I'm alive!!!

stolen from DrawCeption.com

Well this sure has been an interesting 48hrs!  As of my last posting (Wednesday night), I was frustrated because I was too tired to do any of my extracurricular workouts.  Thursday morning, I woke up, bright-eyed & bushy-tailed, amazed at how much energy I suddenly had.  Sure, there was a tickle in my throat & Alex had come home from work sick the night before, but who cared?  I was finally over the hump & could start working harder!!

Unfortunately, as the morning progressed, the tickle turn into a scratch, turned into a sore throat & I felt my body temperature rising.  I pushed through to finish the morning's work, told my bosses I felt like crap & went home to self medicate (Zinc, Vitamin C& DayQuil) and sleep.  I had hoped I'd wake up from my nap feeling great.  No dice.  I had to tell Jarrett & Jon that my weak body had betrayed me & I was unable to come in to train.  Not even one week in & I'm already having to skip practices.  Great.

On the plus side, while on my way in to work Thursday morning, I had already called my GP, Dr. Piland, to set up my pre-fight medical screening for 2:30pm the next day.  When I woke up still feeling crummy on Friday, at least I knew I was already on the books to get checked out.  I muddled through the morning (ended up taking a nap), showered & dressed and then headed out to my appointment.  I got there a few minutes early, waited around for awhile, was ushered back to the examination room about 15min late, and 15min later, was cleared to fight!  He also checked my throat & said that a) I was on the down slope of whatever it was that had been bugging me, but b) I still shouldn't go to the gym that night.  Well drat, now I'm bailing on a third of the classes this week.  Weak sauce.

Now comes the kicker: in addition to my 2:30 with Dr. Piland, I also had a 4:20 with Dr. Hong, my optometrist.  I had been really nervous about this particular appointment because I remembered (after that awesome shin-to-face experience AJ introduced me to), that he had found some sort of retina issue with my eyes when I was a kid.  Needless to say, retina issues + blows to the head = bad stuff.

I went in, explained the situation to him & got my vision check.  20/400, AWESOME!  I mean, without glasses.  With glasses, I gotta be at least...what, like 20/390?  Anyhow, then come the eye drops to dilate my pupils, the thirty minute wait while I lose focus & then the flashlight through a magnifying glass into my eye-ball.  No, seriously: he puts on a head lamp, grabs a hand-held lens, and shines that jank DIRECTLY INTO MY EYEBALL!!  I mean, I know that he needs to do this in order to see the inner wall of my retina & stuff, but MAN it sucks!

As he's looking around, he breaks the news to me that I've got Lattice Degeneration.  Turns out that I have with a condition that makes it more likely that I'm going to suffer retinal tears.  Balls.  But then as he's looking all around my eye, he seems to be getting less & less dour.  After he's hit the eight angles on each eye, he actually starts to smile!

"Well, I've got good news, Ben!" he says, "All the little tears and holes I had noted when you were a child have actually completely healed over!  It looks like your eyes are completely - o wait, there's some fresh damage."

You gotta be frakkin' kidding me.

I thought I was home-free & then it comes crashing down just like that.  I won't get into the rest of the visit, but it basically breaks down like this: I'm just naturally at a higher risk for retinal tears than the rest of  the population, and there's no way to know how many tears there are (or how bad they are) during my day to day life until I suddenly start seeing weird spots, a "veil drops over your vision", or just stop seeing stuff.

This makes it sound really terrible & like if I step outside in a rain storm I'm gonna turn into Geordi La Forge.  Dr. Hong says that's worse case scenario (obviously), and that it's perfectly plausible that I could go through this whole fight camp & the tournament itself in March & suffer no ill-effects.  Heck, he even filled out the medical form for me, but he looked my squared in the eyes (at least I assume so, the eye drops still had my pupils wonky) & told me that if I was his son, he'd tell me not to do it & that it wasn't worth the risk.

So now I'm at a cross roads.  In about 30min, I'll be heading to the Saturday afternoon conditioning class led by BJJ brown belt Daniel Frank (did I mention I woke up this morning feeling amazing?), and afterwards, I'll talk to my coaches.  I'll be honest, I'm leaning towards not doing the tournament anymore.  I've always wanted to do at least 1 BJJ competition, 1 Muay Thai fight & 1 MMA fight, but it looks like that might not be the wisest goal to pursue.  It'd be different if I were considering being a pro fighter & making this my career, but since it's just a hobby meant to deepen my understanding & love of these sports, I don't think it's worth it.  Maybe Jarrett & Jon will be able to talk some sense into me after class, but I dunno.

Just to be clear, even if I decide not to fight, I'm still going to be part of Fight Camp.  There are still 5 other guys planning to fight on March 9th & I am still 100% committed helping them & firing them up.  The only piece I'll have to opt-out of is Tuesday/Thrusday hard sparring at the end of the night.  All the other jump roping, shadow boxing, cut kick & pads rounds (plus MWF light-sparring), I'll be right there with 'em.

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Well, just got back from the conditioning class.  First things first: screw you, Daniel Frank!  Man, that guy designs one miserable workout!  Ok now that's out of the way:

Second things second: THANK YOU, DANIEL FRANK!!  MAN, that guy designs one MISERABLE workout!!  Whoo-ee, that was no joke!  Lunges, Frog Jumps, Front Jacks, Sprawls & Mountain Climbers, 30secs each and that's just the warm-up!  Then we hit pyramids of push-ups, CrossFit sit-up, burpees, squats & active planks, finished off with jump-roping until all other teams finished.  MISERABLE & AWESOME!  I hated it & can't wait to be back next week!

OK, to wrap-up: I talked to Jon (Jarrett wasn't able to make it today), and he of course was very understanding & supportive.  He's was OK with my plan of stepping back from being a fighter to just a helper, but said to think & pray on it for the weekend & then touch base with him & Jarrett on Monday.

Gotta be honest, having coaches who look out for your well-being & not just the prestige of their program is an amazing blessing that isn't lost on me.  Can't wait to get back in there Monday!