Finding the "Food Freak" Balance, Part III

In the spring of 2010 Charles took over management of a district for Dick's Sporting Goods that included part of North Carolina, part of Virginia, and part of Tennessee.  That was one heck of a commute.  What it amounted to was that Charles was living in a hotel Monday-Friday and came home to Georgia (and Parker and me) on the weekends.  Interestingly enough, I lost weight and Charles gained.  I was stressed out all the time and Charles was not eating well--certainly not vegan.  By the time we moved to North Carolina as a family, I was about five pounds underweight and Charles was about forty pounds overweight.

Soon after moving to High Point, I realized that I was actually in a small pocket of Heaven on Earth.  I became fast friends with one of my neighbors who just happens to be a Registered Dietician.  She gave me all the good skinny about her CSA and where I could sign up, which I did post-haste.  I met a wonderful older couple right down the road that literally operates a produce stand in their front yard during the summer months.  Charles told me all about the gigantic Farmer's Market that is a stone's throw away from our house.  I became the worst type of food snob.  I have access to locally grown, organic produce year round (granted, some of it is grown in a greenhouse, but I'd rather that than trucked in from 2k miles away).  The local grocery store has a decent selection of organic produce to supplement what I can't purchase from local farmers.  The number one industry in North Carolina is...wait for it...agriculture!  I began reading and watching all sorts of stuff about food.  Food Inc., Forks over Knives, and plenty of other food documentaries became my viewing pleasure.  Any book by Michael Pollan or Joel Salatin was purchased and read with fervor.  I began running on a regular basis in the fall of 2010 when Parker started attending preschool three days a week.  I started reading books by running gurus like Dean Karnazes, Alberto Salazar, Kara Goucher, and Scott Jurek.  We still joke that Parker goes to school so "My Mommy" can go running.  It's really not a joke.  It's the truth.

I made a New Year's Resolution in 2011 to run a half-marathon.  I started upping my weekly mileage while maintaining the Zen factor in my runs.  Parker was starting to enjoy "school", even though I had to pry him off of me with a crowbar every time I dropped him off.  He didn't want to be left, but he never exactly wanted to be picked up at lunchtime, either.  We became somewhat involved in our church.  It's hard not to be involved in our church due to the, um, lack of girth in the congregation belt.  So why is it that my husband looked like THIS in the spring of 2011?

I guess Charles was much more shocked than I was when he saw this picture.  He told me to remove the picture from Facebook.  He started making better eating choices.  He saw a chiropractor at my urging for his back pain.  The chiropractor gave him instructions for a cleanse diet.  He saw a general practitioner HERE at my urging, instead of going to the doctor that had mollycoddled him into staying on blood pressure medication in Georgia.  The doctor here in NC told him point-blank he needed to lose 60 pounds.  I am so thankful to that man I cannot even put it into words.  No beating around the bush, no "this cholesterol medication will make it all better [and pad my wallet]".  Simply put:  You're fat.  Lose weight and you'll be healthier.  The timing of the chiropractor + general practitioner + unflattering photograph = a husband pushed over the edge.  My husband jumped on board the health wagon.  He started the cleanse.  I'm not sure how I feel about those as a rule, but my husband saw immediate results that caused him to stick with a healthier lifestyle.  I'm not sure he could have done it otherwise.  I started making his lunch for him to take with him on workdays and making his daily "cleanse" drink (apple cider vinegar, straight cranberry juice, straight lemon juice, and water if I remember correctly) to take with him.  I prepared the solid food he could take with him each day for about two weeks.  He started seeing results and started taking a more active role in managing his own health and meals after that.

By the time I ran my first half-marathon in October 2011, my husband had lost at least 30 pounds (I can't remember the exact number) and I had signed up for my second half-marathon with the stipulation that if I broke two hours I would sign up for a full marathon the next year.  We joined a gym.  My husband hired a personal trainer.  This is what my husband looked like Thanksgiving 2011, a year ago (shown with his dad and our son):

Big difference.  That day we ate a heritage turkey bred and raised by the farmer that grows our CSA box.  It was expensive, but worth every penny...it was so delicious and we felt great about the way it was raised--and we didn't die or immediately develop cancer when we ate it!  Two weeks and two days after that picture was taken I ran my second half-marathon in under two hours.  There was a full marathon in my future.  I started considering adding some meat back into my diet on a regular basis after reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  It just made sense.  You can make the Biblical argument that man was created in the Garden of Eden and was vegetarian.  It very well may have STARTED that way, but you aren't even out of the book of Genesis before God tells Noah to eat meat (I imagine out of necessity; I don't guess many plants would have survived that type of flood).  In the book of Leviticus, God even goes so far as to tell Moses what types of meat are clean and what types are unclean.  The non-Biblical argument is:  if we're on top of the food chain, why in the world would we need to be able to run so far at decent rates of speed if not to catch our food?  Why is it that it takes distance runners so long to become "slow"?  All that aside, Charles continued to get into better and better shape.  Parker continued to grow and develop and impress his doctors.

Fast-forward to Spring of 2012.  We had, as a family, gone to "Open Farm Day" for the second time at the Goat Lady Dairy.  I do not like goat cheese.  I think it tastes like goats smell.  I do, however, love the Goat Lady Dairy's farm.  She operates a CSA, not by herself--but you catch my drift--and has free-range chickens and dairy goats available for children to chase and pet, respectively.  Children, and adults for that matter, can see where the free-range chickens lay their eggs and how the goats get milked and how that milk turns into cheese.  You don't have to like goat cheese to appreciate the process (and pet the goats).  She hosted this wonderful event in which other local artisans and farmers were present, peddling their wares and pitching their services and enjoying a wonderful day of community and comradeship.  We met a great local wood turner and bought a gorgeous handcrafted walnut bowl.  We met felters and farmers that raised sheep and alpacas and goats.  We also met a local farmer that raised grass-fed (from birth to butcher) cows and whey-fed hogs.  He and his wife worked for the Goat Lady making the cheese and they used the by-product whey to feed their organic hogs.  We bought some beef filets from him for the second time and made sure we got his business card because his steaks were so delicious.  Funny how I didn't think twice about eating a cow that I could identify by name if I chose to, but if I thought about eating a hamburger from McDonald's my stomach would literally turn.  Some things are just RIGHT, you know?

My personal caloric requirements coupled with my husband's manly "need" for red meat led us to go in on the purchase of a whole cow from the aforementioned farmer with another family we had grown close to.  It was expensive, but we still have plenty of meat left from our half of the cow in the freezer in our garage.  I admit, it was strange at first, but it wasn't off-putting.  I still don't like the idea of cow's milk, and I try to avoid too much cheese (trying to get back to avoiding all cheese).  But boy can I eat some burgers from Bradd's Family Farm!  They taste better...wait a minute, they TASTE...and I agree with the way the cows are raised.  Because they are grass-fed from birth to butcher and have all the room to move they need, the cows have the correct ratio of Omegas in their muscles.  Oh, and my dog gets in on the action, too.

This is one well fed German Shepherd.  He's my number one running partner.  Not too many dogs run thirty or forty miles a week on a regular basis.  I have always been concerned with providing what I thought was decent nutrition for my dogs, but with the availability of grass-fed cow, organically raised heritage turkeys and chickens and ducks and geese, and a great quality kibble that is free of ALL grains and was formulated and is distributed locally, I began to make some changes for him, too.  He now eats a mostly raw diet.  At seven years old he's in incredible condition.  He's the perfect weight, his teeth look phenomenal, his coat is in great shape, and he can run 16-20 miles with me (depending on the temperature) on my long run days without showing fatigue.

The most difficult thing about our dietary choices of late has been our son.  He has never been a really picky eater.  He ate a mostly vegan diet until we ended up with half a cow in our freezer, and even now it's really a plant BASED diet.  He's never had anything but french fries and Sprite from any of the big name fast food chains.  Moe's is a different story.  He can pack away some Moe's Power Wagons (no meat, only beans) and would do so everyday if allowed to.  He eats fish because he likes it.  He loves broccoli and carrots and raw green beans with hummus.  Unfortunately for us, he's growing up.  He has peer influences now.  He eats lunch with his PreK class right before he gets picked up, so he has what all his classmates eat for lunch on his brain when I pick him up from school.  He watches mindless drivel on television sometimes, too...complete with commercials showing the "prizes" you get for ordering a "meal" of pink slime and hydrogenated oil in a box.  I can't shelter him forever, I can only explain that while other people may eat that way, I would prefer it if he didn't because those aren't necessarily the most healthy choices for a little heart warrior.  I don't want to tell him he CAN'T eat certain things for fear of retribution by cholesterol consumption.  I also don't want him to feel singled out in a group.  He has certain things he prefers to eat, and now he's starting to voice his opinion about things he doesn't want to eat and starting to say "Ewww" about things he's never even tried.  I'm trying really hard to remain balanced and teach him why certain things make better choices than other things while giving him the freedom to make smart decisions on his own.  I always try to lead by example; I can only hope that I'm the type of person my kid looks up to enough to emulate.

So where are we now?  As a matter of fact, it's Thanksgiving Day.  Everyone else at my house (including the dog) is asleep, with a belly full of organically raised, heritage breed turkey and all the wonderful, organic plant based sides that we had with it.  This morning we all got up really early, not to put the turkey in the oven (heritage breed turkeys don't take nearly as long to cook as commercially farmed broad-breasted, hormone- and antibiotic-injected, never see the sun or know exercise turkeys), but to cheer on my husband at his first 5k race in over twenty years.  He's run two half-marathons this year, and a 200-mile relay race, and a 7-mile trail race.  Today was his first venture back into the realm of a more speedy race (due to the shorter distance--it takes me three miles to warm up, for crying out loud).  He placed sixth overall and first in his age division.  He has struggled to find his own personal "food freak" balance, and he has struggled to find a good food balance within our family.  I think his efforts have reaped some mighty fine rewards.  He looks amazing.

I made it through this holiday without getting too twitchy, but I was pretty much in charge of the menu. I've got turkey carcasses making some wonderful stock as I type and will likely have a delicious, homemade, organic turkey pot pie (fingers crossed I can find an organic ready-made pie crust since pastry and I don't typically get along) to eat over the weekend.  I'm going to continue to work on balancing my fear of all things GMO with the realization that an occasional commercially grown meal will not kill me or any member of my family.  But, I'm also going to continue to promote local, organic produce and local, heritage meat farming (and meat farming as part of a biodiverse farming model) to anyone that cares to listen.  I'm going to try to be balanced in how I deal with food issues with my son and not flip out when he tells me he wants the latest toy from the evil yellow M that's an "exclusive".

Today, mostly, I'm going to be thankful that I have the stock going, that I have the garage and freezer shelves lined with organic vegetables and jams made and canned by me, that I have an amazing family and wonderful friends with whom to share all the goodness, and I have a healthy husband and healthy son that I love more than anything else--including turkey...and yes, running too.

Finding the "Food Freak" Balance, Part II

Parker was born after 43 hours of pain med free labor that culminated in a C-section complete with spinal block.  I tried.  The important thing is that Parker handled all those contractions and all the drama and insanity like a champion.  I would like to think that my eating habits the last few months of pregnancy contributed to his ability to cope.  Charles and I were warned that heart babies tend to sleep a lot, tire easily, be smaller than average, and sometimes don't feed or thrive as well as heart-healthy babies.  As soon as Parker made his grand entrance, I was allowed to kiss his face and then he was whisked away to the NICU while I was closed up and wheeled to recovery.  Charles was able to go to the NICU to be with Parker while they determined if he would need surgery that day or not.

I was put into a private room and shortly thereafter Parker was brought in to me.  He was not "ductal dependent" and would be able to stay with me as long as he didn't exhibit any signs of a "Tet spell" before his first open-heart surgery, which, God willing, would not have to happen until somewhere around six months of age.  Parker's measurements had been tallied and he was in the 50-75th percentile for weight at 8 pounds 1 ounce, 25-50th percentile for length at 20.5 inches long, and 90th percentile for head circumference (hence the 43 hours of futile labor).  So far he had surpassed expectations.  The nurses in the NICU had given Parker a bottle of formula while he was in their care, presumably to calm him and keep him quiet--a Tetralogy of Fallot baby can go into cardiac arrest if allowed to cry--so he wasn't hungry when he first came into my arms.  Up until the point at which I first held him I was undecided about the whole breast feeding "thing".  I wasn't sure I would be able to do it.  As soon as I held him I knew I was going to give it everything I had.  I must say, it is SHOCKING how poor the choices in food are for a new mother at the hospital where Parker was born.  I almost couldn't eat anything from within the hospital because it wasn't healthy enough for my standards.  My milk didn't come in the entire time at the hospital and Parker started dropping weight.  They started talking about supplementation and I started squalling about wanting to go home.  Thankfully, all else went well (even though Charles and I both contracted the flu in the hospital--go figure), my milk came in when we got home, and Parker continued to amaze the pediatrician, the cardiologist, and his mom and dad every single day.

Having a baby that is not allowed to cry presents some pretty interesting challenges.  There is no option to let them "cry it out" for a few minutes and see if they can self-soothe.  Having a Tetralogy of Fallot baby means that you must mentally steel yourself for six months of sleep deprivation.  I firmly believe that my dietary choices made this a little easier, too.  Even though it was insanely difficult to motivate myself to cook everyday and to shop two or three times a week for fresh, organic produce, I knew in my heart that feeding my body these good meals was in turn providing my baby with the best chance possible of clearing the obstacles he would encounter in the months to come.  Some of it, I'm sure, was pure adrenaline, but I was able to fight fatigue with a daily dose of spinach and black beans.  Our grocery bills had grown larger, but we never ate out anymore so the jump was justifiable.  We, as a family, had a tremendous amount of stuff to deal with over the next year.  Parker had two surgeries, Charles changed jobs, and we moved.  It made me sweat just to type all that in the same sentence.

Parker had open-heart surgery when he was five months old.  The cardiologist, the cardio-thoracic surgeon, the pediatrician, and all the nurses at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta were amazed that my son, a cardiac kid, weighed 18 pounds when he went in for surgery.  I suppose this was unheard of for a cardiac kid.  Well, I remember watching Popeye cartoons as a kid and I remember how beneficial spinach was to Popeye's strength.  I also know that I noticed a difference in the color of my breast milk when I pumped after eating spinach and other greens versus the times I didn't.  When Parker went in for his surgery, I had not eaten any meat or dairy for nearly a year.  I tried to eat only whole, organic foods.  Now, I understand that I was using nursing to soothe him and keep him from crying, but I firmly believe that what I ate played a role in the health of my son leading up to his surgery.  I was not putting fast-food, GMO, processed garbage in my body to be further processed and passed on to my infant.  I think I may remember ONE time before Parker's surgery that he spit up.  ONE TIME.  In five months.  No reflux.  No spit-up.  No fussiness at feeding time.  I couldn't even make the kid burp.  The only feeding issue we had those first five months was that he wanted to nurse what seemed to be more frequently than other infants, and I couldn't refuse him because he couldn't be allowed to cry.  Everything that happened in CICU is a blog for another day and another subject.  Suffice it to say that Parker handled the anesthesia and the surgery itself like a champ.  There were other babies that didn't fare so well.

This is how Parker looked two days after surgery.  We learned at this point why it was so important that we have as much weight on him as possible before surgery:  Parker had chylothorax.  Chylothorax is not an uncommon condition for an individual to have immediately following open heart surgery.  According to Wikipedia, "Its cause is usually leakage from the thoracic duct or one of the main lymphatic vessels that drain to it. The most common causes are lymphoma and trauma caused by thoracic surgery. If the patient is on a normal diet, the effusion can be identified by its white and milky appearance, as it contains high levels of triglycerides. This chyle composition of triglycerides is mostly in the form of chylomicrons." and, "Since the mechanism behind chylothorax is not well understood, treatment options are limited. Drainage of the fluid out of the pleural space is essential to obviate damage to organs, especially the inhibition of lung function by the counter pressure of the chyle. Another treatment option is pneumoperitoneal shunting (creating a communication channel between pleural space and peritoneal cavity). By this surgical technique loss of essential triglycerides that escape the thoracic duct can be prevented. Omitting fat (in particular FFA) from the diet is essential."  Parker already had a chest tube in place, so the pleural effusion was not as big an issue as the fat.  We had to eliminate ALL fat from his diet for six weeks in order to allow his lymphatic vessels to heal.  Interestingly enough, when they tested the chyle from Parker's drainage tube, the doctors were amazed at how low--nearly nonexistent--the triglyceride count was.  After a day or so of Parker vomiting because he wasn't tolerating the fat-free, cow-based formula prescribed to him, the doctors actually allowed me to try nursing again because the triglyceride count of my breast milk was so low.  Unfortunately, there was still too much fat, so we entered a six week long cycle of feeding and vomiting.  While we were still in the hospital, the doctors decided to introduce baby food to Parker to give him some calories and vitamins that he wouldn't end up wearing a half hour AFTER eating.  Gerber baby food peas were on the menu for Parker's first food experience.  Parker's eyes got so wide and he was nearly giddy eating that green mess.  He developed a horrible diaper rash, I'm not sure if it was from the maybe-too-soon introduction of vegetables or the formula, but at least we were cleared to feed vegetable baby food.  I remember feeling so helpless those six weeks, not being able to do for my son the one thing I had done such a stellar job of until that point.  The one good thing that came of that experience: my breast milk was one of the first to be studied at the hospital to determine the plausibility of skimming breast milk.  While we didn't benefit from the research, babies that suffer from chylothorax after open heart surgery can now be fed breast milk instead of a cow based, adult-oriented, ridiculous excuse for nutrition.

Parker came off the formula and resumed his normal eating habits, with the addition of organic baby food vegetables and fruit, and soon after that steamed vegetables and fruits that still had their original shape and beans and grains.  I know of parents of cardiac kids that have such horror stories regarding feeding their babies.  They can't keep weight on them, pre- and post-surgery, they have picky eaters, and they have to use all sorts of supplementation to keep the weight on and the calories going in.  I know everybody is different, and every cardiac baby is different, but I know in my heart that Parker's success in nursing and weight gain and stamina and recovery and willingness to eat all sorts of food from the get-go was due in large part to the good dietary choices I made for him, starting from before he was born.  The next picture was taken not long after he came off of the horrible formula.

I also believe that Charles and I were more able to cope with all the stress brought into our lives because our immune systems were better supported by good nutrition.  Even after all the sleepless nights and all the stress, Charles and I only got sick while sleeping in the hospital.  We both got the flu when Parker was born, and I got sick when Parker was in the hospital with pneumonia after his first birthday.  Same type of thing, flu-like symptoms with lots of mucous everywhere.  I'm just allergic to hospitals.  After two hospital stays in the spring of 2009 due to pneumonia, Parker was doing great.  I began to relish taking him to the grocery store over the next few months as I didn't have to worry about who might breathe on him (can't have a cardiac baby getting sick--they already have low oxygen saturation levels in their blood and any type of infection would just make it lower) and I could just talk to him about all the different colors and textures of the food.  Charles changed jobs and we moved to the other side of the city, which put us much closer to Charles's parents.  I was back to work a few days a week, back to my pre-pregnancy weight and starting to run again here and there.  Life was pretty good.  Life was pretty healthy, or so I thought.

This last picture was taken in December of 2009.  It wouldn't be much longer before my life would be turned upside-down, and forever changed...again.

Finding the "Food Freak" Balance, Part I

I'm a self proclaimed Food Freak.  I'm not sure what else to call myself.  I prefer to purchase locally grown, organic food whenever possible.  I get a little panicky when we go out to eat as a family, and not just because I worry about my four-year-old's behavior in public.  I will not eat chicken or products that I know contain chicken (more on THAT later) or pig or products that contain pig.  I have recently added cow back to my diet as long as it comes from one of two local farms that raise their cows on grass from birth to butcher.  I will eat seafood as long as it was not farm raised.  I will eat turkey only from our farmer.  "Our farmer"=the man that grows a large portion of our food.  I know his name, I know his wife's name, I know his address.  I see him on a weekly basis nine months out of the year when I swing by his storefront (which is a slum by "retail" standards, heaven to me--I once helped capture a mouse that was scurrying across the floor while I was perusing the local apple selection) to pick up our CSA and some of the most amazing organic bread I've ever had the pleasure of so much as smelling.  I try to avoid milk unless it's of the organic soy or rice variety, and eggs need to come from organically-fed, free-range creatures (chicken or duck [recently added]--I've never eaten goose eggs to my knowledge) whenever possible.  Needless to say, this time of year makes me a little twitchy.  Not only is my son's Halloween candy in the house, complete with every type of artificial coloring and flavoring and sweetener under the sun, Thanksgiving is coming...and then Christmas.  Traveling to Savannah for the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon last weekend was trying enough.  Seriously, who spends $55 in the grocery store for one night and one morning of eating when in SAVANNAH?  That would be us.

Let me develop this story a little bit by telling you all how I got to be this way...In 2007 I remember thinking my in-laws were insane for not eating turkey at our Thanksgiving dinner.  Thanksgiving has been "my" holiday since 1998.  I have cooked, I believe, every year but one since then.  In 1997 my dad and I ate Domino's pizza for our Thanksgiving dinner.  I vowed then that THAT would never happen again.  There have certainly been some mishaps; I recall microwaving an undercooked turkey one year so that none of us would get salmonella poisoning, and the year of the super-gritty turnip greens (sorry, Grandmother!), but overall I love the holiday and claim it as mine.  I even enjoy taking in what I call "strays" whenever possible for dinner.  Anyway, in 2007 my in-laws didn't eat turkey and I remember how odd I thought that was.  My father-in-law, (THE FOLLOWING IS THE EPITOME OF FACETIOUSNESS) who is not the least bit an opinionated type of person or the sort to suffer from ailments of conviction had read T. Colin Campbell's book The China Study and had instantaneously converted.  He was a confirmed Vegan.  I just thought it was him being himself and my mother-in-law going with the program.  I also remember that Thanksgiving because it was the holiday that I spent worrying whether or not my unborn son had DiGeorge Syndrome.  We were made aware of his heart defect earlier that month and I had undergone the subsequent amniocentesis to rule out Down Syndrome and DiGeorge Syndrome.  The Down Syndrome test had already been confirmed negative.  I was told at first that everything was clear, but another phone call a few moments later:  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Giddens, we don't have the results of the DiGeorge test back yet...we'll have to get back to you after the holiday weekend..." had me reeling.  My husband and I, and I believe my dearest friend (and Parker's Godmother) Lauren were the only ones that knew of the uncertainty.  Everyone else (including Charles's parents and my dad and his wife) believed that we were all in the clear; well, except for that little Tetralogy of Fallot thing.  Anyway, Charles and I were told that malnutrition and alcohol abuse by the mother were the only two things attributed to increased risk of Tetralogy of Fallot in a fetus.  I pretty much never touched alcohol between my college years and Parker's third birthday, so alcohol abuse was not a concern for us.  Malnutrition?  I never considered it.  It's not like I ever went hungry...

My father-in-law can be a passionate orator, and he tends to have read plenty about the things he likes to talk about.  I heard an awful lot about that book that Thanksgiving, and an awful lot about the positive changes it had made in the life of my father-in-law.  I was just starting to get fat from pregnancy and feeling miserable, craving cheese eggs like nobody's business but completely repulsed by chicken in any other form.  I began reading the book after my father-in-law lent it to me and I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things I was reading.  Then came the next event in this curious chain:  I developed a weird, itchy rash.  My abdomen, my chest, and my thighs were constantly itching and then the skin became very angry looking: bright red with hives everywhere.  I would wake up in the middle of the night clawing myself because it itched so badly.  I tried every type of moisturizer and lotion under the sun to alleviate the misery and nothing helped.  When I went to see my OBGYN for my next follow-up appointment, she shook her head in disbelief.  "I'm sorry honey, but it looks like you've got PUPPP."  Well, yeah, I had two of them at home, but they weren't puppies anymore and it wasn't like I had brought a new dog home and then gotten a rash.  I was a dog trainer, for crying out loud!  If the next thing on my plate was a dog allergy, I was going to have to check myself in for an extended stay in a padded room somewhere with a view.  But no, the doctor went on to explain that PUPPP is actually Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP) and unfortunately for me I would likely be stuck with the rash until after Parker was born.  Curiously, while I fit the mold for PUPPP sufferers in that I was carrying a boy for my first to-term pregnancy, most women didn't get PUPPP until about the 36th week of gestation.  I was 26 weeks pregnant!  I had no idea how I was going to survive up to 14 weeks of that torture.  At least I had some reading I could do when I couldn't sleep.

While I was up reading The China Study one night and wishing I could scrub my belly with fine grit sandpaper, I was struck by a passage in the book that seemed to parallel the PUPPP research I had done.  Really it was one word that got my attention with the same efficacy as a wallop to the head with a brick: hormones.  Some doctors had posited that PUPPP was more prevalent in women carrying boys due to the male hormones present in the fetus.  The China Study was outlining all the evils inherent in consuming milk and milk products from cows treated with growth hormones and therapeutic levels of antibiotics.  I'm certain I couldn't follow that epiphany exactly backwards to tell you how I arrived at it, but I was certain then that I was right.  I cut dairy from my diet the next day, completely and cold turkey.  Within three days, my rash was gone.  My doctors were gobsmacked.  I was a convert.

My doctors were made aware of my dietary transition into the world of Vegan and everyone seemed okay with it as long as I was taking my B12 supplements, which I did religiously.  No more PUPPP, as you can see from the photo, and my little baby boy with his super special heart was developing better and growing bigger and being more active than the doctors could have hoped for.  Then came the day that changed my life forever...

God Bless George Harding!

WARNING!  The following post contains crass and foul language, as well as frank discussion of bodily functions.  Please do not read any further if you are likely to be offended.

For women, and probably for men (although I can't speak with authority regarding the opposite sex), the bathroom has historically served two purposes of oxymoronic nature: it's a place to dump all your shit and it's a place to get your shit together.  Think about it; you know it's true!  The first purpose is obvious and doesn't need any additional explanation.  The second purpose doesn't need explanation either, but it's where all the good stories come from.

"Thank God for the man that invented this thing."  That was the thought that went through my head during my FOURTH visit to a Porta-Potty on November 3rd, 2012, the day of my first marathon in Savannah, Georgia.  My first visit was pre-race as soon as we arrived to the Start Village of the race, where all the runners enter their respective corrals and do whatever it is they do to combat nerves before the start of the race.  This was when I took care of some seriously important nerve related business, if you catch my drift.  Before entering our corral, the point of no return, my friend Chris and I hit the portable latrines one last time to empty our bladders and hopefully leave any remaining nerves in a bright blue abyss of sanitizing liquid.  The lines were so long!  When we got close, to the point that you could then define the two or three rectangles your line was feeding, I remember that the end "unit" just stayed occupied.  I wasn't the only one that noticed.  Some of us discussed how we would burst into applause and cheer for the individual that finally emerged.  One lady even tried the door just to be sure it was indeed occupied.  It was.  Silently I determined that whoever was in there was having some serious second thoughts about what they were about to do and was trying really hard to get their shit together versus let it all hang out (so to speak).  Chris announced that he would pass on the opportunity to use the one on the end even if it presented itself.  It didn't.  Both of us took our turns in the plastic boxes and entered our race corral where we talked a little strategy and basically shot the...no, I won't go there...until the race started and we were off.

Running a marathon is hard.  I would like to think that anyone that has completed one would tell you the same.  I'm not a particularly fast runner, I'll likely never be an elite runner, but I think anyone that covers a distance of 26.2 miles on foot at a speed that is slightly uncomfortable for them would agree that running a marathon is hard.  Distance runners tax themselves mentally and physically at the same time.  Mentally they are considering race strategy (if they have one), checking out the runners around them, and checking in with their bodies alternately every minute to every few minutes of the race.  The physical taxation is real.  Once your body runs out of glycogen stores, you begin to feel like you have the flu.  If you aren't careful with your water and electrolyte intake and balance, you have many more (and much worse) things to worry about.  As long as you stay in your own head and don't let your body run off without your brain, the main thing you have to focus on is putting one foot in front of the other.  Until you have to pee.

I think I knew I still had to pee when I first entered the corral, but I also knew I didn't have time to wait in that line again.  I thought I could hold it.  I remember doing just fine until mile 9 or so; after that, I was all about finding a bathroom.  I knew I needed to drink something, but how could I drink anymore fluid when my eyeballs were already floating in a urine suspension?  The half-marathon course split from the marathon course around mile 11.5 and the field of runners grew incredibly smaller after that.   Less distraction meant increased discomfort.  Then, low and behold, there it was!  The blue Porta-Potty line at the halfway mark...and at the top of the hill.  I crested the 13-mile marker and afforded myself the pit stop at the very first door.  Have you ever tried to hover after running 13 miles?  My thighs were screaming, but my bladder was all applause.  Funny, I didn't realize how much I had been sweating until I tried to pull up my running skirt with its built-in compression shorts.  I felt much better and after a bit of a slow start, I was off and running again.

Something started happening to me after mile 18.  Doubt started creeping in.  I knew I was getting steadily slower.  I had very strange images floating around in my head.  I started to feel a little bit nauseous and I was beginning to question the ability of my quads and my heart to cope.  I never really considered quitting, don't get me wrong, but I do remember telling myself that walking would be acceptable.  I didn't walk, but I did start scoping the landscape for the next available bathroom.  My saving grace came around mile marker 23.  There was a water station with Porta-Potties available (presumably they were there for the volunteers manning the water station).  I suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that my feminine hygiene product was failing me just before I crossed the finish line (which came with the hyped-up "photo opp").  Not wanting to have a "stain" on the record of my first official marathon, I ducked into the last box with permission from one of the volunteers.  Now finding it nearly impossible to hover over the hole, I let go of a little trickle, confirmed that my feminine hygiene product purchase was money well spent, and then took a few extra seconds to collect myself.  Finally I told myself "Look, if you can handle 43 HOURS of labor, you can handle one more 5k".  Whatever works, right?  I emerged from the portable shit collection station (feel free to read that either way) with some slightly renewed vigor and after thanking God for the inventor of the aforementioned box, I finished the race strong.  I still laughed at the guy that blew by me at the 26-mile marker for his Olympic-style finish, but I finished strong.  I finished faster than I thought I would and in the top 26% of full marathon runners.  Not too shabby for an old broad running her first full marathon!

I vowed to find out to whom I owed my first marathon finish.  God Bless you, George Harding!  Now to train for the next one and learn to leave it all on the course instead of in the can.  I'm sure I can better my last performance if I can do that!