The 20 week Experiment

Today was a beautiful day. It was one of those pristinely calm, warm, not a cloud in the sky days that always entice me into a good run on my favourite route in Collingwood. Being 5 months pregnant I haven’t actually BEEN on a run in a long while as I have a perfectly good excuse NOT to on all those days unlike today when it is either raining, too hot, not hot enough or just not the kind of thing I had the energy to do that day.

Can people actually JOG while this far along in their pregnancy? I wasn’t so sure, but after a long and busy call weekend, I left the hospital and could think of nothing I’d rather do than set out to find out.

About 10 yards into my run, I was so short of breath it looked like I’d been running for hours. It was only a few minutes after this that my notorious bladder started acting up. I had JUST GONE to the bathroom so, determined not to be defeated, slowed my pace a little and did a slight knee inversion to maintain my continence and kept going.

A few paces later the bouncing on my bowels starting calling attention to that region with even more potentially disastrous consequences. I still carried on, squeezing my bum cheeks together.

A few paces later my nose started to bleed.

If I hadn’t turned back for my bladder OR my bowels, I CERATINLY wasn’t going to let my now feeble mucous membranes ruin my experiment so I carried on, gracefully using my forearms as a Kleenex.

That’s about when my butt-clenching-knee-inversion form started called attention to my sciatic nerve, which has a tendency to blast shooting pains down my right side without the least bit of provocation theses days. WHY I hadn’t anticipated THAT I don’t know. But there I was, with blood streaked arms, hobbling down the path trying not to relieve myself of ANY lower bodily functions while dragging my sorry right leg behind me.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse my cell phone went off. It was the hospital. Gasping for air and pinching my nose so I wouldn’t drip blood on my iphone I hobbled over to the side of the trail to speak to the ICU nurse, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the high pitched nasally tone I had from pinching my nose. After explaining what she was calling for she asked,

“Dr Boyd, are you OK?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine” I tried to sound professional, “Please give the patient diazepam 10mg rectally in the event of a seizure and give the calcium carbonate po instead of IV”. I sounded like Daffy duck and looked like an escaped convict. I wish I could have taken a picture of the LOOKS I got from other people on the trail. I suspect they thought I was in some sort of danger and pretending to be a doctor to some poor unsuspecting sucker at the other end of the line.

As I hung up the phone I decided that my experiment was over and WALKING the rest of the way was probably the noblest and least-conspicuous option. I lamely hobbled back the rest of the way to the hospital, still covered in blood and intermittently having to stop as my painful right leg gave way on me.

I may not have put the beautiful running day to good use but I DID manage to answer my own question that I now share with you all as both fact and warning;

No, you cannot go for a run while 5 months pregnant.