Whacked knee, training hard and blood test results!

Thursday’s class was a really good class. It was a very active, intense, keep moving type of class. A lot of the throws we did involved rolls, which is always fun (unless you are exhausted like I seem to be all the time). It wasn’t long before I was sweating and the dojo windows were fogging up. Though I was tired to begin with, I kept on pushing myself to get through the class. Towards the end of the class, the yudansha who was teaching had five of us stand up. One person was in the middle and the other four took turns attacking. We had to do a particular technique that we had learned that night from a double shoulder grab. You simply enter, turn 180 and throw the person into a roll. Well, at one point I was one of the attackers. Things were going quite well… until they weren’t. During my roll, all the sudden there was this loud bang and my knee hurt. Turns out the yudansha threw me into the kamiza. Our dojo used to be an old church, so the entire lifted wooden platform at the front is our kamiza. The room got suddenly quiet and I could hear the yudansha who was teaching asking me if I was alright. I got up and said I was fine (which was a lie because it hurt like hell). He then told me to be in the middle. It wasn’t a consolation prize I was looking for, but it did help me think of other things besides the pain for a bit. After class, the yudansha who threw me into the kamiza came over and asked if I was alright. Again, I was modest and told him I was fine.

Second hour sensei had us grab our bokken. We did some nice partner work. I wasn’t doing too bad as most of the things we were doing I had done before. At the end of class, he had one person stand in the middle with four people standing around them (on the front, rear, left and right). We all lifted our bokken and when the person in the middle dropped theirs, all four of us were to strike shomen at the same time. The person in the middle had to pick a direction, slice across the ribs, step through, turn and strike shomen. I was the last of us to go. I was hoping we would run out of time and that I wouldn’t have to do it, but I did have a turn. Surprisingly, I didn’t do half bad! I just made up my mind as to which way I wanted to go before I dropped my sword to invite their attacks. At the end of the night I went home and elevated my leg because my knee was swollen. It is all better now though. Well, it aches sometimes, but it isn’t swollen anymore and the bruising has went away.

Saturday I woke up with a headache, but went to class anyway because it wasn’t that bad. One of the new iaido students was there (he doesn’t show up regularly) so sensei decided we would work on four kata: shohatto, sato, uto and atarito. We were each focusing on different things. I was watching my variation of speed (slow, fast, faster) through the kata as well as my timing. He had us do a few of the kata extra slow, which was nice. My thighs were sore the next couple days. Who knew two weeks off could cause you to get out of shape. I have read though that your body can decline from two weeks of not training/working out. At the end of class, I went up to sensei and told him I would not be staying. During iaido I wasn’t feeling too well. My head was all foggy and I almost felt like I was on meds and I kept having these awful hot flashes where I wanted to rip my gi top and hakama off and just work out in my t-shirt and pants. I figured ukemi wouldn’t really do me much good. I was sad to tell him that I wasn’t going to stay. The sad fact is during our meditation period after iaido (I failed to quiet my mind this week) all I did was debate on whether I wanted to stay or go. I thought about staying and watching, but I really wanted to lie down; so home I went. Sensei asked me if I knew when I would have my results back from my blood work and urinalysis. I told him that I would find out Monday.

Monday I found out that my blood work and urinalysis was all great except for one thing. My thyroid level is low. Now I have an appointment tomorrow to see about going on medication. I was told that hypothyroid can cause chronic fatigue, along with a lot of other symptoms that I also coincidentally have. So, I am going to the dojo tonight. We will see how that goes. I’m also going to tell sensei the news because he was quite interested and worried about what was going on with me as well. He thought I was deficient in the iron category, but alas… I am not. Uck. Anyway, that is all for now!