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Third Time’s a Charm?

So… here we go again.

Yesterday was the 12 year anniversary of my first spinal surgery. (My second surgery was in September 2010.)

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to UCLA for my third spinal surgery (officially: Lumbar 4 to Sacrum 4 laminectomy and resection of intradural extramedullary tumor) to hopefully get this guy removed:

I’d love to say that this will be the last time I have to go through this, but history isn’t really on my side, is it?

There is some good news:

The tumor is almost definitely a benign ependymoma. And benign tumors are the best kind. (#silverlining)

After the struggles I had getting back into running last fall and winter, I’ve been running and swimming well for the last four or five months and I’m in great shape. Over the last eight days I’ve had good runs at Mt. Wilson (photo below from last weekend), Temescal, Sullivan Canyon, Runyon and Mt. Baldy (top photo with Molly and Jon who I ran into up there today), even setting a bunch of Strava PRs along the way. Over the last few months, I’ve had a ton of fun running myself back into pretty good running shape and have been swimming more and better than ever in my life. I’m headed into surgery having already swam over 300,000 meters (186+ miles) this year (biggest year for me ever) and run over 550 miles (not a ton compared to past years, but given my struggles during the first 3+ months of the year, I’m really happy with that number). While part of me feels like it’s a waste of all this fitness to have to spend time recovering from surgery and then trying to get back into everything again, but everyone keeps saying that going into surgery as fit and strong and healthy as I am will help ease and quicken my recovery. (#silverlining)

Also, I’m going into this with full knowledge about what the next few weeks should be like. And even though it’s not going to be any fun for at least a few days, the other good news is that both times I’ve gone through this I bounced right back and did bigger and better things than before. It wasn’t until after my first surgery that I ever did a triathlon, let alone an Ironman. After the second surgery, I ran my 100 mile PR, half-marathon PR, marathon PR and two 135 miles races. (#silverlining)

I don’t know what’s in store for me in the years after this surgery, but I’m confident it will be something exciting, challenging and fulfilling.