K-dog

Okay, so the week was a write-off, from a training perspective. Went out for an easy run Thursday night, and had to race home half-way through the circuit. It was a race to make it to the toilet (seconds to spare), and let's just leave it at that. I thought that was that, but the rest of the weekend so far has been spent "spun out", feverish and dizzy.

Never mind all that. I'll talk about training next week. On Friday morning, when I was actually feeling human, I went down to the Hospital for Sick Kids to visit my brother, sister-in-law and my eight-month old nephew. The "K-dog" has DILV, a congenital heart defect that basically means he was born with half a heart. To make a long story short, the little dude is in for three open-heart surgeries before his third birthday. That's the little dude with me (above), taken this summer between surgery #1 and surgery #2. This week was the tail-end of the recovery week following surgery #2. This has a little extra special meaning for me, since my first daughter was diagnosed with HLHS, and was stillborn at five months.

The good news of the weekend? By the time I saw them on Friday, the little dude was chubby, pink (just as babies should be) and chasing after his daddy's chocolate chip cookies (runs in the family, apparently). He was on his way to being discharged from the hospital on Friday. By now, they're all home.

The take-home message? Big things and little things have a way of shuffling priorities. Little things are precious. Life is precious. Stop reading this and go hug who, or whatever you have to hug. I'm going to go hug my kids now.

Peace.