Time for a story, although unfortunately a story with some gross details, so be warned...
The middle to end of July I went on the Camino and then went to the beach two days with a friend in beautiful Galicia, where my knee started to hurt excruciatingly bad. I'll have to blog about the Camino another time, but Maria (my olympic marathon running friend) and I went to meet her family at their beach "house" after we finished the Camino. We got there, walked along the beach a bit, which is just right down from their beachfront property, which is where they park their RV for the summer and have an outdoor sort of house, with an attachment, like a tent, for the living room (and guestroom), a little shed outside which houses the kitchen (equipped with a fridge, stove, sink) and then the kitchen table is outside in between the two, as is the grill. Not to mention that it all is up on a little hill directly above the beach. Nice. While we were on the beach the sun was warm, the water cold (but nice since the sun was hot), and there was a continual cool breeze. I wasn't ever hot, nor cold, just perfect.
So, we wandered around the coast (Rias Baixas) and enjoyed the beach the first day. We, of course, went for a run on the beach which was nice, other than feeling my knee a little and that my body had taken a toll from walking 10 days with a backpack probably a bit heavier than it should have been and from the last two days without much stretching and a lot of running around (literally) to try to take care of everyone else who was hurting. (At that point I felt just fine.) That night we went to another coastal town for some incredible seafood and then wandered around a bit in a beautiful little place that reminded me a bit of the grecian islands. The next day we took off for one of the islands closeby in Southern Galicia / Rias Baixas (still NW Spain) to do some hiking and then sunbathing. We started off just fine. I was a little disappointed with the vegetation, as I've been missing the lush greens of Missouri/Pennsylvania/much of the US, but the coastline was gorgeous with the crashing waves and such. We walked around, at the lunches we'd packed, went past a camp of kids on the island, and my knee started to hurt with a vengeance. I tried to just ignore it and kept going, slowing down a little. We then went down a somewhat large and steep hill. Fine, okay now I was limping and the pain really was excruciating. Maria asked how I was doing and I said not too good. Ironically some other people went by at this time and one of the guys said (obviously in spanish), "If you go to Santiago, don't tell me I didn't warn you." Maria then yelled back, "That's where she just came from."
So my walking is now pathetic. I'm trying not to put pressure on my left leg, but also not to make any quick movements. Maria convinces me to make it down to the beach below to put my leg in the cold water of the ocean while she goes off in search of some ice. It's a pretty rocky coast, so I just stop at the first pool of water I find, which only comes up to my calf when I'm sitting down, but it works a bit. Maria comes back with ice that we put on my knee, while she massages my leg with the remaining pieces. She also convinces me to take the medicine, since it is excruciating pain. (I'm not a huge fan of medicine, particularly when it's just to cover up the pain, or in this case when I don't actually know what I'm taking.) In fact I take two, which Maria assures me her mom does nearly everyday.
We stay there for awhile, alternating between icing my leg a couple times or submerging myself in freezing cold water, and laying out in the sun. It was a pretty beach. The other little glitch was that somehow in all our concern about the looming clouds and possible rain, and thus the rain ponchos from the camino, we had forgotten to bring a towel - not even one. So we laid out the bright yellow ponchos as our towels. That worked alright, although I still ended up a bit sand covered, until we went to re-ice my leg-knee. I was icing my knee and enjoying actually not having pain, while Maria was wandering around the rocks. One of the many seagulls began to peck at the yellow poncho. Maria went to shush him away. I was now laying on the nice cool rocks. Now the seagull was back with the poncho and now looking in my backpack. Maria ran back to shush him away, pack up the ponchos and came back. He was back once more, now looking in the bag for the ponchos. Maria made a pile of stuff so that he couldn't get into the bag nor see anything yellow. Pretty humorous.
We wandered back to the port, I'm actually walking normally now, careful, but normally, and thrilled about that fact. We make it back to the café alongside the pier, wait for our ferry back and head home. That night and then the next morning I take another pill of her mom's pain killers, thinking, "I just need to get back to Madrid and then can go to the chiropractor and get this taken care of." Both that night and then again the next morning it occurred to me that my mind was not as clear as normal and that I felt a little out of it. I mentioned to Maria that I thought these pain killers were pretty strong medicine. She didn't seem concerned.
They drove me to Santiago to catch my plane back to Madrid that morning and I got carsick on the way there, right as we get to the airport and I opened the door. It was a hot, poorly ventilated car with curvy coastal roads, no big deal. Not normal, but not to worry. Maria's parents scold me for not having told them sooner and I explain that it happened all really quickly at the very end. Her dad insists on carrying my backpack and walking with me in. I sit down and say goodbye. Later I check in and am noticing that I still don't feel 100%. I definitely feel nauseous, but probably just need some air, to walk a bit, some water on my face, something... I make my way to the gate, eat the lunch Maria's mom sent with me, read a bit, fan myself as I still feel a bit flush, and wait. We board the plane and all is well until about a half an hour before the landing, major turbulence. At this point, I start to think, "Dawn, you can make it, it's' just a little turbulence before landing. Just go to sleep." But the turbulence went on longer than a normal, turbulent landing. At this point, I think, "Okay, if I need it, I still have the bag from my lunch." Time passes, I ask the tall gal next to me to please open the vent a bit more to let some air come in. She can't seem to figure it out and I am fading. The horrible flush feeling starts to descend over me, I empty the bag of the tupperware and unfortunately throw up several times. I apologize to the people next to me. The turbulence continues awhile longer. The flight attendant comes by and takes my bag, which I then think, "Aren't you going to give me something else just in case?" He comes back, gives me three paper towels and hurries off. The kind girls next to me are saying, "Don't worry about it. Just relax." We land and of course it seems like an eternity getting off the plane. We get off and head to baggage claim.
As I wait for my backpack, I get a call from my ride (who I'd called that morning since I wasn't sure about hiking across town on the metro with my camino backpack, my bad knee, and the nausea). He said he was sorry, but he was locked out of his apartment and car and that his wife was far enough away that it didn't make sense for me to wait. It would be at least a couple hours before he could get there. I told him not to worry about it and that I would probably just take a taxi, which I mainly said to put him at ease.
After I got off the phone I found my backpack and walking stick and thought through my options... taxi, bus and metro, or just metro. Generally the second would have been my choice, since it's the quickest and easiest and cheapest of the latter two. But any moving object like a car or bus didn't sound that great in my physical state and since my knee didn't hurt too bad, I figured I'd try the long trek on the metro, even though it involved much more walking. I'd just go slow. So that's what I did and it was fine thanks in part to the smooth metros of Madrid.
So, I got home Tuesday afternoon and went immediately to the chiropractor, who was amazing, slept all day Wednesday, or almost, and tried to just kind of lay low getting ready for the Second Camino trip which left Sunday at 4am and weighing the pros and cons considering that my knee was still in a decent amount of pain, now without any medicine in my bloodstream.
Thursday I talked to my good friend Ruth who said that if worse came to worse I could just drive between places and see them in the evening, which sounded kind of lame. Time alone, yes, but not at all ideal for the camino. I met up with everyone going on Friday for lunch. They were super-excited about going and since they consider me an expert on the Camino the bombarded me with questions. We left and I went to pick up a smaller backpack and a couple other things from Decathlon, kind of like an REI but cheaper. We actually ended up going all together and it occurred to me that my knee hurt more when it was stationary too much time and that I felt more nauseous than before, particularly after eating. So I went home and after flip-flopping back and forth about a million times finally decided not to go. It was now Saturday and they had made me promise that I'd at least come over on Saturday night for awhile, even if I decided not to go. So, I grabbed my keys to leave and boom, I felt awful. Nauseous, weak, horrible headache, the works. I laid down, sent Ruth a message, and despite wanting to go, ended up staying home. Yuck. The next day I slept almost the entire day, with flu-like symptoms, a hurting knee, aching all over, a horrible headache, nausea, etc., I forced myself to go walk a bit and to ice my knee, but that was it. That lasted about a day and a half and then I actually got hungry and began to eat again. And thanks to a great chiropractor and some resting, my knee feels almost fine and I am dreaming of running. (A friend told me to wait a bit, but I may try out a short run sometime this week.)
I am hoping to write some thoughts about my recent trip to the US and seeing it through my Spanish friends' eyes a bit since she came with me. I arrived back on Friday morning, am still fighting with jet lag (at least in the mornings), have watched four movies in the past 24 hours to prep for our film nights this fall, am trying to cram one and a million things into the next 24 hours, and leave tomorrow afternoon for two days of meetings in Barcelona.
