School's out.... forever!

I thought that after I finished school, I'd be able to catch up on life - on all of the things I was slacking on or putting off... but as it turns out, blogging is still just as challenging for me!

Since the NYC marathon... life has been filled with finishing school (officially!), more running (surprise, surprise!), holidays, one very stressful and mysterious hospital visit, some very exciting football, and a visit to Coeur d'Alene. So here goes...

We went to Napa for Thanksgiving. They didn't have snow, but they had plenty of turkey! We flew in early Thursday morning and dad kindly picked us up. We were put to work right away. David had just had a beautiful cover built over the patio and we put up lights, brought in the heaters, decorated, and started cooking. The Long/Leigh household knows how to throw a good party, and it seemed the 40+ people who showed up had a great time! There was so much food, even more wine, and dancing (with DJ Jazzy Geoff, of course). Although, in the middle of dinner, Dustin and I had to escape upstairs in order to watch the Seahawks slaughter the 49ers. Not the best crowd to celebrate that win, but three of us were pretty excited!

Jen put me in charge of decorating the pie... these are the Seahawks storming the Golden Gate Bridge. Jen did not enjoy this. :) 

The day after Thanksgiving meant the start of running Santa. We had decided that Dustin needed a new  Santa suit this year and we found something quite unique on Amazon. I even decided to join in this year and ordered myself a snazzy Mrs. Clause suit. So on Friday, when even Ellie and her friend wanted to join in on the fun, we went out for a run and spandex running Santa made his debut in Napa.

To continue the costume fun, I had found some wonderful Christmas holiday shirts for everyone this year and they eagerly sported them as David drove us down to the best Christmas tree lot in the Napa Valley to pick out the Griswald family tree.

Dustin and I spent Sunday in San Francisco, as he had an early flight on Monday. I had been looking forward to eating at this vegan Mexican restaurant called Gracias Madre and it was delicious!

After a great trip, I had two long stressful weeks of school to finish and a lot of cramming for finals. I was holding my breath a little until grades came out, but I did it! Then I received my diploma a few weeks later.

We did a few Christmas things like see "The Grinch" at the Paramount, went to a Figgy Pudding caroling contest downtown, and had an all-day PJ Christmas movie watching party.

2015 started off a little rough and I hope it's not telling of the rest of the year. New Year's Eve was tame - we went to dinner at 8oz Burger Bar with Pat and Amanda and barely made it to midnight. We got up the next day to help them pack up their truck, as they were heading off for new adventures in Lake Tahoe. A day or two later, Dustin's back was bothering him, but he just attributed it to sore muscles. On Sunday, we were supposed to run a race that was part of this trail series we had started. Dustin felt so crappy that he didn't go and when I got back from the run, he asked me to take him to urgent care. His back pain was really bad and was now accompanied by pain in his abdomen as well. We went to a place nearby... the doctor basically wrote him off - attributed it to taking a lot of ibuprofen. He gave him some muscle relaxers and some stomach medication. We came home and he took some of the stomach medicine and ate some mac and cheese and an hour later was throwing up - and throwing up blood.

So we went to the ER. They checked him in, ran a lot of initial tests and we waited around for a while. The ER doctor finally came back in at some point and said everything was perfectly normal... but his kidneys were failing. Uhhhhh......

He didn't know why. We were totally shocked. He was healthy except for that. His creatinine level (a measure of kidney function) was almost four and it's supposed to be less than one. They admitted him to the hospital that night.

They started him on a lot of IV fluid, put a catheter the next day, and ran a LOT of tests. The first two days his creatinine level got worse and slowly... it got better. There was a lot of waiting around to see doctors all day, interrupted sleeping at night, pain meds... it was a rough week for me, and I can only imagine how much worse it was for Dustin.

The doctor told him to order a blood pressure cuff and then let him finally go home on Friday. He had a prescription for pain meds, but stopped taking them when he got home. I had signed up to run with a group of my coworkers in the Bridle Trails Relay on Saturday and I went to that in the afternoon. I was fourth in line to run and when I got done, I checked in with Dustin and he said he needed to go back to the hospital. He was in pain, had a terrible headache, pressure in his chest, and his blood pressure was through the roof. We went back to the ER and they ran a slew of new tests... and some of the same ones. He threw up once on the way back from the test, but they finally got his pain under control and didn't think they needed to admit him.

Back at home, and over the next week, he weened himself off of the meds. His boss let him work from home, so he was able to take it easy over the next week. His condition continued to improve... and he seems to be back to normal now - running long runs again and getting ready for Boston.

We finished off the trail series with the Interlaken Icicle 5k. We had started the trail series in November with the Ravenna Refresher 10k and Dustin came in 2nd place. He took 2nd place in the next race (the Reindeer Romp) in his spandex santa suit no less. The people really enjoyed his suit! And again in the next race at the Seward Solstice 10k. It was a fun series, put on by Northwest Trails. They would give out funny prizes to the top winners and raffle prizes as well (I won some bumper stickers and a box of fruit loops!).

As part of a celebration of finishing school, I also cut off all of my hair on New Year's Day. It was probably a good 18" that I chopped and was able to donate it. :) I'm very happy with how it feels!

The Seahawks went to the Super Bowl again! But sadly, lost to the Patriots. They almost even came back to win it in the last play of the game... it was heart wrenching. We had a fun party at Joe's though.

We also took a short weekend trip to Coeur d'Alene (first time there). We went and explored the downtown area and Tubbs Hill. We had some excellent chickpea burgers from Seasons of Coeur d'Alene restaurant and went for a nice 10 mile run along the river trail on Sunday. It was a fun little city and I definitely want to go back in the summer.

 On the way home, we stopped in Spokane to see the falls at the Riverfront Park. We also had some vegan lunch at Boots Bakery and I found the most delicious vegan carrot cake cupcake. Totally worth the stop!!