Week Twenty-Two: No marathon for you: You have swine flu!

For twenty-one weeks, I'd managed to dodge the bullet with every illness that's come through my household and office. Runners tend to have a higher immune system than most sedentary folks, so I think that running may have played a big part in me avoiding any sicknesses lingering the halls.
However, on Monday, after an eight mile run, I started to feel a little scratch in the back of my throat. This was the same exact scratch that I felt last year when I caught a severe cold that turned into bronchitis. I hoped that I could just drink some water, take some extra vitamin C, and it would be gone the next day, but that's not exactly how things panned out.
By Tuesday, I had flow-blown sore throat, headache, and stuffy nose. No denying it, I was sick. As the day went on, my symptoms became worse. My headache had turned to a migraine and my sore throat was drastically limiting my speaking, breathing, and swallowing abilities. Usually I'm not one to go to the doctor, I'll just let an illness run it's course, but with H1N1 going around like wildfire, I thought it would probably be a good idea to pay the ol' doc a visit - just to be safe!
So, I show up at the doctor's office, give them an overview of my symptoms, and they immediately make me wear a face mask. Great, now I really can't breathe and everyone in the waiting room is staring at me. I could easily tell what they all were thinking: "she has the swine flu, must stay as far away as possible." Luckily, I only had to sit there for a few minutes before the doctor called me back. I sat down on the papered doctor's table and proceeded to explain my symptoms. Before I could even get into too much detail, the doctor interrupted me and asked, "have you gotten your swine flu shot?" I responded with, "no, it hasn't been available to me yet." She quickly reached for a face mask, put it on, and said, "it is highly likely that you have H1N1 - you have all of the beginning signs." In my head, I was thinking, "so far, I've only told her that I have a sore throat and headache. Is that really enough to determine that I have swine flu??*" However, she seemed very confident in her decision and even got a second opinion from another doctor. Then, even worse news came. She told me that it would not be a good idea to run the Seattle Marathon because H1N1 usually takes three weeks to fully clear your system. Any rigorous exercise might make the virus worse. Then she said ever-so cheerfully, "well you can try for the half." The half?! THE HALF?! I have not been training for 21 weeks to run the half-marathon; I AM running the full, swine flu or no swine flu. I am going to run this marathon or die trying. How could I possibly put all of this hype and training down the drain?? This cannot be happening.
I went home in complete disbelief; I refused to except that I might have the swine flu, especially with such a short doctor's visit in which they gave me no real tests for the flu. The only thing that I could do at this point was to wait it out and see if my symptoms got worse or better. Swine flu is a progressive virus; each day you have it, you begin to feel worse. It commonly starts with a sore throat and headache, and soon turns into body aches, chills, and fever.
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, my sore throat and headache had almost completely gone away, but I still had a bit of a running nose. This was a good sign. I did not wake up feeling any worse, I was actually starting to feel better. Then, by Thursday, the sore throat and headache were completely gone, I was just down to a tolerable runny nose. This clearly wasn't getting progressively worse, so I am going to play doctor and say that this isn't H1N1, just a bad head cold.
On Thursday, I felt almost good enough to go for a light run, but I refrained because I knew that I still needed more rest. I didn't want to have another bronchitis incident. That would be a marathon show-stopper for sure. So, I forced myself to lay down all day for another day.
I must say, all of this resting is making me kind of anxious because I am missing what was supposed to be my last hard week of training before the race. I can't help it, but feel like I'm losing ground! However, I need to keep reminding myself that I have been diligently training for 21 weeks straight. One week lost will not affect my performance. In fact, the rest will probably do me good. Hopefully, by next week, I'll be back on track!

*I strongly believe that doctors are over-diagnosing people with the swine flu without properly testing them. If your doctor tells you that you may have swine flu without giving you a flu test, I highly recommend getting a second opinion.

Only 3 more weeks until the marathon!

Week Twenty-Two (non)Training
11/2 - Run 8 miles
11/3 - Thought I had swine flu - rest
11/4 - Turned out to be a cold - more rest
11/5 - Didn't want it to turn into bronchitis - even more rest
11/6 - Light workout DVD just to get the muscle moving again
11/7 - Very light run - maybe
11/8 - 6 mile run, if I feel completely rid of my symptoms