Post-op

I woke up in a holding area after surgery on a gurney on the edge of consciousness due to anesthetic.  Between two bags of ice over the incision, morphine drip in with my IV, and some other narcotic, I was in a strange mode of blissful and exhausted.  I fell back asleep, I woke up. I feel back asleep. Between sleeping bouts the surgeon came in to tell me that it went well, and that I had a big tear in my Rectus Abdominis.

When they transitioned me from the gurney to a hospital bed I accelerated back to being away of existence again.  It hurt.  Several hours later the nurse got me up and half me walk around, which produced an ebbing in the pain as I got some blood flow to the area. An hour after I was released, and very slowly, and rather painfully, walked back to the hotel from the hospital bed.

I slept decently, but having slept all day, I found myself awake at 4:30, but not terribly uncomfortable.
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There is something in all of this that is both rewarding and disconcerting.  For the past year and a half I have been dealing with this, and near the end, was coming to wonder whether I simply didn't have the right stuff anymore to run fast.  Was I too old? Was this theoretical discomfort all in my head?  Was anything really wrong?  Obviously, based on the past several days the answer to all of these questions is no.

Distance running is a relatively unique sport in that the better you get, the better you get at pain management.  You learn to deal with a lot of discomfort, and sometimes the lines blur between discomfort (something alright to be managed) and true pain (something to be attended to).  As much as some people used to credit me as being a head case when I was a younger runner, over the past 5 years I have now run for a long time with something that is very wrong, and simply tried to convince myself that I can handle it.

I've managed to take my relatively talent devoid self and run much faster than anyone expected due to wanting it badly enough, and truly making myself suffer for it.  But there has to be sense, there has to be rationality.  When I can't sleep, when I limp all the time, when 8:00 pace feels disconcerting and not relaxed, they are all very tangible signs of a problem.  At the doctor's office Tuesday I was more anxious that he was going to tell me I didn't have a problem there, and that he couldn't solve my issue.  I was ready to quit running, because there has been little joy in it for a long time now.  As a result, I was actually rather calm and prepared for the surgery.

I've run several bests with a compromised body.  I can handle pain, if anything, I need to get a lot better at realizing when something is a legitimate problem and get it checked out, not months, not years down the road.