Good Bye Gal Bladder.....will be lighter without you anyways :)

A lot can happen in a week, that is for sure....... Its saturday here exactly one week since i rather meekly said goodby to my Gal Bladder and went under the knife to get it removed. Four key hole scares and a swollen tummy later I am just only today able to manage the walk up the boulder creek path to Pearl street's 'The Cup' to get a decent fairtrade coffee..... its been a long week! so let me take you back a bit and explain how it all got to this....... I returned back to Boulder after the surrealness of the disaster that Boise 70.3 was and was determined to get back into training and turn things around for my next race in Lubbock, Texas. I had 2 weeks... and given my base going into Boise I was confident it was plently of time. However my body had other ideas and on my first attempt of a training session i was hit rather bluntly in the face with the reality of what state my body was actually in. I managed to crawl a measly 2kms, bearly breaking 6mins per sector and i was struggling big time. My whole body had a blanket of weakness over it, my stomach was hugely bloated and felt really bruised and sore and i was faint in the head. I called it at 2km's and walked home, stoping at various vantage points to rest. mmmmmmm..... maybe not quite recoverd yet..... After a conference call with Coach Gordon ( thank goodness for SKYPE thats all i can say!!) We decided to back right off rest and try and shake the bug for good. it was not ideal but what other choices did we have? AS the week went on I rested, and attempted training sessions as planned but the pain i was in just kept getting worse. Apart from the ongoing fatigue and bloating and bowel issues, I was starting to get massive bouts of intense pain, pressure and bloating after meals and as each day would progress the pain and pressure would just increase. By THursday the pain was wrapping istelf around my ribs and into the mid back as well as the stomach and i was to be honest crying myself to sleep after trying to dwon play the pain i was in during the day. I didnt know what was going on i didnt know how to fix it, i was starting to get a bit worried. Come FRiday night 12.30am I was lying on the floor in my room in front of the fan in the fetal position, I heard my flatmates coming dwon the hall, I tried to sit up so I didn't loook completely pathetic, but when they came in I just burst into tears I couldn't tuff it out any longer i needed help. Thankfully Katie had a car and she very nicely said she would take me to the A&E. I went in expecting to just get some antibiotics and some pain relief but instead got a battery of tests and ultra sounds between the hours of 1 and 4.30am and thankfully some pretty amazing pain reilf. ( I knew it was going to be good when the nurse said "let me just lie you dwon to give you this" as she adjusts the bed and puts the rails up on the sides!!) Yip a pretty decent narcotic. She was not kidding when she said this may make you feel a bit loopy!, for the proudly drug free, dehydrated Lawrence it was quite the head spin!!! The varying temperaments of the the on call nurses etc as they one by one got called in from deep sleeps..... eventually eased as they started to figure out that i was actually in pain and that there was more than just a tummy bug going on! Anyways the news came at about 4.30am. It had been a long night for both myself and Katie( what an absolute angel she was staying with me through this even though i was fully awear that it would be ruining her training for probably the weekend, she didnt complain at all,and refused to go home till it was sorted. It meant the world to me to have her there to support me. I had only meet her 3 days ago...... its amazing that unspoken bond of your fellow athlete, when it really counts we are there for each other although at times it appears that each is just out there for themsleves.) The diagnosis, was An infected, very inflamed Gal Bladder and the duct that goes from the liver to the stomach. Plan of attack, admission to hosiptal, meeting with surgeons in a few hours and then surgery ASAP. oh yeah and a whole heap of IV anitbiotics, fluids and pain relief! the doc said most people didnt wait 2 weeks before they got them removed so we didnt have time to wait, it had to come out as waiting would just casue more complications. so that was my weekend drugged up in hospital. One of the nurses said to me, "you dont have to be tough in here, if your in pain let me know, we can fix that"..... that was all i needed to hear i think I left my toughness at the door of the hospital.I was definatly not in my element, needles, blood tests, injections, sugery, high pain narcotics...... I felt a mere shadow of the girl who lines up at the startline that was for sure. This past week has all beeen about recovery. I have some pretty decent looking wholes in my stomach. I feel ike I am 6 months pregnant with all the swelling and fuild build up in my stomach and body but as each day passes, the improvements are really noticeable and I am hanging on to the little gains. Its going to be about 3 weeks of getting back mobile and training again and then I should be all good to get stuck back into things again, which will be great. Obvoiusly this is not going to be season of racing that I planned, and i have been pretty gutted about that, but for what ever reason these are the cards I have been dealt so I am going to work with them the best I can. I had no idea the extent I would need to hear those words from the song on the radio in Boise echoing the words.... "This will only make you stronger..... Stronger..... Believe me...make you stronger"...Ironically or should i more accurately say naively thought that that was as hard as it was going to get....... it appears that that it was actually only the beginning. My Cousin wrote on my face book in response to my last blogg entry reminding me it is not the hardships that define us but our come backs. He told me I was born to do this ...... And if anything through this rather blunt wake up call......... it seems that I finally believe that.....