Climb for Hospice

I just booked my flights.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!

This just got entirely more real.

Hahahaha – ohhhh, silly, silly, silly…

Remember when I had that cold? And then remember when I said that cold was the flu? Yeah, I was wrong about that.

So, funny thing really… I have pneumonia.

Yep, thaaaaat’s right. I’m basically a pile of gasping goo right now, coughing my way through the wonderful moments of my day. On the upside, I am certainly catching up on my reading!

I went to the doctor yesterday and he got mad at me. I can’t understand why! All I told him was that I was coughing up weird coloured things, and that whenever I took a breath it sounded like I had the Death Rattle going on.

“How long has this been going on?”  he asks

“Ummm… 10 days or so?”  I reply.

I don’t often see my Doctor do a facepalm, but when he DOES do it, I figure I’ve done something really, really wrong.

Anyway, he told me to “lay low” and gave me a script for 7 days worth of  Biaxin (an antibiotic). He told me to take it easy, rest, drink lots of fluids, stay home from work (oh boy!), and if I’m not better in 2 days… go to the hospital for a chest x-ray. Guess this is serious. Meh.

Needless to say, the training is on hold for a while. Considering I can’t even stand without getting short of breath, I’m pretty sure that lifting weights or hiking isn’t going to be all that productive. Besides, do you have any idea how tiring it is to put on shoes!?

I’d *like* to hike this weekend, so we’ll see how I feel in a couple of days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some fluids to drink…

🙂

It was certainly a successful Easter dinner! Usually, I tend to over-eat and gorge on all the wrong things, but this year I did very well for myself. No sore tummy and gastronomically-induced groaning, no Tums chasers, no multiple-dessert regrets. I ate a reasonable amount of dinner – weird!

The fact of the matter is – well, I was simply too exhausted to eat a truck load of food. Getting up for seconds wasn’t even a possibility, considering that I was struggling with the simple act of bringing a forkfull of tasty goodness to face level.

I think I need to go to the doctor.

Odd that the reason to see my GP is because I *don’t* have a visibly larger stomach the day after Easter dinner.

“So, what brings you in today, Robyn?”

“I wasn’t a glutton at Easter”

“MY GOD WOMAN! Call an ambulance! You’re SICK!”

I can’t believe I have to wait until Thanksgiving now in order to eat myself into a coma. This sucks.

But for now… I’m going back to bed. G’night.

Well, yesterday I went to speak with my website guru, and aside from a few wee kinks to work out, my website is almost ready to go!

The sad part is that I’ll no longer be using the blogger page. I’ll have to just put a post up that redirects you to the new site. What a pain in the butt…

However, it’s a good thing, because the website has more info, and is more interactive, as well!

You’re gonna’ liiiiiiiiiiiiike it…

I’ll keep blogging here until the change over happens.

xo

Yesterday I decided that I was going to use part of my ‘For Gear Only’ donation that I earlier received from a very generous, imaginative, amazing person. I took $500 and headed downtown to Mountain Equipment Co-op (aka: Co-op, The Co-Op, Equipment Co-Op, Mountain Equipment, M.E.C., MEC…) to tick some items off my Gear I Need list.

I chose MEC because the prices are good, and it’s basically a one-stop-shop. I need a headlamp, gaiters, gloves and liners, base layers, mid layers, thermal underwear, pants, shorts, improved cardio, legs of steel, the will to survive this climb… you get the idea. Anyway, MEC seemed the right choice.

How totally uninspiring MEC was.

Is it just me, or has MEC really changed over the past 10 years? I used to be able to walk in there and leave with arm-fulls of stuff. This time around I couldn’t find anything that I really liked, and the stuff that attracted me was hella expensive.

So I left.

I walked down the street and into Valhalla Pure on the next block west. I bought my boots here a couple months ago, and they were really good to me. So I sought out the same salesdude (it must be a hiring condition of all outdoor sports shops that a certain percentage of employees be from either New Zealand of Australia) and listed off some of the things I need. He showed me some stuff, and the prices weren’t too bad. But then he said, “why don’t you start upstairs in our sale section?” Upstairs?

I went upstairs (tripping once because I was too busy gawking at the photos of shirtless climbers that were on the wall), and…

*Cue Angelic singing here* GLORY BE!

It was awesome! All the clothing I needed at really, really reduced prices. I loaded up! Pants, tops, a jacket, a headlamp… ‘oh what fun it is to buy in one store on Broadwaaaay…’

So, I came out of there with a bag full of stuff, having spent $474. That may seem like a lot of money, but for the amount of gear I was able to purchase, it’s a phenomenal deal.

Valhalla Pure, I love you. Thank you for being so generous and full of awesome. So convenient, so full of quality equipment, so very understanding of my fetish for photos of shirtless climbers…

I’ll be back my wondrous, giving friend. Oh yes, I will be back.

Let’s see here… hmmmm… *pokepokepoke*

OW!

Swollen? Check.
Mottled? Check.
Unable to bear weight? Check.
Unable to bend? Check.
Painful? Check.

Now, I’m no doctor or anything, but I’m pretty sure I’ve broken my Went To Market toe.

How did I do this, you ask? It’s a funny story, really. I was rescuing kittens from a burning building, and… no, no that’s not right. Oh! Yes, that’s it: I was serving meals to the homeless, and I… nope. Nope, that’s not it either.

Chasing a purse snatcher? Braving the rapids to save a drowing puppy? Taming a bucking bronco before it tore through a class of first graders? Wrestling a wild boar? Going ten rounds with De La Hoya? War wound from ‘Nam?

…Actually, I kind of had a dream last night that I fell of a wall, and when I woke up my toe hurt.

*facepalm*

This really puts a crimp in my hiking plans for this weekend.

But it certainly doesn’t stop me from wearing 2.5 inch open-toe pumps to work today! They have ruffles!

I am finding that although I want to write something, I can’t seem to find the words. Maybe it’s because Andrew Koenig’s body was found in Stanley Park yesterday. He had taken his own life. I did not know Andrew, and do not know his family or friends. But somehow, his suicide has affected me. I think I need to write about that a bit, if that’s ok with you all. (Mom, dad… you can skip this one if you like).

Depression is a terrible, terrible disease. Yes, it is a disease. Unfortunately, one of the worst parts of depression is the fact that such a stigma is attached to it. For people with depression, people like me, we struggle not only with the disease, but with having to face people who think we are somehow “weak” because our brains take over our thoughts sometimes and don’t let go.

Yes, there is medication. But like most medication, it doesn’t SOLVE the problem – it just helps us to cope. Even when you take some NyQuil or Tylenol, you don’t feel 100%, something is still amiss within you, right? It’s the same with antidepressant drugs. For the most part you can get along very well each day, but you know that somewhere inside you, a darkness waits. It shows up when it wants to, it goes when it wants to, and it leaves a horrible echo.

Yes, we know there is “help”. There are many people to speak with, many numbers to call. Have I ever called the Crisis Line? Yes I have. In fact, it’s programmed into my phone under “Help”. It did help on the two occasions that I called. I was very grateful.

But here’s the thing (and please know that I don’t speak for everyone who has depression, obviously)… the pills, the help, the support… none of it matters when you get to a place where you don’t even recognize your own face in the mirror. When you’re so low, so down, so dark and grey that opening your eyes, or lifting your head is an exhausting task that you can’t even bother to attempt. Depression can strike me down at any time. I can start a day really well, and then I may start to feel it creeping up. Nothing triggers it. No event. It just arrives.

It is never welcome. It shows up, and I try to fight it off, but it’s kind of like… like… trying to punch a fog out of a room. I can’t fight it off. It is impossible. What makes it worse, is that this is when people think that I am the “weakest”. That hurts me so much. I do not want to be depressed. It is not ‘attention-seeking behaviour’. Don’t you think that if I had the ability to “just smile!” or not “think about it“, or “cheer up!”, that I would gladly take those opportunities?

Am I suicidal when I’m depressed? It doesn’t work that way. I just feel… heavy. Yes, heavy, I think that’s the word I want. I don’t want to do anything, see anyone, participate in life. I don’t take care of myself because at that time, I don’t care about myself. For me, it’s a lot of self loathing. These are the dangerous times. These are times when I sometimes think, “what’s the point of even taking the medication?”… but I still take it because I fight very hard to keep myself present enough to know that I have to.

Depression hurts me very, very much, and it is something that, every so often, takes over in my body and in my brain, and makes every single minute an excruciatingly difficult task to complete. It truly is like a heavy, choking, fog that wraps itself around me. It’s all-enveloping, and I’ll be honest, it’s really, really scary.

It is a personal journey that I am forced to take against my will. And I will take it for the rest of my life.

I’m thinking that climbing Mount Kilimanjaro will be the easier journey.

I do not travel well. Really, I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love to get out into the craziness of the world and experience new things, but whenever I do something inevitably goes horribly awry.

Like the time I spent a week on the beautiful island of Virgin Gorda after the airline had lost my luggage. Well, when I say “lost” I actually mean “sitting behind the counter in the San Juan airport, the victim of “It’s Not My Job”. Not that one needs a lot of luggage to chill out on a Caribbean island, but a bikini is always nice. And some sunscreen. Since the friend who I was staying with was a size zero, (I don’t care what anyone says, ZERO is NOT a size!), I had to break down and buy a bikini on the island. For $250.

Or how about the time when I went to Paris, and my travel partner took ill and went into the hospital. I must say, wandering around Pigalle by oneself while worried about the health of someone you care about can really put a new spin on a vacation. No worries though, I hopped a bus to Rotterdam. Unfortunately, they showed the movie “Air Bud” on the bus trip. And I cried like a baby through the entire movie, trying desperately to hide my face and sob into my shoulder.

Then there was the “I’ll-Sleep-In-The-Lobby” sized argument that I had with a friend in Mexico City.

And the 3-day leg rash and edema in Amsterdam.

And, of course, the “Your-Credit-Card-Has-Been-Compromised-So-We-Cancelled-It” fiasco that happened when I still had three days left in Greece.

And finally, the “Screaming-Toddler-On-The-Flight-Home” ordeal. Seriously, that kid wailed for almost SEVEN STRAIGHT HOURS. I’ve never seen anything like it. The day after I got home I went to Bose and bought those fabulous Noise-Canceling headphones. HALLELUJAH!

At the time, all of these things were devastating, humiliating and/or mondo-sob inducing. But when I look back now, I can laugh at these situations. I know that something horrendous will happen when I am in Tanzania, and that scares the crap out of me. I’m just hoping it doesn’t involve spiders. Or mugging. Or mugging spiders.

However, no matter what happens, I also know that I’ll be able to laugh about it as time passes. But I’ll admit it: I’m really scared right now…

Weird Kilimanjaro Facts – Lesson One

-Kaiser Wilhelm was given Mount Kilimanjaro as a birthday present from Queen Victoria (which is why it is part of Tanzania and not Kenya, as Tanzania was a German territory)

-Mount Kilimanjaro’s name means: “Mountain of Cold Devils”

-Mt. Kilimanjaro is the only permanent snowcap within sight of the equator

-Although mostly living in North and South America, porcupines have been seen on Mt. Kilimanjaro (at about 11,000ft)

-First summit (in Oct 1889) by: German Geology professor Hans Meyer, Marangu Army Scout Yoanas Kinyala Lauwo and Austrian mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller

186 days until I stand at the bottom of Mount Kilimanjaro, look up, and wonder what on earth made me think that this was a good idea.

186 days.

How the simple act of living in my home is preparing me for the many different facets of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro:

The Cold
As a way to save money, I have basically had my heat off for the entire winter season. The reason for this is because I only have costly baseboard heaters, which some fantastically intelligent designer placed right under the biggest windows in my condo. Heat gloriously comes up, heat evilly gets sucked out into the great unknown.

The Heat
I have decided that in order to get myself used to the heat that I will be facing when I go to Tanzania, I am going to use my oven more often. If this means that I have to bake more cookies, then by god, I’ll just have to suffer through it. Cake in the name of adventure!

The Scree Slope
My dog Jenn is a tennis ball addict. At any given time, there can be upwards of 17 tennis balls scattered around my home (I’m not kidding). Often, as I stumble through the dark of night or the bleary morning, I am jolted awake by stepping on one of these fuzzy landmines and having my foot slip out from under me.

The Rain forest
I have a highly effective black thumb, and so no plant life has had the fortune to thrive in my home. Therefore I have had to resort to other means in order to try and understand the rain forest environment. I now take extended, hot showers with the bathroom fan off.

The Wild Animals
It is a common occurrence to be woken in the morning by the glorious feeling of a cold nose being shoved in my eye. Yes, my eye. If this does not work, my way-too-intelligent dog will slap her paw across my nostrils, causing me to splutter awake and be forced into the happy, waggy morning.

The Ascent
To best prepare myself for climbing more than 19,000 ft, I have made the decision to not use the elevator in my building. I use the stairs to go up to, and down from, my condo. Even if I have groceries, have just gotten back from having Cara kick my butt at the gym, or if I’ve had a long day, I still make the effort to climb those stairs. Sure I live on the first floor, but still!

The Altitude
I believe I can accurately understand the effects of Altitude Sickness due to my fondness for, and happy consumption of, champagne. This can lead to dizziness, giddiness, hallucinations, headaches and nausea. But usually it doesn’t. Usually.

By the time August comes around, I believe I’ll be fully prepared.