Wednesday, July 18, 2012

16Jul, 17Jul and 18Jul, plus oh yay it's RHABDO.

Monday's breakfast:

Kefir with egg yolks, coffee with milk, the whites of the eggs cooked in butter and lard, a handful of sauerkraut frizzled up (mostly to soak up the fat in the pan).

It was a fairly restful day - I had a lot of stuff to take care of, so I took the day off from the lab and got nearly everything done.  In the evening after he got off work, The Man and I took a trip down to the Eno and strolled around in the woods for a good long while.  Any Durhamites who haven't been there yet...really?  Just go already.

Yesterday's breakfast:

Kefir (this is actually made partly with colostrum, or "first milk."  It's what comes out when the cow's milked for a few days following the calf's birth, and it's super high in protein and fat and all kinds of immunoboosters.  People worried about the calf: there is a LOT.  this cow is used to getting milked, so if she didn't, her udder would be like a fricking balloon, she'd probably get mastitis and it would likely be too painful for her to feed her own baby), coffee with milk, ground beef and sauerkraut (the beef is under the sauerkraut so it can soak up all the delicious juices, and also because it's raw (yes really) and I figured people would be grossed out) with brown butter poured over.

Today's breakfast:

Kefir is still fermenting!  I guess this is a good thing because it means my apartment isn't at a steady 80 degrees anymore.  I love that stuff so freaking much, though!  Probably should start making a couple batches at a time.  But anyways, without the kefir, this looks pretty much like the average breakfast, right?  Coffee and a bowl full of something that looks kind of mealy.  Except in my case there's not so much cereal with fruit and a little more diced squash and chicken hearts sauteed in butter and lard, with dried coconut sprinkled on top.

...I'm beginning to think I'm weird.  It's ok, though.  It's the good kind.  (and the coconut?  made. the. meal.  wow)

So yeah, rhabdo.  Last time I was at CFD, we did this thing involving power cleans (65# for me) and pull-ups (ring rows for me) - 10 of each, then 9 of each, then 8, etc etc.  It was awesome.  I liked the setup a lot - it's 55 reps of each move total, but the way it's split up makes it seem like it's going by much faster.  I tried to strike a balance between going heavy-ish and actually completing the whole thing.  I could have done band pull-ups, but it seems like my shoulder is stronger than it is stable, for some positions - there's more of a danger of hurting it if I go faster.  Obvs.  Anyways, I need my damn pull-up bar!  But moving on...

I did the whole thing.  Took me 15:04, and I was the slowest by about 10 seconds behind the second-slowest.  It wasn't terrible, but I figured my arms would be pretty smoked the next day.  That night, I took an ice bath - my normal regime is 10 minutes up to my waist, 5 minutes up to my neck with arms out and 5 minutes with arms in.  This time the cold tap water was warm enough so I didn't get numbed like I usually do (damn you, record-breaking North Carolina summer!), so it was considerably more of a hassle to stay in.  So I kind of skipped the part where I put my arms in.

And maybe I also didn't drink enough water.  Like, say, any.

And then suddenly on Friday afternoon, my arms were so swollen that my elbows were completely obscured and I couldn't straighten them past a 90-degree angle.  I was also nauseous and totally brain-fogged, and absolutely convinced that it was some kind of crazy allergic reaction to the scone and cream puff from Guglhupf I'd had that morning as a treat, after eating pretty damn clean for the past two months.  Except for the Walker shortbread cookies.

I didn't think it's was anything super serious or that wouldn't go away relatively soon, so I just muscled through it (er, so to speak), trying to eat very clean but still not figuring out the part where I SHOULD DRINK SOME FREAKING WATER.  This continued all through the loooong work weekend.

So then Monday I messaged Dave that I'd be by CFD probably the next day, since I had this omg crazy arm thing going on!  but I'm icing it like a mofo and I'm sure it'll be totes fine by tomorrow!  k cya!  And then he wrote back "ummm, Nelly...that sounds a lot like rhabdo."  And I was like WHAT.

So we talked about pee for a while and I looked up some other symptoms of rhabdo, and yeah...probably got it.  Here are all the symptoms I had, plus the ones I'd been told to look out for but didn't see:

  • Your pee looks like Coke.  I didn't have this one, and it was still pretty bad.  This is NOT the only indicator.
  • You have crazy soreness and cramping.  Like, way way more than normal.  Not just in the stomach, either, which is what I'd been told.  My arm muscles literally felt like they were about to rip when I tried to straighten my arms.  And I come from a long line of English majors, so I know what "literally" means!
  • You are swollen up like a balloon.  When I say I couldn't see my elbows, I mean they were totally obscured by the swelling - I couldn't even feel my elbow bone.  Even now, the better part of a week later, they're significantly larger than normal.  Also, my muscles felt like they wouldn't stop flexing - they were rock-hard all the time, which for other things can occasionally be a good thing, but here was not so enjoyable.
  • "Brain fog," i.e. UTTER CONFUSION.  I knew I was out of it when one of the cooks said something to me about pretzels, and after I actually understood her words the third time she said them (not a normal event), I was like "oh no, John's making the pretzels today."  And then she looked at me weird and said "no, I mean give me one."  And we laughed merrily together, but inside I was like "wtf??  damn gluten..."  Seriously, though, I was in a total haze and honestly probably shouldn't even have driven the mile and a half back to my house.
  • Nausea and general feeling shitty.  BLARG.  It's never, EVER been so easy for me to turn down all the delicious Mexican food the cooks make for each other.  I entertained the thought for a second, but my stomach started gurgling even at that.
That's everything I noticed.  Don't be stupid like me, kids.  Drink your damn water.  I'd fallen out of the habit when I stopped going to CFD* on a regular basis, but now I've got my liter bottle in my hand and I'm chugging like a sixth-year senior frat boy trying to fill the emptiness inside.

-Nelly

*I will probably be there at 6 or 7 tonight.

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