Flu/Ambulance/Albuquerque

Update time here at followtherun.org. Hope all is well with you and yours. It's been a few days, and a lot has happened between now and my previous large update.

Last weekend I was in Thoreau, New Mexico at a tiny volunteer fire department resting after a long and exhausting hike. As previously noted, if there is a fire station in the location I stop in for the night, I have a place to sleep. On foot, with my pack, it generally takes about ten or twelve hours to get to a destination, and I'm pretty banged up once I get there, so it's nice to have a place to stay.

The morning I was to leave I woke with all of the symptoms a nasty flu. I don't like sitting in one place for very long as I'm already well behind my intended schedule (I would have been finished with this run three days ago if things had gone as planned), so I figured I could sweat out whatever sickness I had, which in retrospect doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think I made that up as a functional cure for an illness. Basically, I decided I wanted to be sweaty, tired, and sick.

After a day of relatively fast hiking, I arrived on the edge of a town called Grants, and literally could not walk another step. I simply fell down on the side of the road with my pack and called the fire department to pick me up. The folks in Grants took good care of me, but I was a pretty big mess. My eyes burned, my throat was raw, I had the shakes. It sucked. I was barely functional for three days.

On the last night I recieved two bags of IV fluid, and hit the sack early so I could get out at first light the next morning. From Grants I was to stop in Laguna, sixty miles outside of Albuquerque.  I remember Tweeting that I was only a few miles from my final destination for the night and making good time, and that was my last clear memory before I was talking to a couple of EMTs in the back of an ambulance. I never do this, but I guess in my sickness I really wasn't paying attention to my gear. I'd run out of water and energy bars, and coupled with still being ill...I was hit hard.

At some point I had deleriously been walking down the highway, because when I snapped out of whatever haze I was in, I was further down the road than I remember being. I called my mom, told her I was about to pass out, sort of remember talking to a highway patrolman, then being in the back of the ambulance getting taken care of.

I refused to sign the agreement for transport to the hospital, and instead was taken two miles to the town I was to stay in and given seven dollars to buy some food. I scarfed some horrible Dairy Queen (it's been years since I've eaten fast food), and went about finding a place to stay. The Laguna fire department actually wouldn't have me for whatever reason. It was weird, not really worth discussing in detail, but basically the person that was supposed to take me in wasn't there and thus the decision was made not to give me a place to sleep. My options and sleeping accommodations extremely limited between there and Albuquerque, I was looking at spending a night in a field in my tent...sick with the flu.

In the end, I weighed my options, got ahold of my ACS contacts in Albuquerque, and decided to grab a ride into the city to stay with the folks I'd been set up to stay with once I was to arrive in a few days. John, the media guy for the American Cancer Society in Albuquerque had e-mailed me to let me know that he'd be able to crew me for some running during the weekend. It was Friday, so I'd have a chance to rest. We'd be able to go outside of town and I could then make up those miles I had been driven into town. I had sixty total to make up before I was officially in Albuquerque. Until then, I was put up at a nice place in town with a girl named Terra and her roommate April. Terra is a friend of my ACS contact in Flagstaff, Ameeta, and like always...Ameeta came through. Comfortable couch, a shower, food, and nice folks.

I've spent the last two and a half days recovering, and was able to go out Sunday morning and run twenty of the sixty I'll have run by Tuesday. I intended to run forty that Sunday, but I'm still working on getting my running legs back after almost two weeks of nothing but beating my feet up hiking ten plus hours at a time with a heavy pack.

Still, getting out on the road the way I intended was fantastic. I can't tell you how good it felt to run down the highway again with my light running pack on my back. I even ran a little further than intended. Yeah, I was sore and exhausted afterward, but it was still great. I really cannot wait until I have a crew again so I can do this for the rest of the run. Yes, I've enjoyed meeting everyone I've come across on this trip since losing my crew, and I wouldn't trade having met those people, but it's time to get running. I'm ready to see my family and friends. It's time. That doesn't mean that's the way things are going to happen, but I have to think something is going to give soon.

Right now I have a publicity agency pushing my story in a large number of media outlets, and have at least one big hit thus far that I'll talk about later once their involvement becomes more concrete.

I'm just really, really ready to be running again. I hope desperately that something comes of this media attention. Like I said before, I will finish this journey. It doesn't matter if in the end I'm hiking in or running it, but being able to get out there and run Sunday just makes me itch for it. I'll be pretty bummed out if I'm hiking toward Santa Fe Tuesday or Wednesday instead of being crewed by someone. I'll certainly get over it, but having a taste of what I lost again will make doing so a little more difficult.

We'll see....

-Dustin