I had originally planned on updating the blog last night after I got answers from the sports doc on my ankle. However as things normally go, plans change. The last 48 hours have been just an amplification of how the past week and a half have been.
Tuesday evening I went on my normal bike ride and had a great ride on the new Scott Sportser S10. I really love the bike and the gearing and light weight made a huge difference! Climbing the hills actually was kinda fun on this bike.
After getting home things took a different turn though. Our dog Dasher(whom Santa brought my daughter when she was 3) greeted us as normal by barking as we came in the door and then wiggling and wagging his tail uncontrollably after he saw it was us. We had dinner and he acted normal and was begging for food. However at about 9:30 he acted like he needed to go out, and my son let him out. After about 20 minutes of him not returning I knew that something was odd. I found him a little bit later out in the yard just turning in circles, stumbling, and running into the walls and trees. He had huge amounts of drool coming out of his mouth and was pretty unresponsive to my voice and even me petting him. My wife and I immediately agreed we needed to get him to the emergency vet in Springfield(about an hour away). I had to pick him up to get him in the van and by the time I got to the vet’s office around midnight he wouldn’t stand up or move. Long story short – within about 45 minutes of being at the vets, he was gone. His heart stopped and they tried to resuscitate him unsuccessfully. I really couldn’t even absorb what was happening. Just 3 hours earlier he was running around acting normally and now I was loading him up to take him home to bury him. I normally put up a good front of being a tough guy and cover up any emotions but the ride home that night was tough. I cried most of the way home talking to my wife and wondering how we were going to be able to break the news to the kids and how our life was going to be different waking up the next morning.
I finally got to bed around 3am and slept until our kids started coming in around 7. I had a meeting to get ready for and planned on taking care of the meeting and getting back home to bury him. My daughter ended up sleeping late that morning and it was a good thing because it allowed me to get back home before she was up and around so that I could break the news to all the kids at the same time. That was easily one of the toughest things I have had to tell them. They were all heartbroken and bawling. The bright spot in it was that my 9 year old daughter reminded us that he was in a better place and that he was happy. What an amazing girl!!
We will miss you much Dasher!!
I didn’t have much time afterward before I had my doctors appointment to find out what the diagnosis of my knee and the outlook for getting back to running. They took X-Rays as soon as I got there. Dr. Talley came in shortly after and greeted me and asked how things had been since the last time I was in. I was really relieved when he told me that there were no fractures on the X-Rays. After poking and prodding for about 5 minutes he pointed to their diagram of the foot on the wall and confirmed exactly what I had thought – Peroneal Tendonitis. Amazing what Google can do now days in terms of self diagnosis. One of my running buddies has suggested I give up this whole technology gig and hang a shingle out for running injury diagnosis. Dr. Talley indicated that I should be OK within a couple of weeks as long as I don’t push it and run through any pain. If within a couple of weeks I still have issues, he will want to put a boot on it to help settle things down. But as soon as I feel OK I can try to run a few miles and see how it feels.
The red areas are the tendons that are inflamed
All in all – good news I guess considering I could have been told I was out of running for much longer. And by this point in the day I was ready for any good news I could get. So for now, I am going to plan on biking more and really concentrating on swimming to help get ready for the Sharkfest Tri in July. At least it is not the dead of winter where biking would be out and swimming wouldn’t be as appealing.
Tough couple of days but hopefully some rest and a little calm is in store for the long weekend!
