ROAD RUNNING
When it’ s Not Your Time …
When the surgeon says you shouldn’ t be alive, you know you’ ve had a narrow escape, says Wendy Seller, and when he adds that it’ s probably only the fact that you run that you survived, you find extra motivation to keep running!
– BY SEAN FALCONER morning and my left side felt lame. The chiro realigned my hips, and like a typical stubborn runner, I said I was doing that marathon, whether I run it or crawl it on my eyelashes!” says Wendy.
It was two weeks after her first 42km at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon last September, and Wendy Seller’ s thoughts were already on her next race. Her goal was to fit in five more half marathons by November in order to celebrate the one-year anniversary of her first 21km by running her 21st half at Soweto, and she had several pre-entries lined up for the various races she intended running … but something was not quite right.
The 39-year-old Johannesburg-based graphic designer and mother of two young boys, Diego( 10) and Rocco( 5), had struggled with various injury niggles all along her right side for several months before the marathon.“ I think I picked up the injury at the MTN Half Marathon in June, and that led to a never-ending battle, because the injury kept moving up and down my left side. Then I woke up one
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ISSUE 105 APRIL 2018 / www. modernathlete. co. za
Proud Cape Town Marathon Finisher
She ended up running the marathon with her whole side taped up under her running kit, but says she still managed to dance at all the water tables and have a real‘ jol’ the whole way.“ I ran it solidly, and did much less walking than I expected, but hyperventilated at the finish. At the time I thought it was due to the excitement of finishing my first marathon, but it turns out it was actually due to too little oxygen.” And things were about to get a lot worse.
Mystery Symptoms
Two weeks after the marathon, she woke one Sunday with a sore neck and shoulder on the left side, which she put down to having slept badly.“ I also had a headache and was off-colour, but didn’ t think too much of it,” she says.“ On the Monday it was still there, so I decided not to run; Tuesday there was no change, and there was now a constant headache behind my right eye. On the Wednesday I played golf with the kids, who were on holiday, and on the way home I stopped at the chemist for an anti-inflammatory. That afternoon I started to swell, getting puffy around the jaw and collar bone, which I thought was just a side-effect of the anti-inflammatory.”
The following morning she took her car in for a service, then Ubered home, where she saw herself in the mirror and realised she was now so swollen that she couldn’ t make out her jaw line or shoulder, due to a massive fluid build-up, so she decided it was time to see a doctor. All the tests seemed normal, and the X-ray just showed fluid, so the doctor couldn’ t pinpoint the problem and scheduled Wendy for a sonar at 2pm that afternoon.“ I phoned my mom to fetch me, as my car was at the mechanic, and we drove there in heavy rain that afternoon.”
“ They did a quick scan of both sides, and I then had to wait an hour for the results, but eventually they gave me a little brown envelope and said I must go straight
Images: Courtesy Wendy Seller