The night before the Philadelphia marathon, I went to bed, but not to sleep. Runners sometimes talk about racing as fighting with our demons. In a tough race, your mind will give you all kinds of reasons to stop: You’re not good enough or tough enough (a perennial favorite). Your performance doesn’t matter (also popular). Just walk a little bit and it will hurt less (true, but the mental pain of defeat will hurt more later). Those are standard demon arguments and most runners are familiar with them. Good runners have strategies for combating them. But if you go into a race with a non-standard problem, the demons will capitalize on it. If you start a race with your heart heavy with grief or disappointment or fear, the demons will go to town. I was expecting the demons on race morning to tell me that my health concerns of the last six months mean I have no business running marathons, now or possibly ever again. I was ready for the race morning demons, but they showed up at night. Sneaky, sneaky demons.
I did the usual stuff to try to sleep. I listened to my sleep meditation on Headspace. I listened to another one. But I couldn’t focus on anything. Random song lyrics were pinging around my brain. My heart and thoughts were racing. I realized just how scared I was. Probably more scared than I have ever been in my life. More scared than before giving birth. More scared than before any other race. Only the four days that Aidan spent in the hospital after his bike accident could touch this level of fear.
Some of the fear was because of the race and especially the weather. But I was mostly scared about the hypoparathyroidism. This condition has been so terrifying. It feels utterly out of control. I want my parathyroids to recover so badly and I can’t do anything to make that happen. I’m terrified of what my life might look like going forward if my parathyroids don’t wake up. Some people experience so much chronic fatigue and pain that they can’t work. With this condition, you have to take high doses of calcium and vitamin D forever. That “treatment” means that many people end up with calcium deposits in all kinds of places where calcium is not supposed to be. Hypoparathyroidism and its management seriously increase the risk of kidney stones, cataracts, and most terrifyingly, calcification of the brain. I have been living with this fear since late July and it’s exhausting.
I woke up Mervus and told him I was having some kind of panic attack. We tried playing Wordle for distraction and we got a shockingly clear result. Does God pick the Wordle words? Despite this sign, my anxiety was still sky high.
I’ve started therapy with someone who specializes in medical trauma and she had sent me a long list of grounding exercises based on the five senses as a way to connect to the here and now. One suggestion was eating something with a strong flavor like a pickle or a piece of chocolate, but what I had was the leftover biscuit from Molly Molloy’s. I ate it very slowly, bite by bite. I focused on the crumbly texture, which I love. The slight sweetness of the honey butter. The tart berry jam. I ate it consciously and brought all my being into the act of eating that biscuit.
It worked. I could feel myself relax enough to go back to bed. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but I calmed down enough that I was eventually able to get to sleep. It was easily the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had before a race, but at least I slept. And hey, biscuits are extra carbs.