The GumOut Effect

Today marks 2 weeks since my surgery to repair a badly deviated septum. The recliner and I were best friends for the first 7 days and I’ve been following the recovery plan outlined by my doctor to the letter. Truth be told I hardly remember the first post-op week, mostly the result of great meds and lots of sleep. I’m reminded once again what a profound work of art the human body is. It’s impossible to believe in anything but a Creator once one sees the body in action – at play in a race, gutting it out, but also at work, healing itself after injury whether intentional or not. The last 2 weeks especially, each day I’ve awakened I’ve thanked God for yet another opportunity to serve Him by serving others, but also for the beautiful gift of health which I’m aware is sadly not the case with everyone for a multitude of reasons.

I’m not 100% healed yet but I am well enough to return to training, even for light to moderate efforts. Last week I was biking on the trainer and running on the treadmill at home. No heroics, just moving the muscles and getting the blood flowing. Earlier in the week it had only been 7 days since my surgery but I could already feel a difference in how much better I could breathe.

My doctor had forbidden me to return to the pool until today. He’s been mainly concerned about sudden nosebleeds as well as all sorts of gack I could blow into the water. Fun for me to see the “jellyfish” in the water, hee hee, but less fun for my lanemates...such a drag :).

Knowing I was returning to Masters swimming today, I could hardly sleep last night. I was 12 years old the-night-before-going-on-vacation all over again, the excitement was that hard to contain :). Based on how I was feeling and breathing during my bike and run sessions, I had high hopes for getting back in the water. The main consideration was how well I could exhale (even lightly) with my face in the water. I’m still under orders (with punishment of death…ok, maybe not that extreme, but at the very least a setback in recovery, as well as a really bad headache) to NOT blow my nose. Doc says it’s “too violent” and I can see what he means. Going the other direction is just fine though. So I’ve learned to hoark with the best of them. Put it this way: if hoarking was a Dating Game question and I was behind the partition, I would put money on a bet that the asking party would not know I’m a girl – I can hoark like a guy. Even the word hoark is cool. Needless to say Steve is loving it – one more notch on his wife’s belt of “guy things.” Right up there with medium rare steak, shopping once a year for clothes, and outdoing him on the Decibel Scale for flatulence :). Sorry Jen, I love you Coach, but pink is just not up there for me :).

Anyway, I was awake at 3:48am today – 10 minutes before the alarm went off. On Masters mornings I wake up at 4:00am so I can eat something, drink some coffee/Gatorade/water, and do it with enough time to spare so I don’t hurl in the water later on. Today I bounded out of bed and practically ran to the kitchen. I was out the door in no time and tried very hard not to drive fast screaming in my car through the richy-rich sections of St. Louis on the way to the swim center.

We had a 500yd warmup, 20 laps of easy swimming. I sat on the wall for a minute, adjusting my goggles and started my watch’s timer. The minute I put my face in the water and pushed off from the wall with my head tucked and arms extended in a streamline, I knew I would be fine. In fact more than fine - I swam my first 100 yards nearly 5 seconds faster than my fastest 100 yard time before the surgery. Now, I’ll grant I’ve been on a nice 2-week “taper”, which means I’m well rested and haven’t forgotten my “feel” for the water, but every successive 100 yard split during the workout was a couple seconds even faster, and it seemed I could inhale/exhale at will with nothing in the way. I didn’t do flip turns, not today, but even my open turns were on the mark, something I’ve had trouble with in the past, especially exhaling through my nose before flinging my head back into the water at the wall. Inevitably I would get water up one or both nostrils, which would slow me down even more.

Not today :). Both airways were wide open, which meant my lungs were delivering maximal oxygen to my working muscles – booyaaahhhh!! About the only trouble I had was trying not to laugh at the recurring mental image of a carburetor in my old Dodge Dart when I was a teenager and spraying GumOut into it. In the days before fuel injection and the madness of fiberglass materials that make up some engine parts these days, carburetors were the supreme regulator of airflow into an engine’s intake manifold, and then mixing it with fuel prior to combustion which ultimately moved the car forward. The bigger the “barrels” on a carburetor, the more air could be brought in, which in turn translated to faster giddy-up on the muscle cars of times past. At times, carburetors would get “gummed up” with carbon from the air-fuel mixture, and a magic substance in a can called GumOut could be sprayed into the open barrels to remove the buildup.

Funny, carbs carried an entirely different meaning 25 years ago. Amazing to see how words and their meanings have changed over the years in just our lifetimes.

Not nearly as amazing though as how much better I can breathe – thanks to the GumOut Effect on both barrels in my nose :).