Marathon Training

Just had to share this....if I ever need more inspiration or validation or motivation to continue I will read this daily. I was on runnersworld.com surfing around...and found this discussion forum for people to post stories comments etc....and found this girls post...posted today....with her picture...very sad...I am at this very moment promising to NOT EVER complain about how difficult a run is...and promising to try my hardest to remember that it can always be worse. She posted the following....

"This post is just a self centered, pitying rant. Feel free to skip on by to happier topics. I won't be offended.Hodgkin's Disease is mostly treated with four different drugs. The regimen is called ABVD. The B is Bleomycin, a potentially pulmonary toxic drug. Lucky me. Bleomycin has completely and utterly messed up my right lung. CT scan and x-rays show infiltrate, scarring, and fluid. The only thing good is it is confined to the right side.The oncologist dropped the Bleo weeks ago when I started having breathing problems. But I haven't gotten better.I'd like to say my life and my running right now is all flowers and happy fuzzy bunnies, but the truth is running with cancer has become ugly. To keep the severe pleuritic pain in the right side of my chest under control now requires Vicodin; I have to take two if I want to run. All of my running shirts are dotted with small blood stains ... running will inevitably trigger at least a couple coughing attacks that bring up blood.I'm not really sure why I am still going out and trying to run. I can't really run very well -- I have to take walking breaks or else I won't be able to catch my breath and a coughing attack is more likely. I guess since I've always been a runner and its really all I know how to do, the only way I know to cope with stress, I keep going out the door every morning to try. Or it may be I am living under the illusion that tomorrow will be the magic day I feel better ...My doctor said running wouldn't make things worse. I asked him specifically. But, yes, I am starting to wonder. The only good news I have had is I got off prednisone. It was making me depressed and it wasn't helping so my doctor stopped it.Somehow I have to make it through three more months of chemo. How I am going to do that, I have absolutely no clue. I know I won't make it through if I stop running, so I really have tgo go out there every day, even if I know its a bad day and it will end in dismal failure. I feel like I have to go and try because that is what I do; I am a runner and I desperately want to hang onto my identity as a runner (and, by implication, my old SELF) ... the rest of my world has fallen apart and running and my parents are all I really have left. So I am pressing on because I don't know what else to do. "