I'm one and a half weeks out from my second foot surgery , and, by all important measures, I'm doing well. But boy has the past week been difficult. In the first few days post-surgery I was in a pretty good mood; the surgery had gone well, I was in the excellent care of my mom, and I had made it past the last major hurdle of this months-long event. All I had to look forward to was recovery and progress and gradually returning to my normal life, whatever that might look like. But even though I've gone through this process once already, it's still just as difficult this time around. There's the constant worrying about this weird feeling or that new pain, the accidental step in the middle of the night when I forgot which foot was injured, and the agonizing wait time between appointments. Now it's compounded by concern over whether I'm taking good enough care of my first foot. Did I ruin the surgery when I stubbed my toe falling off an exercise ball? Am I usin...

First things first: my surgery went very well. The doc told me so as I was coming out of my slumber, but he also spoke at length with my parents. There were no complications, no real surprises, and if the healing goes as it should, the doc said he doesn't see why I shouldn't be able to get back to running—very welcome news! My doctor, by the way, is  Matthew Werd , at Foot and Ankle Associates in Lakeland. I fretted a lot over which surgeon to choose; I'd had three consultations, and it came down to two. One was an orthopedist I'd seen for injuries, and she happened to have performed bunionectomies on two of my coworkers, who were happy with their results. But her recovery program seemed far too good to be true. Walking around within a few days, no boot, and the second foot done within 10 days of the first. Maybe it would have been perfectly fine, but in the end I decided I wanted the more cautious approach, albeit with a much longer recovery period. Nonetheless, I...

Seminole Heights is kind of the "it" place in Tampa these days, and here is just one more reason to love it. Although the clinic I visited has been around for many years prior to the community's popularity, I only recently discovered it and decided to try it out. I've tried acupuncture several different times over the past decade or so, first to treat allergies , then to help alleviate a new and undiagnosed pain that set in several years ago. It's always been difficult to tell whether the acupuncture helped; it's not an immediate, magical solution to a given problem (although I did feel nearly immediate relief from head pain in a recent visit). For persistent or chronic problems, it takes repeated sessions, patience, and an open mind. But it also costs money (naturally), and the rate I was paying at the previous practitioners' offices was not sustainable, so I never continued the treatments for very long. I'd found out about Seminole Heights Co...

I set out several weeks ago to train for a marathon , knowing there might be a chance I'd have to change my end goal to a half marathon. And so that has happened. Maybe my training plan was too ambitious for where I was in my body, having spent the better part of a year not running and generally trying to avoid being on my feet, or rather my foot, and then slowly coming back to running over the course of four months. I started with a two-mile test run one week, then three miles, gradually adding on a couple more low-mile run days per week. So to expect to go from that careful, measured reentry to a full-on marathon training was perhaps unrealistic, though hopeful. And that I was hopeful is okay; for a time when I wasn't running, I was not hopeful and had forgotten that it was okay to have hope. But back to my current reality. When I did my farthest long run since April 2015 , 12 miles, my body did not support it. Both feet hurt, my hips hurt. And not just in the typical pav...

Pain is life--the sharper, the more evidence of life. --Charles Lamb I've been experiencing a lot of "life" lately. For the past year, I've struggled to get a diagnosis for pain that I've felt on and off, and almost daily for the past seven months. I first noticed the pain around my left ear, and then on the back left side of my tongue and sometimes along my left jaw, and more recently into my head and sinus area. I went to my dentist, who referred me to an oral surgeon, who referred me to an ENT. Next, I went to three different ENTs who could not find anything wrong with me. I subjected myself to many frightening medical tests, halfway hoping to find something, halfway not. I did not. I decided after my last disappointing ENT visit that I had nerve pain, possibly a neuralgia (this was based on meager suggestions from ENTs, and the Internet, of course). I went to a neurologist, who ordered more tests, just when I thought there were no more that could possibly ...

I've been in somewhat of a summer funk lately. It hits me every year with the onset of summer: work slows down dramatically, running gets tougher with the onslaught of heat and humidity, and I feel overcome with restlessness and a lack of focus. I blame it on idle time--something I've never been good at handling--and summer just seems to encompass idle time, does it not? While I've never quite figured out how to beat these blues, I've found recently that focusing on breathing is helpful, both in stillness and in physical activity. This is no great discovery; the benefits of breathwork and conscious breathing have been heralded for decades in Western society (and since Ancient times in the East), largely alongside the rising popularity of yoga, which in its most basic form is a focus on the breath. However, as a lifetime asthmatic with numerous environmental sensitivities, I've always struggled with breathing. Not focused breathing or breathing exercises, but merel...

Of energy, of will, of belief . . . you name it, and it's been drained from me. I thought these last two weeks before the marathon would be a breeze. Instead, I've either bailed on or walked through several runs, having felt like my body was revolting against me, unwilling to push forward in the most defiant manner. This makes me concerned. If I can't get through five miles, how will I get through twenty-six? I began thinking that it might not happen--I might have to pull out of the race. I imagined myself getting all the way to Chicago, standing in line among thousands of runners on race morning, only to find that my body would quit on me a couple of miles in. What then? Would I duck out in shame, try to continue on, walking? This isn't a walking race. Everyone would be disappointed. I've made a huge deal about it. For months. I made sure everyone I cared about knew I was doing this. And they'd be expecting great things of me--great things I wouldn't be abl...