feeling sorry for myself (Read 975 times)

Yikes! I'm sorry to hear about your accident! Sounds like y'all crunched pretty hard! Healing from major injuries like that is way beyond anything I'm familiar with, so I'll only say that physical therapists are your friend. Yes, they get paid to hurt you, but it's a good pain... Are you going to be completely bed-bound? This might be a good time to exercise your brain. I hear visualization techniques can help a lot with training when you can't actually physically do it. You may also want to spend some of your now extra time researching about running - techniques, methods, etc. That'll help keep your mind focused towards running and then you can come here and share what you learned with the rest of us! Why don't you keep involved here on runningAHEAD? Post something - ANYTHING - every time you go on-line and we'll keep you company along your return to health. Just because you're not able to run right now doesn't mean you're not a runner. You can still belong here if you choose to. Janell

Mmmm. Chocolate milk good. You also might want to consider volunteering at the marathon you'll be missing, if you think you're up for it. I remember hearing one of the more experienced runners suggest that to someone else who got sidelined, and it sounded like a good idea. It'll be hard knowing you're not out there, but at least you'll get to be part of the excitement. Think about it, anyway.

you can always come here and play with the cats and dogs that roam this place

Said the man dressed in the giant rabbit costume... Don't let us scare you off, Sara. We may be a little strange, but we's good folks. Promise!

Thanks everyone, your encouragement is greatly appreciated and needed. As for chocolate milk and ice cream, I will see what I can do... Also, I'm not bed bound anymore, the doctors want me to pretty much do as much as I can even though it hurts. A lot. I am not in any kind of cast because they stopped binding ribs recently. The doctors discovered that it is better not to have them so your lungs can expand and not be limited by where your ribs are. It helps with pneumonia. And, unless your pelvis is broken all the way through in places, they don't do anything. I only fractured my pelvis and one side feels like it is very deep, it seems like it might be too because the doctors are worried about movement. Anyway, I am glad I didn't break it because then I would be in traction. So, it is a mixed blessing. At least I don't look like a plaster of paris "masterpiece", but then I don't have any kind of support either. As far as the research goes, I will go back to work on that tomorrow. I am working with a geophysicist with high pressure studies of iron and phosphorus. We are getting the equation of state together for a certain compound, which would allow us to determine whether or not phosphorus is an element in the Earth's core. We know iron is, that is why we can use the compound. We can't examine phosphorus directly because it burns at normal pressures in oxygen. This is my senior thesis, and I am enjoying the work. I might continue in my prof's footsteps and go to graduate school for geophysics. But, there is also nano and biophysics. We will see what happens. To answer your string theory question... I do not like theory, I like the more hands on experimental side of things. However, the school I am at, albeit small, is lucky enough to have two accomplished string theorists. That is more than even the big schools and the really prestigous schools have. I think string theory is an interesting idea and it has a lot of merit. It certainly explains a lot of things, but they still need to work on it in order to figure a few things out. I won't go into it because the math involved is seriously like reading Greek (there are Greek words and letters in there among other things) and I took a class last semester dealing with the math needed. I did okay in the class, but it really made me realize just why I like the experimental stuff. Anyway, let me appologize now for any tangents, loops in thought, or anything else that will occur in the next few months as I write to you guys. I'm not saying I wouldn't do this normally, but now I have a real excuse... drugs, they gave me Percacet (don't know if I am spelling it right). It isn't as cool of a drug as the one they gave me in my IV at the hospital, but this is pretty neat for a drug in pill form. It does play some tricks on my short term memory, and on making me sleep a lot. It also seems to make it difficult to concentrate for an hour. At any rate, I am talking you guys' ears off, so I will sign off for now. Thank you for the support. I will write again later. Sara

Got any opinions on string theory?

I remember I used to play with string in kindergarten. Theory was that it helped us develop creativity. Or, did you mean something else?

Oh, I enjoy science and math, but reading and language are right up there too. I do have to admit that I have a soft spot for science fiction. Although, not all of us science "geeks" do. I knew a guy who was in school with me last year and he hated science fiction... said it wasn't real enough and there were too many inherrent problems. However, Star Trek did bring us the MP3 player. So, the creative side helps to guide the science/math side to where society wants us to explore next. I also LOVE reading, one good thing about this accident is that I will have plenty of time to read. But that only starts to happen as soon as I am off of the pain medication. I can't seem to keep my eyes open for very long. On a different note: I have started "training" again. You can see my log for my new times and distances. I will probably mention them in here as well. I decided feeling sorry for myself was good enough, I had to at least start working toward where I was in time and distance. Let's just say I won't think 12 minutes/mile is slow again At least, not for a while. Today, I only managed to go .2 miles. And, it took me 20 minutes to do it. With my walker. I will get better though. Sara

The current Newsweek actually has a little article about a transgendered guy (I think he's about 50 and was still a woman as recently as the late 80s) who was born a woman and now is a very respected scientist. He is doing a lot to help young women find acceptance in the Sciences, as he once struggled to not be treated as a lesser in the field, himself. Interesting story. k