officially a donor

Yesterday, I donated bone marrow to a newborn with a rare blood immunodeficiency. I'm still pretty overwhelmed by the whole experience. I'm in awe that somewhere in the world is a tiny little boy who is fighting to live - and he has my DNA inside his body to help him now. There's a tough little mini-me out there, and all I want him to do is live.

The procedure wasn't painful - minus the sore throat left over from the anesthesiologist's breathing tube, and the pretty intense constipation - I was asleep for the whole thing, which took less than an hour. I am drowsy from the painkillers, and sore. I feel like I fell down a flight of icy stairs and bruised my butt and lower back.

I despise IVs more than anything else I've ever encountered.

One of my kids gave me a card and made me promise not to open it until after the procedure :)

Awake, but still heavily anesthetized, on morphine, and very confused by "KGC." This is also the most unattractive photo ever taken of me, so of course I had to include it here.

And I would absolutely do it again.

I can't run for two weeks while I recover. The doctor says that any kind of over-exertion too soon will cause the puncture holes in my pelvic bone to "connect the dots" and cause a fracture. So I'm counting down the days until I can put my Asics back on, and focusing my energy on fundraising while I wait.

I'm also praying. I'm not huge on prayer, because I'm not convinced God cares about what happens to us. But just in case It does, I want to give my patient, my Little Man, the best chance he can possibly have to survive and thrive. So it'd be nice if you'd pray for him, too.

so I'm running a half-marathon...

I just realized that - in addition to not blogging nearly as much as I'd like - I've been leaving a pretty huge part of my life out in my posts. I kind of hinted at it in my New Year's resolutions, but haven't explicitly written about it here.

I'm training for a half-marathon. The Rock and Roll Half on March 16, to be precise. I'm doing this with my mom to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Mom's best friend is four years leukemia free, and considering she's been like an aunt to me - she's my baby sister's godmother, too - raising money for an organization that's done so much for her is a no-brainer to me.

So we go out in the cold Tuesdays and Thursdays after work to run. We have long runs on Saturday morning; I'll assume these were scheduled by Satan, since they start at 8am. Short recovery runs are Sundays. For our long run today, we went eight miles. Pretty exciting stuff for someone who never made it through a high school cross country race - a poor choice I endured for one single season my sophomore year - without stopping.

The best part? I live in DC so all of our runs are BEAUTIFUL!

I've only lost about five pounds since we started December 1, but I just keep losing inches. So many inches. I'm back in pants I haven't fit since my first teaching stint in 2007, and appear on track to squeeze into a few favorite pairs of jeans I've kept from college. My standing heart rate is 56 beats per minute, doctors say I'm in excellent health, and I love that now I do something after work that doesn't involve wine or midnight bacon and eggs. Oh, and I'm doing a pretty good job raising money for cancer. Halfway to my fundraising goal with two months left to go!

If you read this blog, we're probably friends on Facebook, so you've probably already seen my posts asking for donations, if you can spare them. But just in case you've popped in from somewhere else, consider giving a few dollars to help LLS continue its research and support programs for patients with blood cancers. My page (with running updates) can be found over here.

2013 resolutions

1. Create something (ex: make a dress) or see something someone created (ex: go see a local band play) at least once a week.
2. Blog at least twice weekly.
3. Run 5 races of any length.

And a two-year resolution: finish a complete first draft of my dissertation by April 2014.