I’m not dead.
Well I mean I’ve been close the last few weeks but not entirely dead.
But here’s the scoop.
A couple weeks back I ended up running a 103 fever for a couple of days followed by severe neck and back pain. My first thought was meningitis, so I went to the doctor and they promptly shipped me to the ER. I underwent a bunch of blood tests, CT scan, spinal tap, etc. After 8 hours of drugs, morphine, pain and hell, turns out I didn’t have meningitis. What I did have is a currently unknown viral infection (they are thinking West Nile because, yes, I got attacked by a bird a couple days before I got sick) as well as a confirmed case of Lymes disease.
Because the severe sweats, fever, and encephalitis from the West Nile sent my ass to the hospital, they were able to catch the Lyme’s disease before it started having any serious effects. I had pulled a tick off of me about 10 days prior and Lyme’s symptoms typically don’t manifest that quickly. Because they did such a broad range of blood tests I was able to get on antibiotics and shouldn’t suffer the long term consequences of Lyme’s. So, I guess thank you west nile for getting me sick enough that I found out I had Lyme’s? Otherwise I’d be dealing with long tern neurological effects.
But my short term is screwed. I’ve been essentially bedridden the last two weeks as my body tries to fight off both the viral infection as well as Lyme’s. I had my last testing sessions 3 days before I spiked a fever and I hit lifetime PRs in the weight room and on the track. 450×4 on squat and a 2.70 flying 30m. I had 4 races set up, one each of the next 4 weekends and I was confident I was going to blow the hell up.
Instead I’ve lost 10 lbs.
This isn’t the end. I’m using this forced rest as my end of season rest. I will restart, retrain, and get my ass back to USATF indoors for 2013.