I'm Back!

Well, this is like resurrecting an old blog from the dead! For those who have stuck around to check in from time to time, I will briefly try to update you on what in the heck has been going on with me! In short, last October I signed up for the first ever Ironman event to take place in Louisville. I hired a coach and began gleefully, I might add, training. In late January, I made a fatal error in training... I decided to incorporate some mountain biking into the mix, you know, intervals or whatever. It was a good thought... until I hit the ground. To make a long story short, I crashed very hard and injured my wrist. The orthopedist said it was not broken but wanted to do an MRI because of the pain level being so high.

The MRI showed the lunate bone to be very cloudy and I was diagnosed with a rare bone disease called Kienbock's Disease. Basically, the Orthopedic Surgeon said the lunate bone in my wrist was not getting proper circulation because my radius is longer than my ulnar bone and immediate surgery was needed to shorten my radius, insert a plate, and try to revascularize my lunate... yeah, thats what I said. Over the next several months I visited hand specialist and researched the condition all the while thinking something was wrong. Just picture me sitting at my desk tapping away at the keyboard surrounded by twinkie, snowball, and cupcake wrappers. Yeah, I had stopped training. Running with a cast was not fun and trying to ride with one was even less fun. I had to figure out what to do. In my gut, I knew something was off about the diagnosis. I mean, Occam's Razor says that the injury was caused by the mountain bike crash. I continued to search and research nonetheless. I saw 6 hand specialists and found a couple of recurring themes. One: Kienbock's Disease is really rare, Two: No one really knew what to do with it except operate and of all the 4 or 5 options for operation, research showed success rates to be less than 55%. One Doc, who was voted best hand guy in Dallas, said that he had only seen this once in his 38 year career and said, "we can learn together." His suggestion was a cast for 12 to 18 months to see if the bone would restore blood flow on its own. Yeah, a YEAR in a cast... NEXT! I had everything from that to immediate surgery to surgery whenever. The scary thing is that all the orthopedists just wanted to cut, saw and plate. The hand guys were all over the map. Finally, I found a young hand specialist that actually had experience with Kienbock's. His name is Dr. Thomas C. Dilibert. He said that he thought it was related to the mountain bike crash and because the MRI appeared cloudy on the end and not consistently across the bone that it could be a really bad bone bruise, but bottom line, it did not look like Kienbock's and he has seen Kienbock's. He said, sure you are Ulnar Negative, but that doesn't mean Kienbock's. Plenty of people have different size Ulnar and Radius bones and have no problems. So I took his advice and we decided to wait a while and then re-MRI it.

So we waited four months and redid the MRI. Guess what? My gut feeling was right. Everything was okay. The lunate was normal which means it was a bruised bone. We did find some torn and damaged cartilage in my wrist, but that can wait until after Ironman.

That is right, I am back. I have re-upped, signed up for the Louisville Ironman for 2008. So we will try this again! I have been procrastinating in updating this blog for a really long time and now it would take me forever to get all that has happened since I last actively blogged. So bear with me as I get you up to date.

Basically, Coach Phelan has had me running like crazy. I did not ride much after last spring's normal series of rallies. I rode the Dallas/Fort Worth MS 150, well at least the first day of it, then went the next day to win the Benbrook Sprint Tri's Clydesdale division. After that, I raced in a few tris, ran a little, rode a little, and kind of went through the rest of the season with little to show for the little training I had done. In August, we went to Chicago for the Half Marathon. It was my first and a wake up call. My goal was to break 2 hours, but I finished just over at 2:02:46.