Horrors at the Dentist & Annoying Achilles Tendons

Hellloooo and happy Friday!

With the holiday season well underway, I know that you’ve all got parties to attend – from Hanukkah family celebrations and ugly Christmas sweater parties to end of the year gatherings with co-workers. I have 2 to go to this weekend, and I’m sure a lot of your probably do too! If you’re worried about how you’ll keep your healthy diet on track with so many unhealthy choices around, check out my article on FitKit: 7 Tips for Making Healthy Choices at Parties.

Now you’re probably wondering what the hell my blog title is about, yes? Let’s get to it…

Though eating well and exercising daily are huge components of healthy living, there are other important aspects of living a healthful life – from having strong, honest relationships to finding ways to keep your stress levels in check (you may need to revert back to exercise for that one!). Sometimes healthy living involves things that aren’t fun in the least bit, but are necessary to go through in order to be the healthiest you that you can be. A couple of experiences in my day yesterday made me think of this.

I had been avoiding going to a specialist my dentist referred me to for a sensitive, achy tooth I’ve had for awhile. After letting my dentist redo the old filling on the tooth and it not helping in the least bit, she suggested that I needed a root canal and referred me to another doctor. A ROOT CANAL! I might have been scarred from the not so fun experience I had last year of getting all of my wisdom teeth pulled. They needed to cut into my jawbone to remove one of the teeth, and Adam took care of me afterwards while I acted like the little boy from David After Dentist and whined, ”Is it going to be like this forever?”

Or perhaps my hubby’s hatred of the dentist is rubbing off on me (seriously, he despises it more than anyone I know!). Whatever it was, I avoided going to the specialist for months. I knew that I needed to get it taken care of, but I honestly just did not want to. I ignored it until a few weeks ago, when I started getting a constant dull achiness in my mouth (one that I’m feeling as I type…), at which point I knew that I needed to just suck it up and make the appointment.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I’m sitting in the doctor’s office bright and early, having a minor panic attack. The sounds of a root canal being done next to me brought tears to my eyes. That drill noise gives me the chills just thinking about it! I did not want to be there, but I knew it was the right choice in the long run.

Yesterday I also was reevaluated at physical therapy. I’ve been rehabbing my calf for a few months now, and thought that it would be almost as good as new by now. It’s not feeling bad, but when I try to do any high impact activity, it feels like something’s not right immediately. The docs think I still have tears in my calf and Achilles that are just healing slow and need more time to repair. So, even though I’d like to take a boxing class today, I can’t. What I can do is lower impact stuff, so I’m going to up my cycling time and continue to do things like yoga and easy hikes.

The point in me telling you all of this is to say that sometimes you feel like your body is failing you in small but annoying ways. I brush and floss, I don’t eat candy all day long, but I still need a dang root canal. I’ve been taking it easy, not pushing myself too hard with my workouts, and have been diligently rehabbing my calf, but it’s still not recovered. Maybe you’re trying to lose weight and the scale won’t budge. Or you’ve been working to set a new personal record for your half-marathon time, but you seem to have plateaued. Whatever it is, it’s frustrating. You might want to quit, avoid the dentist, stop rehabbing your injury, and so on. But living your best, healthiest life means that you take care of what needs to be taken care of. It means that you won’t give up, and you’ll keep trying to achieve whatever it is you have your sights set on. Would I like to go on a 2-hour hike with Harley this weekend? Absolutely. Did I want to run out of the doctor’s office and never look back? YES! Instead, I’ll be getting that root canal done after the holidays.  I’ll continue to work on getting my leg and foot back to 100%. And I’ll also remind myself to be thankful, because at least I have teeth and the means to get them fixed, and I have strong legs that work well…. but apparently just need to be worked on a bit more.