CafeChatNoir

Lane is home! They still have no freaking clue what it was, but he’s home and that’s the important thing.

I find it rather appropriate that even the demolishing of the Woodrow Wilson bridge is delayed. It was supposed to go down at 11:59, they’re still standing around at 12:17.

If you’re still up and want to watch, the live feed is here:
http://www.nbc4.com/videostream/6025072/detail.html

Got some GOOD news on Lane today! Thank god.

He’s eating, off the morphine and only taking Tylenol for pain, the rash that came with this adventure is fading, and he’s being a real smartass. Looks like he’ll get to go home soon.

At one point on Friday the docs apparently weren’t really sure he was going to make it. I can understand that. 5 days of extreme, unexplainable pain and no answers. At that point it becomes a mental battle to try to stick it out and believe that you really will get better.

They still have no idea what caused it, but I’m still thinking it sounds for all the world like a case of the shingles.

Woohoo, didn’t die on the swim!!!

OK yeah, so I’m sitting here in a hotel room hoping I’ll get tired here soon so I can get some decent sleep before tomorrow.

Got everything checked in at the estrogen-fest IronGirl registration/bike racking/et al. It’s very…strange? different? odd? Something, I just don’t know quite what. It may have something to do with the fact that they had 1800 people register for it, so it’s pretty huge. (Biggest tri I’ve been involved in topped out at 500 registrations if I recall correctly.) Supposedly 800 of the folks here are first timers – pretty cool.

Looking around at bike racking, it sure looked like a pretty hard core field to me – didn’t see any mountain bikes or hybrids like I did at Virginia Run, and everyone had that “I know what I’m doing” look about them. Ack. Got a good look at the swim course, too – my god it looks 10 miles long. It’s hard to visualize 1,000 meters of water, and this definitely doesn’t look like I imagined, LOL. But, they’re saying the water temp is 84 degrees, so that’s definitely a plus for me. Also, something I noticed is that a good chunk of the swim is relatively close to shore, so should I freak out, in theory I should be able to paddle to the shallows, put a foot down, take a breath and dive back on in. The other thing is that I am planning now to just go ahead and side/breaststroke the first leg of it (it’s an out/left turn/left turn triangle-ish route) to get past the initial HR spike that always happens in the first couple minutes when I swim, that way I can still be head-above-water & breathing and not panicking while I wait for my body to agree that yes, we are swimming today. Once I thought about those things, I felt much better about the swim, so I think I’ll be able to stay relatively calm through it given that I’ve thought it out ahead of time and have a “plan” of sorts.

I really didn’t think anything of the fact that this was going to be an all female event when I signed up – it just looked like a reasonable distance that was late in the season, so I figured I’d be able to tackle it without dying. Well, let me tell you, this being an all-female event is a Very Big Deal. This is “IronGirl“’s first season of triathlons. The first was earlier this year in Dallas, they got about 600 people I think, and this one registered 1800, so I can see how that is a big deal for an inaugural race.

Guess I’m just having troubles wrapping my head around the need for an all female event. Why couldn’t you have a kickass co-ed event and push it hard as “first timer friendly”?

Tomorrow, I may understand why an all female event *is* a big deal. Regardless, if what I have seen so far today of the setup and such is indicative of how things will be tomorrow, it should be a very good, very enjoyable race.

Looks like the common theme of BT racers tomorrow will be “this is for you Lane” – he’s still in the hospital, still no diagnosis, but his friend who visited with him today said he’s still being a smartass, so that’s definitely a good thing. I’m usually not one to race for a “reason” but tomorrow, it’s for him.

So, this weekend’s race is slightly more involved than others I’ve done. Between being “out of town” to an extent (just over 50 miles away), bike racking is today. Which is not unusual in larger races, but I’ve not run into it before. So, I have to get to the host hotel and get my packet, then over to the race site to get the bike inspected and racked, then back to the host hotel for the “Mandatory but not really, we just want you to come” meeting at 5PM, then over to my hotel to crash out for the night.

Fortunately, all these various locations are within a few miles of each other. As it stands right now, if I leave now, I will have about a 2 hour window for bike inspection and racking before needing to get back to the meeting. Of course, I’m not quite ready to go.

Bike inspection and racking shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes tops, even with lines – if the inspections are like they usually are, it’s “check brakes, bar end plugs* and helmet” and that all there is to it. In theory, I leave as late as 2 and still make it. However, I don’t think I’m going to push that, so as soon as I have the last of my stuff packed up and the bike on the car, I’m gonna hit the road.

So, yes, I should get on all that, shouldn’t I?

*Bar end plugs = the little plastic round piece at the end of the handlebars. Quite important, if you fall/crash and manage to have one of the handlebars decide to attack your body, it’s the difference between a bigassed bruise and an actual wound that will require a tetanus shot.

I know no one here knows Lane, but I feel better being able to talk about it.

He still feels like total shit and they have no idea why. MRI & CAT came back with nothing, his white counts are normal.

Dale is going to visit this weekend with another one of Lane’s old friends (they had been roommates way back when) and will be printing off all Lane’s blog comments and reading them to him, hopefully that will perk him up at least a little bit.

I know he’s really down – who wouldn’t be – you’re in a ton of pain and no one can tell you why or how to fix it? How long can you put up with that before you give in? That’s what I’m really concerned about – if they can’t give him an answer here soon, how long can he stick it out?

I was going to make a road trip to Nashville in September to surprise him at a race. I may be booking a flight to Memphis at the beginning of next week.

If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we figure out what hell is wrong with Lane?

They still don’t know what’s going on, except that he’s hurting, and has a fever. I talked to him briefly this afternoon, and they were getting ready to take him for an MRI. His Mom is thinking it may be time to change hospitals and get him up to Vanderbilt up in Nashville.

He sounded tired as hell, but his sense of humor is still at least a little intact – he’d had a running bet w/his friend Dale (the one who has been the main POC on this) on some weight loss – he’s now insisting that he’s won. (He hasn’t eaten in 4 days.) Told him if he’d really wanted a rest day from training, all he had to do was take one, no need to go to these lengths.

When Dale checked in this evening, they’d given him some Demerol and he was finally sleeping, which is good – he SO needs the rest to fight whatever this is.

I’m very worried and scared for him.

Lane is still in the hospital, still no firm diagnosis. (Meningitis & West Nile have been ruled out.) His friend who has been checking in with him and keeping us in the loop emailed me this morning with “I am sure he would rather hear from you than me.”

So…I’m getting ready to call the hospital for a quick “Dammit, get yourself better” call. I’m a wreck when it comes to these kinds of things. I’m totally terrified that he’ll have just fallen asleep and I’ll wake him up, or something like that. Wish me luck that I don’t say something stupid or start crying.

The books are apparently “Out for delivery” so hopefully he’ll get them sometime today.

Edit:Didn’t say anything stupid or cry. Go me.

Well, my evening of being cutoff resulted in absolutely nothing critical being missed and some peace & quiet. :)

Having a much better day today already, with only one downer. My friend Lane down in Memphis is in the hospital – they don’t know what’s wrong with him but he went from training for Ironman Florida to not being able to get out of bed on Monday. His first thought was tick bite, but there is no firm answer yet. He’s probably going to be there for at least a few more days, I’ve sent off a couple books (thank you Amazon for cheap next day shipping, that prime membership thing just made itself worth it), figure you can only watch so much CNN and Oprah. Not much you can do from 900 miles away.