Taking on Water

One year ago, my body tried to tell me to slow the hell down. One year ago, I might’ve been the worst listener on the planet.

Here’s the thing about our bodies… THEY KNOW. They try to tell us when we are going too hard, doing too much, and stressing too hard. Have you ever been in a life situation where you were proverbially taking on water and you knew it, but instead of fixing the problem, you just kept going until your ship sank? That is what I did last April. Bear with me, this is going to be a long post…

It started out simple enough. I woke up on a Sunday morning feeling crappy, lethargic, and exhausted. I ran a few errands and quickly realized I needed to lay down. I spent half a day in bed and decided to randomly check my temperature because of how I was feeling. 102… so I took some ibuprofen and went back to bed. The first of several critical mistakes came the following morning. I had a crazy busy six-day work week full of travel and chaos. Trips to Wyoming, Eastern Montana, and a medical conference requiring me to be out of town even on a Saturday. These weeks are not entirely uncommon in my work life, but this was a particularly busy week. I woke up on Monday still running a fever, and instead of resting like I should have, I packed up my car and grabbed some ibuprofen and took off for Gillette, Wyoming. I think back to this moment now and say to myself “what the hell, Kristin?”

I guess I assumed that the fever would resolve, and I’d be fine. That first night was when I noticed that I was getting these red blotches on my legs, but I assumed it was a side effect of the fever. My appetite was shot but again, just the fever, right? It’ll be better tomorrow, right? It wasn’t better tomorrow, or the next day, and the red blotches just kept multiplying until I had a solid rash covering my arms and legs. Wednesday night and Thursday were where the situation got ugly. I was alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol every 2 hours. Setting alarms all night because if I missed a dose, the fever would sky rocket to 102/103 so fast. I worked all day Wednesday and was supposed to get on a little tiny plane to Sidney, MT on Thursday. Wednesday night, I started vomiting… like a lot. I had barely eaten since Sunday. At 4AM on Thursday morning, I ended up canceling my trip and calling in sick. I was in a hotel room in Billings, MT but I was such a mess that I just had to rest. Friday, I still got up and went to work despite not really feeling much better. I was working a conference where there were two-hour time slots between times when we needed to be at the conference center and I was going to my car to sleep between every session. At this point, I even had rash on my chin and face that I covered with makeup. I had to go out and buy a long sleeve shirt to wear that day, so I could cover how bad this had gotten. When I finished working that day, I went back to my hotel room and laid on the bed and cried. Then I started throwing up again and laying there on the floor of my hotel room in between. At about 6:30 that night, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and went to the doctor.

Shit got real quickly. The walk-in doctor gave me some Tylenol because my fever was back up and immediately sent me to the ER. Keep in mind, this is all happening in Billings, MT which is 3.5 hours from home. In the ER they hooked me up to IV’s and started running every lab test known to man. The ER doctors were very bothered by the fever with a rash and somewhere around 10pm, they told me I wasn’t leaving. I called my husband and told him to get ready to come down, but in the morning when it was light and safe to drive. Thankfully, my brother and his wife as well as some great friends live in Billings. They came to the rescue and hung with me because I was terrified about an impending hospital admission.

At the end of this, I spent 3 nights in a hospital bed on a lot of drugs. I had given myself aspiration pneumonia on top of the weird unknown virus that I had. I was severely dehydrated; my kidneys were in an acute state of distress called AKI (acute kidney injury) from dehydration and all the ibuprofen I had been taking. Additionally, my liver was really pissed off from Tylenol. They never did figure out what the virus was, but they made me stay till the fever had mostly resolved and the rash had started to look better. It was awful, and I have so many regrets about my epic failure to listen to my body. When all this happened, I did not put a ton of info out there. Lots of people knew what had happened but I didn’t go very public because I was exhausted and a little embarrassed by how dumb I was.

Now, looking back, this was an important moment in my life. Not only did I learn a valuable lesson about taking care of myself and listening to my body, but I also ended up making an epic comeback. The last year has been full of growth. I am talking about the kind of personal growth that only comes from facing something tough.

I had literally started doing CrossFit about two months before this happened. I was making some gains. Let me tell you what… if you want to see rapid strength loss, a hospital bed is the place to be. In a week, essentially, I lost 20 lbs. After I got out of the hospital, I was told to take at least another week off from work and working out. I was so exhausted even though I was on the mend, so I absolutely needed that time. Going back to the gym was so terrible. The first day, I remember we were doing back squats and that was when I realized how weak I was. I had to bail on a squat and I walked to a wall and kicked it because I was so angry. The second day, I cried through a bunch of thrusters. The pneumonia made everything cardio feel like actual death. That damn pneumonia took almost 8 weeks to recover from fully. On top of that, my white blood cell count was elevated for 8-12 weeks after I was “better.” It took so much mental tenacity to keep showing up and keep working out. I can tell you right now that if I hadn’t been surrounded by coaches who totally committed to helping me get through this and a support network of workout buddies who cheered me on and pushed me to show up even when I was crying, I’d have quit.

Those of you who know me, know that I have rebounded fully and then some. I am stronger and faster physically than I ever was a year later. On top of that, I learned so much about my ability to fight through tough stuff. I learned how strong I am as a person. I also learned to let go of “I can’t” or “I’m afraid” and set some serious goals and work my ass off to achieve them. I learned to be open about struggles, because we all have them. I learned to take leaps out of my comfort zone. I learned that a little confidence in yourself goes a long damn way. I learned that I only have one body and I need to listen when it needs something. I learned that I have a fierce and supportive group of friends who have my back and will take care of me when I need it most. Embarrassed as I was that I essentially did this to myself, I am so grateful I went through this. It drove me and taught me a lot about who I am.

In all of this, there are a couple big takeaways. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY, PEOPLE! Rest when you need it! Don’t continue taking on water until you sink. Ask for help. Do whatever you need to so you can ensure you have time for self-care, no matter what that means. Secondly, don’t ever let a bad situation of a little adversity take you out of the game entirely. Use it as fuel for your fire. Keep pushing, strive for more, and I promise you’ll be better for it.

For those of you that read this far, thank you for sticking with me… I know it was a long one, but I hope it was worth the read.