This week I finally manned up (or acted like a grown-up, at least) and made a bunch of doctor’s appointments to address problems I’ve been having. I ended up going to three doctor’s appointments this week, which is more than I typically go to in a year.

The first two were for my back. A little over two years ago, I hurt my back. Since then I have dealt with chronic back pain. It’s always there, it’s just a matter of how much it hurts on any given day. Running doesn’t really affect it and it never hurts enough to impact my daily work/social life, so I didn’t do anything about it. But there’s no reason to live with chronic pain when you can do something about it, especially when it hurts just to breathe. So I finally went to the doctor. Lo and behold I’ve been living with three ribs out of place (partially dislocated) for two years. The rib heads are sitting slightly out of and/or above the joint where they line up with the vertebrae in my spine. I had x-ray’s done on Monday at my initial visit and received some preemptive treatment for it. Then I went back on Tuesday and had the ribs put back in. It may take some maintenance to get them to stay in place, but I’m on the mend!

On Monday I mentioned that I have been dealing with breathing issues for the past few months while running. Specifically, I have been having a lot of issues with wheezing. It started in January and I thought it was just a combination of the cold air, being out of shape, and the string of respiratory illnesses I had. Sometimes it would seem to go away, but I definitely never went a week without at least one wheezy run. Yet, I attempted to ignore it and keep running in the hopes that it would magically disappear.

This past Sunday I had to cut a 10 mile run down to 3 miles because it was literally like I was breathing through a straw. It sucks to cut a run short, but this especially sucked because it was a gorgeous day outside, my legs felt great, and I really needed the long run to prepare for upcoming races. So I finally made a doctor’s appointment, which I went to yesterday. My symptoms and the breathing test (spirometry) indicated that I have asthma. However, the doctor felt it is more of an exercise-induced asthma, since I never had it as a kid. She prescribed me an inhaler to use and I’ll have a follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks to see how things are going.

I’m lucky that both issues ended up being easily diagnosed and have straight forward treatments. Hopefully I have learned from this and will not let things go on for so long in the future. Probably not, but maybe.

What types of things do you procrastinate?
Do you ever use the “ignore it and it will go away” method?
Who else has asthma/uses an inhaler?