Thanksgiving & Pederson Run?

I debated posting this one but I decided that although it is more personal than I am normally comfortable posting, it would be ok to do so.

Thanksgiving Day featured a family run, my wife, my daughters, a boyfriend and I all went over to Hastings and participated in the Gobbler Gait. It was the first time in probably 13+ years that all of my family had participated in a run (I should probably note that 13+ years ago we probably didn't give the girls a choice which is why they did it :-) and it was the first time we had done the Hastings event. My youngest daughter ran the 8k course the fastest, my wife and I ran together and my oldest daughter and her boyfriend walked the course. Although the weather was quite cold (~5 to 10F), we had a blast and it is a nice course, with easy logistics and an overall fun event. We plan to make it a new Thanksgiving tradition.

After the race we got together with friends, we have done this for the last 23 years, and yes, it has been a great tradition. We originally started doing it when we all decided to stay in MN for Thanksgiving versus driving 4 to 12 hours to visit family. It has led to a very nice calm, pleasant and stress free Thanksgiving day. I know my wife and family consider ourselves lucky and blessed to have such a nice tradition.

After Thanksgiving, I was planning on getting some things done and then heading to Afton on Saturday for the Pederson Benefit run. I registered on Friday but let Alicia know that I was iffy as my ankle didn't really do well during or after the 8k. So I had pretty much decided to not meet Wayne and Karen to run a loop but instead was debating heading up later to take in the auction and visit with them and others. I know that I am not a social person by nature and as an injured runner I am even more non-social. For whatever reason though I didn't feel like I should go and I wasn't sure why as I like all the ultra/trail runners I have met and had really planned on going.

As it turns out, it was a good choice, my wife received a call from our youngest daughter that she was having chest pains, for the record she is 17. Not a call a parent expects. We drove over to pick her up from work and to figure out what was up. When we got there, she said she had chest pains and then had kind of passed out, gotten light headed or something when she went to talk to her boss. So we drove her to urgent care but decided maybe the emergency room would be a better choice. They quickly hooked her up to an EKG machine and got preliminary readings that all seemed normal. With the triage complete, we waited for a while (a long while) before they called us back for additional testing. They again hooked her up to an EKG, the Doctor came in, and asked my daughter about the pain and then he asked my wife a few more questions on family history.

One of the questions caused him to be a bit more concerned as my wife told him that she has antiphospholipid-syndrome, it is a blood clotting issue that we (along with our Dr's) believe caused us to have a still birth during our second pregnancy (at 25 weeks) and then made for a pretty complex pregnancy for our youngest. For that pregnancy my wife had to inject herself with heparin 3 times a day, she was tested weekly to make sure her blood was at the right clotting level, we went from the right level to unexpected nose bleeds (not enough clotting) to the wrong level (to much clotting), repeat cycle again and again, she had a fairly large hematoma from an injection, a whole lot of stress and a lot of Doctors, suffice it to say when our youngest was born, we called her our miracle baby for a reason.

Back to the hospital, when he heard that, he paused and asked had she been tested? We said no and he said, he would do a chest x-ray and then he left, then he came right back in and said he wanted to do a cat scan instead to make sure that there wasn't a blood clot. So we went through the test and all turned out clear. He then said he was comfortable that she had pleurisy and that she would be fine in a few more days. So our 5 hour adventure came to a happy conclusion.

I know I was sure happy that I hadn't gone out to the Pederson running event and although it was a long afternoon at the hospital everything we experienced sure helped me appreciate the right things (faith, family and friends) to be thankful for. I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving.