Running back to wellbeing
After a year of traumatic illnesses, the Round the Bays beckons, writes Steven Walton.
Samantha McInnes has farewelled a horror year of health problems – including four hospital admissions and the loss of her unborn baby – by starting a new decade with a resolution to get her fitness back on track.
McInnes is braving her lovehate relationship with running, and is preparing to run in her first Round the Bays event in Auckland in March.
It’s a long way from October 2018, when McInnes had the first of four hospital admissions in a year for separate problems.
That month, the endometriosis she’d been diagnosed with at the age of 18 had flared up.
Doctors removed an adhesion from her ovary, but the surgery forced her to take a month off from her job in medical sales.
Then, in February last year, McInnes discovered she was pregnant. But a little over two weeks later, her midwife advised her to go hospital, where she was told she was having a miscarriage.
She remembers the stages of grief; denial, anger, and depression. ‘‘My loved ones had to ride me.’’
By mid-March she was back working and attended a big industry conference.
But instead of making sales, she was hiding behind her booth in ‘‘agony’’.
‘‘I had some fabulous people at the Christchurch Town Hall who I’m forever indebted to because they raced me up to hospital,’’ she explains.
Doctors discovered she had erosive stomach ulcers. They that rollercoaster with were ‘‘very painful’’, she says, and were potentially caused by the stress of the miscarriage.
Then, about six weeks after the stomach ulcers, McInnes began experiencing intermittent bleeding from her bowels.
She chose not to go to hospital. She had already taken so much time off work and being an exnurse, she knew her symptoms weren’t life-threatening, an approach she does not recommend.
She put up with occasional pain and bleeding for the next three months, until the end of July, when it became more frequent and she finally went to hospital and was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome.
By this point, McInnes says she was fearful, tired and sore. ‘‘I couldn’t see light at the end of the tunnel.’’
But after about two months of working with a dietitian and a psychologist, her attitude began changing. Her focus has turned toward her career and wellbeing.
In November, just after her 28th birthday, she decided to enter the 8.4km Round The Bays.
‘‘Running is something I love and hate in the same breath,’’ she says.
‘‘It pushes me to my limits . . . you never know what you can achieve until you actually try.’’
Friends and family were central to her journey. She remembers one friend who showed up to the hospital one Friday night, ‘‘just because they knew I was alone and I was struggling’’.
McInnes has surprised herself with how far she’s come as she prepares for the Round the Bays on March 8.
‘‘When I look back on this in a year’s time, I won’t even know where I’ve come from,’’ she says.
‘‘I will have done ten million more things from there that I couldn’t even fathom right now.’’
‘‘Running is something I love and hate in the same breath.’’ Samantha McInnes
The Ports of Auckland Round the Bays event is owned by Stuff.