Read Write Edit Play Repeat vol 10

Running From or To Something

Running From or To Something

Less than a year after my kidney transplant in 2017, I started running. I was struggling with weight because I could suddenly taste food again and I wasn’t nauseas all the time. My first 5k was on the anniversary of my transplant and I ran with the guy who donated a kidney to me. My first half marathon I ran, he was there running too. He actually finished the race, ran back to where I was, and finished the race again much slower with me. I ran a marathon distance, but I did that near my house just through my neighborhood in circles all by myself. I was tired of paying a lot of money to get up early, travel, and run with a bunch of other people.

I started having some real endurance problems. I was going backward instead of improving. The pandemic hit and I really fell off. I tried a few times to start again, but had no energy. Putting back on weight was part of it. It turned out I had a blockage building in my heart that led to a heart attack on January 12, 2022. That was a big part of it too.

I’m in cardiac rehab now. I’m battling some depression that appears to be chemically induced by the cardiac event. That’s not uncommon especially when you have comorbidities like I do. But I started running again. I’m going slowly. As I write this, I’m running five minutes twice a week. The first time I ran five minutes it felt like the marathon I ran a while back. It’s getting better though and I’ll soon move up to six minutes.

I sometimes ask myself if I’m running toward something or away from something. Do I have a goal or am I being chased? I don’t have a solid answer for that. The average functional span of a live donor transplant kidney is 13 years. That can be decreased by noncompliance with meds or poor diet. It can be expanded through exercise and good healthcare. The average span for someone my age between first and second heart attacks if no care is taken is 8 years. Since my transplant was in 2013, my heart and kidneys are lined up to 8 years now. So, each time I don’t feel like exercising, I ask myself if eight years is enough or do I want more? Then, I go exercise. That seems to me a little bit of both running to and from something. Whichever is, I hope I get there.

Here are some things you might be interested in:

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How to Come up with the Perfect Story Title

by Jay Wilburn via LitReactor

How do you come up with the perfect story title? I wish I knew…  Searching in the darkness for the right treasure, the perfect words, that may in fact not exist at all. But you have to call your story something, so let’s see if we can figure this out together …

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“Good Old Boys and Fine Young Men”

by Jay Wilburn

Ellis Merit helped his dad load the combat gear into the cage welded on the back of their truck. Ellis’s attention drifted across the street to the barricaded and barred buildings that used to be the shops of Main Street in Jesup. It wasn’t the shops but Beth standing there talking to Kevin that had his attention …

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This 50,000 word action scene of a zombie story is available in ebook and paperback now.

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