My Decision to Start Running :

Feeling Unstoppable:

Its fall semester of my last year of being an undergrad student at Appalachian State University and I just got back from a summer in Australia. This was going to be a great year and leaving with a blast; just as I did when I started there with a 3.92 GPA after my first semester there. I transferred there after my first two years spent at Young Harris College.

    My two year plan after my graduation was to enter the Peace Corps, but a sickness changed my plans.

 

The Fall:

    My energy started being zapped and my love of playing sports seemed gone. My normal state of being changed from happy to paranoid and sad, which no one noticed the change because they barely knew me. These changes really appeared to me the week of Halloween. I would be watching scary movies and after a while I felt like a character off the series of Final Destination.

    One day, on my route to school in the morning, I fished tailed three times; twice almost in a ditch and the third time towards an 18 wheeler. I made it to campus and while I was walking through the parking garage a car started to back up right as I got behind it. I slapped the back window and yelled. They stopped. These types of events were not constant, but happened enough to make me nervous and stressed.

 

Vulnerable?

    Near mid-November my heart started to have palpitations. I would lie down to relax or even be dead asleep and be woken up by an over awareness of my heart beating accompanied by a horrible sense of doom. I would curl up and lie there until it stopped.

    The end results of this, before going home for break, was my grades dropping and I missed many Ultimate Frisbee practices, which I adored then. Also, a group of friends I just started hanging out with dropped me, because of my emotional state. Finally, it came time to go home for the holidays.

 

My Christmas Break:

    At arriving home, after a five hour drive, my mom could tell how sick I was, but I did not have a temperature. At this point she took me to the doctor for a physical, pap smear, and to get blood work done to try to figure out what was wrong with me. After all the results the only indicator of me being sick was that my white blood cell count was 80% higher than it should have been.

    From here I wore a heart monitor for 24 hours, which ended up not showing anything even while the palpitations occurred. From here I spent Christmas Eve in the hospital to get my head x-rayed. All that was found was all my chronic allergies in my head were cleared up. That was good news, but left the mystery still unsolved.

    This and all the other news was unnerving, because my energy was still low. The doctors gave me some antibiotics and they helped with my heart and with my white blood cell count. The heart palpitations were still a mystery so my doctor sent me to get an ECG. The results came back to reveal that I had a Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm, which means the wall in between the two top halves of my heart has a sagging muscle from a weaken valve, which leads to blood leaking back into my heart.

    To be safe I was sent to the Cardiovascular Specialist. I had a week until my appointment and during the first day I worried, because my Nana died from a brain aneurysm that busted.

    After the first day I became eerily calm about it and all my family and friends seemed to worry for me. By the time of the appointment I felt good bit better. After the doctor looked over my paper work he laughed and did not understand why I was there. At this point he said that the extra muscle could have been there since I was born and not to worry about it. The title is miss-leading too. He believed that my heart palpitations were the results of too much caffeine and stress.

So, from here I thought about what kept me happy and calm. I decided being outside for one and walking. The results were my decision to run.

 

Avoiding the Sickness:

    After returning to school I started running in the school's gym and also at Valley Cruseis Park. I was happy to accomplish a mile when I made it. Plus the running I did strength training for my upper and lower body. Yoga matt and my exercise ball became my best friends. When I ran in the park I would do my strength training on the grass. Sometimes I would climb the trees, swing on the juggle gym, and one day decided to jump into the river. That was not the best idea, because it was no where warm enough to do so.

    From my exercising and more time spent outside, even if it meant lying next to the river studying, I felt stronger and better than ever. At the end of the semester I graduated with a 3.01 GPA after it fell down to 2.95 from the semester before. I graduated and went home.