Congestion a red herring?

Here is a health update for those who care to know. The appointment on Monday wasn't the revealing test read for which I was hoping. According to the CT scan my sinuses appear to be in good shape. Other than the eye muscle that got caught in my broken orbit 10 years ago, it looks like it is bulging into one passage and there isn't too much to do about that. What was apparent is that my septum is screwed up and while the there are no blocked passages, some of the openings are very tiny. So, I have surgery coming up in two weeks to fix that, and hopefully I come out of it no longer a mouth-breather.

What this means though is the other symptoms that I have been having are not accounted for, and the congestion that was pointing toward sinusitis was a bit of a blind alley. My GP has referred me to a neurologist two weeks from now(everything is always two weeks away!) to see if my brain is broken. Which many people who know me have suggested in the past! As I sit here and right while my eyes pulsate, I sure hope something gets figured out.

On the more positive side, I think the fluticasone that was given to me to help with the congestion was the culprit for the shortness of breath and racing heart at the past two races. It may be a rare side effect, but I am not the only one to have it. The symptoms coincide with use a week after I started, and it takes a while to build up in the system to work. Which means it also takes a while to get out of the system. Last night at the Gun Show I didn't have much top end speed because I was tired, but I was able to put out some good effort, getting the heart rate high. And here is the key, the heart rate dropped down after the bigger efforts and I was able to breath, something that was not happing in the past 3 weeks. I am praying it is a good sign for the weeks to come.

This weekend is Levis and I have some friends from MO coming up to race the 100 mile. I am looking forward to it. Friday afternoon we are going to explore the trails, then on Saturday I am probably just going to do the 25, unless Scott wants to do the 50 duo. Either way I have no big expectations and I plan on seeing how I feel and maybe going hard for the second half of the race. Race report to come early next week.