Just as I was getting ready to settle into some serious training this month, life threw us a curveball. Actually threw Mandy a curveball and my training took on the collateral damage. Last Friday night, July 6th, as we were getting settled for the night, I was gearing up for a big weekend of my long run and bike. Mandy started experiencing some serious chest pains that she believed might be a heart attack. Just a couple weeks ago a co-worker of mine's husband was having some chest pains. He was going to take a shower and lay down instead of getting it checked out, and within an hour or so he had died of a heart attack. So with this fresh in my mind, I wasn't about to take any chances and took Mandy to the ER. She was diagnosed with a Winslow hernia, a rare form of hernia that needed immediate medical attention. They put her in an ambulance and took her straight to the University of Iowa Hospitals to meet with GI surgeons to figure out the next course of action. After 8 hours in the ER exam room, and talking with 5 different surgeons, the verdict was that she needed surgery that day to fix the issue. The head GI surgeon at UIHC had reassured me that she had done intestinal surgeries many times, however to show you just how rare this condition was, she did add that she had never seen anything like what Mandy had. Everything I saw that they had written down said exploratory surgery, meaning cut her open and figure it out from there. Thankfully God is great, and the 3.5 hour surgery went great. However for Mandy, going from Friday afternoon when all is well and you think you're in great health, to 24 hours later you have 22 staples in your stomach after being cut on, that is quite the whirlwind. We had to stay in the hospital for 4 more days, getting released on the following Wednesday the 11th. Mandy is still recovering and in some pain, but all is well medically and we hope for continued recovery.
Obviously my first and only priority at the time was Mandy's health and that she was going to be OK. Once we knew that was going to be the case, then I started thinking about the week of missed training. The Mon-Wed was no big deal, but I missed my long bike on Sat and my long run on Sun. This was the 2nd week in a row that I missed the long weekend workouts. This had me in a bit of panic. I was contemplating scrapping this whole quest and conceding that too many life happenings were going to keep popping up and derail my training leaving me unprepared. After some time contemplating this, Mandy convinced me that was ridiculous. I had put in too many hours to this point to get discouraged (31 miles of swimming, 819 biking, and 293.5 running), and keep on working through the process. The journey now just has an interesting and unique speed bump.
It's Friday night. The long bike and run of the weekend lie ahead. Time to conquer them and get back on track!
