Shuffling in the rain...

Busy day. 

Up early for a Chamber of Commerce networking meeting, then work on budgets, off to the dentist, the doctor and back to work for an important meeting and more number crunching.

My gum is still infected, and it has been since January, and everything the dentist has tried has not gotten rid of the infection. Now the infection is causing bone deterioration. My dentist referred me to a specialist. I have a feeling this is going to be very expensive to fix. I think they may have to remove the tooth and then do whatever they do to replace it. 

Then I went to the doctor for my blood work results and the good news is that I don't have hepatitis A, B or C. The bad news is that he is not certain what the cause is. He wants me to reduce my beer drinking and the amount of fat I'm eating. I kept asking if the exercise has anything to do with it and he said that there has been no research to support that my enzymes would become elevated with exercise. I was drinking the same or more than I do now before I started exercising and my enzymes were better than fine. Once I started exercising they got out of whack.

My theory is that it may be because of the beer drinking, combined with exercise. I think that my liver is busy eliminating waste from training and when I drink lots of beer, all at once, it shocks the liver and it can't keep up with removing the waste from both the exercise and beer at the same time. I'm sure there is no research on this theory. After all, who do you know that trains at least 14 hours a week and parties and drinks as much beer as I do? I bet they couldn't find 100 people in the world, and that might be stretching it. 

In the short term I'm going to try and do what he says. I'm going to try to eat better and reduce my beer consumption, which is not going to be easy. He did tell me that my liver does not have permanent liver damage and that a fatty liver is reversible, if I take his advice. 

I did ask him how long I'd live if I didn't follow his advice and I didn't really get a clear answer. He probably was shocked I'd ask him that. My thought was that if by doing what he said gives me an extra couple of years but I have to sacrifice having a good time, then I don't know if I want to do it. I'd rather have 65 Sammy Davis Jr. years versus 100 boring years.

My old doctor did have a nutritionist call me yesterday. This nutritionist helped him, through diet, to cure his prostate cancer. His assistant told me that the process is to meet with the nutritionist for a 3 hour meeting and he goes through my entire medical history. From that, he develops a personalized nutritional plan and reviews it with me. The cost is $695, which is a lot of money for someone to tell me I need to reduce my beer intake and eat more fruits and vegetables and natural foods. If my insurance plan covers it, I'll go. If not, I'll figure something out on my own and see if it works.

My doctor said that if I take his advice and we don't see an improvement, then he will refer me to a specialist. I think that is a fair approach. My next blood work test is going to be in 90 days.

I went for a recovery run in the rain tonight and it was more like a shuffle. It's been a while since I've run that slow and I enjoyed it. My legs are still a little stiff from lactic acid build up and I could feel tightness in the muscles while I ran. After a while they loosened up and afterwards I took extra time to have a really good, long, stretch.

Race Recovery Run - 51:32 / 5.65 miles / 9:05 pace / 121 avg hr