What's it all about?

In the summer between my senior year in high school and freshman year in college, I competed at the only Junior National Swimming Championships I ever went to.  I earned what I did to get there, but I didn't qualify for the meet.  At the time, the standard for men to qualify for this meet was 54.39 in the 100 meter free, and that season I went what would be my lifetime best of exactly 55.00 seconds, and in retrospect, that's not too shabby.  I swam relays at this meet, and it was perhaps one of the most interesting experiences in athletics I have ever had.  For those who don't know, Junior Nationals is, perhaps, the point at which elite level swimming begins, and for those that go on to bigger levels, a stepping stone towards the pinnacle of the sport.  So, I earned what I did to get there--my time that season was used to put in the qualifying time for our team for relays to compete in that meet, and I chose to go to this meet over the Zone Championship that I qualified for in the process of swimming that time.  However, it never felt like I belonged there--the literal pool of talent so far exceeded anything that I was capable of that I felt like an outsider, and that I had somehow cheated my way into the meet--officially I was not even registered in the meet, since relay only swimmers were in a different classification.

As time went by, when I would talk with other swimmers about this, I would always have to qualify my description of that meet with "I only swam relays." Sometimes I have said that it killed the experience for me, but the reality is that I always appreciated being there, and being able to participate in the biggest athletic event I've ever been in. But it's only been by putting it in the context of "I earned getting there--I just didn't get as far as I dreamed I wanted to."

So, I wonder what it is with all of the people in athletics that take every shortcut possible--every avenue, including the use of performance enhancing drugs to climb their way up the ladder to international glory, or professional level sporting. What is it that drives a person to want to achieve something that they didn't earn?

People have their theories--there are many explanations that have been proposed about what causes one person to decide that it's ok to cheat. Certainly, once money becomes a significant factor in racing, there's a stronger likelihood that someone in the field is doing some sort of drug use to get there.  That major motivating factor is likely what drove the ring-leader of the US Cycling scandal to do what he did, and it probably has led to countless others in lesser funded sports.  Fame, glory, the desire to stand on top of a podium and be told that you're the best--that's an explanation that holds water.

At the forefront of today's headlines is the story that the country of Russia was banned from competing at the Winter Olympics.  A process was put into place that allowed Russian athletes that had not been involved in this particular systematic doping scandal to still be allowed to compete, but not as a member of what would have been Team Russia.  In this case, it's easy to believe that politics and the desire of a country to prove that they are the best at any cost is what went into this.  No doubt that Russia applied pressure to its athletes to force some of them to participate in the doping plans either against their will or with the promise of significant incentives--that doesn't make them any less guilty of what they did, but it does paint the picture of what a massive national organization is capable of to "prove" that their team is the best.

At a lower level, and something that has shocked me since I learned of it, is that there has been a rise in doping at the amateur and age group level in sports such as triathlon.  There is no money in this sport--well, there is some money at the professional level, but for an age group competitor; the type of which I compete against?  No.  No money.  That part of the equation is immediately removed.  I would venture to guess that I have never been in a race with someone who is participant of a systematic doping program....well, except for the possibility that Lance Armstrong was in small triathlons that were not sanctioned by USAT while his final fate was being decided.

Estimates of doping in the amateur triathlete population are difficult to get a handle on.  A study done in 2013 based on anonymous surveys of triathletes showed results of 13-15% of those athletes admitted to doping (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078702).  That's somewhere in the ballpark of 1 in every 7 athletes is actively taking banned substances.  This study did much more than just try to establish if and what number of athletes are doping--it looked for things like correlations between people taking illicit doping substances and their use of legal substances, such as caffeine, that serve as performance enhancers.  The point, however, is that 1 in 7 athletes is huge.  Why are these people doing this?

Some may be trying to break into the professional ranks of triathletes--that doesn't explain the high numbers, since only a fraction of triathletes are in a position to potentially cross that threshold.  Some may be doping to qualify for the age group world championships.  Some may be doping just because they want to win.  Whatever the case, there appears to be a huge number of athletes that are actively cheating and racing in the amateur ranks.

I can't get my head wrapped around this--the study was 2997 triathletes, which means that 13% of that number is close to 400 athletes with admitted (but anonymously admitted) doping. Does 13% of the field really feel that the most important thing is to win at all costs? 

I've always thought that if I got there, and I didn't earn it, I simply didn't belong there.

A lifelong undiagnosed case of ADHD?

I'm extraordinarily happy to say that since my last blog post, I've had a dramatic improvement in the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and otherwise annoying feelings that I've been experiencing. These peaked this year, likely due to the series "undesirable events" that I dealt with--I'll save you the rehash on those...I think I've blogged enough about them, and it's time to move forward.

My dogs have always made me happy, so that's why
 they're in this post.  This is Barrett

Moving forward has taken a different path for me that I might have ever imagined. At the last appointment I had with my psychiatrist, we discussed the very real possibility that I may be dealing with a case of ADHD, which has been missed, and attributed to episodes of depression since my teenage years. As I write this post, and this is due to the engineering side of my brain, the diagnosis is not 100% certain, though it never really is, since medicine, and in particular medicine in the field of mental health is a substantial amount of art combined with science and medical knowledge.



Everyone knows what a hyperactive kid looks like--and that is somewhat difficult to miss--he or she has problems staying still, can't focus on a damn thing, and often breaks down into screaming fits for very little or no reason whatsoever.  That was never me. What was me is this form of ADHD known as inattentive type ADHD which presents in a different way. It's a lack of focus that takes the shape of the day-dreamer, resulting in things like an inability to stay involved in a conversation, doing things like rushing through tests and quizzes unnecessarily fast and making careless errors on them, starting but not finishing project after project, forgetting where you leave things like your keys or your wallet and having to spend endless time finding them. Reading through this list (https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/symptoms-of-inattentive-adhd/) makes me think "This is me, and this has been me ever since I can remember."

Josie and Max after dog park

There are a number of reasons why I can imagine this got missed--first and foremost is that a large percentage of inattentive type ADHD cases go undiagnosed. Estimates vary, but somewhere on the order of 50%-75% of adults with ADHD go undetected (https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/adult-adhd#). In addition to that, inattentive type ADHD affects women and girls more often than it affects men and boys.

Additionally, long periods of my life were occupied with things that resulted in self-treatment of ADHD symptoms. Exercise is one of those things, due to exercise's effect to aid in increased levels of dopamine in the brain (https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/adult-adhd-and-exercise#1). During my high school days and portions of college, I was a swimmer, training upwards of 5 hours a day, and my ability to focus on things was reasonable.  It helped that I was good at school--I was the master of the "study break"--which is exactly the opposite of what you're thinking. I would spend an hour doing anything else, and then 5 minutes studying and absorbing some piece of material until I understood it and lost interest in studying it anymore. I swam in college, and then I didn't swim, and then I swam again when I lost my direction. In the off-swimming semesters, I became a caffeine addict and it turns out that caffeine is also a treatment for ADHD, although a somewhat less effective one (https://www.additudemag.com/treatment/caffeine/). At the peak of my caffeine issues in my adult life, I was consuming 12 shots of espresso a day.

Max--most photogenic dog ever

Some semesters in college, I resorted to alcohol, and substance abuse is clearly associated with untreated ADHD. People turn to alcohol (or some people turn to other substances) as a way to quiet the mind, or in some cases, to relax inhibitions to incite the impulsivity issues that go along with ADHD. I say that I drank a lot during some semesters in college--that statement is often a no-brainer.  College is a place where people tend to experiment with drinking, and often do it a lot. It's a societal norm. The thing is that I drank a lot during the semesters that I wasn't swimming, that I wasn't overly focused on finding a way to stay on top of school work (drinking a pot of coffee a day), and often to get through some of the more mundane tasks I had to deal with. There was a structural analysis class that I went to either already buzzing or with an alcoholic drink in my hand because it bored the crap out of me--when it came time to take the final, I decided I had to be in the same state of mind that I learned the material in, so I went for drinks before it. I got an A, and I believe one of the highest scores in the class.

Josie

These types of self medication (exercise, caffeine, alcohol) are common in people with undiagnosed ADHD. Some people who are open to it, and able to do it, also resort to marijuana--which I'm unable to try due to my job. Interestingly enough, out of those self medication options, weed may be the best option of them all, but it remains illegal at a federal level, and therefore is not an option for me in my profession.

So my psychiatrist put me on Adderall, and when the dosage was increased to where it is now, I saw an immediate and profound effect in my ability to get through my day. Tasks became less daunting. Challenging work became interesting again, as opposed to just being aggravating. Over time, my level of happiness has increased to the point where the job that I'm dealing with now, while on travel, is difficult, but more in the vein of a "challenging and interestingly type of difficult." Don't get me wrong--having to leave the hotel at 5am to get to a maneuver this morning was not my preference, but it didn't seem like the weight of the world was crushing me either.

In the world of triathlon, I look forward to workouts now. I've signed up for a couple of races in April and May, and I'm working out what my larger goals are for the year. I feel like life is resuming for me.

So now I'm off to get a run in along the Seine. It's really one of the most picturesque places in the world to go running--I'm very lucky that way.

Eiffel Tower/Statue of Liberty

I am not OK, but that's okay.

To round out October as National Depression Awareness month, I thought I'd put all my thoughts of how I'm doing in one spot. As some who have read my Facebook posts might have wondered, I'm in a less than optimal state these days. Perhaps the largest indicator that something has been amiss is that I stopped writing in my blog--I remember a high school English teacher once telling me that people should be worried, not when I write about potentially dark or concerning things, but when I stop writing about them.

I've occasionally seen posts from several Facebook friends with the relayed message that goes something like "Please post this so that people know that someone is listening." Frankly--it doesn't do a whole lot for me, but I'm sure there are people that it does help, so please keep on with that.  What did help me enormously was when a friend reached out to me late last week over text message and just asked how I was doing, and offered to help in any way that he could. Just being able to explain my frustration with the state of mental healthcare in this day and age went a long way to settling my thoughts.

I should begin, not at the beginning, but at a point where this snowball began. Somewhere around a year and a half ago, I saw a new psychiatrist who put me on Remeron, which did wonders for immediately fixing my issues with getting to sleep and staying asleep. She was fairly certain that based on my activity level, the usual side effect of weight gain would pass me by. I gained somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds almost immediately, and then plateaued, and I accepted this as a necessary side effect. More concerning was that I woke up most mornings in a fog that did not clear up until noon, and I lost pleasure in the simple act of getting a workout in. You know that feeling of runner's high? Gone.

Just gone. The endorphins that went along with working out were eliminated from my psyche.  Working out became about effort. It became about looking at my workout on paper and deciding if it was good or not after the fact. It became about redefining joy around a performance--be that finishing a workout, or about meeting a speed objective. I lost the ability to independently say whether I enjoyed doing what I was doing or not.

My psychiatrist suggested lowering the dose of Remeron, which appeared to help with the "been in the hit head with a shovel" aspect of waking up every morning. Strangely, the weight gain picked back up again, and there was no improvement in the runner's high side of things. I made the determination that I needed to come off of this drug, and with my psychiatrist, we decided that we would see how things would go in an unmedicated state. I'd been on this antidepressant for a year, and we agreed to taper off of it. She said she didn't need to see me again unless things went wrong. At the end of it, I gained 17 pounds, almost 10% of my initial body mass.

So, I came off the Remeron. I passed four kidney stones in three months, and work became a great upheaval of overcommitment. I recognized the problem as it was happening--I was on a trip, and having to deal with another program from my hotel room, in a double duty fashion, and a third thing occurred. When I politely explained my predicament, the requests just got louder (as in emails to include the managers in my group about me not getting stuff done). I wound up doing the work, and made mistakes like forgetting to load files onto my laptop so I could work on it while I was flying--I was just in a state where all the cylinders weren't firing, and it was digging an even deeper hole for me. After landing in Paris, I spent a good chunk of time in my hotel room completing a document because of that screw up. Maybe it helped with the jet lag. I don't know. I started on Klonopin again to get myself to sleep--which is the red flag I had set for myself that things had gone awry.

I passed that fourth kidney stone a few days after I got home from Paris. Dehydration from flying probably had something to do with it. I then threw out my back the day after my stone, and met with my therapist and my urologist. At the urging of my therapist, I met with my manager to talk about how to reduce my stress load at work, and he said all the right things in that meeting. "We need to find people to take over some of the work you have"..."we need to find ways to eliminate some of those problems that cause you issues, like the commute from Long Beach to El Segundo"--my experiment with a desk in Seal Beach failed miserably over the past year, because I had nearly daily reasons I had to be in El Segundo.

However, I left that meeting with no concrete plan--no actual changes to the schedule. No actual shifts in responsibility. So, the days unfolded as they had before. I would work on something, at the demand of somebody who had already thought that I had failed by being late, and get that done, and then go to another building the next day and repeat the process. The discussions with my therapist about going out on disability for stress leave became more real. I also decided I needed to get back with my psychiatrist to go on another anti-depressant, and it turned out that she was gone on vacation for 5 weeks, and refused to start me on anything from a distance because it had been too long since I had seen her--5 months apparently exceeds her threshold. She said I should go to my GP to get started on a different drug, and it was in that moment that I decided she had simply washed her hands of me.

So, I simultaneously tried to make appointments with a new psychiatrist my therapist had referred me to and my GP to get me started on Wellbutrin. The psychiatrist's first availability was Nov. 22nd, and my GP's was after my scheduled trip to D.C. I agreed on a same day appointment with another doctor in the office I had never seen before. He asked me a series of questions basically covering his ass, and then prescribed me a dosage of Wellbutrin that is, in all likelihood, ridiculously insufficient.  It's less than half of what I took when Wellbutrin worked for me before.

For anyone who was concerned about why I posted "I'm pretty sure one of the leading causes of suicide is 'we can't get you on the schedule for 2 months'"--this is it. To be very clear, I am not suicidal--but I believe that anyone who is that faces this complete load of crap in trying to seek professional help might just have problems making it through. I had follow up discussions with my manager over email, and he now understands just how serious this problem is, and is working on a path to correct it. The plan is not concrete, but it is coming together. I am hopeful that my life will begin to turn around very quickly.

But something needs to change. And I mean something very significant about how this country views and treats mental healthcare. It should not be the right of only the super rich who can afford to pay out of pocket for professionals who know what they're doing. And it should not only be the right of the wealthy upper middle class who have decent insurance.

I have a plan. I am not ok. But I will be ok, so that makes it ok. And I am hopeful that, as I claw my way out of this hole, I will find the joy of working out again, and the feelings of accomplishment that come from doing a good job on something at work, while not having to prioritize things in a way that starts with "Who do I want to piss off the least today?"

So, for all you out there who may be going through something similar--I'm here.

Returning to Normal Life

Passing a kidney stone ranks in the top 10 of pain caused by medical issues, along with things like cancer and childbirth, as well as other crap everyone should be thankful that they haven't had the pleasure of dealing with.

I passed 3 stones over the last 5 weeks, and it wasn't like the experience of the previous ones made the next ones any easier. They just made me aware that I probably wasn't going to die from this. Before I got the first one diagnosed in the ER, I thought I might have been dying, because that's how intense the pain was. There are some forms of pain the human body was not meant to be able to deal with.

As I was passing the 3rd stone, I referred to it as a "stone fragment" because that's what I thought it should have been. I had lithotripsy done 5 days before that in an effort to crush the stones into sand...and well, that didn't work out quite the way it should have. Doctors sometimes tell you the best case scenario, and if something worse (or more painful) happens, they're happy as long as it gets you past it.  In my case, the remaining stones were probably reduced in size, making it possible to pass them, but no less painful. I spent about 36 hours in agony on the 2nd day after lithotripsy and another 12-18 hours on the fifth day. The third stone was roughly the same size as the first one, so the use of the term "fragment" could not have been more wrong.

On Friday, I was elated to find out that I had no remaining stones left--that the ones I had formed were all successfully expelled in the week following my lithotripsy. I would like to be able to say that I feel like I'm 100%, but that's not actually true. I get tired really easily, and I'm hoping that will improve quickly. A little bit of me has been smacked in the face with the cold, hard reality of my own mortality. One does not go through three stones being passed without taking a moment to pause and reflect about the human body's capacity to suddenly betray you.

So, I'm sitting here in my mid 40's, grateful to be alive, but also conscious of the fact that being alive is a gift that should not be squandered. And I'm sleeping and resting a lot right now, and that's ok.

See you back out there, sometime soon.

"I'm no superman..."

"Well I know what I've been told
You gotta know just when to fold
But I can't do this all on my own
No, I know 
I'm no superman
I'm no superman"  

--"Superman," Lazlo Bane, theme song to Scrubs

Occasionally, life throws a curveball at you, and you have no choice but to adapt to it. 13 days before I was to leave on a trip for work to the east coast, I dealt with my kidney stone, and returned to work to find out that my trip had been canceled. My reaction was relief--these work trips leave everyone involved in them exhausted, to the point of sometimes being unable to recall complex words after they are over. You know--like when you're putting on your shoes, and you're sitting there going...I need to put on these other things before them.  What are those called...you know, made out of fabric? "Socks." I need to put on "socks."

I thought I'd be able to balance the follow up appointments--the scheduling of my pre-op appointment, the scheduling of my surgery, and get all the way through this phase of the new normal for me. It would result in blasting the crap out of the large kidney stone sitting in my right kidney so that there wouldn't be a chance it would get stuck between my kidney and my bladder if it were to start moving.

I thought I'd be able to do that while ramping back into a healthy amount of training. I thought I'd be able to return to eating well.

And then, three days later, we were told to reschedule our travel, and the trip was back on. I initially did not, and decided I needed to prioritize the lithotripsy for my kidney stone over this work. The doctor thought there was very little chance that the existing stones would start moving in the few weeks since my last one, so while traveling with the impending doom of pain that would literally bring me to my knees was a concern, it was unlikely to actually occur. The problem was that I didn't know when I would be able to schedule this surgical procedure.

That Monday, I got it scheduled for the 17th of August, and the pre-op appointment was clear of the trip. I was free to travel with all my coworkers.

By the way, "Scrubs" was an awesome show

I was not free to do what I typically do on these trips--which is to get a workout or two in before I go in to work, further stress my body out by dealing with extensively long hours, and throw caution to the wind in the amount of time that I should be sleeping. My marching orders are clear--keep the kidney happy. Things that would raise my blood pressure were to be avoided.  Working too many hours was not allowed. What I did probably pushed the line, by working every day that I was in DC (yes, including the weekend--this is normal for everyone that I travel with). I chugged a 1.5 liter bottle of water every day at work, in addition to the usual fluid intake that I have, and made many, many trips to the bathroom.

I'm learning to say no, out of necessity. Within the first couple of days I was in D.C., an urgent request came through that I agreed to take care of my first day back, but I refused to reschedule my pre-op appointment around it. On Thursday, someone else will present that material for me. So, I'm completely brain-dead from the work I just got through, and I'm going to go in to work tomorrow and crank some shit out....do not get me started on why no one else is able to do this for me. But I'll leave, and I'm going to take the next two days off.   I need to put my life back together.

I'm going to take those two days and relax...and get the fairly manageable looking workouts done that I have on my plan, and not get stressed out about any of it.

Sometimes, life throws a curveball at you, and your health should always take priority.

Gertrude

Lap 3, two laps to go. I woke up at 2:30, due to jet lag from returning from Europe two nights ago, and I really didn't think anything of the early wake-up. Had a couple of shots of espresso because I was clearly not getting back to sleep, and suddenly I've got this unrelenting pain in the midsection of my right abdomen.

I named my stone, "Gertrude."  I think I will frame it.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, something told me to get up and walk, because that's what women in labor do to get through the pain. Around the island in the kitchen, through the kitchen doorway by the front door, past the tv, and around the couch to the wine rack and back again. Lap 4. If I can make it to lap 5, I'm sure it will pass.

Lap 5. I decide to lie down after meeting my goal and think that maybe the pain has decreased a little, and I am sadly informed by my gut that there would be no break from this. I try lying on my left side. I try lying on my right side. I lie on my back and massage my abdomen. A cramp, but not a cramp--a feeling that something inside me is tearing apart. It hurts too much to cry.

5 minutes pass. If I can make it to daylight, I'm sure it will improve.

10 minutes go by, and I decide I need to walk again. Lap 1. This is worse. Lap 2. It's no better. I round the island in the kitchen, holding myself up as I pass it, and my knees start to wobble. I let out a groan, and I'm aware that Brian has gotten up to go to the bathroom. I bypass completing lap 3 and heave myself up the stairs on all fours. "I need help. This hurts so bad, I don't know what to do. I need you to take me to the hospital."

Hesitation. I expect this. It's 3am, about 30 hours after we got home from Europe. Brian is sick with a monster cold. I wonder if this is what Brian's diverticulitis felt like. I have no idea what's wrong with me. "I need my pants and my wallet." Brian goes to the bathroom as I manage to pull on my pajama bottoms. We meet at the bottom of the stairs and he hesitates to open the front door. "What's wrong?"
Brian says, "I'm turning off the alarm." I know this, but every second of delay hurts more. The alarm is shut off and we make it down the stairs to his car. I get in the passenger seat.

"I need air." Brian rolls down the window. We're on PCH, and there is too much wind. "It's too much." Brian rolls up the window mostly.

We sail through the traffic lights to the traffic circle, and there's a red light for the left turn to get to the emergency room--I want him to run the red light. Brian isn't sure where to go for the ER.

"There," I say, and he makes another left turn into the ER dropoff. I'm aware he can't park here, but that's not my problem. I make it to the admit desk, and then crumple to the ground. "I need help.  It hurts here," as I grab my right side.

Sadly, I had thought that if I could make it this far, they would help me immediately. They tell me to take a seat, and I can't sit--the pain is too intense. I try standing, and I fall to the ground. The admit desk tells me I can't lie on the floor, and I tell them I can't sit. I try heaving myself up by my arms, and I manage to stand for a while.

"I can't breathe.  I told you I can't breathe, " a man yells at the admissions guy. "I need to dial 911 and go to a real hospital." I'm not really sure what happened to him, but I had a feeling he left the waiting room. There is one triage nurse, and he is dealing with the patient who came in before me. I wonder if this person is there for a cold, or bronchitis, or something equally as "not emergency."

Eventually, it's my turn, and the triage nurse tells me to sit in a chair. I can't sit. I stand, holding myself up by the countertop. Slowly, methodically, he goes through each question. I can't remember what they were. I need to lie down.

And I eventually do lie down, in the bed in the ER. They want my shirt off and a gown on. I lie there...I think for an hour or two, while the ER nurse asks me questions, hooks me up to a monitor, takes my blood pressure, and seems to accomplish nothing. The heart rate monitor keeps alarming every time my heart rate drops into the 40s. The alarm pisses me off, and my heart rate rises back into the 50s. My blood pressure is through the roof--something like 170/110. I ask Brian to ask the nurse to set the heart rate alarm lower, at 40. Somewhere during this time, I communicate that I've had my appendix removed, and I have to go to the bathroom. I come back and even though I feel like I constantly have to pee, there's nothing to pee. The nurse asks me if I've had kidney stones.

"No, but my dad and my brother both have."

At this moment, it dawns on me that this is what it must be.

"I'll report this to the doctor." The nurse disappears. My belief that my active lifestyle would avoid this genetically fated hell falls apart in the minutes of this realization. I had no idea how painful kidney stones are.

They eventually roll me to a CT scanner. Brian goes to get something to eat. Hours have transpired. The guy rolling my gurney to CT and I start talking about the cruise I was on--somehow I've told him about how we flew on a helicopter to an iceberg when we went on an Alaskan cruise many years ago, and he says those are the experiences he wants to have.

The CT goes easily--it's so much easier than an MRI. I'm aware that it's a thousand times the exposure of a single x-ray, and I don't care. It's preferable to dying.

An hour later and Brian asks what's going on. There are no results yet, and finally the doctor comes back and says I have a 2 mm stone somewhere between my kidney and my bladder--he said more specifically where it was, but I don't remember that detail. The plan is to let it pass. There's a 4 mm stone and another 2 mm stone in that right kidney and then others in my left kidney. I should follow up with my doctor, and if the pain gets worse, return immediately.

I've been hooked up to an IV and I get Toradol for the pain--it starts working and I feel fine in about 20 minutes. I wonder if the stone is passing or if it's just the pain medication, and they discharge me. We drive through Burger King on the way home, and I collapse on the couch. At some point, I decide I need to walk to CVS, because walking is supposed to help, so I pick up my drugs, and Brian asks me to get him some cold medication.

During the day, I decide that I want to watch the movie "Life," that I bought on my laptop on iTunes several weeks ago, but I can't figure out how to get the AppleTV signed into my account--effing two-factor authentication. Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhal in the same movie. Ryan Reynolds dies--this is stressful. An hour in, my pain starts to return and I take a Percocet. I have to pee through a screen filter until this stone passes.

I start watching Deadpool, and it's really hard to follow while strung out on Percocet. I don't finish it. I don't remember if I had dinner. I go to bed.

I wake up in pain about 9pm, and take another Percocet--I go back to sleep. Maybe 11pm, maybe midnight, I have to pee again, and the stone pops out. Diffuse lower back pain. It does not hurt to pee. I always assumed pissing a stone out would hurt like hell, and it does not.

I go back to sleep thinking this is over, and I wake up and realize that I've got as many as 5 other stones sitting in my kidneys that I have to get taken care of, which results in a call to my doctor, and they can't see me for 3 weeks. The scheduler is not helpful. I start screaming at her what the problem is and that these stones will put me back in the hospital, and she finally gets a message to my doctor, who responds that I have to go to a Urologist--who, luckily, can see me tomorrow.

My Urologist informs me that I need to get the larger stone broken up with lithotripsy, which is an ultrasound treatment to break up kidney stones because the 4.5mm stone may get stuck on the way out and cause me to have to have surgery--he believes it will remain in my kidney for some time, so it is urgent, but not an emergency, and the woman who schedules these procedures is out on vacation until Monday. I have that larger one to deal with, a smaller one, about the size of the one I just passed, and then the others are really not kidney stones, but small calcifications, that are of no consequence. I will have to endure the smaller stone passing at some unknown time in the future. I am a ticking time bomb.

I sit waiting...hoping that the large stone doesn't pass before they can blast the crap out of it.

The Worst Triathlon Ever

Yesterday was the day of the worst triathlon I ever did. Or didn't do, as the case may be. Close to 9 months ago, I registered for the triathlon at World Out Games Miami, as well as the swim meet (hosted in tandem with IGLA, the international governing body for gay and lesbian aquatics). Without belaboring the point, the sole reason that swimming, water polo, synchro, and diving went on is because of the blood, sweat, and tears of the members of IGLA that organize these sports on an annual basis. Without them, swimming would have likely fallen to the same fate as the upwards of 300 other sports that were canceled in the days before the events were to take place.

Something seemed off about the triathlon in the weeks leading up to when we departed for Miami. It is virtually unheard of to not receive a ridiculously long electronic packet of information for a triathlon prior to the race. Generally, there are something like 2 important details buried in 30 pages of stuff you have heard a million times. Since I hadn't heard anything, I emailed OutGames, as well as our swim team's contact to IGLA to ask two rather important questions--the first was if the event was still going on, and the second was what the water temperature in Miami was. I live on the west coast, and the ocean water temperature is always freezing cold, always wetsuit legal, and never something that you have to question. Miami, however, is much warmer, and a google search said upper 70s or low 80s this time of year--likely above the threshold for use of a wetsuit, and one less thing I should pack for a triathlon. I hadn't received a response from them the day before I left for Miami, so I asked my coach what she thought the likelihood of a wetsuit swim was, and she responded that it was pretty unlikely and the water temp was likely to be in the 80s--it was enough for me to not pack the wetsuit.

I found out the triathlon was canceled as we were pushing back from the gate to fly to Miami. In the several minutes before we had to shut down electronic devices, we found out that there were people coming from as far as Australia whose events had been canceled while they were in-flight. The email from OutGames was succinct, mildly apologetic, and made it clear that swimming would go on. I am much more fortunate than a lot of other people who trained for their races all year long, some of whom undoubtedly made this their A-priority race of the season. They lost their OutGames general registration fee ($150) along with their sport specific event fee, which varied by sport, but was $125 for the triathlon. If someone were traveling specifically for the triathlon, and not doing any other sports, they lost $275. Nobody has any expectation that refunds for these sports are coming--in all likelihood, this is money they will never see again.

Word got out that OutGames allowed people to register for the events as late as the week before the opening ceremonies. One person who posted to Facebook said that she and her partner registered for Golf the week before and were given no indication that there was anything wrong with the events. It is implausible that the organizers of OutGames did not know that they were in financial straits a week before the events that they canceled. Statements such as "fraud" and "misappropriation of funds" were tossed about on social media. An article came out in the Miami Herald that the organization would be investigated. Anybody who watches TV or movies knows that these things take time, sometimes on the order of years to come to conclusion, and anyone who has been the beneficiary of a class-action lawsuit knows that the likely outcome is that each person that is owed any money will wind up with no more than pennies on the dollar of what they paid, if they get anything at all.

I don't ever expect to see the hundred and twenty-five bucks I lost on the triathlon again. The cynic in me says that OutGames owes me more than that, because part of the reason there is a general registration fee is to cover the cost of the multi-sport/multi-cultural events that are a big part of the gathering of gay and lesbian athletes from across the globe, and those events were canceled outright. Recovering that money is a pipe dream strapped to the back of a unicorn, sliding down a rainbow into a pot of gold.

What I lost more than that money was the experience of doing that triathlon, because those events are fun to do, in particular when the pressure is off to perform well. I've been dealing with an elbow injury, and had made peace with the fact that I would likely struggle through the swim (I swam as slow as a 5:32 for a 400 meter free this week), and then see what I could do with the bike and the run. Again, I am much better off than some people, who were likely gunning to go a PR, win the race, or have some other goal they had been working toward for a very long time. OutGames stole that opportunity from them.

OutGames dashed the hopes of thousands of athletes this week, and for that, they should be cast out of existence, never to be heard from again...except for the check for 67 cents I'll probably get in 5 years.