April has never been the best month of the year for me. Last year was one of the absolute worst when my sweet little Romo died. I'm far from over that and can't think about it too much without getting lost in the grief. Maybe it's something I will never fully get over, but we all do our best to keep moving forward. This year has been up and down, better than last year but still with its challenges.
I still think of April as my second birthday, a time when I came out of a long fight with a terrible illness. I've now met two more people who had similar experiences with viral meningitis as I did. One gentleman contracted the virus from a feral kitten. I was bitten by a spider. The other lady I met didn't have a specific incident; she just ended up with it. All three of us were misdiagnosed and sent home, and all of us ended up back in the hospital for an extended stay shortly after being discharged. I don't know if this says more about the difficulty of diagnosing the illness or our healthcare system in general, but it doesn't seem right.
I'm not happy to know that others suffered like I did, but I was glad to know that I wasn't the only one who had lingering symptoms. I mean, I'm glad someone can relate. Two years after the worst of it, I finally felt like I was more solidly on my feet, but even now, I know that I'm not the same person I was before the spider bite. No, I don't mean I don a cape and fight crime like Spiderman now; I just mean there are some issues that occasionally pop up with my body and brain, issues I'm sure are related to the effects of the virus. Now that I know I'm not alone in this, it feels a little less scary.
Last year, I bought myself a bike to celebrate what I think of as a birthday of sorts, the time of year I recovered after nearly dying from meningitis. Since I had foot surgery recently this year and put a lot of cash into some car repairs, I think I'm going to keep any celebrations limited to splurges on small-scale things like cheese or chocolate, but April will always be a time of great reflection for me.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Collateral Damage
For a few years now, I have been debating whether or not to write about an issue in my life. It's not my issue per se, but it affects me a great deal, especially more recently. I've tried to ignore it or take the high road by simply sitting back and doing nothing, but that became increasingly harder to do in the last few weeks. I'm putting this out there because I'm tired. The strange and escalating online behavior of an individual has gone past shocking to worrying me, and I'm really sick of saying nothing about it and pretending it's OK. It's not. When I write this all out, I assume it will look like the shenanigans of kids in middle school, but when this stuff happens in the adult world, it's unsettling.
In 2009, I *met* a woman through a mutual friend on Facebook. It was actually my boyfriend, Kevin, who introduced us. He had started coaching her sometime in October of that year, and, despite my initial first impression and a sense of uneasiness, we friended each other the following month. This woman and I had a few online chats and occasionally commented on each other's social media posts. Though she confided in me about a few of the issues she was facing at the time, I felt the need to keep my guard up and never really opened up to her, something I'm glad about now. By the summer of the following year, she seemed to want to keep her distance, and I was fine with that. From what I could gather, she was preoccupied with a guy. Our communications ended, and the only real tie that linked us together was Kevin. You can read his recap of events here.
Sometime in 2010, Kevin asked if I had been saying things about him to this woman or to anyone else. Apparently, she told him that I and one of Kevin's ex-girlfriends had been saying some unkind things about him. Both his ex and I denied having said anything, and this was enough for me to realize his client was not someone with whom I wanted to socialize. I quickly blocked her on Facebook and other social media websites. I assumed I would never have to deal with any of these kinds of antics from her again. Out of sight, out of mind seemed appropriate, in theory anyway. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Long before she and Kevin began having issues, I found out that she had tried to convince Kevin to lock me out of the house where we were staying. It's true that Kevin and I had our ups and downs and were in a down spell at the time, but I still find it odd that someone I hardly knew and still hardly know, and someone I had made every effort to be kind to, would suggest something like this. He didn't, of course. When she and Kevin had their first falling out, I wasn't surprised, and when she came back to him later and requested that he coach her once more, I and many of his friends gently warned him that it might not be in his best interest to take her on as a client again. When their second falling out occurred, it also wasn't a surprise, but what happened after that was, at least the severity of it was. When things seemed more than a little bit out of hand, at least from my perspective, I tried to encourage Kevin to go to the police, but he didn't think the police could really do anything and didn't think things would continue. They did.
Things turned ugly after the second falling out, and she took many opportunities to complain about Kevin online, sometimes anonymously on Let's Run and sometimes on her blog or on social media. When he finally responded, she went off the deep end to the point where Kevin ended up in a hearing after she filed a petition for a restraining order that was filled with something other than facts. The hearing was bizarre. Kevin purchased a recording of it that's now in my hands. To me, it seemed like the judge was aware that not everything was adding up, and toward the end of the proceedings, he said that he felt Kevin's former client was doing and saying these things in an effort to make Kevin look like a bad person. He also said that Kevin could take her to court for defamation of character and for lack of payment, but it was a hearing only and didn't address those kinds of issues. At one point, the judge turned to her and said, "I suggest that you do not post anything publicly about Mr. Beck online..." He added that he felt it was best that the two of them leave each other alone. Her response was to go home and immediately post something publicly online about Kevin, and he is no longer quiet about pointing out her inconsistencies.
Since then, she has continued to take both direct and indirect swipes at Kevin; me; our coauthor, Brad; many of Kevin's friends; anyone living, coaching or training in Boulder; people with eating disorders (how we are stupid); and at Boulder in general. Oh, what a crummy place it is to be. I'm pretty sure Kevin is no longer going to let any of her attacks slide, which is understandable considering nothing seems to work to stop her, not even a judge suggesting she do just that.
Some of the more hurtful comments she has said about me include stating outright that I haven't eaten since high school, that I have "huge problems", that I'm a "legendary anorexic" who is in no position to coach, that I enable or even go on drinking benders with Kevin (I barely touch alcohol!) and, the worst, that I'm basically using my mom, counting on her dying, so that I can inherit her house. This last one is bogus, of course, but because I'm very close to my mom and love her dearly, it bothers me more than the others that show more about who she is as a person than about who I am. People who know me know the kind of person I am. I'm not worried about that. I'm very fortunate to have some incredible people in my life. There have been other mean-spirited remarks about me, but the gist is always the same, that I'm washed up, a failure, don't have a good job, that I'm a victim of domestic abuse etc.
I've never hidden the fact that I struggled with an eating disorder that nearly killed me, more so in the past, but I have put it out there in an effort to help others and let people know that it's OK to struggle. We are not our illnesses. She can rip on that all she wants, but to bring my very kind, very able-bodied, older mother into things is hitting pretty damn low. She tried to claim that Kevin somehow manipulated or edited these tweets, but I got them directly from her twitter feed:
Though something like the tweet below, as absurd as it is, isn't directed at me in particular, it's directed at runners who have some type of an eating disorder, and I fall or have fallen into this category, as do many others, I would guess, especially if you take a broad definition of eating disorders and don't limit it to anorexia, bulimia and binge eating:
I don't know. This is something I will never quite understand. In general, I try very hard to be a decent person. I'm not perfect, but I do my best to be helpful, kind, compassionate and considerate. In this case, I'm really not sure how to handle it. Doing nothing and looking the other way hasn't helped. If anything, things have gotten worse.
It's possible that there is some hurt under all these outbursts. I think it's misdirected at me, but I know that finding your true identity as a runner can be difficult. It might be that the falling out with Kevin, a coach who helped her reach some pretty lofty goals in running, caused some conflict in her mind. The coach-athlete relationship, good or bad, can be a hard one to let go of, but this is a lot of speculation on my part. I don't know enough about the situation to make any solid conclusions. There may be deeper issues at play, too. All I know is that I want all this bullshit to stop. Whatever grudge she has against him or, for whatever unknown reason, me, I just want her to go live her life and be as happy as she claims to be in between venomous bouts of tweeting or posting my name on Let's Run, Twitter or Facebook. There's no need to constantly and relentlessly drag other people into this fight. These kinds of attacks are so unnecessary and so very cruel. I may be expanding the scope of conflict by posting this, but my intent is to stop pretending like this shit doesn't affect me. It does. It's upsetting and weird and even a little bit scary.
And obviously, this is my perspective. Again, I don't know this woman and have no idea why I am so often the brunt of her online remarks or even why Kevin is. All I know is that I want out of this situation and really hope something will eventually help her stop lashing out and move on with her life.
In 2009, I *met* a woman through a mutual friend on Facebook. It was actually my boyfriend, Kevin, who introduced us. He had started coaching her sometime in October of that year, and, despite my initial first impression and a sense of uneasiness, we friended each other the following month. This woman and I had a few online chats and occasionally commented on each other's social media posts. Though she confided in me about a few of the issues she was facing at the time, I felt the need to keep my guard up and never really opened up to her, something I'm glad about now. By the summer of the following year, she seemed to want to keep her distance, and I was fine with that. From what I could gather, she was preoccupied with a guy. Our communications ended, and the only real tie that linked us together was Kevin. You can read his recap of events here.
Sometime in 2010, Kevin asked if I had been saying things about him to this woman or to anyone else. Apparently, she told him that I and one of Kevin's ex-girlfriends had been saying some unkind things about him. Both his ex and I denied having said anything, and this was enough for me to realize his client was not someone with whom I wanted to socialize. I quickly blocked her on Facebook and other social media websites. I assumed I would never have to deal with any of these kinds of antics from her again. Out of sight, out of mind seemed appropriate, in theory anyway. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Long before she and Kevin began having issues, I found out that she had tried to convince Kevin to lock me out of the house where we were staying. It's true that Kevin and I had our ups and downs and were in a down spell at the time, but I still find it odd that someone I hardly knew and still hardly know, and someone I had made every effort to be kind to, would suggest something like this. He didn't, of course. When she and Kevin had their first falling out, I wasn't surprised, and when she came back to him later and requested that he coach her once more, I and many of his friends gently warned him that it might not be in his best interest to take her on as a client again. When their second falling out occurred, it also wasn't a surprise, but what happened after that was, at least the severity of it was. When things seemed more than a little bit out of hand, at least from my perspective, I tried to encourage Kevin to go to the police, but he didn't think the police could really do anything and didn't think things would continue. They did.
Things turned ugly after the second falling out, and she took many opportunities to complain about Kevin online, sometimes anonymously on Let's Run and sometimes on her blog or on social media. When he finally responded, she went off the deep end to the point where Kevin ended up in a hearing after she filed a petition for a restraining order that was filled with something other than facts. The hearing was bizarre. Kevin purchased a recording of it that's now in my hands. To me, it seemed like the judge was aware that not everything was adding up, and toward the end of the proceedings, he said that he felt Kevin's former client was doing and saying these things in an effort to make Kevin look like a bad person. He also said that Kevin could take her to court for defamation of character and for lack of payment, but it was a hearing only and didn't address those kinds of issues. At one point, the judge turned to her and said, "I suggest that you do not post anything publicly about Mr. Beck online..." He added that he felt it was best that the two of them leave each other alone. Her response was to go home and immediately post something publicly online about Kevin, and he is no longer quiet about pointing out her inconsistencies.
Since then, she has continued to take both direct and indirect swipes at Kevin; me; our coauthor, Brad; many of Kevin's friends; anyone living, coaching or training in Boulder; people with eating disorders (how we are stupid); and at Boulder in general. Oh, what a crummy place it is to be. I'm pretty sure Kevin is no longer going to let any of her attacks slide, which is understandable considering nothing seems to work to stop her, not even a judge suggesting she do just that.
Some of the more hurtful comments she has said about me include stating outright that I haven't eaten since high school, that I have "huge problems", that I'm a "legendary anorexic" who is in no position to coach, that I enable or even go on drinking benders with Kevin (I barely touch alcohol!) and, the worst, that I'm basically using my mom, counting on her dying, so that I can inherit her house. This last one is bogus, of course, but because I'm very close to my mom and love her dearly, it bothers me more than the others that show more about who she is as a person than about who I am. People who know me know the kind of person I am. I'm not worried about that. I'm very fortunate to have some incredible people in my life. There have been other mean-spirited remarks about me, but the gist is always the same, that I'm washed up, a failure, don't have a good job, that I'm a victim of domestic abuse etc.
I've never hidden the fact that I struggled with an eating disorder that nearly killed me, more so in the past, but I have put it out there in an effort to help others and let people know that it's OK to struggle. We are not our illnesses. She can rip on that all she wants, but to bring my very kind, very able-bodied, older mother into things is hitting pretty damn low. She tried to claim that Kevin somehow manipulated or edited these tweets, but I got them directly from her twitter feed:
 |
| This isn't directed at me, but my mother and I are collateral damage. |
 |
| More of the same kinds of tweets by Kimberly Duclos. |
Though something like the tweet below, as absurd as it is, isn't directed at me in particular, it's directed at runners who have some type of an eating disorder, and I fall or have fallen into this category, as do many others, I would guess, especially if you take a broad definition of eating disorders and don't limit it to anorexia, bulimia and binge eating:
 |
| Another odd remark from Kim Duclos. |
It's possible that there is some hurt under all these outbursts. I think it's misdirected at me, but I know that finding your true identity as a runner can be difficult. It might be that the falling out with Kevin, a coach who helped her reach some pretty lofty goals in running, caused some conflict in her mind. The coach-athlete relationship, good or bad, can be a hard one to let go of, but this is a lot of speculation on my part. I don't know enough about the situation to make any solid conclusions. There may be deeper issues at play, too. All I know is that I want all this bullshit to stop. Whatever grudge she has against him or, for whatever unknown reason, me, I just want her to go live her life and be as happy as she claims to be in between venomous bouts of tweeting or posting my name on Let's Run, Twitter or Facebook. There's no need to constantly and relentlessly drag other people into this fight. These kinds of attacks are so unnecessary and so very cruel. I may be expanding the scope of conflict by posting this, but my intent is to stop pretending like this shit doesn't affect me. It does. It's upsetting and weird and even a little bit scary.
And obviously, this is my perspective. Again, I don't know this woman and have no idea why I am so often the brunt of her online remarks or even why Kevin is. All I know is that I want out of this situation and really hope something will eventually help her stop lashing out and move on with her life.
Monday, April 3, 2017
Quick Update
I have now had 9.5 surgeries on my feet. I think I'll stop there.
The cyst removal went very well. I was surprised to see how big that sucker was. It had started to attach itself to four places, so my doctor tied off each of those. Instead of being the size of a pea, it was more like the size of a pecan. My doctor likes to show me these things. I got to see my severed nerve last time. It's interesting. It's funny that I had no trouble watching surgery on my hand, but I don't know if I would want to see someone cutting into my feet.
For my right foot, the doctor numbed it up (that's way more painful than it sounds) and manipulated my toe to break up the scar tissue. At one point, there was a very loud POP! that sounded like someone snapping a fresh carrot in half. "Did you hear that?" my doctor asked. How could I not! Apparently, that noise was the sound of something good happening. After a bit more manipulation, my toe went from looking like it was trying to escape from my foot to resting in a more natural position. It's not perfect, but it's much, much better than it was.
I had a slight reaction to the pain meds, so I used them very sparingly. The second day, I had a fever and spent the day in bed. I thought I would try some yoga, but I ended up lying down on my yoga mat instead of actually doing much. Oh well, I made the effort. It didn't happen. Today I got my bandages changed and was able to move around more.
Things are looking good. It will be a week before I get the stitches out, but I got the go ahead to do some workouts.
I need a shower, but I have to keep my foot dry. Somehow a shower with one foot outside of the tub is never quite as satisfying, but it's better than nothing.
The cyst removal went very well. I was surprised to see how big that sucker was. It had started to attach itself to four places, so my doctor tied off each of those. Instead of being the size of a pea, it was more like the size of a pecan. My doctor likes to show me these things. I got to see my severed nerve last time. It's interesting. It's funny that I had no trouble watching surgery on my hand, but I don't know if I would want to see someone cutting into my feet.
For my right foot, the doctor numbed it up (that's way more painful than it sounds) and manipulated my toe to break up the scar tissue. At one point, there was a very loud POP! that sounded like someone snapping a fresh carrot in half. "Did you hear that?" my doctor asked. How could I not! Apparently, that noise was the sound of something good happening. After a bit more manipulation, my toe went from looking like it was trying to escape from my foot to resting in a more natural position. It's not perfect, but it's much, much better than it was.
I had a slight reaction to the pain meds, so I used them very sparingly. The second day, I had a fever and spent the day in bed. I thought I would try some yoga, but I ended up lying down on my yoga mat instead of actually doing much. Oh well, I made the effort. It didn't happen. Today I got my bandages changed and was able to move around more.
Things are looking good. It will be a week before I get the stitches out, but I got the go ahead to do some workouts.
I need a shower, but I have to keep my foot dry. Somehow a shower with one foot outside of the tub is never quite as satisfying, but it's better than nothing.
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