And when I say a little bump, I mean heavily bleeding ulcer in my duodenum. That little fucker made me feel physically vulnerable for the first time in my life when I passed out 2 times in a row, started sweating profusely and had trouble breathing.

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

But after 5 days in the hospital, one stomach pumping, two fibrescopes, 15 to 20 IVs and 2 blood transfusions I finally got home and started recovering.

But my recovery will take a while since my hemoglobin level was down to below 6 g/dL when I got to the hospital and improved to about 8.1 when I left it. A normal level for men is 13.5 to 17.5 grams per deciliter.

But I'm moving forward. Slowly, step by step, but still... Moving :) And speaking of moving - my monthly schedule got rekt only 2 months in.

Because I couldn't run the last 10 km of the month and instead I walked them, my pace dropped to 6:43/km for the whole month.

Well, I can at least console myself that my pace before this ailment was well ahead of schedule (5:41/km for those 45 km) and after a month or so of recovery I will be on track to catch up to my schedule :)

There is a silver lining to this whole situation. I wanted to improve my eating habits for a long time and since I got back from the hospital I've done that. I stopped drinking coffee (used to drink 6-8 cups a day), stopped eating sweets and chocolate (used to consume at least 100-150 grams a day) also I no longer eat anything that is made from wheat. I try to do intermittent fasting of at least 12 hours now and will do longer periods when I will fully recover. All of that and the fact that I had to fast for 3 days when I was in the hospital helped me to lose 10 pounds (about 4.5 kg) during the past 2 weeks and I'm still losing about 0.1-0.2 lbs every day :) which is great! That means that my knees will be much happier when I will start running again :)

Running contest

My running contest wasn't very popular :) only @vivaultra joined it and met my two impossible requirements :)

Congrats to him! :)

For now, I am closing this contest and maybe will renew it when I will fully recover.

Thanks for reading!

(Source)