Life After Running
April 24, 2024 3:57 AM Subscribe
Life After Running Athletes are often defined by their physical strength. Who are they when they lose it?
It is not a replacement for running, but to live with a chronic condition is to become an expert at negotiating between one’s wants and one’s capacities. It means constantly hacking away at the richness of one’s life—there is nothing casual about it.
Suddenly being unable to do things you're used to and, most importantly, things that give you joy is a struggle. My grandpa was an example of this for me, luckily, he had it temporarily, but he broke his arm once and was unable to do gardening which he loved. Can't imagine the toll it takes on mental health of former athletes, especially if taking a step back wasn't their choice.
posted by torturedpoet at 5:45 AM on April 24 [3 favorites]
posted by torturedpoet at 5:45 AM on April 24 [3 favorites]
Yes, not to pull the focus too much from runners or athletes in general, but as I am neither, my lived experience has been telling me lately that living—or, to be more precise, aging—is a chronic condition. "Negotiating between one’s wants and one’s capacities" is not easy. Making peace with circumstances that make choices for us we wouldn't make ourselves, is a black-belt level Life Skill.
posted by concinnity at 5:50 AM on April 24 [13 favorites]
posted by concinnity at 5:50 AM on April 24 [13 favorites]
(Apologies, this got long)
Oh this hits so close to home. Not for me, but for my wife. We both came to running later in life (I was 35, she was ten years older than me and started a few years later when she was almost 50). When we were first married, running meant running to the store to buy a pack of cinnamon rolls to split.
But after we started running, we both fell in love with being active, for different reasons. For me, it was the first time something I did changed my body, in a way I liked. I spent 35 years hating my body before I started transitioning, and running was a key part of that. I lost a lot of weight before surgery, on my doctors advice. Running was a big part of that. And I discovered I just enjoyed it.
My wife was an academic, getting her PhD at the time. Towards the end of that, she surprised me asking if I’d help her work up to walking a 5k. I’d gently bugged her for a few years as I was running, to get out and do a little, but she resisted. Finally towards the end of her dissertation writing, she brought it up. She said she needed to do something that wasn’t thinking all the time, something to get herself out of her head. And I think she also needed a new challenge in life as her long PhD goal was almost there.
We walked that first 5k together, a little local race. I had a simple medal engraved with her name and “first 5k” on it, that I carried with me and gave to her at the finish. I was so proud.
She wasn’t a runner that just ran effortlessly, pouring in miles and getting faster and faster. But she trained hard. Her times did get better, but she was always towards the back of the pack. She mostly didn’t care - sure she’d have loved to run faster, but realized it was just where she was and she really was just competing with herself anyway. And she took that traditional runners journey. A 5k, then a bunch of 5ks, then a 10k, then a couple years later a half marathon. I ran her first and only Marathon with her, that she did at age 54. It took a bit over six and a half hours. But she was ecstatic because her goal was to just beat the races’s seven hour cutoff, and she smashed that.
We both kept running over the years, and it became a huge part of our identities. She ran a race in all 50 states (I did 48 of them with her, she did a couple in New England when she taught there, and we were bi-coastal for a couple years). She brought her undergrad theater major and academic study of adult play together with running, and started making running costumes for us. The joy she found and she taught me to embrace from getting smiles, cheers and laughs from fellow runners and spectators when they recognized your costume was priceless.
We both retired. We were going to spend the rest of our lives running, walking, traveling, and coming up with creative outfits for events.
Then at the end of 2021 we did a New Years Eve 5k (dressed as baby sheep, “new year, new ewe”), and she really struggled. I ran the race at my pace, and came back to run the last mile with her(we did about half the races this way and half together). We made it to the finish of that race, but she had a side stitch that bothered her. The next day, it was still there. The day after, we went to urgent care because the pain wasn’t better. They did X-rays, and sent us to the ER. The ER did scans and called in liver specialists.
At age 65 she had advanced bile duct/liver cancer. It was rare, had no known cause, and no treatment. 2-3 month prognosis. There were some chemotherapies that helped in 30% of the cases, so we started those. And she still ran and walked, as she could. Only a month in, she developed a blood clot (from the cancer or the chemo) in her leg.
Now she couldn’t run at all, and used a cane at that point. But she was determined to keep moving. Her coach got the Ok from the doctors to getting her walking, and her first workout was “walk 10 minutes”. I think she slept for a day after that, but she did it.
She needed a goal, so we found a local race with a one mile walk in a couple months. So in the midst of chemo, and ending up hospitalized every few weeks from random side effects, she ran (it was a walk, but I think she was running, in her mind). I did every training run with her. We built up to 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Half a mile, three quarters of a mile. I got a folding golf stool that I’d carry, because she neeed to sit down every so often. We joked she went from her normal “run/walk/run” method to “walk/sit/walk”.
The morning of that one mile race, they had some snafu and had to change the course. It ended up being one 1/4 mile loop of the parking lot. Since it was a charity event, they figured the walkers wouldn’t care. Screw that. My wife had trained for a mile and she was going to do a mile. We walked the course four times, til we hit a mile on our watches.
With that achieved, she set her sights on a huge goal. Walk one last 5k. Our one goal after the diagnosis was to make it to June, to our 25th anniversary, and an Alaskan cruise we had planned for years. We had gone to Alaska on our honeymoon. And this time it wasn’t just a cruise, but a running cruise, with events at each port. We decided the 5k in Juneau was her target.
We trained and trained, and got up to a couple miles. We had a scare with dangerously low blood count for chemo. But we made it to the trip. And dressed in our anniversary themed outfits, we walked that 5k together. I carried the folding stool. We took breaks every ten minutes. We got permission to modify the course so it went out half a mile and back, three times, so we’d always be near the finish. And she did it. It took us an hour and half, but we didn’t care.
We had to stop the chemo, even though it had shrunk the cancer a little. It was causing too many dangerous side effects. We had a couple good months over the summer- she trained and competed a super mini sprint triathlon (100 yard swim, 6 mile bike, mile run).
Nine months after the diagnosis, her health started going quickly. We moved to a walker, then a wheelchair. I found an adult size jogging stroller, and we did two last 5k’s together, as I pushed her along the course. One was a Gildas Club 5k, and we both dressed as Roseanne Roseannadanna. The other was a cancer fundraiser race, and she was the Skipper, I was Gilligan, and the jogger was the S.S. Minnow. That was our last run together. And in her running career, of trying to break 30 minutes for a 5k but not quite doing it, I made sure she finally did that day.
She held on to being a runner those ten months, and she said riding in the jogger felt like running. Being a runner was whatever the hell she wanted it to be.
She’s been gone for 18 months now. I still run, to give my self something to look forward to each day. I still run races in the costumes she made for us. I learned to sew so I could make a few myself, with her sewing machine. I think she’d like that.
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today”, Watership Down
posted by gmatom at 6:22 AM on April 24 [345 favorites]
Oh this hits so close to home. Not for me, but for my wife. We both came to running later in life (I was 35, she was ten years older than me and started a few years later when she was almost 50). When we were first married, running meant running to the store to buy a pack of cinnamon rolls to split.
But after we started running, we both fell in love with being active, for different reasons. For me, it was the first time something I did changed my body, in a way I liked. I spent 35 years hating my body before I started transitioning, and running was a key part of that. I lost a lot of weight before surgery, on my doctors advice. Running was a big part of that. And I discovered I just enjoyed it.
My wife was an academic, getting her PhD at the time. Towards the end of that, she surprised me asking if I’d help her work up to walking a 5k. I’d gently bugged her for a few years as I was running, to get out and do a little, but she resisted. Finally towards the end of her dissertation writing, she brought it up. She said she needed to do something that wasn’t thinking all the time, something to get herself out of her head. And I think she also needed a new challenge in life as her long PhD goal was almost there.
We walked that first 5k together, a little local race. I had a simple medal engraved with her name and “first 5k” on it, that I carried with me and gave to her at the finish. I was so proud.
She wasn’t a runner that just ran effortlessly, pouring in miles and getting faster and faster. But she trained hard. Her times did get better, but she was always towards the back of the pack. She mostly didn’t care - sure she’d have loved to run faster, but realized it was just where she was and she really was just competing with herself anyway. And she took that traditional runners journey. A 5k, then a bunch of 5ks, then a 10k, then a couple years later a half marathon. I ran her first and only Marathon with her, that she did at age 54. It took a bit over six and a half hours. But she was ecstatic because her goal was to just beat the races’s seven hour cutoff, and she smashed that.
We both kept running over the years, and it became a huge part of our identities. She ran a race in all 50 states (I did 48 of them with her, she did a couple in New England when she taught there, and we were bi-coastal for a couple years). She brought her undergrad theater major and academic study of adult play together with running, and started making running costumes for us. The joy she found and she taught me to embrace from getting smiles, cheers and laughs from fellow runners and spectators when they recognized your costume was priceless.
We both retired. We were going to spend the rest of our lives running, walking, traveling, and coming up with creative outfits for events.
Then at the end of 2021 we did a New Years Eve 5k (dressed as baby sheep, “new year, new ewe”), and she really struggled. I ran the race at my pace, and came back to run the last mile with her(we did about half the races this way and half together). We made it to the finish of that race, but she had a side stitch that bothered her. The next day, it was still there. The day after, we went to urgent care because the pain wasn’t better. They did X-rays, and sent us to the ER. The ER did scans and called in liver specialists.
At age 65 she had advanced bile duct/liver cancer. It was rare, had no known cause, and no treatment. 2-3 month prognosis. There were some chemotherapies that helped in 30% of the cases, so we started those. And she still ran and walked, as she could. Only a month in, she developed a blood clot (from the cancer or the chemo) in her leg.
Now she couldn’t run at all, and used a cane at that point. But she was determined to keep moving. Her coach got the Ok from the doctors to getting her walking, and her first workout was “walk 10 minutes”. I think she slept for a day after that, but she did it.
She needed a goal, so we found a local race with a one mile walk in a couple months. So in the midst of chemo, and ending up hospitalized every few weeks from random side effects, she ran (it was a walk, but I think she was running, in her mind). I did every training run with her. We built up to 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Half a mile, three quarters of a mile. I got a folding golf stool that I’d carry, because she neeed to sit down every so often. We joked she went from her normal “run/walk/run” method to “walk/sit/walk”.
The morning of that one mile race, they had some snafu and had to change the course. It ended up being one 1/4 mile loop of the parking lot. Since it was a charity event, they figured the walkers wouldn’t care. Screw that. My wife had trained for a mile and she was going to do a mile. We walked the course four times, til we hit a mile on our watches.
With that achieved, she set her sights on a huge goal. Walk one last 5k. Our one goal after the diagnosis was to make it to June, to our 25th anniversary, and an Alaskan cruise we had planned for years. We had gone to Alaska on our honeymoon. And this time it wasn’t just a cruise, but a running cruise, with events at each port. We decided the 5k in Juneau was her target.
We trained and trained, and got up to a couple miles. We had a scare with dangerously low blood count for chemo. But we made it to the trip. And dressed in our anniversary themed outfits, we walked that 5k together. I carried the folding stool. We took breaks every ten minutes. We got permission to modify the course so it went out half a mile and back, three times, so we’d always be near the finish. And she did it. It took us an hour and half, but we didn’t care.
We had to stop the chemo, even though it had shrunk the cancer a little. It was causing too many dangerous side effects. We had a couple good months over the summer- she trained and competed a super mini sprint triathlon (100 yard swim, 6 mile bike, mile run).
Nine months after the diagnosis, her health started going quickly. We moved to a walker, then a wheelchair. I found an adult size jogging stroller, and we did two last 5k’s together, as I pushed her along the course. One was a Gildas Club 5k, and we both dressed as Roseanne Roseannadanna. The other was a cancer fundraiser race, and she was the Skipper, I was Gilligan, and the jogger was the S.S. Minnow. That was our last run together. And in her running career, of trying to break 30 minutes for a 5k but not quite doing it, I made sure she finally did that day.
She held on to being a runner those ten months, and she said riding in the jogger felt like running. Being a runner was whatever the hell she wanted it to be.
She’s been gone for 18 months now. I still run, to give my self something to look forward to each day. I still run races in the costumes she made for us. I learned to sew so I could make a few myself, with her sewing machine. I think she’d like that.
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today”, Watership Down
posted by gmatom at 6:22 AM on April 24 [345 favorites]
In my experience good competitive athletes, at least the men, bask for life in the glow of their youthful alpha maleness, no matter what their present physical capabilities ... sometimes inversely to their present physical capabilities - easier to be content with your fat cigar-smoking middle-aged self when you know that you were the cheerleaders' idol 35 years ago.
posted by MattD at 6:41 AM on April 24
posted by MattD at 6:41 AM on April 24
gmatom - I just want to thank you for sharing that with us. With me. I don't have the presence of mind to unspool all the ways in which it's connecting to me but please just know that it's beautiful and this internet stranger is sitting in a coffee shop feeling very emotionally full. Thank you so much for this gift.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:51 AM on April 24 [52 favorites]
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:51 AM on April 24 [52 favorites]
Goddamnit gmatom, I'm sorry. This internet stranger is proud of you & your wife.
Sure is dusty in here. Must be the runners we can't see kicking some dust up.
posted by lalochezia at 7:08 AM on April 24 [24 favorites]
Sure is dusty in here. Must be the runners we can't see kicking some dust up.
posted by lalochezia at 7:08 AM on April 24 [24 favorites]
gmaton, if you're comfortable sharing it I would love to see a photo of you two Roseanne Roseannadannas.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:16 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:16 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
Yes, favoriting seems an inadequate response for that comment.
posted by praemunire at 7:32 AM on April 24 [27 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:32 AM on April 24 [27 favorites]
gmatom, what a beautiful elegy for your wife. Count me as another internet stranger who is sorry for your loss.
posted by turbowombat at 7:39 AM on April 24 [11 favorites]
posted by turbowombat at 7:39 AM on April 24 [11 favorites]
These are heartbreaking examples, but I fall into the broader middle ground of, "I used to be able to do this stuff. What happened?"
The inevitable decline of athletic performance is tough to accept. I'm slowly getting worse at everything I do and it's a real bummer. And my small physical ills - chronic muscle soreness, tendonitis, tweaked backs, etc. add up. I know it's good for me to stay active, but it's also kind of bad for me. Is being in minor constant pain worth the effort, or should I lean into into a less active, less fit future where I decline more but hurt less (maybe?)?
posted by Phreesh at 7:59 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
The inevitable decline of athletic performance is tough to accept. I'm slowly getting worse at everything I do and it's a real bummer. And my small physical ills - chronic muscle soreness, tendonitis, tweaked backs, etc. add up. I know it's good for me to stay active, but it's also kind of bad for me. Is being in minor constant pain worth the effort, or should I lean into into a less active, less fit future where I decline more but hurt less (maybe?)?
posted by Phreesh at 7:59 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
Seemingly a lifetime ago, I ran. Not big-time. Not even one of those every-morning-every-day runners. Just a couple of days a week, usually on my lunch hour. But, man, did I love it.
But then I destroyed my T-10/11 disc. And, after four hours of surgery to clean up the mess, my surgeon informed me that my running days were over. I was crushed.
I miss it so much, even today. And my fitness definitely went downhill after that. I’ve tried biking, ellipticals, etc. Nothing comes close to the bliss I felt running. I mourn its loss.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:01 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]
But then I destroyed my T-10/11 disc. And, after four hours of surgery to clean up the mess, my surgeon informed me that my running days were over. I was crushed.
I miss it so much, even today. And my fitness definitely went downhill after that. I’ve tried biking, ellipticals, etc. Nothing comes close to the bliss I felt running. I mourn its loss.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:01 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]
"For athletes facing this conundrum, there is no clean phase change. There is no haven in a new identity. There is resistance and pain and self-alienation. I have become a new type of person, and I will spend the rest of my life wishing I had not."
I've played volleyball for 32 years -- an outdoor pick-up game, playing everything from doubles to six-on-six, depending on turnout. We've played in the absurd 100+ degree heat and humidity of Durham, North Carolina summers, and we've played with icicles hanging off the net in January. We've played every weekend, and midweek after work, as long as the daylight allowed. Then last summer I wrecked my right rotator cuff at the beach, getting picked up and slammed shoulder-first onto a sandbar by a Wave of Mutilation. And just like that, I've not played volleyball since.
An MRI showed that my years of playing had already frayed my tendons so badly that surgery was extremely unlikely to help -- there's just not enough left to work with to re-attach. So I've been doing PT and hoping to re-train the few muscles that are still attached to move my arm in ways that those muscles were never intended. I've seen improvement, but I still can't really lift my arm up past shoulder height, much less over my head. And then there's just the pain. Every goddamn day.
Now, don't get me wrong, I was never that great an "athlete" and our crew does not exactly play elite-level volleyball; but we don't suck, and the play is competitive and fun, and we laugh after just about every point. I cannot even tell you just how badly I miss it. This huge piece of my identity is just -- gone. I still hold out some hope that maybe one fine day I'll be able to play again.
I look at the woes of this crazy world and conclude that my problems do not amount to a hill of beans. I must still count myself extremely lucky indeed. And I do. And I am trying to get my head around the idea that maybe that part of my life could be over for good, and trying to figure out how I might come to terms with that and make peace with it. But, yeah, there really still is "resistance and pain and self-alienation." And I really do suspect that "I have become a new type of person, and I will spend the rest of my life wishing I had not."
posted by fikri at 8:03 AM on April 24 [15 favorites]
I've played volleyball for 32 years -- an outdoor pick-up game, playing everything from doubles to six-on-six, depending on turnout. We've played in the absurd 100+ degree heat and humidity of Durham, North Carolina summers, and we've played with icicles hanging off the net in January. We've played every weekend, and midweek after work, as long as the daylight allowed. Then last summer I wrecked my right rotator cuff at the beach, getting picked up and slammed shoulder-first onto a sandbar by a Wave of Mutilation. And just like that, I've not played volleyball since.
An MRI showed that my years of playing had already frayed my tendons so badly that surgery was extremely unlikely to help -- there's just not enough left to work with to re-attach. So I've been doing PT and hoping to re-train the few muscles that are still attached to move my arm in ways that those muscles were never intended. I've seen improvement, but I still can't really lift my arm up past shoulder height, much less over my head. And then there's just the pain. Every goddamn day.
Now, don't get me wrong, I was never that great an "athlete" and our crew does not exactly play elite-level volleyball; but we don't suck, and the play is competitive and fun, and we laugh after just about every point. I cannot even tell you just how badly I miss it. This huge piece of my identity is just -- gone. I still hold out some hope that maybe one fine day I'll be able to play again.
I look at the woes of this crazy world and conclude that my problems do not amount to a hill of beans. I must still count myself extremely lucky indeed. And I do. And I am trying to get my head around the idea that maybe that part of my life could be over for good, and trying to figure out how I might come to terms with that and make peace with it. But, yeah, there really still is "resistance and pain and self-alienation." And I really do suspect that "I have become a new type of person, and I will spend the rest of my life wishing I had not."
posted by fikri at 8:03 AM on April 24 [15 favorites]
Here are pictures of our last 5k costumes, and our 5k in Juneau.
posted by gmatom at 8:20 AM on April 24 [103 favorites]
posted by gmatom at 8:20 AM on April 24 [103 favorites]
I look forward to reading this.
As I'm getting into my "masters" age (raging against the dying of the light), I also feel more alone in my athletic pursuits as I become more the exception rather than the rule - people my age don't do the things I do.
I didn't write, "can't", they're just doing other things: careers, children. It's not ultimately a bad thing, but what happens is Old Age sneaks up on you. When you stop being active, you age in ways you don't notice.
And then one day: it's too late to get it back.
posted by alex_skazat at 8:22 AM on April 24
As I'm getting into my "masters" age (raging against the dying of the light), I also feel more alone in my athletic pursuits as I become more the exception rather than the rule - people my age don't do the things I do.
I didn't write, "can't", they're just doing other things: careers, children. It's not ultimately a bad thing, but what happens is Old Age sneaks up on you. When you stop being active, you age in ways you don't notice.
And then one day: it's too late to get it back.
posted by alex_skazat at 8:22 AM on April 24
gmatom, that was a fantastic and moving comment. Thanks.
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir "The Secret To Superhuman Strength" is a good read on the topic of aging and athleticism. Review with extracts.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:24 AM on April 24 [16 favorites]
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir "The Secret To Superhuman Strength" is a good read on the topic of aging and athleticism. Review with extracts.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:24 AM on April 24 [16 favorites]
Along with all the others, sorry for your loss gmatom.
I have never been an "athlete", but played indoor soccer for 10+ years. And, that kind of did become an identity for me. And then I had a horrible medical situation. And I haven't been able to play for now a year and a half.
And all I want to do now is to just be able to play one more time...
(Maybe this summer when everyone goes on vacations and they need a goalkeeper)
posted by Windopaene at 8:27 AM on April 24 [3 favorites]
I have never been an "athlete", but played indoor soccer for 10+ years. And, that kind of did become an identity for me. And then I had a horrible medical situation. And I haven't been able to play for now a year and a half.
And all I want to do now is to just be able to play one more time...
(Maybe this summer when everyone goes on vacations and they need a goalkeeper)
posted by Windopaene at 8:27 AM on April 24 [3 favorites]
gmatom, thank you for sharing your story. It is such a beautiful tribute.
If you've ever had a precious puppy or kitten and found yourself already mourning that they have such a shorter lifespan than we do, that is how I'm feeling in relation to this topic. I used to identify as a runner. I still run. I discovered partner dancing at the age of 41 and really dived in when I was 42, 43, 44. Now I plan vacations around it, teach, build community, and just turned 51. In some ways I expect I'll be able to do parts of this for decades. Other parts will be very reliant on my health and are already limited to what I could have learned and done at a younger age. So, even as I embrace it, I'm also trying to think about how I will back away. Seeing younger dancers struggling with injuries or other body limitations is edifying in this regard. I suppose part of the beauty of falling in love is the fear of loss, but it is still very hard, so I try to focus on the joy of the moment.
posted by meinvt at 8:43 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
If you've ever had a precious puppy or kitten and found yourself already mourning that they have such a shorter lifespan than we do, that is how I'm feeling in relation to this topic. I used to identify as a runner. I still run. I discovered partner dancing at the age of 41 and really dived in when I was 42, 43, 44. Now I plan vacations around it, teach, build community, and just turned 51. In some ways I expect I'll be able to do parts of this for decades. Other parts will be very reliant on my health and are already limited to what I could have learned and done at a younger age. So, even as I embrace it, I'm also trying to think about how I will back away. Seeing younger dancers struggling with injuries or other body limitations is edifying in this regard. I suppose part of the beauty of falling in love is the fear of loss, but it is still very hard, so I try to focus on the joy of the moment.
posted by meinvt at 8:43 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I've never been much of a runner, though I used to make myself do it for soccer in high school. I liked the weight training and plyometrics more than the running. But this is still relatable. When I was recovering from my broken right ankle in 2018, I started walking a lot more. Later, one of the things I began doing in those early post-vaccine days of 2021 was going out dancing, and I made a lot of friends doing that.
Unfortunately, last fall, I started experiencing Achilles tendonitis on the left side (might have been the hole I twisted my ankle in on my front lawn while moving a lot of boxes, might have been jumping on concrete while dancing in Málaga, might have just been because of compensation for my stiff right ankle). It seems like it might be starting to become chronic, Achilles tendinopathy or paratendinopathy. Apparently the X-rays showed some arthritis in both feet as well.
Not sure yet how this will go from here—have an MRI coming up, finally, because it seems no one will do imaging of injured soft tissue until after you get an X-ray and do physical therapy for a while. It's entirely possible that thicker socks, high-tops, and hydration will be part of the answer. (Leg warmers! Basketball shoes!)
But yeah...six months of relative inactivity has been frustrating, especially since the injury really kicked in right around the time I lost my job in the fall. Also, this was my good leg! I think what's difficult is just ever-shifting expectations, or not knowing what to expect next. (Also, yeah, having to completely self-advocate with doctors who at times just ghost you, while also dealing with COBRA and other insurance changes.) Sometimes it seems like I'm making progress in PT. Then I'll have a bad day, that burning pain will creep up the back of my left calf, and I'll take a car home.
This is the nature of chronic illness, which I learned a lot about from attending the bedside of my ex-partner, so I try to keep my expectations reasonable. I have some chronic metabolic things myself, and I have chronic stenosing tenosynovitis (trigger finger) in my left ring finger when it's cold. All of this might be related!
Oh well. I actually think this was really just the universe enforcing change: Time to get serious about my music and art projects, and get some distance from my previous tech industry overwork and burnout. I'm recovering from that too, as much as anything! It's always good to have an identity beyond your job and your exercise habits—I had that in mind this weekend when I went to my first dance party in months and was listening to a friend of a friend I hadn't seen in a while talking about how much he's overworking and his weight-lifting regimen. Like I hope that works out for him, but I also hope he develops a personality beyond those things, because yeah.
Disability hits most of us at some point, and it's just the nature of having a physical body. But it's also our nature to mourn what we've lost in terms of physical capabilities and connections.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]
Unfortunately, last fall, I started experiencing Achilles tendonitis on the left side (might have been the hole I twisted my ankle in on my front lawn while moving a lot of boxes, might have been jumping on concrete while dancing in Málaga, might have just been because of compensation for my stiff right ankle). It seems like it might be starting to become chronic, Achilles tendinopathy or paratendinopathy. Apparently the X-rays showed some arthritis in both feet as well.
Not sure yet how this will go from here—have an MRI coming up, finally, because it seems no one will do imaging of injured soft tissue until after you get an X-ray and do physical therapy for a while. It's entirely possible that thicker socks, high-tops, and hydration will be part of the answer. (Leg warmers! Basketball shoes!)
But yeah...six months of relative inactivity has been frustrating, especially since the injury really kicked in right around the time I lost my job in the fall. Also, this was my good leg! I think what's difficult is just ever-shifting expectations, or not knowing what to expect next. (Also, yeah, having to completely self-advocate with doctors who at times just ghost you, while also dealing with COBRA and other insurance changes.) Sometimes it seems like I'm making progress in PT. Then I'll have a bad day, that burning pain will creep up the back of my left calf, and I'll take a car home.
This is the nature of chronic illness, which I learned a lot about from attending the bedside of my ex-partner, so I try to keep my expectations reasonable. I have some chronic metabolic things myself, and I have chronic stenosing tenosynovitis (trigger finger) in my left ring finger when it's cold. All of this might be related!
Oh well. I actually think this was really just the universe enforcing change: Time to get serious about my music and art projects, and get some distance from my previous tech industry overwork and burnout. I'm recovering from that too, as much as anything! It's always good to have an identity beyond your job and your exercise habits—I had that in mind this weekend when I went to my first dance party in months and was listening to a friend of a friend I hadn't seen in a while talking about how much he's overworking and his weight-lifting regimen. Like I hope that works out for him, but I also hope he develops a personality beyond those things, because yeah.
Disability hits most of us at some point, and it's just the nature of having a physical body. But it's also our nature to mourn what we've lost in terms of physical capabilities and connections.
posted by limeonaire at 9:27 AM on April 24 [5 favorites]
I really wish the author had done some more thinking and connecting the dots around the issue of hidden disability and how mainline American culture reacts to them.
Because for a certain subset of Americans--those who are upwardly mobile, type-a, largely white--the absolute greatest sin you can commit is laziness (thank you, Protestant Work Ethic). And therefore fatigue illnesses (long COVID, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Depression, etc) and other hidden conditions are likely to be perceived as a personal failing. And outside of a clinical setting, the responses are often: "You just need to get out there" or "have you tried exercising" or "you just need a win".
(briefest of asides: as an endurance athlete with lifelong chronic major depression, this tendency is a constant source of frustration. I am, however, blessed with an amazing group of athletic friends with similar struggles. We've been lucky to find community in disability that the author mentions is often lacking for those with hidden illnesses.)
Moreover and in summary, what I felt in TFA's interviews was despair at a loss of ability, for sure, but also and probably more importantly, a loss of perceived virtue. I would argue that the latter is a larger contributor to one's self-image, and therefore having it ripped away is simply devastating for a lot of people. To feel unable to discipline one's body and mind within our individualistic, capitalistic context causes one to ask all sorts of increasingly-unhealthy questions about career, relevance, and utility. And in a world of social media (check out my Insta!) and instrumentalized recreation (check out my Strava!) this despair is just ratcheted up to new levels every day.
I dunno. I feel like maybe I'm just treading over well-worn ground here and perhaps not saying anything new. But I had to get it out & thank you for making it through my meanders.
posted by turbowombat at 9:35 AM on April 24 [20 favorites]
Because for a certain subset of Americans--those who are upwardly mobile, type-a, largely white--the absolute greatest sin you can commit is laziness (thank you, Protestant Work Ethic). And therefore fatigue illnesses (long COVID, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Depression, etc) and other hidden conditions are likely to be perceived as a personal failing. And outside of a clinical setting, the responses are often: "You just need to get out there" or "have you tried exercising" or "you just need a win".
(briefest of asides: as an endurance athlete with lifelong chronic major depression, this tendency is a constant source of frustration. I am, however, blessed with an amazing group of athletic friends with similar struggles. We've been lucky to find community in disability that the author mentions is often lacking for those with hidden illnesses.)
Moreover and in summary, what I felt in TFA's interviews was despair at a loss of ability, for sure, but also and probably more importantly, a loss of perceived virtue. I would argue that the latter is a larger contributor to one's self-image, and therefore having it ripped away is simply devastating for a lot of people. To feel unable to discipline one's body and mind within our individualistic, capitalistic context causes one to ask all sorts of increasingly-unhealthy questions about career, relevance, and utility. And in a world of social media (check out my Insta!) and instrumentalized recreation (check out my Strava!) this despair is just ratcheted up to new levels every day.
I dunno. I feel like maybe I'm just treading over well-worn ground here and perhaps not saying anything new. But I had to get it out & thank you for making it through my meanders.
posted by turbowombat at 9:35 AM on April 24 [20 favorites]
I don't care about my objective performance going steadily downhill, but I do deeply mourn the loss of exercise as a mental health boost. I miss endorphins. I miss the flow state. I miss the simplicity of just doing and being, instead of constantly self monitoring and holding back to prevent injuries.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:01 AM on April 24 [8 favorites]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 10:01 AM on April 24 [8 favorites]
I am a biker rather than a runner. I wound up banished from biking for an extended period, two years ago, due to arthritis in my neck. The head posture of bending over the handlebars on a bike is hugely aggravating for the sad condition of my neck, can’t do it.
I tried ordering a recumbent trike, which 1) took forever to arrive, 2) was quite slow and impractical (despite being a thing of engineering beauty, it sucked in practice), and 3) the fucking thing got stolen anyway. So that didn’t work out. And I wasted a lot of time waiting for it and then trying to make it work. Honestly I try to frame the theft as a positive thing, because I would have kept sinking effort into it otherwise.
I then tried an electric bike, a cruiser-style model with a more upright posture. This is working out okay so far, but it’s still not perfect, and my neck still gets aggravated a little bit. It’s manageable so far, but I can foresee a day where I will be banished off of this bike too.
That’s not going to be a great day. Hopefully I will have learned better how to cope by then. Because it was pretty shit when I was off the bike the first time around, and the first time around I still had hope. Not going to be so much hope next time.
But right now? Doing the best I can. Biked into work today! One day at a time, folks.
posted by notoriety public at 10:08 AM on April 24 [8 favorites]
I tried ordering a recumbent trike, which 1) took forever to arrive, 2) was quite slow and impractical (despite being a thing of engineering beauty, it sucked in practice), and 3) the fucking thing got stolen anyway. So that didn’t work out. And I wasted a lot of time waiting for it and then trying to make it work. Honestly I try to frame the theft as a positive thing, because I would have kept sinking effort into it otherwise.
I then tried an electric bike, a cruiser-style model with a more upright posture. This is working out okay so far, but it’s still not perfect, and my neck still gets aggravated a little bit. It’s manageable so far, but I can foresee a day where I will be banished off of this bike too.
That’s not going to be a great day. Hopefully I will have learned better how to cope by then. Because it was pretty shit when I was off the bike the first time around, and the first time around I still had hope. Not going to be so much hope next time.
But right now? Doing the best I can. Biked into work today! One day at a time, folks.
posted by notoriety public at 10:08 AM on April 24 [8 favorites]
gmaton, thank you for sharing that beautiful story. I'm so glad your wife was able to still be, and still feel like, a writer until near the end.
I am not an athlete, but I've had a similar experience to the ones the athletes in the article experienced. In my mid forties, I enrolled my youngest child in preschool at the Y. The cardio room was right across the hall from the preschool, so I got a membership and started working out. It was easy since I was already in the building. I did nautilus for strength training, and the treadmill for cardio. I loved it so much that even when he moved to another preschool I kept going 5 days a week or so. I got stronger than I'd ever been, and got to a point where I could easily walk at a good clip for over an hour. At 45, 46, 47 I was as fit as I'd ever been, maybe even moreso.
And then I got sick, and I was sick for a few years, hardly able to leave my bed. By the time I recovered from that, arthritis pain curtailed my ability to walk or stand for very long; I'm now a regular mobility scooter user, at 58.
I miss having that strength and stamina, but being physical wasn't part of my identity the way it is for athletes. I've lost a lot over the years since I first got sick, some of it pretty core to my sense of myself, but have also, over time, adapted pretty well. I've had a chronic condition since I was maybe 27, and I just hate to hear about young people developing chronic conditions or becoming disabled. I've had a good, good life, but I want it to be easier for other people than it has been for me.
posted by Well I never at 10:52 AM on April 24 [2 favorites]
I am not an athlete, but I've had a similar experience to the ones the athletes in the article experienced. In my mid forties, I enrolled my youngest child in preschool at the Y. The cardio room was right across the hall from the preschool, so I got a membership and started working out. It was easy since I was already in the building. I did nautilus for strength training, and the treadmill for cardio. I loved it so much that even when he moved to another preschool I kept going 5 days a week or so. I got stronger than I'd ever been, and got to a point where I could easily walk at a good clip for over an hour. At 45, 46, 47 I was as fit as I'd ever been, maybe even moreso.
And then I got sick, and I was sick for a few years, hardly able to leave my bed. By the time I recovered from that, arthritis pain curtailed my ability to walk or stand for very long; I'm now a regular mobility scooter user, at 58.
I miss having that strength and stamina, but being physical wasn't part of my identity the way it is for athletes. I've lost a lot over the years since I first got sick, some of it pretty core to my sense of myself, but have also, over time, adapted pretty well. I've had a chronic condition since I was maybe 27, and I just hate to hear about young people developing chronic conditions or becoming disabled. I've had a good, good life, but I want it to be easier for other people than it has been for me.
posted by Well I never at 10:52 AM on April 24 [2 favorites]
gmatom: Here are pictures of our last 5k costumes, and our 5k in Juneau.
Ahhhhh, my heart! You're cute as two buttons!
I gave up running not long after college: my crummy knees just hurt all the time. I don't miss the pain, either.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:13 AM on April 24 [2 favorites]
Ahhhhh, my heart! You're cute as two buttons!
I gave up running not long after college: my crummy knees just hurt all the time. I don't miss the pain, either.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:13 AM on April 24 [2 favorites]
turbowombat, you summed up so well something I've felt from at least a couple folks these past 6 months since I (literally and figuratively) stepped off of the treadmill of work and exercise. I've felt it before, the discomfort people sometimes have when you can't keep up with their pace at work or in exercise, or they're not sure they can rely on you to, say, lift heavy objects on the spur of the moment, or if you've realized there are things you might value more than working too hard to make a lot of money in tech or being in peak physical condition no matter what. Yep.
posted by limeonaire at 11:16 AM on April 24 [4 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 11:16 AM on April 24 [4 favorites]
For the longest time I thought I had skipped any kind of midlife crisis. Then a brain surgery, two cardiac ablations and now an upcoming spinal surgery to (hopefully) save an impinged nerve, all within the last year and a half have hit me like the full swing of a baseball bat. The exercises and activities I have had to give up as well as the ones from long ago that I (certainly falsely) believed I could always go back to if I wanted have slipped away with frightening speed. I have never felt so lost as I have in the last (sidelined) six weeks with nothing to do but stare down the barrel of age. It certainly doesn't help that now in my mid-fifties, I am virtually invisible to much of the world around me.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:52 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:52 AM on April 24 [6 favorites]
gmatom, it looks like your post on r/goodomens is making the rounds of GO fandom on Tumblr. For what it's worth -- I don't know where you live (only one or two places you've run), but I would travel some distance to don my Aziraphale cosplay and cheer you on in a race.
posted by humbug at 12:01 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
posted by humbug at 12:01 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
I remember the first time I got some kind of temporary weird condition in my early 30s that took a while to fix - some stomach ache issue or whatever. Took a few months to resolve with beta blockers. And I was all surprise pikachu face to be restricted in what I could eat and having to take certain pills and complaining why was it taaaaking so looooong to go away at the doctors office one day and my GP looked me dead in the eye and was like “those of you who have grown up in good health take it for granted and are often taken by surprise when your body suddenly doesn’t work anymore, but I see people every day who have been sick their whole lives. You have no idea. This will go away for you and you’ll continue as usual very soon. ” Basically calling out my privilege. Now that I’m facing my 50s I think about that comment more and more.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:05 PM on April 24 [11 favorites]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:05 PM on April 24 [11 favorites]
gmatom thank you for your story. It is really touching and real.
This article hit a nerve with me - I just started back at martial arts, for the like, 5th time - broke my leg, injured things, had a bad Covid outcome with my heart, injured myself again. This time before going back I really had to look at why all the injuries…it’s both age-related but also because when you put me back in a class, my muscle memory kicks in…but my /body/ needs months leading up to the moves. If I were starting as a beginner, I’d have no idea how to throw a spinning hook until after I learned to pivot, but my leg is slower to pivot than my knowledge at this point. So this time I did considerable physio first, am trying to set my mind properly to not go for the full range of motion:etc. yet, and also have got a lead instructor who is really making me go slow.
I was so much not an athlete before I took up martial arts in my mid 40s that it never occurred to me that one day I would think I can do something and know how to do it, but have my body not ready to get there. Usually I just had no idea why other people could do things and I didn’t know how at all.
After so many injuries I should not want to go back but…I do. I get this article do hard. Every class I go to, I feel literally high at having been there (and it’s not just the workout because I’ve been working out.) if I could never go back - and that day will come for me - I would grieve.
Hopefully I can be like the 80 year old that just got his black belt. He had to use oxygen on breaks (lung disease) but he did it. He’s the rare bird though.
This thread is awesome.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:42 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
This article hit a nerve with me - I just started back at martial arts, for the like, 5th time - broke my leg, injured things, had a bad Covid outcome with my heart, injured myself again. This time before going back I really had to look at why all the injuries…it’s both age-related but also because when you put me back in a class, my muscle memory kicks in…but my /body/ needs months leading up to the moves. If I were starting as a beginner, I’d have no idea how to throw a spinning hook until after I learned to pivot, but my leg is slower to pivot than my knowledge at this point. So this time I did considerable physio first, am trying to set my mind properly to not go for the full range of motion:etc. yet, and also have got a lead instructor who is really making me go slow.
I was so much not an athlete before I took up martial arts in my mid 40s that it never occurred to me that one day I would think I can do something and know how to do it, but have my body not ready to get there. Usually I just had no idea why other people could do things and I didn’t know how at all.
After so many injuries I should not want to go back but…I do. I get this article do hard. Every class I go to, I feel literally high at having been there (and it’s not just the workout because I’ve been working out.) if I could never go back - and that day will come for me - I would grieve.
Hopefully I can be like the 80 year old that just got his black belt. He had to use oxygen on breaks (lung disease) but he did it. He’s the rare bird though.
This thread is awesome.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:42 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
I've played sports and been active my entire life but it was never a core part of me but over the pandemic I started riding my bike to work instead of just on the weekends for fun and I've become That Guy about cycling. The good thing is it's relatively easy on the body so hopefully I can keep it up for a long time but there's any number of things that could happen that would stop me from being able to ride my bike. I have a lot of other hobbies that I could scale up so hopefully that would work for me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:06 PM on April 24
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:06 PM on April 24
I'm so glad that this article resonated with so many people as it did with me. gmatom: thank you for sharing the amazing story and beautiful pictures of your wife!
I'm about to go to the track for a weekly Atlanta Track Club workout. When I was a kid, I could fly. Running much faster than pretty much everyone else I knew had always just been something I could do. And I loved it. I loved being on a team, too. I loved group workouts that pushed me past what I thought I could do. I was not the most gifted runner in many ways, but I was always unreasonably persistent, which is one of the key traits of the distance runner.
When I was first diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, the diagnosis came with instructions not to run, that it would increase inflammation too much, and I couldn't really do it anyway without dealing with days of severe fatigue afterwards. As new biologic drugs have come along, it's now not that weird for someone with AS to be able to manage their symptoms well enough to run. But I am slow! And I need rest days. And I cannot push myself past what I think I can do, or I will wind up in bed for several days. And it sucks!
Luckily, Atlanta Track Club is the most supportive running organization I've ever been a part of. Everybody there is just working to do their best within their limits, and we're all so incredibly proud of each other when we each accomplish our goals, no matter what those goals are. It's great to do track workouts again. It's great to be a part of a team again. But I miss the way my body used to be able to run.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:16 PM on April 24 [5 favorites]
I'm about to go to the track for a weekly Atlanta Track Club workout. When I was a kid, I could fly. Running much faster than pretty much everyone else I knew had always just been something I could do. And I loved it. I loved being on a team, too. I loved group workouts that pushed me past what I thought I could do. I was not the most gifted runner in many ways, but I was always unreasonably persistent, which is one of the key traits of the distance runner.
When I was first diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, the diagnosis came with instructions not to run, that it would increase inflammation too much, and I couldn't really do it anyway without dealing with days of severe fatigue afterwards. As new biologic drugs have come along, it's now not that weird for someone with AS to be able to manage their symptoms well enough to run. But I am slow! And I need rest days. And I cannot push myself past what I think I can do, or I will wind up in bed for several days. And it sucks!
Luckily, Atlanta Track Club is the most supportive running organization I've ever been a part of. Everybody there is just working to do their best within their limits, and we're all so incredibly proud of each other when we each accomplish our goals, no matter what those goals are. It's great to do track workouts again. It's great to be a part of a team again. But I miss the way my body used to be able to run.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:16 PM on April 24 [5 favorites]
Well, this hits home. I'm currently living through the unexpected joy of experiencing this in reverse.
I was a runner for many years. Not a fast one, but I could run slowly for a long time. I did a 35-mile ultra, running a lap right around a Scottish island; a trail marathon in the Lake District; more half marathons than I can easily count. I worked in athletics comms, writing online every day about the joys of running, the benefits of physical activity for our physical and mental health, celebrating the sense of community it can bring etc.
Then, after a March 2020 infection, I got Long Covid, and could do no more than a very slow 10 minute walk a day without being utterly felled by a recurence of Covid symptoms and a crippling fatigue. I still remember the moment, a few weeks after the initial infection, when the realisation sank on me that this wasn't going to just get better the way a cold got better; that it was going to be a very long, slow recovery, if it happened at all.
Months and years passed, and though I improved very gradually, the improvement was at the level of being able to walk a little further month by month - I came to terms with the idea that I might never run again, even as I was still posting online about how running was the cure for all ills (except, it turns out, post-viral illness).
But astonishingly, over the past year, things started to turn around, and I began tentatively trying a Couch to 5K. It took so long - six months rather than the suggested 10 weeks, even though I was making steady progress all that time. I'm still not up to 5K, but I made it up to the 30 minutes outlined in the programme. Now I'm settled at about 20-25 minutes, and in between runs I'm going swimming, and walking, and just never have to think about how tired it might make me. It's absolutely glorious. I'd forgotten my body could feel this good, and I appreciate it so much, having previously lost it. I live in a city full of hills and steps, and on a lunchtime walk this week, started up a huuuge flight of stone steps and felt a sudden, excited urge in my legs to run up them. I'd forgotten how that felt - so different from the heavy feeling of dragging a dead weight around that had become familiar for so long.
On the other hand, the pal I ran the ultra with, also got Long Covid, and never recovered. She's just taken early retirement on medical grounds, and on a good day might make it down to the garden or across the road to sit on a bench. I feel so lucky.
Also: gmatom, I'm so happy you and your wife got to share all that running joy - those photos are wonderful!
posted by penguin pie at 1:36 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]
I was a runner for many years. Not a fast one, but I could run slowly for a long time. I did a 35-mile ultra, running a lap right around a Scottish island; a trail marathon in the Lake District; more half marathons than I can easily count. I worked in athletics comms, writing online every day about the joys of running, the benefits of physical activity for our physical and mental health, celebrating the sense of community it can bring etc.
Then, after a March 2020 infection, I got Long Covid, and could do no more than a very slow 10 minute walk a day without being utterly felled by a recurence of Covid symptoms and a crippling fatigue. I still remember the moment, a few weeks after the initial infection, when the realisation sank on me that this wasn't going to just get better the way a cold got better; that it was going to be a very long, slow recovery, if it happened at all.
Months and years passed, and though I improved very gradually, the improvement was at the level of being able to walk a little further month by month - I came to terms with the idea that I might never run again, even as I was still posting online about how running was the cure for all ills (except, it turns out, post-viral illness).
But astonishingly, over the past year, things started to turn around, and I began tentatively trying a Couch to 5K. It took so long - six months rather than the suggested 10 weeks, even though I was making steady progress all that time. I'm still not up to 5K, but I made it up to the 30 minutes outlined in the programme. Now I'm settled at about 20-25 minutes, and in between runs I'm going swimming, and walking, and just never have to think about how tired it might make me. It's absolutely glorious. I'd forgotten my body could feel this good, and I appreciate it so much, having previously lost it. I live in a city full of hills and steps, and on a lunchtime walk this week, started up a huuuge flight of stone steps and felt a sudden, excited urge in my legs to run up them. I'd forgotten how that felt - so different from the heavy feeling of dragging a dead weight around that had become familiar for so long.
On the other hand, the pal I ran the ultra with, also got Long Covid, and never recovered. She's just taken early retirement on medical grounds, and on a good day might make it down to the garden or across the road to sit on a bench. I feel so lucky.
Also: gmatom, I'm so happy you and your wife got to share all that running joy - those photos are wonderful!
posted by penguin pie at 1:36 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]
(former) cyclist, two years into long covid, and man, this hits home.
posted by entropone at 1:40 PM on April 24 [6 favorites]
posted by entropone at 1:40 PM on April 24 [6 favorites]
I'm glad I'm not the only one that came here to talk about the shitty hand age will eventually deal you. I feel so dang good about being able to finish a short 8 mile ride on my horse at a slow pace last Saturday. Was sore the next day but survived. Hopefully, it will improve as the summer progresses. I'm going to try to do 62 miles of the Weiser River Wagon Train 24-27 May. The longest ride is 20 miles the last day that I'm hoping I can do in 4-5 hours. Not sure if I can handle it. I may have to skip a day? Aging sucks. In the 'glory' days I did a 5-day, 250-mile endurance ride, with no less than 6 hours finish time any day.
Having who you are taken away overnight versus watching it eroding and dribbling slowly away--It all sucks--it's just a different kind of suckage.
... - people my age don't do the things I do.
I didn't write, "can't", they're just doing other things: careers, children....
I get you. It's pretty lonely. I can go out and plonk down a flat road with old friends that that still ride, but I still want to do exploratory rides down steep mountain trails--try to find anyone my age that will do that anymore.
They're all busy with quilting and cooking and keeping up with TV serials. That's ok, but what do you do if your whole live has been defined by horses and riding? I can't hardly get up on my big 16 hand horse without a mounting block. And what do I do if/when it starts hurting too bad to ride more than a mile or two? My husband has hissy fits when I say I want to ride in the mountains, but I think to myself--the best of all possible scenarios would be to come off the horse and be killed instantly. Would suck to be the poor sods that have to pick up the pieces but sounds ok to me. As far as 'doing other things' in my advancing age, I'm really working on getting into yoga and meditation, primarily for stress, but it might help the advancing depression and rage at my body falling apart.
It certainly doesn't help that now in my mid-fifties, I am virtually invisible to much of the world around me.
Oh, sweetie. Wait till you're 71. Seventy-one and female. Limping Christ on a busted crutch.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:34 PM on April 24 [11 favorites]
Having who you are taken away overnight versus watching it eroding and dribbling slowly away--It all sucks--it's just a different kind of suckage.
... - people my age don't do the things I do.
I didn't write, "can't", they're just doing other things: careers, children....
I get you. It's pretty lonely. I can go out and plonk down a flat road with old friends that that still ride, but I still want to do exploratory rides down steep mountain trails--try to find anyone my age that will do that anymore.
They're all busy with quilting and cooking and keeping up with TV serials. That's ok, but what do you do if your whole live has been defined by horses and riding? I can't hardly get up on my big 16 hand horse without a mounting block. And what do I do if/when it starts hurting too bad to ride more than a mile or two? My husband has hissy fits when I say I want to ride in the mountains, but I think to myself--the best of all possible scenarios would be to come off the horse and be killed instantly. Would suck to be the poor sods that have to pick up the pieces but sounds ok to me. As far as 'doing other things' in my advancing age, I'm really working on getting into yoga and meditation, primarily for stress, but it might help the advancing depression and rage at my body falling apart.
It certainly doesn't help that now in my mid-fifties, I am virtually invisible to much of the world around me.
Oh, sweetie. Wait till you're 71. Seventy-one and female. Limping Christ on a busted crutch.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:34 PM on April 24 [11 favorites]
Here’s a positive anecdote. This was me in January facing amputation after running for almost 30 years and having done almost 40 marathons.
I was miserable - this article rang so true to me.
BUT, thanks to taking the risk of posting that post here on metafilter, I now am the owner of bilateral Exosyms!
In the two months since I’ve gotten my new devices I’m up to walking 2-3.5 miles daily with trekking poles where I’ve been housebound for a year. In functional training that was part of the initial device delivery they even showed me how to run and I ran across a soccer field. Once I work on my strength and ditch the trekking poles in a few months I definitely have plans to work on running, although it will be a slow climb and is not even close to feeling the same. I learned as an athlete I need something to push for and push myself against and I think I learned this when I lost everything and couldn’t really do that. Even though I have a lot of physical work to do, it feels good knowing I have it as the remedy because I missed it.
And being able to be active and hopefully moving in the right direction is nothing short of a miracle. A metafilter miracle!
posted by floweredfish at 3:16 PM on April 24 [36 favorites]
I was miserable - this article rang so true to me.
BUT, thanks to taking the risk of posting that post here on metafilter, I now am the owner of bilateral Exosyms!
In the two months since I’ve gotten my new devices I’m up to walking 2-3.5 miles daily with trekking poles where I’ve been housebound for a year. In functional training that was part of the initial device delivery they even showed me how to run and I ran across a soccer field. Once I work on my strength and ditch the trekking poles in a few months I definitely have plans to work on running, although it will be a slow climb and is not even close to feeling the same. I learned as an athlete I need something to push for and push myself against and I think I learned this when I lost everything and couldn’t really do that. Even though I have a lot of physical work to do, it feels good knowing I have it as the remedy because I missed it.
And being able to be active and hopefully moving in the right direction is nothing short of a miracle. A metafilter miracle!
posted by floweredfish at 3:16 PM on April 24 [36 favorites]
Content note: suicidal ideation
I was an athlete when I was young. I played volleyball and basketball in high school. Volleyball was fine, but what I really loved was basketball and weightlifting. After high school I entered the military, where I ran because I had to. I mean, I ran in training for basketball, but I hadn't really done much long distance stuff until the service. Then I got kicked out for being queer.
I was still weightlifting and playing pickup basketball the next year when I was in a car accident that reoriented the upper third of my spinal column. I was 19, and I have not had a moment without pain since then.
It took a few years to regain most of my mobility. I was utterly shocked by how much the upper third of your spinal column is affected by every movement you make by any part of your body, just about. Thanks to genetics and an abusive childhood, I'm very good at pain, so I probably pushed a lot harder than I should have during that recovery. I know I did during my subsequent career as a millwright. Add in hypermobile joints and early onset arthritis, and we have a fun little mix to pile on top of the damage done by the beatings in childhood. And then the long covid, in my case, "just" myalgic encephalopathy. And and and and.
Folks up thread who talked about the moral cultural valence of physical strength aren't wrong. For so many years, I assuaged my physical suffering with "at least I still push through and DO it," all as a sop to my sense of value. And when I no longer could push through (was the pain worse? The spasming? Or did I just think it was? Had I become weak, lazy, immoral?) I hated myself for it. It was worse because I look uninjured.
I've been chronically suicidal since childhood. Getting hurt didn't help. And I've lived with a feeling of deep irony - I loved weightlifting, but my doctors after the accident kept telling me that it was only the thick musculature of my shoulders and neck that kept my neck from snapping. From killing me. So the weightlifting kept me in a life where I can't do it anymore. Where I live with pain in a body that can do less and less of what I ask of it.
And I know I am still so way more mobile than so many people. I'm still way better off than so many. But still just fucking sucks and messes with my sense of myself. I was an athlete and an blue collar guy. I'm not anymore.
Funny thing is, since I've been dealing with this since my late teens, most people in my life come to me for advice in how to live with new limitations. I can help figure out ways to do the things that must be done within those limits, but I still don't know how to not hate the limits themselves. I still don't know how to extend the same empathy to myself that I do to others, how to not hate myself for not being able to magically make my body even just work decently, far less reduce or eliminate the pain.
All that said, let's be careful not to say anything with a meaning even close to "disability is worse for athletes". It's maybe different, I don't know, having been an athlete. But let's not privilege the pain of the formerly privileged. It all just sucks for everybody.
posted by Vigilant at 3:32 PM on April 24 [19 favorites]
I was an athlete when I was young. I played volleyball and basketball in high school. Volleyball was fine, but what I really loved was basketball and weightlifting. After high school I entered the military, where I ran because I had to. I mean, I ran in training for basketball, but I hadn't really done much long distance stuff until the service. Then I got kicked out for being queer.
I was still weightlifting and playing pickup basketball the next year when I was in a car accident that reoriented the upper third of my spinal column. I was 19, and I have not had a moment without pain since then.
It took a few years to regain most of my mobility. I was utterly shocked by how much the upper third of your spinal column is affected by every movement you make by any part of your body, just about. Thanks to genetics and an abusive childhood, I'm very good at pain, so I probably pushed a lot harder than I should have during that recovery. I know I did during my subsequent career as a millwright. Add in hypermobile joints and early onset arthritis, and we have a fun little mix to pile on top of the damage done by the beatings in childhood. And then the long covid, in my case, "just" myalgic encephalopathy. And and and and.
Folks up thread who talked about the moral cultural valence of physical strength aren't wrong. For so many years, I assuaged my physical suffering with "at least I still push through and DO it," all as a sop to my sense of value. And when I no longer could push through (was the pain worse? The spasming? Or did I just think it was? Had I become weak, lazy, immoral?) I hated myself for it. It was worse because I look uninjured.
I've been chronically suicidal since childhood. Getting hurt didn't help. And I've lived with a feeling of deep irony - I loved weightlifting, but my doctors after the accident kept telling me that it was only the thick musculature of my shoulders and neck that kept my neck from snapping. From killing me. So the weightlifting kept me in a life where I can't do it anymore. Where I live with pain in a body that can do less and less of what I ask of it.
And I know I am still so way more mobile than so many people. I'm still way better off than so many. But still just fucking sucks and messes with my sense of myself. I was an athlete and an blue collar guy. I'm not anymore.
Funny thing is, since I've been dealing with this since my late teens, most people in my life come to me for advice in how to live with new limitations. I can help figure out ways to do the things that must be done within those limits, but I still don't know how to not hate the limits themselves. I still don't know how to extend the same empathy to myself that I do to others, how to not hate myself for not being able to magically make my body even just work decently, far less reduce or eliminate the pain.
All that said, let's be careful not to say anything with a meaning even close to "disability is worse for athletes". It's maybe different, I don't know, having been an athlete. But let's not privilege the pain of the formerly privileged. It all just sucks for everybody.
posted by Vigilant at 3:32 PM on April 24 [19 favorites]
At the risk of oversharing on the blue, I am dealing with a relatively new hidden disability--one that profoundly changes how I see myself physically.
I shared and discussed the article with my wife, who made the following paraphrased point:
"Women are told from a very early age that their body will change. Through puberty, through pregnancy, through menopause. And moreover, women are often told it is their duty and privilege to receive these changes (from a patriarchal society). Men, on the other hand, are told throughout their life that their bodies aren't supposed to change, that they are to attain and maintain strength and power throughout their life. I think permanent bodily change can be harder on men, who are (for better or worse) not culturally-prepared for this all-too-common outcome."
posted by turbowombat at 4:25 PM on April 24 [10 favorites]
I shared and discussed the article with my wife, who made the following paraphrased point:
"Women are told from a very early age that their body will change. Through puberty, through pregnancy, through menopause. And moreover, women are often told it is their duty and privilege to receive these changes (from a patriarchal society). Men, on the other hand, are told throughout their life that their bodies aren't supposed to change, that they are to attain and maintain strength and power throughout their life. I think permanent bodily change can be harder on men, who are (for better or worse) not culturally-prepared for this all-too-common outcome."
posted by turbowombat at 4:25 PM on April 24 [10 favorites]
Yeah I'm staring at this situation myself, uncertain how much it will apply in the coming months and years.
I've been an avid long-distance cyclist for 14 years now, taking state-sized tours, crossed the U.S., ridden the Seattle-to-Portland annual ride multiple times, but now I'm in this gray space of uncertainty. Will I be able to continue? Haven't yet a clue.
On January 5th as I was commuting home from work, a driver ran a red light and hit me as I was in the bicycle crossing. Hit me doing 30-40 miles an hour and badly fractured my pelvis, broke my left femur, exploded my right femur's condyle, and shattered my left tibia and fibula into multiple pieces. Now I've got 29 titanium implants and a deep sense of relief that I had the extraordinary luck to have good insurance covering the $450,000 in billing.
Was over two months before I returned home, and still can't walk, though I've recently graduated to standing (yay!) and using a walker, and have even hobbled a few steps on a cane. Doctors tell me I'll likely make a full recovery, but won't be back to mostly normal for the entire year, and still seeing improvements for two.
Will I be able to bike? Likely. More importantly for me, will I be able to bike long-distance? Who knows? I've got four screws driven through my pelvis, titanium rods running the length of my left leg, and twenty pins and screws holding my right condyle together. How is all that damage and hardware going to affect time in the saddle? Only attempting to ride can answer that question, and that's months and months away from now. Physical therapy is ongoing, and I have no clue how long it will continue. Progress remains frustratingly slow, and the right knee still doesn't have enough range of motion to pedal.
Despite those frustrations, every day I'm grateful that the hit-and-run driver impacted my left hip. It was the best part of an absolutely awful situation. A split second earlier and I'd be looking at spine damage or traumatic brain injury if I'd even survived, but I nonetheless am in limbo now as to whether or not I'll ever be back to "normal." The trajectory of my life was altered in an instant by someone staring at their phone instead of the road, and whether or not I'll be able to bend it back remains a mystery.
The uncertainty is agonizing.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:10 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]
I've been an avid long-distance cyclist for 14 years now, taking state-sized tours, crossed the U.S., ridden the Seattle-to-Portland annual ride multiple times, but now I'm in this gray space of uncertainty. Will I be able to continue? Haven't yet a clue.
On January 5th as I was commuting home from work, a driver ran a red light and hit me as I was in the bicycle crossing. Hit me doing 30-40 miles an hour and badly fractured my pelvis, broke my left femur, exploded my right femur's condyle, and shattered my left tibia and fibula into multiple pieces. Now I've got 29 titanium implants and a deep sense of relief that I had the extraordinary luck to have good insurance covering the $450,000 in billing.
Was over two months before I returned home, and still can't walk, though I've recently graduated to standing (yay!) and using a walker, and have even hobbled a few steps on a cane. Doctors tell me I'll likely make a full recovery, but won't be back to mostly normal for the entire year, and still seeing improvements for two.
Will I be able to bike? Likely. More importantly for me, will I be able to bike long-distance? Who knows? I've got four screws driven through my pelvis, titanium rods running the length of my left leg, and twenty pins and screws holding my right condyle together. How is all that damage and hardware going to affect time in the saddle? Only attempting to ride can answer that question, and that's months and months away from now. Physical therapy is ongoing, and I have no clue how long it will continue. Progress remains frustratingly slow, and the right knee still doesn't have enough range of motion to pedal.
Despite those frustrations, every day I'm grateful that the hit-and-run driver impacted my left hip. It was the best part of an absolutely awful situation. A split second earlier and I'd be looking at spine damage or traumatic brain injury if I'd even survived, but I nonetheless am in limbo now as to whether or not I'll ever be back to "normal." The trajectory of my life was altered in an instant by someone staring at their phone instead of the road, and whether or not I'll be able to bend it back remains a mystery.
The uncertainty is agonizing.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:10 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]
Well, that is terrible los pantalones del muerte...
I hope you are able to fully recover. It can take a long time. Be patient with your body.
(Also, amazing what surgeons can do, without them, I would be dead. Also, nurses...)
posted by Windopaene at 7:17 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
I hope you are able to fully recover. It can take a long time. Be patient with your body.
(Also, amazing what surgeons can do, without them, I would be dead. Also, nurses...)
posted by Windopaene at 7:17 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
I was diagnosed with arthritis (originally rheumatoid, these days they think it's more akin to anklyosing spondylitis, because they've got new tests since 1985) my senior year of high school. I have never known an adult life when I was supposed to be able to run.
This whole discussion is hitting me where I live. Love to all who are going through this loss and especially to gmatom, Vigilant, and los pantalones del muerte. I see y'all.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:27 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
This whole discussion is hitting me where I live. Love to all who are going through this loss and especially to gmatom, Vigilant, and los pantalones del muerte. I see y'all.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:27 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]
Los pantalones del muerte, I was hit by a car in 2020–broke my pelvis, three ribs, severed a nerve (but thankfully not the adjacent femoral artery) resulting in permanent loss of feeling in my inner left thigh.
This past weekend I completed my 14th imperial century since the crash, and I’ve got my next one planned for May.
I hope your recovery has been as successful and full of miles as mine.
posted by turbowombat at 11:38 PM on April 24 [3 favorites]
This past weekend I completed my 14th imperial century since the crash, and I’ve got my next one planned for May.
I hope your recovery has been as successful and full of miles as mine.
posted by turbowombat at 11:38 PM on April 24 [3 favorites]
"those of you who have grown up in good health take it for granted and are often taken by surprise when your body suddenly doesn’t work anymore, but I see people every day who have been sick their whole lives. You have no idea. This will go away for you and you’ll continue as usual very soon."
THIS SO MUCH. I've been what my mother calls "sickly" my entire life. Asthma, strep every year during childhood, ear infections even as an adult, pernicious anemia, I'm allergic to the world, various dance/horseback riding injuries, early onset arthritis. I'm used to feeling like shit and just getting on with it, or not, depending on how bad I feel any given day. Do I wish things were different? Of course. But things aren't different so the chronically ill generally just learn to deal and get on with things.
My husband, on the other hand, just isn't sick. Like ever. He got Covid, was really sick for about a day and then completely recovered. He doesn't get colds or the flu. A couple weeks ago, a bout of benign paroxysmal vertigo hit him. He felt, for the first time in his 54 years of life, betrayed by his body, and it was incredibly hard for him. He looked at me one day, after nearly falling over after getting off the couch, and said, "How do you do this every day and keep going?" I told him that I've never known a stretch of more than about two weeks where I felt great, so I just cope with it and bend my life around it as best I can.
I really do feel for people who have been well and fit and then suddenly they aren't. It sucks. Being chronically ill sucks, too, but at least I've learned coping mechanisms throughout my life.
posted by cooker girl at 9:12 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]
THIS SO MUCH. I've been what my mother calls "sickly" my entire life. Asthma, strep every year during childhood, ear infections even as an adult, pernicious anemia, I'm allergic to the world, various dance/horseback riding injuries, early onset arthritis. I'm used to feeling like shit and just getting on with it, or not, depending on how bad I feel any given day. Do I wish things were different? Of course. But things aren't different so the chronically ill generally just learn to deal and get on with things.
My husband, on the other hand, just isn't sick. Like ever. He got Covid, was really sick for about a day and then completely recovered. He doesn't get colds or the flu. A couple weeks ago, a bout of benign paroxysmal vertigo hit him. He felt, for the first time in his 54 years of life, betrayed by his body, and it was incredibly hard for him. He looked at me one day, after nearly falling over after getting off the couch, and said, "How do you do this every day and keep going?" I told him that I've never known a stretch of more than about two weeks where I felt great, so I just cope with it and bend my life around it as best I can.
I really do feel for people who have been well and fit and then suddenly they aren't. It sucks. Being chronically ill sucks, too, but at least I've learned coping mechanisms throughout my life.
posted by cooker girl at 9:12 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]
A couple weeks ago, a bout of benign paroxysmal vertigo hit him. He felt, for the first time in his 54 years of life, betrayed by his body, and it was incredibly hard for him. He looked at me one day, after nearly falling over after getting off the couch, and said, "How do you do this every day and keep going?" I told him that I've never known a stretch of more than about two weeks where I felt great, so I just cope with it and bend my life around it as best I can.
Similar conversations happened with my mother, who'd convinced herself she'd never been sick a day in her life before turning 60. (This was not true, but years of alcoholism plus a lot of conscious denial will do a number on ya.) I was like, my body has been betraying me every day since I was 11, you get up and you do the thing.
Also I reserve a fair bit of blame for the ambient narrative of "manifesting" and whatnot that has been in the culture for the last 20ish years. If you consciously or unconsciously believe that anything that happens to you is something you asked for, any kind of health problem is going to be really hard to cope with. But that's a bit more about illness than injury, generally.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:09 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]
Similar conversations happened with my mother, who'd convinced herself she'd never been sick a day in her life before turning 60. (This was not true, but years of alcoholism plus a lot of conscious denial will do a number on ya.) I was like, my body has been betraying me every day since I was 11, you get up and you do the thing.
Also I reserve a fair bit of blame for the ambient narrative of "manifesting" and whatnot that has been in the culture for the last 20ish years. If you consciously or unconsciously believe that anything that happens to you is something you asked for, any kind of health problem is going to be really hard to cope with. But that's a bit more about illness than injury, generally.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:09 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]
What an extraordinary thread this is. The depth of humanity writ here is... words fail me. "Profoundly moving" will have to do. Thank you everyone for your clarity, honesty and openness. My mind is comprehensively boggled and I will stop complaining about my arthritic hip, right now, right this second, may the Gods zip my lips. Thank you.
posted by dutchrick at 10:53 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]
posted by dutchrick at 10:53 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]
> outside of a clinical setting, the responses are often: "You just need to get out there" or "have you tried exercising" or "you just need a win"
Responses inside a clinical setting aren't all the great, either.
If you want to become raging mad, read some of the discussions in any doctor's forum re: "functional" illnesses.
You would think the fact that they don't understand the cause or how to treat would call for a large dose of humility on their part and greater empathy for the patient - and I'm sure in some cases, it does - but among those with a sort of medical version of engineer's disease it seems to drive them to even greater heights of condescension and patient-blaming.
posted by flug at 11:43 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]
Responses inside a clinical setting aren't all the great, either.
If you want to become raging mad, read some of the discussions in any doctor's forum re: "functional" illnesses.
You would think the fact that they don't understand the cause or how to treat would call for a large dose of humility on their part and greater empathy for the patient - and I'm sure in some cases, it does - but among those with a sort of medical version of engineer's disease it seems to drive them to even greater heights of condescension and patient-blaming.
posted by flug at 11:43 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]
Having been dealing with my own version of Long Covid for about 14 months now, I think one of the things that is most surprising and difficult to deal with for people who are used being physically active and having various goals and projects they are training up for - whether running a 5K or half-marathon, or weight training where a huge part of the point is increasing your strength over time, bike riding where you train up to do a metric century or imperial century, and the like - is that we learn to depend on as sort of a basic fact of the human body, that if you put in the work you will see the gains in a very predictable fashion.
That just becomes part of the way you see the universe and people who live in that mode have a hard time understanding people who don't. And - in typical human fashion - they're far more inclined to feel people who don't do this are either not trying hard enough, just lazy, or have some difficult-to-comprehend mental outlook.
The fact that quite a lot of people just actually can't do this doesn't even occur to them. That many people might suffer actual serious negative consequences of doing this, or even trying, isn't at the top of your mind when what you have invariably experienced is the exact opposite.
This has been one of the hardest things for me to figure out with Long Covid, just because my deep-set mindset is that I can gradually increase my level of physical activity over time and that is going both gradually increase my endurance and strength and also help me feel better and more energetic living life in general.
With conditions like Long Covid, ME/CFS, and others, that whole paradigm is pretty much turned on its head. It's not easy or intuitive - when you've spent a lifetime doing the opposite - to think in terms of energy conservation and strict limits on activity rather than an ever-expanding sphere.
It's also not easy because the physical and mental feedback is quite different from what you experienced before, and consequences are often infuriatingly delayed to the point it can be hard to discern the cause-effect relationship between "I took a 15 minute walk and three days later I'm back in bed all day" or "I went back to work at 75% effort for a week or two that all seemed pretty normal and fine. And then the third week ended up wiped out for the next several weeks."
Looking at my parents who are in their late 80s now, that is kind of the world they've been living in for 10 years or so. It's not a very fun one - or at least, it can be seen as completely lacking in fun for people whose main ideas about fun have heretofore revolved around ideas of continual improvement and growth in strength & ability.
Ideas like those in the quote below just don't quite compute. Also - relating to my comment about views from the medical establishment about these conditions - occupations in the medical profession tend to require a very significant degree of good health and fitness. People who lose that tend to drop out and move into some other profession. That means that those who are left even more disproportionately in the camp of "you just have to try harder and work harder - and if you don't, you must be a lazy malingerer who's not worth my time."
Here is the quote from David Putrino, one of the authors of a recent paper about the causes of some of these physical issues in people with Long Covid:
That just becomes part of the way you see the universe and people who live in that mode have a hard time understanding people who don't. And - in typical human fashion - they're far more inclined to feel people who don't do this are either not trying hard enough, just lazy, or have some difficult-to-comprehend mental outlook.
The fact that quite a lot of people just actually can't do this doesn't even occur to them. That many people might suffer actual serious negative consequences of doing this, or even trying, isn't at the top of your mind when what you have invariably experienced is the exact opposite.
This has been one of the hardest things for me to figure out with Long Covid, just because my deep-set mindset is that I can gradually increase my level of physical activity over time and that is going both gradually increase my endurance and strength and also help me feel better and more energetic living life in general.
With conditions like Long Covid, ME/CFS, and others, that whole paradigm is pretty much turned on its head. It's not easy or intuitive - when you've spent a lifetime doing the opposite - to think in terms of energy conservation and strict limits on activity rather than an ever-expanding sphere.
It's also not easy because the physical and mental feedback is quite different from what you experienced before, and consequences are often infuriatingly delayed to the point it can be hard to discern the cause-effect relationship between "I took a 15 minute walk and three days later I'm back in bed all day" or "I went back to work at 75% effort for a week or two that all seemed pretty normal and fine. And then the third week ended up wiped out for the next several weeks."
Looking at my parents who are in their late 80s now, that is kind of the world they've been living in for 10 years or so. It's not a very fun one - or at least, it can be seen as completely lacking in fun for people whose main ideas about fun have heretofore revolved around ideas of continual improvement and growth in strength & ability.
Ideas like those in the quote below just don't quite compute. Also - relating to my comment about views from the medical establishment about these conditions - occupations in the medical profession tend to require a very significant degree of good health and fitness. People who lose that tend to drop out and move into some other profession. That means that those who are left even more disproportionately in the camp of "you just have to try harder and work harder - and if you don't, you must be a lazy malingerer who's not worth my time."
Here is the quote from David Putrino, one of the authors of a recent paper about the causes of some of these physical issues in people with Long Covid:
"As opposed to what's been sold to patients over the last few decades, that symptoms such as extreme fatigue and exertional malaise are psychological or physical conditioning issues," he says. "Physical exertion does harm to the bodies of people with these illnesses."posted by flug at 12:18 PM on April 25 [5 favorites]
His general guidance is to avoid exercise if you have post-exertional malaise and instead practice "energy conservation."Ideas like this have been amazingly controversial in the medical community. I
I don't know if I can bring myself to read the article quite yet. I've been lucky to be in reasonably good health for most of my life so far (more or less). Then my wife and I got COVID. Before the vaccines. It was the sickest either of us had been in decades. Not life-threateningly bad, but enough that we had friends dropping us food for weeks. My wife had a rule - if I was going to take a nap on the couch, I had to look like it was a conscious decision to nap, so she wouldn't be concerned that I'd died. I barely had enough energy to walk the dogs. Very slowly, Up and down the street, and that was it. And all of the carefully constructed exercise routines that had defined my life for so long fell apart.
Between that, and worsening arthritis in my feet, my time running may be up. But I don't want to let it go. I've tried substituting walking, biking, and rowing... but it's not the same, at least not yet. And I've struggled to get back to more regular exercise, but finding it really hard. As I watch all of us; my parents, my pets, my wife, age and suffer the indignities of our mortal coil, I am still figuring out how to find my way forward.
posted by canine epigram at 7:43 PM on April 27 [3 favorites]
Between that, and worsening arthritis in my feet, my time running may be up. But I don't want to let it go. I've tried substituting walking, biking, and rowing... but it's not the same, at least not yet. And I've struggled to get back to more regular exercise, but finding it really hard. As I watch all of us; my parents, my pets, my wife, age and suffer the indignities of our mortal coil, I am still figuring out how to find my way forward.
posted by canine epigram at 7:43 PM on April 27 [3 favorites]
I ran at least a mile every day for 2,869 days until I slipped on some stairs and tore up my knee. 3 months post surgery my dumb brain recognizes that the weather is lovely and not to forget to run today. I wonder, really wonder, if I'll ever run again.
posted by tayknight at 11:53 AM on May 1
posted by tayknight at 11:53 AM on May 1
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posted by ob1quixote at 5:19 AM on April 24 [8 favorites]