Electronics Disaster: USAT Mideast Regional Championship

Best race t-shirt ever.

What can I say? I'm rusty - in both blogging and Olympic distance racing. Actually, in racing altogether. And definitely in my pre-race preparations. If I weren't so rusty, my return to racing may have been disaster-free.

But it wasn't.

After 10 weeks of dealing with a difficult-to heal tibia stress fracture, my doctor finally gave me the go-ahead to race without my aircast. Personally, I think he did it to avoid having me lapse into a psychotic episode. I think my words to him before he said "ok, you can race" were: "I CANNOT D.N.S. ANOTHER RACE." And yes, I actually said it in ALL CAPS. This injury had already cost me three races this year: the Boston Marathon, the Ohio Triple-T, and Ironman 70.3 Eagleman. The only things left on my schedule now are Olympic distance races. And I'm still not pain-free, but if a 6.2-mile run is ok with the doc, then it's ok with me (*end of discussion*).

However, in the last two weeks, I managed only two runs longer than 30 minutes, thus, I wasn't even sure I'd be able to run the entire 10K (holy hell, did I really say that?). Enroute to the race, my husband Jim and I discussed that my swimming and biking would have to be enough carry me. I think his exact words were: "you'll have to hammer the swim and bike and just see what happens." See. What. Happens. This race had now become a shakedown. My goals? Get back into short racing (from Ironman), put myself in a race situation, make mistakes... and perhaps the hardest one of all: deal with it.

Let's be honest - the proverbial "it" here was one thing: my running. For the first time in my triathlon career, I would have to deal with the inability to use my run to its advantage. My run would not only be sub-optimal - it would probably be my slowest 10K ever. I might have to walk. I might have to WALK. Walking in a marathon is understandable, but walking in a 10K? How much mental pain would I inflict on myself after that? But it had to be done. The 10K, that is. Not necessarily the walking. Let's just say the walking part was my demons surfacing (,climbing up onto land, and beating me senseless).

Which brings me to the race - it was the USAT Mideast Regional Championship. As a qualifier for the USAT Age Group National Championship in August, this race was meant to be good competition for me to prepare for the ITU Age Group World Championship in London in September. But it certainly helped that it was only three hours away in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Medal with a second life.

We quickly learned there were other way more awesome reasons to do this race. It started with my favorite race shirt of all time (see photo at top) designed by Frazz himself, Jef Mallett (who also raced). And for finishers, it came with one of the best medals of all time - it doubled as a bottle opener (do I have to explain why that's cool?).

And, yes, there were trade-offs as well. Despite the amazing work that Epic Races does with their events, this one suffered a bit because of the venue. It was held at Portage Lake Beach in the Waterloo Recreation Area, and upon checking in, we became acutely aware of one very annoying thing about this place: mosquitoes. Everywhere. Especially in transition. I was bitten to death before the race even started. (There were additional negative aspects of the race I will discuss shortly.)

But let's get back to the positives. For me, there was an unexpected perk that came with getting to the venue the day before. Tired of listening to me gripe about wanting to replace my old DeSoto two-piece maddening-to-strip-off wetsuit for two years, Jim convinced me to talk to the Aquaman dealer (a very nice Frenchman named Emmanuel Millet - website aquamantri.com). Not only did he tell us why his suits are number one in Europe, he let me take one back to the hotel to try on and bring back the next day. Astonished, I took him up on the offer. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to find the suit (the "Bionik") had an amazing fit only to be negated by a neck gap [that would no-doubt cause it to fill up with water]. I almost cried because this suit did not restrict my shoulders AT ALL, and it came off instantly because of the high cut arms and legs.

Instead of focusing on my race that night, I spent the time researching Aquaman wetsuits (don't. there is very little information out there.) because the price was about $250 less than comparable name-brand suits. My only hope was that the women's small would actually fit and be available to try the next day. And it was. After a decent night's sleep (surprise, no sleep disaster despite all my worries), I bought an Aquaman Bionik the next morning. The fit is as close to perfect as it gets.

For the race, I had decided not to wear my wetsuit because the water temp was (a balmy) 75 deg F. Then, about an hour before gun-time, I changed my mind and decided to learn the ins and (more importantly) outs of this suit in real time. Heck, this was a shakedown - why shouldn't I do something untested on race day?

For once I didn't have to stop to pull my
DeSoto T1 wetsuit top off over my head

The 1.5K swim was a two-loop course with a deep water start - or, more aptly, a "deep seaweed" start. By the time I reached the first turn buoy, I became intimately aware of something grabbing my feet - not hands, but a cling-on. I tried to shake it off several times, but it had firmly adhered itself to the gigantic timing chip (you know, the ones that look like trucks attached to your ankle). I carried my stowaway through the second loop, but by the finish, I had become more concerned about how hot it was in my wetsuit and took no notice when it finally set me free. I'm subtracting at least two seconds for the extra drag.

Getting out of the water was followed by one of the other trade-offs of this race: THE longest transition I've ever seen in a race - it was even longer than the Chicago Triathlon. Looking at it, I had a tiny inkling of what it was like to storm the beach at Normandy. We had to run up the beach, up a hill, down a paved path and around several turns. By the time I got to my bike, I had almost forgotten why I was there. I wasn't surprised to find at the top of the hill, the guy in front of me stepped off the path to vomit. (Embarrassingly, I took solace in his misfortune - THAT guy was almost surely in for a worse race than I was.)

Panoramic vista, a.k.a. the swim exit

I did remember to look at my watch as I came out of the water and saw the number 20 on it. I was happy with that. The official results added in the run to transition, giving me 22:34 minutes. (Note: I would have been happy with that as a swim time too.)

My wetsuit came off without a hitch. However, I was about to ride smack into the major disaster of my day. My rustiness bit me in the first mile of the bike leg. I looked down at my bike computer only to find the sensor was not registering. (Because I had not checked it while setting up in transition. Even though Jim asked me if I did.) I had to stop for a minute or two to fix it. That was electronics disaster part one.

Heading into T2, happy to be on smooth pavement

Electronics disaster part two followed shortly thereafter. The bike course was a teeth-chatterer - mostly due to road patches and cracks - and turned out to be another drawback of this race. There were only two small stretches of road that were smooth. And I had just received one of those touch-screen 250-lap Timex watches for my birthday only to find that touching the screen wasn't the only thing that took a split. Every. Single. Bump. caused my watch to take a split. I started focusing on that and not paying attention to my ride. And seriously, I had no idea how hard to ride for a 40K. I got into a leap frog with another woman and tried to gauge my speed based on what she was doing. It also helped to have someone to watch in order to navigate the bigger bumps and rattlers. My speed stayed mostly over 20 mph with a couple of flat stretches that I got up to 26. My legs felt fatigued for most of it but not burned out.

I rolled into transition with absolutely no clue what my time was (note e-disaster part 1&2 above). Jim yelled that I was the fourth woman and: "don't chase, just take it easy!"

Yeah right.

I settled immediately into a comfortable pace that felt more like a marathon shuffle. I could not stretch out my stride (have I mentioned an additional hip problem that is still undergoing therapy?). The run started on a paved park road but very quickly turned into seriously rolling hills on dirt roads and trails. Great! My slowness would be compounded by slowness of surface.

The last two miles of the run were on wooded single-track trail that was so winding and rolling I couldn't see anyone in front or behind. At one point, I truly believed I was no longer on the course. There wasn't anywhere to have gone OFF-course, but running alone for that long in a short race can play tricks on my mind. Did I say "running"?

I told you my run was ugly.

YES, I was STILL running. At mile four. I never saw a marker for mile five. I WAS taking splits just in case I ever wanted to go back and upset myself by looking at them. Mostly I was relieved to find that even though they were all over 7 minutes, they were under 8.

Finally, a guy came up behind me and when I turned around to look, he said: "yeah I'm back here - I've been trying to catch you the whole trail." I had no idea what distance was left, but there was NO way I was going to let THAT guy beat me. I tried to pick up it up, but my body's response was dismal. And just like that, we were out of the woods (in theory and in practice) and back onto a paved parking lot with people yelling that the finish was right around the corner. (It wasn't.)

We still had about a half mile to go, so I just hung on. I don't know where my chaser was but he wasn't with me at the finish line. I grabbed a flag (did I tell you that one of the race participants - a veteran - brought American flags from Afghanistan for us to run with across the finish line to show our support of US Troops? well, that's what the flag was for) - and ran across the line with people yelling that I was the third woman finisher.

I barely kept my balance
grabbing that flag (it was huge). 

As it turns out, I was the first over-40 finisher and won the overall female masters award. I tried not to care about my splits right away (Jim will tell you different) - and I was pretty happy to find out that my official finish time was 2:16:55. I was also pretty happy to find that the masters award came with some pretty cool swag from USAT (free year membership and a vest), Rudy Project (free sunglasses), and the supporting bike shop, Transition Rack ($25 gift certificate). I'm not complaining.

In the car on the way home, I tried to make sense of my splits and finally gave up. The final electronics disaster was finding out that my new watch only saves 50 splits per event (wtf, Timex?), and that none of my run splits were stored. I'll never really know what happened out there, but I do know that my 10K was 44:37 (I refuse to calculate the pace). My transitions were slow. But my bike split was 1:07:22 - which includes the stop to fix my sensor - so there's THAT.

And because there's everyone's lingering question: "what's up with the stress fracture?" Here's what happened: during the first three miles of the run, I forgot I had a stress fracture. During the last three miles, a low-grade worsening pain reminded me of it. But then, shortly after I finished, the pain strangely ramped up to a fear-inducing level. I slapped on the aircast, wore it the rest of the day, and prayed. By this morning, it was gone.

And just like that, my hope for salvaging a triathlon season looks much brighter than it did yesterday.

UPDATE: We found out today that my third place overall finish was actually second place because the second place woman was given six minutes in drafting penalties. Wow.

The guy I'm shaking hands with is Michael Wendorf, USAT Mideast Region Vice-Chair,
Michigan Rep, and Youth Development Program Chair, but MOST importantly,
he's in his mid-50s and he BLEW BY ME on the run like I was standing still.

The "M" Word

Menopause. There. I SAID it.

It's like nature's cruel joke. I'm not surprised it has the word "men" in it. If I didn't know better, I'd be sure to blame them for it. But currently, I find that I'm blaming IT for everything else.

For every woman, I'm sure it goes down different. I used to be under the impression that the so-called change of life happened over "years." And not until at LEAST age 50. But a few months ago, I started having hot flashes. For several years I was also under the impression that hot flashes were the same thing as night sweats. Once in a while I would wake up in the middle of the night drenched and have to get up and change my clothes. I thought maybe I was in that very-early-but-not-quite-starting-to-think-about-it-yet menopausal stage. But my older (you know, 50-something) friends would say "oh, that's a hot flash." Hmm.. really? OK. I can deal with this.

Then the real hot flashes began. Like, this-is-all-out-war-with-heat-seeking-missiles hot flashes. In the DAYTIME. During work. During workouts. All hours. Every day. I had been living with a screwy temperature regulation in my workplace that usually found me complaining and in a coat to avoid finger-numbing cold. But a few weeks ago, my good friend and cohort, Linda, saw me fanning myself and she asked me if I was ok. Oh, just a hot flash, I said. Her comeback?

She grinned and spoke these words: "Welcome to the dark side."

I don't like the dark side. It makes me crazy. My already frazzled nerves have gone to completely frayed. And so far, I have found only one upside (ONE!) to this new state of existence: my grocery bill will no longer skyrocket when I need to purchase feminine products.

Menopause has now become my excuse for just about everything. Bad race? Must be menopause. Heart rate out of control during workout? Menopause. Can't sleep? Menopause. Foot itches? Menopause. Hangover? Menopause. Ran a red light? Menopause.

I didn't used to do that. I used to desperately search for reasons why my body didn't cooperate in racing/training situations. One day after a particularly bad situation, I think I said (out loud): "I'm going to blame this one on menopause." My friend Julie was within earshot and responded with: "Sounds good to me. I blame everything I can on menopause."

And there it was. My go-to excuse.

Dropping out of races last year with respiratory infection/asthma/dehydration? No. It was actually menopause. It CAUSED all those other things.

Hip injury in Kona? Menopause.

Falling and tearing my shoulder? Menopause (for both the fall AND the tear).

And most recently, getting a stress fracture in my tibia for no apparent reason?

Yes. Menopause.

And seriously, in THIS case, this might actually BE the case. I recently read that just going through menopause can cause a bone density reduction of up to 20%. After discussing the likely causes of this particular stress fracture, my orthopedic doctor suggested I talk to my PCP about getting a bone-density test (DEXA scan). So that's the plan.

In the meantime, I'm finding ways to not run much. But I'm swimming more. And I'm learning some things about myself and swimming that I always knew but tried to deny. There may be more swimming in my future. I may even blog about it.

I know, I haven't blogged much lately. What can I say? It's probably menopause.

When Sorrows Come

I was fortunate to have an amazing English teacher in high school who told the class that we will someday use the Shakespeare quotes that we were force to memorize. Especially the ones from Hamlet. And wouldn't you know? He was right.

Which brings me to the quote: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but it battalions." This year, I'm truly living the Disaster Magnet credo, and I've pretty much thrown in the towel. I feel alone. And sad. And worthless. And scared that I'm in a hole I'll never get out of.

I've been struggling since last October to get healthy. I've been doing everything "they" tell you to. I took a lot of time off from training. I'm working with a physical therapist to fix the weak points. But things just keep crumbling. And to make it worse, they're not only related to athletics.

I was determined to fight my negativism, look for the silver lining, not wallow in despair, and laugh at all of it. I had been very successful at this for several months. Even my husband Jim said he was impressed by my attitude this year. But today,... well, today I finally broke down. I'm tired and sad and I'm sick of being injured despite how hard I've been working to get un-injured. I'm sick of having things start to go well only to be struck down by something else. I'm sick of having dental work go horribly wrong. I'm tired of drowning myself in work to avoid having to think about anything else. I'm tired of hoping. And I'm tired of keeping it all inside.

(The latest is that one of my gum grafts didn't take and will most likely require more surgery - believe me, one of the worst things you can experience is having a doctor say "uh-oh" when inspecting a post-surgical site. I also won't be running the Boston Marathon this year because I have a stress fracture in my tibia. This is my fifth stress fracture, but my first in 13 years. This one came without warning. I never even got a chance to back off to avoid it. And it came just when my running was just starting to feel strong and fast again because of the PT.)

I had even lost the will to draw (thus also feeling like a failure because of the promise I made to myself). But I picked up a pen again and made two new drawings (they made me cry even more, but I did them). I know they're pretty bad, but I'm trying to get back on track.

The first one I call "Stress Fracture No. 6":

The second one I call "Foothills" - although it started out being a drawing of the hole I was stuck in.

March Update

Nothing much is going on in my world that's worthy of writing home about, but here's an update (like anyone cares).

My daily drawing has been a fail because I stopped doing it while I was feverishly preparing a talk on my latest project (the Cleveland Museum of Art's website) for the Cleveland Drupal Users group. The talk went well, despite my struggles with stage fright.

My training has been another fail because my physical therapist still can't fix what's wrong with my left hip and the torn labrum in my shoulder is back to its pain-state after the cortisone shot wore off. But this past week, we got a little closer to fixing my hip - a new stretch seems to have freed up the tendency to pull my foot inward on the left side. I have some new stretches and a less pessimistic outlook on the future. I've given up hope of running all 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon and begun to look at this trip as just a way to satisfy my craving for New England clams.

I will be having periodontal surgery tomorrow - three teeth will have gum grafts and then I am told I must give up two weeks of training to recover. This will probably kill me (another reason for writing this blog just in case it's my last). I will attempt to focus on my art in (strangely still-optimistic) hope that I may get good at something before I die.

The only thing I did conquer recently was making pie crust.

And I learned something that I always knew about myself - that I was a fish in a former life. There's no other way to explain how I feel when I'm in the water and not focusing on swim training. Sometimes it feels like it's the only time I'm truly at peace with the world and myself. It also might explain why I've almost gone crazy living in places that are land-locked.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I got, and some pictures of the goings-on in my life...

Latest drawings (the first two are hip pain, the "lightbulb" one was during the Super Bowl when the lights went out in the Super Dome):

There were two new Play-Doh disasters (autobiographical): 

And we took a trip to Pittsburgh to eat, shop, and visit my favorite Edward Hopper painting: 

We saw a special exhibition of art from the World's Fairs at the Carnegie Museum of Art:

Then we went to the galleries - and once again checked out Hopper's Cape Cod Afternoon:

We got lost in Pittsburgh for the 50 billionth time (note that at one point, the GPS thought we were smack in the middle of the Monongahela River)

I went running on a very snowy morning along the north shore riverfront trail (one of my favorite Pittsburgh running spots)

The Continuing Play-doh Creative Endeavors

I created a few more Play-doh Disaster Magnet moments that I wanted to share just in case I don't have time for a drawing today. Sometimes, these are just.. well.. easier - in the grand scheme of creative endeavors. The first one (lightbulb-guy) was done when I was really stuck on a stumper of a programming problem at work one day. Oddly enough, shortly after creating the lightbulb, I actually came up with the solution to the problem.

PDDM fashions himself into a lightbulb
to solve his latest problem

Bad day at work?
(Note: background music during this was "Bad Day" by REM)

(Khan!!!)

Visions of Physical Therapy

I just started seeing a physical therapist to fix whatever is wrong with my left hip. On the referral, my orthopedic doctor wrote "capsulitis"-- according to my PT, this is a very general term identifying inflammation of the "capsule" surrounding the hip joint. I think it sounds like I'm taking too many drugs (capsules?). Either way, I haven't been to PT in almost 20 years. It's been so long that I almost didn't recognize my physical therapist (but it was really great to see him again). I told him I hadn't had a problem since last time he fixed me, but I finally broke everything he did and that's why I was back in his office after all these years. He promised to fix me up again (too bad what's wrong isn't all physical).

The first thing he did was identify a major weakness on my RIGHT side. I was blindingly aware of it -- embarrassingly, every time I tried to balance on my right foot, I must have looked drunk. Who knew? He also did a manipulation to rebalance my pelvis which was rotated on the left side. He told me to go running and note how I felt.

So I went home and ran. And something must have changed because the excruciating pain came flooding back into my left hip. But, as usual, as I ran, it didn't get any worse and it didn't get any better. The rest of my evening was spent sitting on an ice pack and listening to the pain shoot all the way down to my ankle. But, progress has been made. And I can continue with the "pain" drawings.

Here are my latest two -- calling them the "physical therapy drawings." The first one was the day before my visit, the second one was during yesterday's ice-pack recovery.

If it's not the Weather, I'm in Trouble

I keep wanting to feel more motivated, and I keep doing things to try to motivate myself, but lately I feel like I'm in the biggest rut of my life to date. I'm no longer an athlete, my work is starting to bore me, and now my commitment to drawing is wavering. The light at the end of the tunnel is dimming. We've been stuck for a week in snow and extremely cold temperatures so I'm wondering if that's affecting me. I'm mentally and emotionally shutting down and I feel more introverted every day. I disappointed myself even more by doing only two drawings in four days. The first was a reaction to my husband telling me how the RA is now affecting his feet. The second was right after I watched a program on the History 2 channel about a volcanic event 250 million years ago that wiped out 95% of species on earth (they kept referring to it as the "greatest mass-extinction event of all time"). I don't even know why I'm even posting this stuff anymore.

More Fix-it Things

Yesterday, my husband Jim said his knee was hurting more than usual (from arthritis), so I told him I would draw something to fix it. This is what I came up with (I'm not sure he liked it - but I'm not sure whether it's because he didn't think it would do the job or if he was just generally mortified as usual):

Fixing Things that Hurt

Sometimes while drawing, I try to come up with solution to my injury problems. This is what I came up with yesterday - for my hip injury.

2013, for Starters

It's been a while since I wrote a proper blog - and I don't know how many of my readers care about my delusional artistic endeavors. But to be fair, I always said I was doing my daily drawings for me - the only reason I'm posting them is to keep me honest. I'm hoping my drawings evolve into something, anything, but for now, they just keep going aimlessly. The exercise has taught me several things:

• Drawing is therapeutic. This is why I have always needed it and sometimes it's where I turn when I can't run. 
• The most satisfaction in creating art (if you can call it that) comes from doing it for myself and no one else. If you force it (several times I sketched just to get one done for that day), it will be a disaster.
• I still love drawing and I have a new-found love of pen & ink - I'm even working on a large-scale (i.e., non-sketch) work to enter in the staff art show this year at The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Enough about that.

In the other realms of my existence, I've been riding roller-coasters. I've touched on some of the ups and downs with my daily drawings but offered little explanation. I suppose I should write more about them for those who might care. From my web hits, I can see that there are about three people left who (may or may not be) interested in what's going on (or in my art). At this point, I write for myself just to work things out in my mind, and I'm currently dealing with the following three things: a shoulder injury, a hip injury, and a "dental" injury.

THE SHOULDER INJURY

You may recall that I slipped and fell while running on a sidewalk last summer (a mishap of which only the Disaster Magnet was capable), and my right shoulder took the brunt of the fall. I was in the middle of the season, and after many weeks of pain, I went to see my doctor and his recommendation was to medicate and ice and cut down on the swimming to heal it. It hurt, but when I took time off, it never got any better. When I swam, it never got any worse. So I dealt with it. Pain. Every day. It was always there - when I lifted things, carried things, reached behind myself, tried to scratch my back (I can't), or put on sweaters and coats (a much bigger issue in winter). My doctor finally ordered an MRI with contrast and the injury was diagnosed: a labral tear. It probably won't heal without surgery because of the lack of blood flow to the area. But after five weeks of no swimming, I wasn't willing to go through another six weeks off. So we're trying an aggressive ice/anti-inflammatory treatment to get me through this season. And there's cortisone waiting in the wings.

In the meantime, I've continued my run as the Disaster Magnet this month by falling down the stairs and once again causing trauma to the right shoulder. Falling down the stairs wasn't the reasoning for the "DM" nomenclature. Falling down the stairs after leaving work early to avoid a driving disaster in the rapidly-approaching blizzard was the "DM" part. Only me.

I've recently started swimming again only to prove one thing to myself: I can still whip myself into swimming shape in less than two weeks with only 2-3 swim sessions per week. Sure, it'll take a LOT more than that to get into 2.4-mile Ironman shape, but I'm not doing Ironman this year, so I'm encouraged that I'll be able to do the necessary swims to at least be "in the race" in September. I'm not deluding myself: percentage-wise, the swim is much more important in Olympic-distance racing than in Ironman.

THE HIP INJURY

The hip is still an enigma. Like the shoulder, it never gets worse, and it never gets better. Some days I'm breaking down in tears from the pain, and some days I'm wondering where it went. My doctor theorized that it could also be a labral tear (wouldn't that be coincidental? especially since there are only two places in the body that have a labrum - the hip and shoulder joints). But, after extensive movement-checking, this was thrown out as a possibility. We've also dismissed sciatica. The next step is to bring in a physical therapist (and if that doesn't work, another MRI). I'm encouraged by the ruling out of two major hip problems. Back in 1993, I saw a physical therapist for my piriformis, and he determined that I have a rotated left hip that was directly responsible for all my running injuries. Could it be that all I have to do is get back into balance and strengthen the area as I did before? (I'm hoping - but also being realistic and not expecting miracles.)

THE "DENTAL" INJURY

Plaster model of my teeth

This one will take some explanation, but I'll try to make it as short as possible. I rarely talk about it because it's been with me for most of my life and I've already done all the crying about it.

In short, my jaw has a deformity known as an "open bite [malocclusion]." As a kid, I was mocked as "buck-toothed," and despite four years of braces in high school, the problem was never corrected (we didn't know then that only surgery can fix it). To make matters worse, I've had two major traumas to my jaw.

As of this week, I've theorized that the first one might be responsible for the malocclusion. When I was 10, in an attempt to replicate a circus act in my room while my parents had company, my brother launched me off my bed, and I landed on the floor, on my face. My front left tooth broke in two places and was left in a spike shape, like a fang. It was a horrible, horrible day for me AND my parents, and the only thing I remember was the sympathy I got from my cousin's wife who held me in her arms crying for pretty much the whole rest of the day.

The broken tooth was capped with a temporary crown, but for more than a year, the sensitivity to hot and cold was so severe that I developed a way of eating and drinking to avoid anything touching that tooth. The pain was so bad that sometimes my mother just pumped me full of aspirin and sent me to bed (because that's what you do when kids complain). I remember the breaking point at a junior football game (my brothers played, I cheered - which means I had to be out in the *cold* with my mouth open every weekend). I remember starting to cry, and I must have finally made my point because the next week I was at the dentist only to find out the tooth had an abscess and needed a root canal. I think years of trying to protect that tooth with my tongue and odd chewing habits may have created the situation I'm in today.

The second traumatic injury to my jaw came in 1994 in a running accident (you KNEW running would factor in). The accident was one of those weird flukes - something that could only happen to a Disaster Magnet. I was running on a sidewalk that had a little zig-zag in it to continue over a small bridge. As I turned the corner, I collided with a guy flying along on his mountain bike (yes, on the sidewalk in a residential neighborhood). His shoulder hit my lower jaw and we both ended up on the ground - me, eventually, in an ambulance. It wasn't broken but I had to see a TMJ specialist, who surmised that the accident completely destroyed the delicate balance that had evolved in my jaw with the open bite. He finally explained this: only two teeth in my mouth ever came together (two back molars), my front teeth would NEVER come together, and this WASN'T normal.

Shortly after that I started grinding my teeth in my sleep - your guess is as good as mine why it hadn't started years before. My current dentist believes it's my subconscious trying to level everything out and make all my teeth come together. I ground down my molars on one side so that now four teeth are hitting, but because I chew primarily on one side and grind at night, I'm continuing to damage my back teeth and gums. I've already broken one of my wisdom teeth. For many years, my dentist has been encouraging me to consult with an orthodontist so that I don't destroy what's left of my teeth. I finally did that two months ago.

Here's the solution to my jaw problems:

• One to two years of braces to position my teeth for the surgeon
• Depending on my crowding situation, possibly removing my wisdom teeth
• Jaw surgery - which consists of removing bone from my skull and repositioning my top jaw, breaking and moving my lower jaw forward so that it's positioned properly below, possibly widening my palate to alleviate crowding, and possibly removing part of my chin bone for aesthetics (big whoop)
• One more year of braces to even everything up
• Retainers for the rest of my life

I was not sold on this procedure for two reasons: (1) it's a drastic treatment and I've lived with my situation for most of my life, why change it? and (2) The cost is ridiculous (and includes having gum grafts), and I will have to pay most of it out-of-pocket because insurance companies tend to regard this as "elective" surgery even if it's necessary to solve a functional problem.

However, when my husband Jim and I went to see the surgeon, a strange thing happened. Before I said anything (he had already looked at my plaster models), he told me what my problems were. They extended FAR BEYOND my jaw. He told me I slurred my speech. (Jim laughed and said "yeah, even when she's NOT drinking.) He told me I had trouble breathing at night. He told me I had sinus problems. He told me I was a mouth breather and a tongue thruster. He told me that I can't bite into pizza or sandwiches without leaving stuff behind. And he told me about all my goofy chewing problems and gum recession. And I hadn't even said a word to him yet.

He also said "jaw surgery can fix ALL of that." (I felt the tears welling up because it really did seem "too good to be true.") I never talk about these issues because they're just a part of my life - it's all I've known for so so many years (maybe not when I was five because my jaw was still growing, but most of my life). Who knew that they were all connected to the shape of my jaw and the way it's positioned in my skull?

I guess, then, the big decision is upon me as I meet with my orthodontist this week. Should I go through with it? The surgeon explained that the whole jaw reconstruction is HARD work. I'll even have to see a therapist to talk and use my jaw after the surgery. My whole sinus area will be in really bad shape until everything heals. He also said I will look different (which freaked out my husband) - my face will be shorter, my smile will be different. And I'll talk different. Jim told me last night that he thinks the way I talk is "cute." (So, do I really want to change it?)

It's really scary to face this decision. If I do it, I think it will make a good story to blog about and show pictures of the changes if only to help someone else facing the same situation. (But Ick. I hate taking pictures of myself.) The biggest dilemmas for me are whether I'm worth the expenditure and whether the changes will make me less attractive to my husband. He says no. But, as usual, I still worry.