Yes, bad shit can happen when you get off the couch.  During weekly run this evening from my office over GG Bridge, I pulled up lame after about 4 miles with pain and tightness in right hamstring.  Bummer.  Same leg but different location from injury suffered more than a month ago.  Connected?  Who knows, and doesn’t really matter.  Only thing to do is to rest it, bike or cross country ski or something that won’t aggravate it, and not cry in my beer/Pinot noir.  Injuries are an unfortunate side effect of exercise, that’s life, and we have to be thankful for all we have.  So many people, because of illnesses, genetics, bad luck, or long-standing lifestyle choices, have difficulty moving around in their everyday lives, and can’t exercise at all.   

I think about my one medical scare — 28 years ago — whenever I start to feel sorry for myself.  Living in Washington D.C., my standard routine was to do a 4 mile run through Rock Creek Park, and end up at my office not far from the White House where I’d shower and change.  Did that almost every day.  After returning from a trip to Eastern Europe in the spring of 1988, I woke up, put on my running clothes, left my apartment building in Adams Morgan, but was unable to run.  My body just said “no”.  I couldn’t take one running step.  Weirdest case of jet lag ever, I thought to myself.  Changed out of my running gear and caught a cab to work.  The next day, tried again, same thing.  I went to see a doctor, who checked me out and said I’d probably be fine in a few days.  I’d been sick with a bad virus in Prague, but was feeling okay by the time I got back to the States.  Very strange.  On the third morning, it was no different, still could not take a single running step, though I could walk and talk.  A little weak overall, but it made no sense.  Sitting around our firm’s law library, I explained my symptoms to a colleague, who happened to be a JD MD.  He immediately recognized my situation as serious, insisted I see a neurologist right away, and put me in a cab to Georgetown Hospital.  I’m glad he did. Because our firm regularly represented Georgetown, the chief neurologist met me, admitted me, and started running tests.  My extremities were getting progressively weaker, reflexes, balance and tensile strength notably impaired.  I could not walk a straight line.  Classic peripheral neuropathy, they said, a form of paralysis.  I quickly learned that there were several possible diagnoses, which ranged from bad to worse.  Multiple sclerosis, lyme disease, myasthenia gravis, and Guillam Barre syndrome, were the leading contenders.  For some of these I would be on medication the rest of my life.  For others, recovery would be long, slow, and unsure.  If I had myasthenia gravis, I would never run again.

I remember thinking about that.  I ran four miles almost every day.  What if I could never run again?  How would that feel?  And could I deal with that?   Surprisingly, I clearly recall not being freaked out.  I’d run a lot, I thought to myself, I’ll find something else to do for fun.  I cared more about overall recovery, quality of life.

After a painful series of tests, including a spinal tap and one involving a bunch of tiny electric shocks, they concluded I had Guiliam Barre, a rare anti-immune disorder where the body’s white blood cells — after attacking a virus (like the one I had in Prague) — go haywire and start attacking the myelin sheath surrounding healthy nerve cells, preventing nearby muscles from working.  The attacks start at the extremities, causing paralysis, and progress quickly.  In severe cases, the out-of-control attacks progress to the body’s core, causing the muscles that help us breathe to stop working, and the patient dies.  Which is why at Georgetown they’d check me every few hours, including the middle of the night, and made me blow into a tube to prove I could breathe.  

I was very lucky; my case of Guillam Barre was not severe.  I had mild paralysis, and would undergo months of physical therapy to regain strength in my hands and legs.  After running almost every day for the last several years, I would not run again for six months.  But I would run again, and almost exactly ten years later I ran a 3:46 marathon.  I don’t know if there’s a list somewhere, but I would bet that I am one of the few survivors of Guillam Barre to ever do that.  A point of pride, for sure, but more of good fortune.  

So, I can recover from this hamstring injury, and whatever else life might throw at me.  Bring it on.