Good Friday

Yesterday's run was a fail. So much so that I didn't even want to write about it, but I promised I would post the bad with the good. The run was supposed to be six cycles of 4 min. run/ 1min. walk. We started out great, walking to the bottom of the hill and then beginning the first cycle. I found my pace and even made it up the first little hill with no difficulty. Then toward the end of my second four minutes, I felt my chest tighten up. I slowed to a walk and tried to calm down and get my breathing under control. As much as I tried to tell myself I would be okay and that I was just a little out of breath and there is a gas station up ahead and I can call home, my mind started going to much darker places.

Last December I had a major attack while driving and ended up in the back of an ambulance in a grocery store parking lot. It was not good. Not being able to breathe sucks. Thinking you are going to die alone in a parking lot waiting for an ambulance sucks really, really bad. I was so lucky.

You would think that I would have learned my lesson. Yet here I was at 5:30 in the morning over a mile away from home with no inhaler, no cell phone and taking swift, shallow, ragged breaths.  I haven't really had any problems lately but since I don't like to carry anything with me I usually use my inhaler before I take off just as a precaution. Not only had I forgotten to do so, but the night before I woke up gasping for air and found two cats sitting on my chest (we found out after the Dec. incident and extensive testing that cats are my biggest trigger so our bedroom is off limits to any furry creatures). All of this went through my mind at the exact moment that I realized the gas station was closed.

I don't know if Tucker could sense my fear or if he just was looking at me because our pace had slowed to crawl, but I stopped and petted him and told him we were going to be alright. We turned around and I just kept walking and talking to Tucker. After a few minutes my breathing evened out a little bit and the vice on my chest began to loosen. That's when I knew I was okay and that I let my mind get the best of me. We walked slowly for about five or ten minutes and I felt good. Good enough to run? Yeah right. Can't blame a girl for trying, right? I don't even think I made it 30 seconds before I felt the ol' chest seize up again. We walked home at a snail's pace.

Stupidity caused me to miss my run and scare the crap out of myself. I felt defeated and totally bummed out. I took the kiddos to school and then later had a lunch date with my husband (yay!). Things were going much better. The kids had a great day at school, we took them for "first day of school blizzards" at DQ and then went home. The rest of the evening went downhill in a big way. After wiping tears and about a half hour of tending to broken hearts, I was wiped. I consoled myself with a half bag of Dove chocolates. That didn't quite do the trick so I moved on and ate my way through a third bag of my husbands M&Ms.

What a loss. At least the self-pity was fading; it was being overtaken by guilt and a tummy ache from all that chocolate. I figured I just needed to go to bed and start over tomorrow. Right before I drifted off to sleep, I remembered a quote I had read on someone's blog a couple days before: "I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days." - Lance Armstrong

I have so much to be thankful for. It was a good day.