else. So, I should have a lot of news after that.

FMD Update

Talked to my kidney doctor yesterday and saw my general practitioner today, and they both concur that it's a good idea for me to check with a doc who deals with FMD a lot. I spoke to an assistant for the doc who's written more on the subject than anyone else, and have emailed him my medical history. He's supposed to look it over and his assistant will get back to me regarding one or more appointments. In the meantime, I'm waiting for results of more blood tests, and I have duplex ultrasonography scheduled for my carotid artery and an echo cardiogram just to make sure those things are in good shape. And I now have written permission from my general practitioner that will allow me to go back to work, since my company wouldn't accept a note from my kidney doctor. I still have moderate abdominal pain, but work isn't supposed to make my condition worse, so I'm hoping to last the whole day. Work is good!

Fibromuscular Dysplasia

Well, it turns out I may not have had a kidney infarction after all. There had been continuous confusion amongst the many doctors involved as to whether I had an infarction (from a clot) or an infection (from unknown cause) in my right kidney. The key thing I understood at the beginning was that I had one small kidney artery that was completely blocked, killing 5% of that kidney, and another small artery right next to it that was partially blocked. The blockages were either from a clot of blood or cholesterol or from an infection. An angiogram showed no sign of an existing clot, so if that was the cause, it had dissolved by then. I was put on an antibiotic in case I had an infection, but that didn't change anything. The early prognosis was that I would be fine with such a small loss of kidney tissue, that I would take an anti-coagulant the rest of my life to ward off any more potential blood clots, continue to watch my cholesterol levels, and the pain should be gone in a few weeks.

Except the pain never left. It subsided for awhile, then got worse a while, then better, and so on, but never left. I was out of work that whole time, as the pain was generally more than enough to require medication that interfered with my ability to think, which is what I get paid for. Had I not taken the pain medication, the pain would have been too much to think, so either way, I wasn't much good for working. Last week the pain improved to the point that I thought was ready to resume working and I got a note from my kidney doctor allowing me to return. At that visit, my kidney doctor reviewed with me everything he knew from all the tests. That included something I hadn't been told about before: there were some partial blockages in the main artery feeding my right kidney, and it was determined (by their size, shape, location, etc.) that they were caused by Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD). The kidney doctor still didn't know what caused the full and partial blockages in the smaller arteries, as things didn't quite fit the normal characteristics of either infarction or infection.

Then I found out my company and the insurance company require a note from my general practitioner, so I had to wait until next week. Then a couple of nights ago, the pain got really bad again, and my blood pressure went high (around 160/110) and stayed there. Although the pain backed off a little, the BP stayed up, and my kidney doctor called in a prescription for Diovan to bring my BP down. After a day or so of that, my BP is back down. In the meantime, I've been studying FMD.

FMD is a rare disease. Really. There's actually a list of rare diseases, and FMD is one of them. And there's a support site on the Internet run by doctors and patients, and information from FMD doctors indicates that FMD is not well recognized or understood by doctors. Patient stories support the idea that most doctors are not familiar with it.

Basically FMD results in some cells in the walls of arteries growing larger than they should, constricting the flow of blood through the artery, eventually blocking it off altogether. No one knows what causes FMD, though genes and hormones both seems to be factors. There's no cure, but the symptoms can be treated with anti-coagulates and angioplasty. Most people who are familiar with angioplasty have heard of it because they know someone who had it to open up an artery around their heart. That common usage means someone gets an angioplasty once every few years or less often. Some people with FMD get angioplasty several times a year. FMD can effect any artery in the body, with the kidneys being the most common, and the carotid arteries being the second most common.

So, I've come up with a theory, which I wrote up and faxed to my kidney specialist yesterday. He called me late last night to tell me he had been in hospitals all day and had not had time to read the letter yet, so I'm hoping to hear from him next Tuesday. I have an appointment with my general practitioner on Wednesday, and I'll discuss this with her then. My theory is that I had neither an infarction nor an infection, but that both are the results of FMD. There is a form of FMD called intimal fibroplasia that comprises less than 10% of FMD cases, but it appears to me it fits perfectly with the full and partial blockages I have in my smaller kidney arteries. It seems to me to explain everything, including my continuing and fluctuating pain, and I really like understanding things. If I'm right, however, it's bad news, because this form of FMD is the most aggressive.

Well, as Bill Gates famously said, it's good when bad news travels fast. That's because the sooner you learn of something bad, the sooner you can do something about it. So, I have FMD. I may have the most aggressive kind. Since I know, my doctors and I can more aggressively monitor my arteries and intervene with angioplasty as often as necessary. And that could give me months or years more than I might have left if we hadn't figured it out.

Whenever I have more news, and feel like posting, without being to unintelligent due to pain medication, I'll post followups here.

Big Setback

I was sure my next training run of 5k was going to be the first time in over 20 years I'd be able to run that distance without having to stop and walk part of the way. I was just a day or two away.

Then I had a kidney infarction and lost 5% of my right kidney. That was weeks ago, and I haven't stopped hurting yet. Quit doing everything, including eating, and have lost 20 pounds, so I'm down to just over 130 pounds. Haven't weighed that little since high school.

Well, two weeks ago I start walking again, very slow, very short distances. I got to where I can walk to the Metro station again, and took a short test ride. Subway trains are way bumpier than cars, if you didn't know, and the shaking is really tough. Since then I've ridden all the way downtown twice. It made me hurt worse for awhile, but within a day it got back to the same level of hurting it was at before the train ride. I sure am looking forward to running again. And working again. And doing other things again. Especially running.

Running Update

Well, the official results are online for the Race for the Cure, and there were only 7,637 finishers, far fewer than I had been told on race day. I was 517th, with a time of 26 minutes and 23 seconds. I was 23rd out of 222 in my gender/age group.

I ran today, to/from my front door, about 3.1 miles, based on a path I traced with Google Earth. It was 88 degrees, 18% humidity, and rolling hills. I couldn't even run a full 2 miles without stopping to walk this time. It took me 31 minutes & 31 seconds, about a pint of sweat, no known blood loss, and my weak link was breathing (again). For my next race, I may downgrade from a run/walk to a run/walk/stagger.

2 Months, 2 Minutes

My son David & I completed another 5K yesterday, the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, which raised over $3,000,000 to fight breast cancer. The temperature was about 72 degrees and humidity was about 80 percent at 6:30 AM, but the temperature climbed fast and the humidity went down a bit by the time the race was over.

The race was to start at 8:00 AM, and David and I got to the starting area at 7:20. There were so many thousands of people scheduled to run, I figured it'd be crowded at the starting line by 6:00, and I didn't want to wait there that long even if it meant having to spend as much time running side-to-side to avoid other runners as I spent running forward, so 7:20 is when I planned for us to get there. Much to my surprise, there was only one other person standing at the starting line, though there were at least a hundred on the shoulders of the road nearby.

We took places front-and-center, and I laid down to rest and wait. Normally, I don't recommend that anyone lay down in the middle of the street on Constitution Avenue. Immediately after the starting barriers were removed, about two minutes before the race started, a couple of dozen people pushed their way to the front. You could tell these were the serious runners who wanted to win or place, so I didn't mind giving way to them.

As the race began, I ran my pace, and instead of having to pass other people, other people were passing me. A lot of these folks were those who don't know their pace, so they go real fast to start, then have to walk. I wasn't able to run the whole way, but I ran my pace as long as I could, and I made the first mile in 8 minutes flat, and the second in 8 minutes and 4 seconds. It wasn't long after that, though, that I had to walk a bit, and alternated between walking and running until the last quarter mile or so, when I was actually able to put in a little kick to the finish line. It was so warm, around 2.5 miles, I had started if I would have to walk the rest of the way, but I was able to mush through it.

This race didn't use the sensors attached to shoes, so they had lanes at the finish line. You enter a lane and someone manually writes down your time, in order. Someone else tears off your bar-coded ID from your race bib and puts in on a spindle, in order, so that if it works right, they get a fairly accurate time. Unfortunately, by the time David came through, there were so many people jammed up at the finish line, he had to wait to get counted. That was the case for most of the runners, and there were tens of thousands, so I was told. David still finished in under 40 minutes, though.

I haven't found an estimate by the organizers as to when official times and places will be posted. By my stopwatch, I finished in 26 minutes and 29 seconds, so I shaved a little over 2 minutes off my time from my race in April. This time, I didn't push myself quite as hard, and wasn't completely exhausted afterward. My average speed was 7.02 miles per hour, and my pace was 8 minutes and 33 seconds per mile. Not bad considering this time last year my muscles hurt so badly without knowing the cause that I wasn't sure if I'd be alive this year. My next goal is to be able to run an 8 minute pace without stopping for a full 5 kilometers. Once I can do that again, I haven't decided if my next goal will be speeding up or increasing distance. Isn't that a wonderful dilema?!

After the finish line, I turned right and walked over to the path around the
Smithsonian Museum of Native Americans and scooped up some water to splash on myself while I waited to meet up with David there. Almost everyone else turned left to go onto the National Mall, where the organizers had lots of tents set up. Despite the enormous crowd, only a dozen or so people came over to the museum, so it was a great choice for a meet-up. That museum is such a peaceful place.