The Come-Back!

Hello Farmgirl friends! This post today is different than my usual posts… but it’s what has been on my mind for three weeks now and so I’m going to write about it! In one word, its called…

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SHINGLES

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For those of you that have had them you are probably shuddering about right now… for those of you that haven’t had them (like I hadn’t) you’re probably thinking, WHY talk about Shingles?! Smile!

But first I’m going to talk about…

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RUNNING

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Most of you are probably aware that for the last 8 years or so I’ve done some off and on running. I haven’t loved it, but I also haven’t hated it. However, I do love how it makes me feel and how it helps me to get through hard things in life. So for Mother’s Day this year my daughter in law gave me the gift of 30 days of an online running coach. There was no commitment with this coach to use her services for more than the month that was gifted to me, but she treated me like I was her forever student! We had a FaceTime conversation about my short term and long term running goals and talked about all the things. I was instructed to download an app where she would enter my daily assignments, comments, suggestions, etc.. So… long story short, after the end of the month I was absolutely HOOKED and I have continued the coaching with Ella. It has taken all the stress and drudgery out of running; each week I see what is ahead, not only for running but also for strength workouts, rest days, walking days etc. My running watch is synced with the calendar so whenever I push the “run” button it tells me exactly what to do and even automatically sets the alerts on my watch. I’m telling you friends… if you ever want to make running enjoyable, get a ….

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Running Coach!

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So… here’s where the fun begins. A full four months of running consistently and feeling absolutely amazing and literally LOVING running, I woke in the middle of the night to the most excruciating pain I have ever had. It was all in the right side of my lower back, my right hip, my right buttock, my right thigh. Nerve pains shooting to the point where I couldn’t lay down or sit down. I spent the entire night pacing the floors trying to figure out how I had injured myself so badly. The next morning early I texted the Physical Therapist that my husband sees regularly for his Parkinson’s Disease (she makes house calls) and she was able to come and work on me. She had a hard time pin-pointing where my pain was coming from but it did seem like it was the Piriformis muscle in my right buttock. She did some dry needling and massage and I felt a little better. But in the night when I was in terrible pain again and up pacing, I happened to notice I had this strange red rash on my thigh. I sent her a picture in the morning and said “is this a side effect to the dry needling”? Her response….

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IT’S SHINGLES!!!!

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It was a Saturday, so I went right to Urgent Care and yes, they confirmed it. I got a steroid shot, prescription for an Antiviral, told that I would feel better in a few days etc. NO IDEA the kind of pain I would continue to be in and that a “few days” was very unrealistic! I’m telling you what, my friends… I have a super high tolerance for pain but this was unreal. The days I could kind of manage, the nights I would just cry with the nerve pain.

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I did a lot of naturopathic remedies that did bring relief during the day and I was so thankful for them. But nothing seemed to work at night. I literally moved my nights outside… to the bed on our porch, to the rocking chair, to walking next to our yard fence here on the hilltop, to having coffee and toast on my porch table at 4:30 AM as the moon set. There was something about the night time farm noises that was soothing… the cows bedded down on the hill, our dog Belle doing her nightly rounds checking to make sure her animals and her people are safe, and just the end of summer cool breeze on my shingles that now completely covered the right side of my lower body from lower back to my knee and then and all the way up the front of my thigh to my stomach. I would walk… and walk… and walk. I clocked it on my watch and four laps around our yard fence was a half mile. I found that walking (and later very slow running) somehow helped the pain and then I could lay down on the porch bed and sleep for 45 minutes before I would get up and do it all again! This became my nightly routine for two weeks. Picture below is one of my night time walks around the hilltop!!!  Smile!

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I am in my third week and feeling quite a bit better now… still sleeping on the porch bed and finding incredible soothing calmness from that.

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And two days ago I texted Ella, my running coach, and told her to get me back on the calendar for some runs! She started me back with a very easy run/walk routine this week and it feels so good.

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Yesterday morning as I was running, I felt the most incredible joy come over me. I was alive, running on my farm trails, listening to a book, noticing all the season changes that I had been oblivious to the last few weeks, and something huge came over me…

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I WAS BACK!

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I have made some new goals. One of them is to recognize and learn to manage stress. I have been through some deep emotional stress and grief this year and since I am an Empath, not only do I carry my own pain but I tend to carry other’s as well. Which is wonderful… until it brings you crashing down. So I am learning what I can do to help that. There is a lot to learn!

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But here is one big thing I have learned…

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LIFE IS FULL OF SETBACKS

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I was thinking yesterday that I could dwell on the fact that I think I’m back to square one with my running or I could think about the simple thing that a setback isn’t the end of the world. As a matter of fact I began to think about my…

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COMEBACK

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And I remembered a quote I’ve heard many times in my fitness classes through the years…

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“…let your comeback be bigger

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than your setback…”

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And that is where I am today… on my comeback!!! So, my Farmgirl Friends… this post really isn’t about Shingles particularly or Running either… it is about making the very, very best of hard situations and hard days, or weeks.. or even months or years, as my doctor told me this week – that this Shingle nerve pain could last that long – but I’m not dwelling on that, no siree I’m not!! I’m dwelling on the comeback!

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Thank you, friends, for always following along, reading my posts, commenting and encouraging! If you have a Shingle or Running or Come-Back story to share…. I’m here for it!!! Leave me a comment!

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Until our gravel roads cross again… so long.

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Dori