I Run These Towns

March 16, 2020 feels like 100 years ago. It feels like yesterday. We'd been having meetings at city hall discussing what we were then calling the Coronavirus and what we'd do if faced with it. That Monday morning we found out an employee had COVID-like symptoms. During the end of the previous week he'd been in several cross-departmental meetings, so the potential for exposure to other employees was very strong. We sat in the Mayor's conference room discussing what we should do and whether we should close city hall. I remember the breaking point being that if this person ended up having COVID and we knew he was symptomatic it would be a disaster. (He ended up having the flu but at that time the tests took forever).  We closed city hall. I went home late that morning and sat at my dining room table working. We didn't have Zoom or Teams or any of the video conferencing platforms we're so proficient with today. I will never forget how quiet the house was and how odd...

Nearly 17 years ago I'd never run more than a mile (MAYBE two) consecutively in my life. I went to a Team in Training meeting with a friend and decided to run a marathon. Like one does. I went from never running to training for my first marathon, and I was instantly addicted.  Running my first half (Nike Women's Half in San Francisco) in 2006 In the next decade I ran and ran and ran. Four marathons. Twenty two half marathons. Dozens of 5k and 10k races, and a few 10-milers and 15ks thrown in. I ran hundreds of training miles, and I loved every minute of it (even the hard ones).  Running both the 5k and 10k at the 5/3 River Bank run in 2015  (my first Mother's Day!) Happy tears after the New York Marathon When I was hospitalized for a month in 2014 I started running again right away. I ran a 10k three months after my hospital stay. Being a runner became a huge part of my identity, and I didn't know how to NOT be a runner. People suggest cycling (vomit) or walking, and no...

My social media shows the amazing summer I've been having. I've gotten lots of quality time with my son and husband. We're at the pool nearly every day per our summer norm. I've been traveling a lot. My business is booming, and I love the work I'm doing for my clients.  On one of the two trips to Oregon this summer What most people don't know is how often I'm faking it. Don't get me wrong: I am enjoying my summer. But I'm wearing a mask. Behind that mask I'm hiding that my Crohn's Disease is at its worst since I got sick 24 years ago. There have certainly been times where my disease has been more acute, but this is a very sustained period of feeling quite awful quite frequently. It's becoming tough to maintain my usually positive outlook. I find that I'm extremely impatient (and even angry) with other people. I know everyone has struggles they're managing, and it's not a competition. But where I generally want to be a supporti...

I was in law school 21 years ago when Legally Blonde premiered. I felt like, while Elle Woods didn't entirely mirror me, this was a character I understood. I've spent my entire life feeling too frivolous, too chatty, too perky to be serious . Serious people wear neutral colors and dark suits and flats (vomit) and frown a lot. If I wanted to be taken seriously, particularly as a woman, I needed to be more serious, whatever the fuck that means.  I love clothes. I have (I recently counted) 65 pairs of shoes not including flip flops and running shoes. I have a closet full of colorful coats and another filled with cocktail dresses (some of which I haven't even worn yet). Looking good makes me feel good. I don't own a suit. I don't do blazers. I don't feel good or powerful in them. I prefer dresses that fit me well and power heels. The heels give me my super powers (coupled with a glass of champagne makes me lethal).  At a presentation early this year. I felt amazing ...

It's been a tough few years for all of us, and even with all this pressure I feel like I've weathered the storms (pandemic, severe health challenges, no childcare, virtual school, job changes) pretty well. This month, May 2022, is when it all came crashing down. Dealing with the air conditioning tune up guy was what did me in. On May 4 I had surgery to drain/repair an abscess, the same abscess I had surgically addressed in 2016 and again last March. The infection just won't stay away, and I hate the idea of having another seton (drain) for who knows how long. But we scheduled surgery, and I came home feeling 1) relieved that it went well and I was heading home and 2) ready to heal and start running again and get back to "normal". When we got home from surgery I mentioned something to my husband about him dropping our son off at school the next morning (less than 24 hours after surgery for the record) and he mentioned he couldn't because he had meetings. So, le...

A few years ago my family started renting houses in various locations for Christmas in order to accommodate the growing number of humans in our family. In December of 2019 we rented a house in Pennsylvania on the Youghiogheny River about an hour north of where my mom lives in West Virginia. I was looking forward to a week with family, but my body had other plans. I ended up with the worst virus I've had in years. At this point COVID was a headline from the other side of the world, but I had all the symptoms: violent cough, fever, chills, exhaustion. I still made a turkey on Christmas Eve and got up with my son in the wee hours of the morning when he wanted to see if Santa had come. I went to urgent care a few days after Christmas, and upon walking in they handed me a mask. It felt so weird to have it on. They diagnosed me with bronchitis and gave me a breathing treatment. The same day we took our son to a different urgent care where he was diagnosed with strep throat. We entered 20...

It started happening in 2017: the realization that I am a sick person. I know, I know...after all these surgeries and procedures and medications I took for the nearly 20 years prior, it still didn't start sinking in until I had a bowel obstruction in February of 2017 . It was the first time I had an NG tube inserted while I was awake (brutal), and it reminded me that I was not in control. That is a lesson that's been very hard to learn. But even with that realization I refused (and still refuse) to live life like a sick person.  Smiling through an NG, February 2017 That summer it was discovered that I had almost zero Ferratin (stored iron), so I added a hematologist and iron infusions into my health care repertoire. I also switched medications from Humira, which was not working, to Stelara. Stelara is a bi-monthly injection that I am still taking to this day and (knock on wood) has been relatively successful at keeping my disease in check. In August my surgeon declared my absce...

I had been receiving IV infusions of Remicade, a biologic treatment Crohn's, for 14 years as I entered 2016. It was becoming clear that what had been a miracle drug was not having the same response. As we entered the new year I was cycling through antibiotics and trying to figure out next steps. Despite my health challenges I continued running. I completed the Shamrock Shuffle 8k in Chicago in March and the Gazelle Girl Half Marathon in Grand Rapids in April. I was still competing (with myself) at a level that made me happy.  In April my son brought home Norovirus from daycare, and it cycled through our family. I couldn't seem to recover from the bug. I couldn't shake extraordinary abdominal pain.  My doctor ordered lab work, so I headed to the lab around the corner from my office. I don't have an aversion to needles and have had lab work completed more times than I can count. On this day the nurse was unable to find a vein, and I inexplicably passed out. When I came ...

In November of 2014 I preparing was to take grenades during Michigan's lame duck legislative session. Our legislative sessions run two years then reset. That makes the last few weeks of a session, known here as lame duck, really crazy. It's a time where anything (or sometimes nothing) can happen.  I was having lunch with a colleague, sitting down for the first time that day. As we got our food my phone rang, and it was our adoption agency. I'm not generally one to answer the phone during lunch, but this was different. The caseworker (the same one we'd worked with 18 months before) informed me we had been chosen by a birth mother who was having a boy in a few weeks. The due date was a little uncertain, but if all went well we'd be parents before the holidays. So that's how my colleague, not my husband, became the first person to know we were having a baby. My husband was negotiating a transportation funding package on behalf of the Governor's team, and he did...

I was in love with my job in 2013 and frequently traveled around the state to meet with communities I represented. At the end of January I headed to Southeast Michigan to present to a group of local government managers (and while I shouldn't pick favorites this group was definitely my favorite). It was an unseasonably warm January day, but it was really windy with promises that the temps would be dropping.  I drove home in the driving wind, hands gripping the steering wheel the whole time. It was a harrowing drive, and I was so relieved to finally pull into my driveway. I walked into the house to find my usually stoic husband in tears. His father had passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack. I was in disbelief that out of nowhere my seemingly healthy, only 57-year-old father-in-law was no longer with us. We got back into the car and I drove back to Southeast Michigan to my mother-in-law's house.  Those days are a blur, and I remember the angst of losing someone I loved too, ...