When you look back on the past four or five months, which is almost all of our winter months here in Winnipeg, how would you say they’ve been?  Did you get out and enjoy the winter weather or did you try to stay put inside to the point you thought of crazy glueing the doors shut?  Did you get through it without being sick or injured or were you down and out for weeks on end thinking you might never feel 100% ever again?

I’m sitting here on the sofa after weeks of having a cold and reflecting back on how this past winter has gone for me.  Mostly because Spring is right around the corner (at least I’m praying that it is) and I’m ready to say good-bye to a winter that has been very hard on me personally.  My family has come through with flying colours but I myself have had too many struggles.

November started it all off when I signed up for a Running Room Half Marathon Clinic and registered for the Hypothermic Half.  I was on a running high after just successfully completing my first Half Marathon and thought that I could run to my heart’s content.  That soon came crashing to the ground when I hurt my ankle on a training run and was out for a couple of weeks.  No sooner was I back at it and I sprained my other ankle during run club one Thursday night.  Although the first injury healed quickly the latter was not to be the same way.  I’m still feeling the effects of it and that was December when the incident happened!

Basically January was a month of rehab.  Foot exercises, rest and recovery were the only things on the agenda.  A little skating and cross-country skiing at the end of the month helped me to keep my sanity in tact but it was a close one between full-out losing it and being able to keep things in check.

February was starting to look a little brighter but then a cold hit and I was down and out for the whole month.  I really hit rock bottom then.  One week I wouldn’t be able to breathe from congestion, let alone want to have a shower, brush my hair or even care that I’d been wearing my pajamas for three days straight.  I even drove my son to school in them hoping that I wouldn’t have to get out of the car and show off my black fuzzy p.j’s with pink bow pattern.  The next week I was well enough to take care of my basic hygiene and get out to the grocery store so my family could have more than cereal for dinner.  But I never felt 100% the whole month.

In fact, last week was probably the worst.  I sat on the sofa for three days straight eating nothing more than my son’s Mott’s apple sauce and water simply for the fact that I didn’t have the energy to move, let alone stand to prepare a meal.  My poor hubby was subjected to mounds of laundry, cooking dinner and making sure our son got his homework completed while I sat and whined about how much tissue I was using for my faucet of a nose.  And boy, oh boy, did I go through some serious amounts of the white stuff!

I did see my doctor last week which gave me some reprieve.  But that too came at a price.  She put me on antibiotics, a nose spray and an asthma inhaler.  I’ve never been a fan of taking medication and try to stay away from the stuff whenever possible but I was getting to the point of desperation.  And I’m not saying that it didn’t help because it did but I know there is a price to pay for it too.

My chiropractor reminded me of that early this morning.  Our bodies get dependant on the medication and when it’s not there an adverse reaction can happen.  Take my nose spray for instance.  Sure it’s helping to take down the inflammation within my sinuses so that they drain better but now that I’m not taking it anymore there is a chance that my sinuses could become inflamed even more than before because they may have become dependant on the spray.  Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen but it is possible.

I am also deaf in my right ear at the moment from my sinus congestion but my chiro taught me a little trick to release it and it’s working like a charm!  I plug my nose with one hand, stick my finger in my good ear to close it off and then blow out my nose as hard as I can.  My ear pops really loudly and within a few minutes my sinuses start to drain some more.  He did mention that I literally need to do this about 100 times a day but that it will eventually open up my ear canal allowing me to hear like a normal person again.  Which would be much, much nicer than having to turn my head towards someone to the point they think there is something weird about the fact that I look like I’m trying to stare them in the eyes every time we talk!!  LOL

Needless to say, this winter has been a hard one physically and mentally on me.  Of course, there have been good days.  Seeing Mr. Hockey excel at something he loves and find his passion as goalie within his hockey team has been awesome!  Watching him accept his “Player of the Game” award at last week’s tournament almost brought me to tears with pride.  Spending time at the cottage with family making new memories really helped to break up February and reminded me of just how good I have things.  Meeting and spending time with our new-found friends from our hockey team has been wonderful and full of fun moments.

Overall, I’d say there has been a lot of great moments in the winter to help break up the bad ones, and good thing or else I don’t think I would have made it through!  Here’s hoping the Spring comes in gently and is much easier on me so that I can get back to the things I love the most and get back to training for the copious amounts of races I’ve registered for.  Injury free too please!!

How was your winter?  Enjoyed it or happy to see it go?

What would you change? What would you want more of?

What’s your most favourite thing about Spring?