Day 136: The 33 Minute Mile…

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

~Mahatma Ghandi~

I haven’t posted here for about a week now, but I assure you it is not because I have forgotten you. I’ve actually been thinking about this website and it’s readers quite a bit over the last few days. I’ve been thinking about what it means to be successful and what we have to do in order to achieve our goals. In this post I talked about a day when it seemed like the world was against me. This past Tuesday I was gently reminded of what a real obstacle is.

A Little Back Story To Help You Understand

You’ve all seen the photos of my screwed up abdomen before. I guess it’s time that I let you know how that all transpired (you’ll know why it’s important soon). Three years ago I was at work and started suffering from some intense abdominal pain. At first I suspected some bad leftover Chinese food, but I knew that it was something more serious. I immediately headed to the Emergency Room and after a few scans I was told that I had kidney stones. They were never actually able to find the stones but they sent me home with some pain medication and told me to drink plenty of fluids.

Fast forward four days. I headed back to the emergency room because my condition was much worse. I barely had the energy to stand and even though I had been drinking fluids like crazy I was not really urinating. I hadn’t passed any kidney stones either. After about 10 minutes of observation they had me on an ambulance headed for another hospital. I was on my way to surgery. Apparently the “kidney stones” were actually a perforated ulcer. I had a hole in my stomach the size of a pinky fingernail. Just so you know, that’s HUGE! All of the fluids I had been taking in had been leaking into my abdominal cavity and I was completely septic (my body was chuck full of infection).

They rushed me to the hospital and it was almost like the movies or an episode of E.R. They took me straight to one of the trauma rooms and people started to surround me. There had to be at least twenty other people in the room besides myself. There were bright lights everywhere and I honestly don’t remember much after that.

I was taken into emergency surgery and their main focus was saving my life not making sure I had a cute tummy. I spent about six more days in the Intensive Care Unit with fevers of 107 and blood pressures of 60/20. I was literally fighting for my life. It was a long road to recovery with a number of different setbacks, but I managed to completely recover.

My abdomen didn’t heal quite right and I ended up with a lot of scar tissue and one of the most screwed up belly buttons known to man. I’m not really self-conscious about the scarring because I have a good story to go along with it and it reminds me of how lucky I am to be alive.

Another Minor Setback

This past Monday night I spent the majority of the night with stomach pains and again I figured that someone had slipped one of those gas station pickled eggs into something I had eaten the day before. By Tuesday morning I knew it wasn’t just indigestion. I again went to the Emergency Room and this time they seemed to take my concerns a bit more seriously. After a few minutes I went in for a CT scan and they found that I had four, yes four hernias. One of them was pretty large and I knew it was there, but I figured it was just because my old wound had healed poorly. Apparently because of the large amounts of scar tissue some parts of my abdominal wall had become weakened and my guts were basically trying to climb out of my body. Gross I know. I was in for another surgery. This time was different though. My general health was so much better and I caught the problem early on. I had surgery on Tuesday and the next three days were spent recovering in the hospital. My recovery has been going amazingly well and I’m on my way back baby.

Moving Forward

Emergency hernia repair will definitely put a damper on a weight loss routine. I can’t really work out at all for the next 3 weeks or so and I can’t do any weight lifting for at least 6 weeks. Even then I’m going to have to start out slow. At first I wanted to call this post “Day 1,” but I didn’t like how that would have negated all of my hard work up to this point. This will be a new beginning for me but it will end the same way. I will meet my weight loss goals and I will become a healthier, more fit person. I started the new beginning today by getting on the treadmill and walking for a mile. It took me 33 minutes. It wasn’t exactly the 10-11 minute time that I’ve been used to, but it’s a start. Every day it’s going to get better and soon enough I’ll be back.

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.

~Zig Ziglar~

There are 53 days left of the 100 Day challenge and don’t think that this little setback is going to keep me from meeting my goal. None of you are off the hook either even though I’m laid up for a bit



3 Responses to “Day 136: The 33 Minute Mile…”

1. Weight Loss » Blog Archive » Day 136: The 33 Minute Mile… says:

   November 27, 2009 at 9:34 pm

   [...] Original post by No More Bacon [...]

   Reply
2. localshred says:

   November 29, 2009 at 1:17 pm

   I just have to say that you are my freaking hero Ryan. You go girl

   Reply
3. Tonyne @ Unlikely Success Story says:

   May 17, 2010 at 9:58 am

   Thanks for pointing this one out Ryan. I needed it. I love the quote at the end.
   Tonyne @ Unlikely Success Story´s last blog ..Sweet Treats

   Reply