Today Pokey made his (alleged) first steps. I say alleged because there's no telling what he does when we're not around. Like those fanciful stories of toys that come alive or animals that act like people when nobody is watching. He's a little daredevil, that Pokey. He's been running and jumping for awhile, I'm sure of it.

 

Speaking of running for awhile, I went in for the 3rd time to try and make the cut for an athsma study at the Robarts center. They were testing a medication and an MRI imaging technique on people with exercise induced athsma, with which I was first diagnosed in June '06. I'll skip the back story, and get right to the part where I showed up two Mondays ago to see if I was a candidate for the study. I followed the instructions they sent the previous Friday. I kept them, so I was able to refer back to it and confirm my non-idiocy when they had to halt the test because I had taken Benadryl 9 hours prior. According to their procedure (but not their email), I was not allowed to take Benadryl for 48 hours. So I had to rebook the test for Wednesday. It also meant that I had to play soccer that night without taking my puffer. I have moved to defense, so that was much easier than it would have been had I remained in midfield (sorry, defense players, I don't mean to insinuate that your position is easy).

 

I went in last Wednesday, and they put me on the treadmill. They had a heart monitor, and kept talking about staying in the target rate so I followed along with their speed suggestions. Turned out they were just being cautious with the speed suggestion because some people tend to exaggerate when describing their fitness levels. Well, I was unable to induce an athsma attack that day, nor again yesterday because I only reliably get them when I sprint (though I did run through an attack at the 5K Run for the Cure 2 years ago). I am not aware of a treadmill on which one can safely sprint. And as the treadmill challenge requires 4-6 minutes of exertion, it's also hard to cover 5K in that time without sprinting either. Stupid limbo lungs. Too crappy for sports, too healthy for their damn study. It's like the opposite of goldilocks.