Although my first triathlon was in general a good experience, and one I definitely want to “tri” again (punny!), it also pushed my body over the edge.  I felt sore and achy and generally exhausted when it was over.  This turned into some coughing and high fevers, at one point reaching 103.9.  My doctor in Richmond told me I had a serious upper respiratory infection/bronchitis, prescribed some heavy hitting antibiotic, and sternly lectured me to take it easy. 

I took my medicine dutifully and still thought I could go on vacation with Running Boy and his kids.  We left for southwest Virginia after enduring (and surviving) Irene.  Unfortunately, I seemed to be getting worse, not better, and he dragged me to the ER in his tiny home town.

(The ER there would give People of Walmart a run for its money)

Turns out I have full blown pneumonia.  New and combined antibiotics were prescribed.  The great ER doc I had said, “You’ll have lots of upset stomach, probable diarrhea, and if you’re really lucky, a yeast infection.”  Sign me up!  With three new prescriptions in hand, I proceded to sleep through the majority of my “vacation” and generally caused other people more trouble by hacking and moaning in my sleep.  Tuesday morning, Nicole rescued me so that I could hack and moan in her townhouse and she could be the one to wait on me.  I’m still in Christiansburg, trying to figure out how I’m going to go another 2 weeks without running or swimming or biking. 

So, I’m going to catch up on projects around the house, a bunch of reading, and getting my kids settled back into school.

I think it’s interesting that this is the sickest I’ve been in as long as I can remember. Apparently, my body needed to remind my brain that I still need to take care of myself.  My stress has been out of control; I haven’t been sleeping enough and my eating has been off.  I would have preferred something a little more subtle than pneumonia to make me slow down, but this is what I’ve got. 

I write frequently about my friend Dan and his lovely girlfriend Nicole, who is now also just “Nicole”, instead of “Dan’s girlfriend Nicole”. 

Something kind of amazing and cool happened to Dan recently (for twitter folk, he is a.k.a. @wxdan). 

To say Dan is a “private” guy would be like calling the iceberg that sunk Titanic a lil’ bit of frozen agua.  It is a matter of my sheer annoying tenacity and willingness to question everything and everyone that has afforded me the relationship I have with Dan, and even I know I’ve barely scratched the surface.  As much as Dan has trouble talking about himself, though, Dan makes sure he is available for his friends, and his social media family. 

He also has an amazing ability to balance things on his nose.

It’s fairly obvious from Dan’s handle that he’s a bit of a weather nerd.  Actually he’s a Weather Nerd with a capital W and a capital N.  Sitting in the townhome he and Nicole share, I can see a huge “Severe Convective Storms” book (great for light reading before bed!).  The man is a scientific genius and used to give me panic attacks just showing me his homework (I have no idea what it even means). 

actual @wxdan homework!!!

When Dan went to finish college at Virginia Tech, Richmond mourned the loss of Weather Dan.  His social media family made lots of sad-faced emoticons in their posts, and we all wondered who in the hell was going to give us personalized forecasts within 30 seconds of tweet requesting it.  Thankfully, RVA News hired him to keep writing weather forecasts for us people in flat Richmond while Dan went to live (literally) at the top of a hill outside of Blacksburg. 

Instead of his ties weakening with his abandoned, sulking River City, it seemed to strengthen.  And he kept on tweetin’, stayin’ up late, and learnin’ more and more about weather.  He even got some sweet storm chasing gig through Tech and did crazy things like driving TOWARD tornadoes. 

Irene was no different than the many other natural things that happen, you know, like earthquakes, storms, and let’s not forget #snowpocalypse (actually, please, let’s forget that hashtag forever). For me, Dan is my personal race day forecaster who has never failed to prepare me for what mother nature is bringing down on my aching feet and burning lungs.  Dan stayed focused on Irene all week, making sure all of us knew the severity of the storm, and urged us to prepare.  He probably didn’t eat, and let’s not think about how many hours he went without showers while he answered the tweets and questions and stared into his weather modeling stuff that sits in a sort of tower in the townhouse.  I’ve heard rumors that Nicole forced him to eat and step away for breaks; that women is a modern-day Mother Teresa with a lot more style and a sewing machine. 

I posted the following Saturday night, as I wondered if Irene was ever going to get the hell away:

As you can see, my friend Mark asks the burning question:  why not just watch the weather?  Well, the weather was frustrating the hell out of me.  I wanted to know exactly WHEN it was going to be at the peak for MY particular area (he knew the specific address of where I currently sat, waiting for a loblolly pine to crush me to bits), and HOW LONG was it going to take.  Dan answered my question quickly . . . .and kindly.  In other words, he didn’t tell me to turn on the television; he knew what I was asking. 

Imagine the social media community of Richmond crawling on its knees, each of us losing power (and cell service!!!! it can’t be!!!), losing Facebook, Tweetdeck, and the tetherings of our sanity.  During all of this, a group of people in Richmond put together a private Facebook group.  During the Hurricane.  Amazingly enough, over one hundred people joined the group and began donating money to thank Dan for all the support, help and extras he’s given throughout the years. 

First, I’m going to post Shane’s explanation for the group that Dan read when he was finally given the news today:

An Open Letter to WxDan:

So Dan. We have a bit of surprise for you. While you were going over storm models and keeping everyone up to date with the best weather resource anyone could find, your friends and followers here in RVA were chipping in left and right to show you their appreciation.

You’ll see stories on this page about how you have helped people. They are sincere and unsolicited. Personally, you’ve been a weather safety blanket of sorts for us. Kristin and I can’t recall how many times we’ve told each other how lucky we were to have you as a resource on our twitter feed and we’re glad to call you a friend.

There is something else you should know. Jeb and Kate started the process by opening the group. I took it and ran that Saturday night as I figured I was the last one standing with both wi-fi and power. It was a total community effort. People enthusiastically gave. Within hours my paypal account had a few hundred bucks in it despite 70 percent of the town without power. Once everyone got to work on Monday it really went nuts. It’s obvious people feel you deserve this and more. Since there are still some folks likely out of commission, I’m going to keep accepting donations until Friday, but I think I’ve heard from most everyone.

So, if you would kindly message me your mailing address all 47 contributors would be pleased to overnight you a check for $1,000. Well $999.50, but I’m rounding up. Perhaps you can get that third or fourth monitor. Take Nicole out for a nice dinner. Pay Rent. Also, we’ve determined that Amazon does carry weather balloons. Just sayin’…

A couple of stories from members in the group, names shortened for privacy: 

Kristin said:  Dan, it was one in the morning, and you were researching tornado warnings for my family cut off from information, huddled in their basement in Pennsylvania last weekend. This is just karma paying your back for your goodness - we were simply the very eager conduits.

Nick said: Dan made a huge difference for Susan and I. Gave me piece of mind while traveling and helped me keep tabs for professional work. Susan was able to follow while home and said it was the best coverage online. Donation happily and proudly sent.

For me, it was an amazing thing to see all the different people Dan has touched with his kindness and patience and his true passion for all things meteorological.  He’s a one of a kind person, and I’m lucky to call him “friend”. 

And for Nicole’s sake, I really hope he passes on the weather balloon idea.  Nicole is really at a loss for where they would store it. 

I had one of the most frightening experiences of my life yesterday. 

Over the weekend in Southwest Virginia, I’d picked up a couple of things for my parents. I called my mom around noon to see if she wanted to meet me for lunch.  She’d already eaten, but we decided to get together around 1.15 to exchange some things and she could watch me hoover up something for my own lunch.  She was perfectly normal when I talked to her.

I arrived in the restaurant parking lot around 1.10 pm.  I saw her car, and her silhouette.  I wasn’t sure why she was waiting in the heat, so I walked over to the car and called her name.  No answer.  I called her name more loudly (and impatiently, because good lord, let’s eat already).  No response.  I walked up to the driver’s side door and noticed the window was down; she was sitting in the car, sort of leaning back and forth in the seat.  I told her I was there, and as soon as she made eye contact I knew something was wrong. 

Her eyes were barely open and her speech sounded like she’d been on an all-night bender in Vegas.  When she tried to get out of the car, she pitched forward immediately and I was able to catch her.  She was unable to walk without falling, and although my mom is petite, she sure felt heavy as I dragged her - literally dragged her - to the other side of the car where I got her to lie down.  Through her thick, slurred speech, she told me she was “just tired” and assured me she hadn’t been taking any medication. 

Internally I was panicking.  I thought she was having some life or death reaction to a medication from the surgery she recently had; the other part of me was idly considering how in the HELL she had driven 20 minutes in the condition she was in without killing herself or someone else.  She was mostly incoherent, making half-hearted hand gestures and mumbling the same sentence in a strange, strangled tone I’d never heard her use before.  Occasionally saliva would bubble out of her mouth, causing me to internally panic and wonder how much I could fake my way through CPR. 

After 2 or 3 minutes of trying to wrap my mind around this person who didn’t resemble my mother in the slightest, I finally began to react.  I called my father first, irrationally asking him why he let mom leave the house in this condition and what medication had she taken?  He said she’d been fine when she left and that she hadn’t taken anything this morning.  I told him to get there as soon as possible. 

In the silence that came after hanging up the phone with him, I began to shake.  My mother kept trying to get up and move around in the car; I kept telling her to stay still and stop talking (the stop talking part was for my benefit, because every time she tried to communicate with me, it scared me even more).  I realized that she wasn’t getting better and I also realized that I needed to make a decision. 

I told her firmly to stay put and ran to the restaurant, grabbed a manager and told him to call 911.  I ran back to the parking lot and stayed with my mother while we waited; the cliche is that minutes seem to take forever when waiting.  In this case, the fire department rescue squad was right around the corner and within 30 seconds of the call being made, I could hear the sirens.  A minute after that, I could hear the ambulance.

Many things happened in the minutes and hours after I made the decision to call 911.  They included a ride to the hospital with my mother in the back and me in the front seat, next to an incredibly buff and sexy EMT (high point of the day), a dawning realization that my mom was probably having a stroke right in front of me, the amazing ability to communicate to large groups of people via mediums like Facebook and texting, and many interactions with a superb, if not overworked, ER staff.

A few minutes after my mother reached the ER, she was assessed for stroke symptoms.  The doctor and nurse both agreed that she was probably having one and activated the stroke team.  Since she was getting better on her own, they didn’t use some of the new medication they have for severe strokes but gave her aspirin immediately and began a long process of CT scans, x-rays, blood work, carotid ultrasounds, swallowing tests and echocardiograms.  A few hours later, we were told that she probably had experienced a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or in layman’s terms, a “mild stroke”. 

I wasn’t familiar enough with the symptoms of a stroke to know that it was urgent to get medical help for my mother.  I didn’t realize that she was smiling and the right side of her face wasn’t the same as her left.  All I knew was that she was completely out of her mind and going downhill; it was that fear of waiting in a parking lot and watching my mother die in an Arby’s parking lot that propelled me to risk the wrath of her later, healthy self about ER copays and ambulance costs to dial 911.  (Really, who wants to pass on to the next fabulous plane of existence with a giant cowboy hat in the background and the smell of greasy fries in the air?  It doesn’t bode well for the next life)

Without wanting to sound too much like a Public Service Announcement, strokes really aren’t that difficult to spot. I’m sure these same symptoms can appear in other situations, but it’s not worth taking a risk.  I’ve pasted some information below from the National Stroke Association about recognizing and reacting to stroke symptoms:

-Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body

- Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding

- Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes

- Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination,

- Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

Immediately call 9-1-1 or the emergency medical services (EMS) number so an ambulance (ideally with advanced life support) can be sent for you.

Also, check the time so you’ll know when the first symptoms appeared. It’s very important to take immediate action. If given within 3 hours of the start of symptoms, a clot-busting drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) may reduce long-term disability for the most common type of stroke.

tPA is the only FDA-approved medication for the treatment of stroke within three hours of stroke symptom onset.

A TIA or transient ischemic attack is a “warning stroke” or “mini-stroke” that produces stroke-like symptoms but no lasting damage. Recognizing and treating TIAs can reduce your risk of a major stroke.

The usual TIA symptoms are the same as those of stroke, only temporary. The short duration of these symptoms and lack of permanent brain injury is the main difference between TIA and stroke.

Now that I’ve done the most basic of research, I’d recognize a stroke from miles away.  It’s plainly obvious if you know what to look for.  I’m posting my story of yesterday in the hopes that others will read this and be able to react quickly if they are ever (and I hope you’re not) in this situation.

In the meantime, my mom is doing much better today.  She will probably stay in the hospital another day while they finish running her through the gamut of tests and using her as a human pincushion, but I’m thankful for a couple of things.  First, I’m grateful it happened when she had stopped driving and I was there to see it happen.  Second, I’m grateful I stopped worrying about how it would look if I overreacted and called an ambulance, and just did it.  Third, I learned a bunch from the experience - both about the signs of stroke and how I react when put in a situation like that. 

I stayed in “competent daughter” mode until 10 pm last night, when I finally got home.  I then reverted to “freaked out daughter who saw her mother having a stroke” mode and let all the pent up emotions from the day spill out.  After a long night of not sleeping, I’m still a bit of a mess but feeling much better today - just like my mom. 

Half Marathon Training Team started this morning.  Just like a year ago, the day was hot and as the kick off speeches and requisite rah-rahs were belted out, everyone was already sweating.  Me, in my infinite wisdom, decided to skip the Fuel Belt this morning and run waterless.  It was “only” 4 miles - no big deal. 

Turns out it wasn’t 4 miles, though.  The routes were messed up and we ended up running between 5 and 5 1/2 miles, depending on who’s Garmin you trust and how many wrong turns you made. 

Last year, I was running with @stanleyfit and trying to just survive the 3 miles the novice team starts with.  I was just meeting my fellow “Cheetah” teammates and too embarrassed to tell them how close to death I was.  This year was marginally better because so many people were also dying out there with me.  Even Running Boy was struggling.  His planned 8 miles turned to a hot and sweaty 10.  I spent the entire 5 1/2 thinking, “Why am I doing this?  I’m 40, need to lose 20 pounds, and can’t breathe from my stupid asthma.  Who do I think I am?”

Oh, but the joyous fact about running is that whenever the run is done, those fabulous sweaty chemicals kick in and the Conquer the World syndrome sets in.  And thankfully with three 1/2 marathons under my belt, I know that when cooler weather arrives I’ll remember why I run and best of all, enjoy running again. 

Your team is determined by your average pace; usually one team will have people on it within a 2 minute pace of each other.  There are only three intermediate teams - the Panthers, the Springboks . . . and my team, the Red Bellied Cooters.  Running Boy is a Panther, of course.  I’m a freakin’ Cooter. 

Today, the great coaches we have showed up wearing red boas and holding signs that said, “HELLOOOOooooo - it’s a TURTLE!” and “Cooters, NOT HOOTERS!”  I started to feel the beginning of Cooter pride, but I still hated the fact that Running Boy is a hairy tuna-breathed overgrown cat and I’m a swampy turtle.  It was enough to almost send me sprinting back to the novice team of last year, my beloved Cheetahs. 

It’s been a rough summer with me and running; we don’t like each other right now and sometimes I feel like totally breaking up with it and changing my phone number.  I’m just hanging on for the lower humidity and the returning ability of my lungs to breathe.  It can’t get here soon enough.  Coming up this week:  20 miles.  I’m hoping it goes by more quickly than today’s run did.

You know all those “how to deal” books they sell parents on dealing with temper tantrums?  They need to sell those same books to adults in general - about how to deal with mature temper tantrums. 

I exaggerate as usual.  I’m not wearing a diaper or throwing myself face down on the floor. Not yet at least. 

I don’t know.  I guess that I thought this summer would finally be the one where I stopped being stressed and magically appeared on the other side of my divorce, smiling and with a sunflower blooming out of my butt.  I was wrong; I need to be flexible and adjust my expectations.  Note:  I’m terrible at adjusting my expectations. 

So looking inside my head, here’s what I thought.

Illusion 1:  Boyfriend and I would take the SAME week off in August.  We would go somewhere fabulous.  He’d be divorced!  His ex-wife would not only have stopped bleeding him dry, she’d be paying HIM!  It would involve an airplane, fruity drinks with umbrellas and possibly some bad Mexican food or an iceberg (either one was okay). 

Reality 1:  Divorce hearing has been postponed to September.  I’m still technically dating a married man.  Dates were not communicated clearly between me and the married man.  We ended up with consecutive weeks off.  In other words, he’s free when I have my kids and I have 8 days off with no kids when he’s with his kids 24/7.  My ex had already booked his trip with the kids; he wasn’t able to change the dates.  Boyfriend had no choice as usual and was given dates by his ex - take it or leave it.  End result:  no mexican food or icebergs. 

Illusion 2:  I could go “home” again.  I talked to some friends in my hometown.  One of my friends - known him for 23 years - offered me a couch and a car.  Camping and hiking and day tripping were mentioned.  I pictured myself practicing yoga at early dawn at the beach.  I pictured myself sleeping at Christmas Cove, feet in hot sand.  There might be a fruity drink; there would be no icebergs.  It sounded heavenly, seeing a few of the people I still love and miss in my home town.

Reality 2:  My friend can’t have me stay at his house for various reasons.  I don’t have access to a car.  I can’t impose on my other friends for that long of a period a time.  I can’t afford to rent a car - the ticket alone up there broke me for the month of July.  I can’t afford to rent a hotel room during peak season.  Basically the entire way and means for my trip went bye-bye.  My reality is a heady combination of severe bummed-outedness about not seeing my other friends there and a deep throbbing sadness because of the choices my couch-sponsoring friend has decided to make.  My vacation is blown, yes, but I’m more upset that my friendship is blown.  Whatever.  No one else seems to get their panties in a wad when things end badly; not sure why I do at this age. 

Illusion 3:  Now desperately seeking any type of Farewell to Summer 2011 that includes getting out of Richmond (even 30 miles out of Richmond), and preferably the Boyfriend, I pitch a one-night get away to a nearby beach.  Turns out that can’t happen either; he’s taking time off the week he has his kids, and unless I want to go home with him (and the kids) for close to 5 days, there isn’t going to be any sort of get away and there definitely will be no fruity drinks with umbrellas. 

I’ll turn back into the cheery person I know I can be, and be happy for all the glorious and wonderful things in my life, but tonight - and really, the last 5 days - has been spent feeling like someone took a poop on my ice cream sundae.  I feel whiny:  I work hard.  This summer, I’ve been working two jobs.  I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t working at night, either on my own business or cleaning my house or doing laundry or packing lunches for camp.  I do not remember the last time I sat in front of a television without my computer or a pile of laundry.  Right now, I should be processing orders or embroidering something, but I’m going to allow myself to sulk.  I can be an adult tomorrow, tell myself to buck up, and move on.  My life is complex right now and involves working with an ex-husband, 2 kids, a Boyfriend, his 2 kids, his job, my job, and my paying job.  Making plans is an act of Congress (well, perhaps easier than an act of Congress, based on the recent past), and sometimes they go awry.  Right now, though, I wish someone else would whisk me away and relieve me of making plans for anyone and anything, and let me sleep 8 hours a night, tell me NOT to run, and tell me that not training for this triathlon that’s three weeks away is no big deal and I can totally do this thing in my sleep. 

While I wait for that, I’m going to fix myself some non-fat sherbet and stick an umbrella in it.  Happy Summer Vacation to me.