Wonderful Milestone Reached!

It's really early to be reaching a milestone and this one was particularly important to me.

A little background....I started the Couch to 5K running program the day Jacob started kindergarten. About 5 years ago! I was consistent & (I felt) successful. I enjoy running. I got my BFF into it and we did several 5K's together and about 2 years into it, I started to have calf trouble.

At first, I just pushed though the pain. But it gradually go so bad that my legs were going numb and in extreme cases, it practically paralyzed my legs. It made my calves engorge with blood, they got like blocks of steel.

I asked my doc and he didn't know, I asked another and they didn't have an answer for me. I finally did my own research and decided that I had Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) with Intermittent Claudication. Not a good diagnosis! And the treatment is 1) frequent exercise to make it better (obviously not working in my case) 2) medication and 3) surgery.

So I pretty much gave up for awhile. It go so that just walking across campus at anything more than a leisurely pace was practically impossible. My calves would almost instantly engorge so bad that I could barely walk.

It's one of the main factors that pushed me to surgery NOW.

So fast forward to yesterday, 9 days post-op. I'm noticing how skinny & floppy my calves are. My legs were skinny anyway, but now they are so....soft & supple haha.

I start to suspect that maybe my calves were just swollen before and that was contributing to the Intermittent Claudication.

So I decided that on my next walk, I would up my pace enough to test my theory. When I went put for my walk, I didn't hold back any, I took off on a brisk pace and kept it up for the most part for 30 minutes. Prior to surgery, I would only have lasted a couple of minutes at that pace before the IC would get so bad that I couldn't walk anymore.

I'm so excited, I'm planning a 5K in September!!!!