If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know it goes something like this “Yay, I love running!” then “I’m not running” then back to “Hey guys, I’m running again!” Usually that’s due to the fact that I’m an injury prone runner. I mean half the people that find my blog are people searching for injury information. I finally got back to running after having Ezra and was really enjoying being injury-free.
I’m back in one of those “not running” phases because I’m still dealing with the pleurisy issue that originally sent me to the ER 3 weeks ago. I’ve been X-rayed, CT Scanned, X-rayed again, and just this week I had a HIDA scan. My doctor thought that my pain was consistent with that of gallbladder attacks – pain in the middle of my back that will radiate to my upper back/shoulder between my shoulder blades for periods of time, as well as wrapping from my back to my upper abdomen, lower ribcage area. She thought it was possible that the pleurisy I am experiencing is referred inflammation from my gallbladder.
My HIDA scan [a fun test where they inject some radioactive stuff in you plus a hormone to make the gallbladder contract while in a machine that looks like a cross between a CT Scan and an MRI machine for an hour] showed that my gallbladder is just fine.
That means it’s still the pleurisy causing me intense pain 3.5 weeks since this all started. I had some periods of time where the pain eased up. I was even able to run the More Fitness Half and my lung was fine during and after the race. A few days after the race, it started to hurt again. I’m talking pain so bad I can’t even lift my 4 month old sometimes because when I do, I feel like a knife is stabbing me in the back. I’m honestly the type to tough it out when I’m sick or something hurts. I rarely ask for help with the kids, but with this situation, I’ve had to.
So now my question is why the heck do I have pleurisy?! I haven’t been sick. I don’t have any chronic illnesses, asthma, etc. Here I have pleural effusions (fluid in the lining of my right lung), plus a partial collapse at the base of my lung and I have no idea WHY. I’m beyond frustrated. My next step is a visit with a GI doctor just to make sure it’s still not somehow my gallbladder due to the type of pain I’m having. Next week I’ll be seeing a pulmonary specialist to try to figure out why my lung sucks and how to fix it. In the meantime, I need to block myself from Google because reading about how one of the treatments for pleurisy can be sticking a needle through the ribs to extract fluid from the lung is not something I want to think about right now.
I had planned on running the Iron Girl Half Marathon in Columbia on Sunday because I enjoyed it so much last year. I also planned on running the Maryland Half Marathon on 5/11. This is one situation where my procrastination has really paid off because I never actually got around to registering for either race so now I don’t have to worry about losing any money because I won’t be running them.
Have you ever had something so completely random pop up that kept you from running? Bonus points if you’ve had pleurisy too 
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