Date: 2009-10-04
From: Herndon, Virigina

To: Home
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

Where to start; where to start? Ok, first, I guess an apology is in order for not having updated my journal before now. The causality runs as follows:April: toe infection stops my hike. Hopefully, it will only be a temporary delay. Oral antibiotics prescribed and taken. Not working very well. Give up and go to ER. They do an X-ray and conclude the problem is serious; the infection may have gone into the bone. Oh, and by the way, the antibiotics prescribed by the clinic in Damascus are not the right ones. Start the correct antibiotics, and go see a foot specialist. He orders blood tests and a bone scan. A week later, he says the bone scan is "inconclusive". May: we continue with the oral antibiotics and the infection begins to heal. I am optimistic that I will be able to restart my hike. I make plans to attend Trail Days, only driving to Damascus instead of hiking in. I pick up the gang along the way -- a full suburban -- and get in late Thursday night. Friday morning, I return to the trail to pick up another four hikers needing a ride. Trail Days is good, seeing old friends and making new ones. But it's hard, knowing I won't be hiking out with them as I had hoped. I also did Hard Core, but due to my injuries, I mostly shuttled hikers to and from the work site, helped Baltimore Jack and company on the dinner crew, and then shuttled a bunch more hikers back to the trail on Tuesday. Break-a-leg was with me at Trail Days, and she actually hiked from Damascus south to Bob Peoples' place (Kincora Hostel), about 50 miles, arriving on Wednesday. I had a day to drive around the area looking at properties, as that is where I'd like to find a farm. Beautiful country, and lots of possibilities, thought the asking prices seemed a tad on the high side given the state of the real estate market. Still, it was a start on that longer-term plan, and the area just felt right. Drove back to Washington, and got Break off to the airport, and then....June: The toe infection continued to heal, and my natural optimism returned. My plan was to do some trail magic for my crew when they came through northern Virginia, which I did, and it was great fun. I wasn't able to get everyone out to the house for a barbecue and a swim, but had quite a few, and I know from experience that it was appreciated. Just before they arrived, I even did a 20 mile hike, from Snickers Gap into Harpers Ferry just to test the toes and make sure they'd be ok to hike with. It went VERY well, and I was thrilled. When I got to Harpers Ferry, I had my picture taken at the ATC Center for their album of '09 hikers, and was really getting psyched. I had a final doctors appointment scheduled for the next Monday, but just to be absolutely sure the infection was gone, I asked for an MRI. I had to be sure the infection had not gone into the bone, as the next stop might be my right (replaced) knee, and that could get ugly. So the Monday comes, and I'm all packed up ready to meet my gang and start hiking with them, and the Doctor says....Hmmm. Not good. It's gone into the bone. I may have said a bad word at that point. July: from there on, it was kind of a blur for a while. The next stop was an infectious disease specialist who order a PICC line installed in my right arm, a kind of temporary I.V. line through which I'd be injecting myself with some fairly powerful antibiotics twice a day. For six weeks. At that point, I concluded that my hike was over for this year. I was not a happy camper. In fact, to be honest, I pretty much went into a funk for the rest of the summer, only gradually coming of it. To make a long story short, I opted to go the surgical route, just to be absolutely sure we removed any risk of further infection: I had the end of the offending digit removed. Amputated. The little piggy that stayed home got his head chopped off. The PICC line came out two days later, and since then, everything has healed up very nicely. As an added benefit, my surgeon reminded me that I would now be entitled to a ten percent discount whenever I get a pedicure... Since then: Well, I went back to work as a consultant again, which helped to take my mind off not hiking with my friends. And I calculated how many days it would be before I could head for Springer Mountain again next spring. As of today, it's 159, and you can be sure I'm checking off each and every one of them. Meanwhile, it seems like almost everyone I was hiking with has summited: Squeegie, Newt and Ms. Scarlet, Doc, Hammock, Samwise, Sun Beam and Half Moon, Gansta and Wags, Will and Way, Mountain Man, Topo -- wearing my bunny ears for good measure, and others who I'm forgetting at the moment. A bunch of them did it together in early September. Ned the Fed came within a hairs breadth, and then had a bad knee injury, with which I can SO identify, but I told him to consider it done. He only had another 80 or so miles to go. Close enough. It was a really awesome group, and the strength of the group, I suspect, is one reason so many of them made it. I only wish I could have been there too.   Sniff. Ok, buckeroo -- Enough sniveling! Break may read this and you can imagine how much sympathy you'll get from her!Speaking of the divine Ms. B, it's just a darn good thing my hike ended when it did. She was clearly running out of "short" jokes. I guess you can only "project" for so long...As to the future: I leave for Springer Mountain on Saturday, March 13, 2010. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach this next through-hike attempt psychologically. I'd like to avoid total paranoia about the prospects of suffering another hike-ending injury, but that's going to be hard. As they say, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. And despair ain't just a tire in the trunk! I'm thinking this next time, if anything gets injured, I'm just going to go for an IMMEDIATE amputation of the offending part, slap on a proththesis (spell check, isle six!) and get back to the trail. To those of you who followed this journal this year, my thanks for all of your support. I'll be opening my 2010 journal shortly, for those of you who want to continue the journey. See you on the trail.