That day my heart was beating like a drum

Not wanting to undo our good work, we kept up a schedule of running an hour each weekend throughout April. I was able to keep up with Alex for the next few weeks. Then on Easter Monday, April 25^th, we were late for my daughter Charlotte’s choir performance in the Auckland Museum. We walked from Newmarket to the museum (about a 20 minute walk), hurried up the hill to the entrance, into the lift and out on the floor just as the choir arrived. The quick pace would not have bothered me normally. That day my heart was beating like a drum. I was sweating hard. I limped to a bench in the World War I sanctuary opposite the choir, sat down and didn’t move for thirty minutes, until the last song was over. I did think being unable to recover from the relatively short walk was a little unusual but I figured the few glasses of wine I had the night before had caused me to feel tired and somewhat impaired. 

I had worked in day care for a few years. I loved the energy, pace and unpredictability of working with small children. It was the least intellectual job I had ever had and perhaps that’s what made me love it more. It was sheer physicality with a dose of child psychology thrown in. Even though many times it felt as if we spent the day erecting a solid foundation only to have it knocked down over night, unlike other jobs, at 5pm I could leave without taking any work or any stress home with me. Running around for eight hours serving the needs of under two-year-olds encouraged a sweat on the coldest days. It seemed only reasonable that, with my demanding work schedule, I would be exhausted occasionally. The week after the museum concert I asked Alex if we could take a break from our weekend runs for the next two weeks. I was working a full week at the day care and I needed some time to recover. He was happy to comply. When we started again in mid-May, I was able to complete a one-hour run, but only just. My breathing was good but my legs were like lead. At first it was like I was running through sand and then through deep water. By the time the run was over, I could hardly lift them. I felt like I was one-hundred year’s old. For the first time ever, I gave in to the demands of my body and gave myself the following week off of work. I didn’t feel sick in the way you do when you get the flu. I was just exhausted. I thought if I just had a few days to catch up on some sleep I would be fine.

But things got worse. I started to get nosebleeds. I blamed my hay fever, which caused me to sneeze heavily and blow constantly. I figured the bleeding was a result of the irritation of the lining inside my nose. Then I started sweating profusely in the evenings. Since it was May, and wintertime in New Zealand, the sweating was curious but I still didn’t think there was anything really wrong with me. I blamed the evening sweats on a sort of shadow menopause, a lingering symptom of the menopause I had gone through a few years earlier. It is amazing how easy it is to rationalise an irrational situation.