Adding hills and miles heading toward's St. Patrick's Road Race again

It recently occurred to me that if I can run three miles, I can run another 3.2, in (as I write this), 19 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes and 3 seconds.

That would be Holyoke's St. Patrick's Road Race, the hilly 10K which I used to run all the time but have not run in a couple of years. Last week when I saw my internist, he asked if I was going to run. When I told him that I had gotten back up to three, he said he didn't see a reason why I couldn't do the whole thing even if I walked a little. Doctor's orders? My stamina is good, possibly because I run so slowly that when I did the Hot Chocolate Run, I asked a person on the sidelines if I was walking or jogging. She kindly said I was indeed jogging.

My only problem is my right foot. The big toe and, gasp, yesterday after a five-miler, a twinge in my heel. Working on both of those things.

The other day when I decided to add some hills and get off the route of running around the lakes at Mount Holyoke, I headed out Ferry Street and went to Brunelle's Marina and back, about four miles. It was good to be on the open road, looking at the river and hearing the sounds of birds and wind chimes. I never ran with music because I like to listen to what's around me.

I'm thankful to Carol Constant for giving me the idea that I could run in a race again when she suggested we do The Hot Chocolate Run to support Safe Passage and its executive director, our summer tennis teammate Marianne Winters.

Yesterday Carol and I did five hilly miles. I felt a little bad that my so-called run was equivalent to her fast walk, but she didn't seem to mind, and we spent the time telling some stories. After a bit of this I told her to go on ahead so she could get a real run.

I said something along the lines of "I don't know how I got so slow. I walk much slower too."

This might be comparable to being hit on the head with a hammer and wondering why your head hurts.

Carol set me straight, saying anything I do at this point is great.

I had been having trouble with my blood pressure and briefly went on medicine. I was convinced it was situational (surgery, lack of exercise, Donald Trump) and when two of those things but alas not the third settled down, I got permission from Ellen, the PA at the light therapy at Dana-Farber, to stop taking the medicine and check with my internist. I saw it go down after I started the day with a brief recorded meditation while sitting next to Maddie on the couch.

As all dog lovers know, this is powerful medicine in itself.

Bummed, but in a First World kind of way

I tried to do something good for myself and ended up doing something bad.

Not Bad with a capital B, just really badly annoying.

I put on my boot like I am supposed to do and then although I had a lot of things going on, I sat down for a brief meditation that I am trying to do every day. I found one that I like on line – free guided meditations offered by the UCLA  Mindful Awareness Research Center – and so I clicked on a 12-minute option and settled in.

When I opened my eyes in the semi-dark room I was not entirely with it. I got up, took one step, and...CRUNCH...I stepped on my glasses that I love so much and that have seen me through thick and thin. They broke in half.

I have been so careful with them, keeping track of them through all my hospitalizations, and I really have no idea why I put them on the floor. They mean something to me. Plus I get a lot of compliments on them and I love their look and feel.

Mark at Village Eye Care checked with the company to see if they make something similar, but all of the glasses are bigger now. The optometrist, Steven Markow, came out to see what was wrong. I remember buying them after my first transplant when I was so immunosuppressed that I had to wear a mask and gloves when trying them on. I couldn't see what I looked like, so he let me take a few home with me, and my friend Korby helped me pick.

Right now I am wearing my spare pair of wire-rimmed glasses through which I don't see as well.

Steven (I call him that because we are long-time acquaintances) said, "It's time for a change."

Me: "I don't want a change."

Him: "I guess you're a real New Englander."

No I just want the same glasses.

One of these days I hope to go back to contacts, but I am not supposed to do it while I am still on prednisone. I know, it is a First World Problem, and not such a big deal in the long run because I can afford a new pair. I placed the order yesterday, and honestly they don't look all that different.

In the meantime I might try some tape or sticky glue.

(Distant memory of sticky glue: little Joe finding it in the junk drawer and screaming, "Mom, I glued my fingers together!" Gotta be careful with that stuff.)

Things to do while on the disabled list

I've spent a lot of time in the hospital being treated for leukemia and then recuperating at home with low energy, and along the way I discovered ways to maintain some type of fitness.

If you're confined to a hospital room or if you can't move around much at home, you can always do a little gentle yoga. A hospital nurse showed me how to do some easy poses in the bed, and I also remembered some chair yoga from a Rodney Yee video on back care. You can just sit in the chair and gently twist from side to side, or do a similar twist lying down or sitting up in the bed. Also good in a chair is simply keeping one foot on the floor and then placing the opposite heel, flexed, over the knee for a good stretch, doing the same on the other side. Also in the chair, you can bend over and let your arms and head dangle.

Back in the bed, you can lie on one side, then the other, and do some leg lifts. You could also use a pair of pajama pants or whatever else is lying around to make a strap. Then lie on your back, raise one leg at a time, and place the "strap" in the arch of your foot while anchoring the strap in you hands. You can also do both legs, raised, at a time. This provides a good stretch. Ankle rotations are also helpful.

Sit-ups in the bed, as many or as few as you're comfortable with, help maintain your core strength.

You can keep some arm strength by doing wall push-ups. Shoulder rolls are a good relaxer, and stretching always helps. Some days I threw in a few wall squats, putting my back against the wall and then doing the motion of sitting down in a chair and staying there for as long as I could.

When I was in the hospital, sometimes for weeks at a time, I tried to walk every day, and sometimes I rode a stationery bike. When I couldn't leave the pod, I walked back repeating healing and calming words in my mind. The nurses usually had an idea of how many lengths constituted a mile; on one larger pod it was 44; on a smaller pod it was 54. Walking while counting helped me to take a break from worrying.

When my blood counts fell, my "yoga" nurse, a muscular, friendly man named Julio (sorry, never knew last name), suggested I send love to my white blood cells. So I did it while I walked.

Mary Jane Ott, a nurse practitioner whom I first met while she worked in the pain and palliative care division, was now working more with children. But she had become a big support and always seemed to find me in the hospital. She's so serene that just being around her, you begin to relax. She brought me a multi-colored sign reading BREATHE. We put it up on the wall as a reminder to do what we sometimes forget. Well, we don't actually forget, but when you pause to be aware of your breath, or count each inhale and exhale to 10 or more and back, you calm down. She also showed me some bed yoga, and one time while I was all clenched up and shivering from a fever, she sat by me and talked me through a relaxation technique until I unclenched.

Sometimes I practiced my tennis swing, without a racquet of course. I went through the forehand and backhand motion, visualizing the path of the ball. I knew I looked pretty silly, so I tried to do it when nobody was looking.

If you look for some of the positives in not being able to do much at home or being in the hospital, they include having the time to meditate and NOT having the distractions that make you jump up and do something else. The better I feel and the more activities I do, the least likely I am to sit quietly. I think about making dinner, walking the dog, doing the wash or whatever, and before I know it I've jumped up. (I know, gotta work on that.)

The internet and bookstores are filled with books and CDs about meditation. I found the most success with the shorter mindfulness CDs made by Jon Kabbat-Zinn, the well-known author on the topic of mindfulness. His Series 1, a set of 45-minute CDs, is good for more advanced practitioners, but if you're an antsy person like I am, you'll have better luck with Series 2, which offers a choice of shorter meditations. They are definitely helpful for calming down. I learned about another helpful site, Healthjourneys.com, that has a wide range of CDs and videos on health and healing, by practitioners including Kabbat-Zinn, Bernie Siegel, Emmett Miller and Belleruth Naparstek. Many include guided imagery and meditation. I even has one on bone marrow and stem cell transplantation! I ordered it but haven't tried it yet. The description: "This imagery uses powerful metaphors of rescue, rebirth and resurrection, cushioning the rigors of chemo with evocative images of love, protection and support, and instilling hope, energy, comfort and patience during the recovery period." Sounds good to me.