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Today, my doctor told me that my blood sugar was high, my blood pressure was high, my progesterone was high, my weight was high, my thyroid was high, and my vitamin D was low.

Where I live, Vitamin D is always low.  The rest…..

“It’s been a hell of a year,” she said, “right?”

I tried to argue that my thyroid being high was a good sign: since being diagnosed with hypthyroidism when I was 28, I’ve constantly had to balance medication levels so I am neither too high nor too low. Unless my life is very, very stable, it’s a given that at least once a year we will be adjusting my meds up or down.

Stress doesn’t help: it can drop me low or catapault me high.  It’s always an adventure.

“Have you been running?” she demanded.

“I’ve been doing yoga twice a week,” I said proudly.  And I am proud: I didn’t think I would like Hatha, as it is slower then the Flow classes I’d been taking for five years or so.  But when a friend suggested I try it, that it would be good for my body and mind, I discovered she was right: I am able to get to The Zone doing Hatha more so then I ever did in Flow.  I am also seeing huge improvements in muscle tone and strength after only six months in Hatha, whereas in Flow I sort of peaked awhile ago and have just been maintaining ever since. Better yet, there is something going on in my head: my voices are coming back (don’t worry; this is a good thing, for me).

My doctor pinned me down with her eyes.  “No running?” she said.

“Well, you know…it’s been figuring out a schedule…”

That is the truth: a structure to my run workouts is important to me.  I need to know when I can go run so I WILL go run, no matter what.  For many reasons, over the last year every time I start on a schedule, it gets thrown off by one kid or another kid or the weather or–

“And you’re eating a lot of sugar,” my doctor said, interrupting my defense.

“Chocolate chip cookies,” I say with a tentative smile.  “Made with dark chocolate.”

Many times recently, I dressed to run, but then something came up.  The chocolate chip cookies were available.  I ate them in my running gear….Plus, dark chocolate….

She glared. “Alcohol?”

“Hmmm?” I said.

She glared some more.  “Once a week? Twice a week? More?”

“Mmmmmmm……”  The alcohol has been like the running: once upon a time, when life made sense, I drank on weekends.  A beer after gardening, at a cookout, after a particularly long day, or when I went out with friends.  When life stopped making sense, I drank a lot, by myself, in my house, after my kids went to sleep, for many months. Then I got bored with myself and my angst and straightened up.  But again–the schedule.  I am a person who needs a schedule, a structure, to function.  Within that structure, I have wild impetuous moments, so that I often feel  wild and rash and impetuous.

I am not.

Back to my doctor, who was still staring at me.

“No more sugar,” she said.  “No more alcohol.  And RUN.”

“But I’ve been doing yoga,” I said weakly.

She blinked.  “The yoga is great,” she said.  “YOU need to run.  When you can.  Not when you planned it, or scheduled it, or thought about it.  When.You.Can.”

I winced.  Nodded.  Contemplated changing doctors to someone who didn’t know me that well, so I could get things past her.  At least for awhile.

Thought about how little I’d been sleeping recently that, even with my bursts of manic-thyroid high, I was exhausted. Thought about how one beer was pushing me past buzzed, which was a sign of unbalanced blood sugar for me.  Thought about how I woke up so hungry I wanted to eat a dozen eggs and pancakes but got sick after one or two: more signs, for me, of high blood pressure and blood sugars….I’ve been here before.  My body likes structure and schedule and life making sense, too, and far too often, life just doesn’t make sense, on levels big and small.

On the way home, I couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of putting on my running gear.  Every piece of workout gear I owned was part of that life that made sense.

I needed new stuff.

I checked the clock: I had an hour to kill.  And I’d left that hour open, in the schedule in my head…..So I went to the store and bought three new workout outfits.  Including socks.

Then, after I picked up my son, before the time I’d decided I would run, I ran.  I even–in my new outfit that was senselessly patterned in neon green and my new socks that were white and did not match the green–ran a new route… that I made up as I went.

Crazy, senseless, times.