Meanwhile, back in Stressville ...

I've been feeling a little off lately. Turns out, there's a reason.

September 5 will be my 45th birthday. And now - right now, as you sit there reading this, while I'm hanging out with my still-44-year-old self, I'm having a hot flash. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that yours truly is once again an overachiever. I've reached perimenopause early. (Kinda like the way it took my husband only five years to get to his seven-year itch, but different.)

Anyway, we seem to have begun the trip to Old Lady Land. At FOURTY-FREAKIN-FOUR! Are you shitting me, body? Really? WTF, mate?

So that explains why I can't remember the last time I was visited by Nature's Special Time. And the night sweats. And the emotions that are running even weirder than usual. While it's nice to have a reason, it sure as hell sucks to be doing this about 10 years earlier than I'd planned. Fuck you, hormones.

Honestly, I feel like my body is betraying me at every turn. Early menopause? Check. Fucked-up Achilles? Check. Bad attitude brought on by the other two? Check and mate. So I saw the orthopedic doc yesterday, and he agreed that my Achilles isn't healing as we'd like it to. It's very big and swollen and gross and still pretty painful lots of the time. GAH. Can't it just get better now?

Okay, how 'bout now?

Fuck.

Anyway, I'm trying to power through. Trying to understand that some of the ravenous hunger is likely due to my prematurely aging body, and maybe not a true need for actual mass quantities of real food. Trying to realize that athletes sometimes get injured and the damn Achilles maybe isn't a sign from the universe that I'm not supposed to work on this athletic thing.

So here's the skinny: Dr. P says there might be little tears in the tendon. That's what we're looking for in the MRI. If that's the case, we'll need to do some therapy and see how we heal. Then we'll do some gait analysis and measurement so we can figure out why mechanically my legs cause me trouble, and how we can avoid it as much as possible in the future.

Meanwhile, my weight has stayed the same. I'm hopeful that this weekend we won't put on a whole lot of weight ... then after I get back, and my MRI results are in, we'll batten down the hatches.

Again.