The Medical Opinion

Yesterday I had a longer chat with a good friend, who is an anesthesiologist. Let's call him the Medic, since he is hopefully going to be in that capacity in my small support team. My very primitive question to the Medic was, that if I go ahead with the Run, am I going to kill or permanently damage myself. I would hope to do neither and if he had told me, that this is highly likely, I would have given up on the idea. He didn't tell me that.

What he did tell me, was the following:

• Get an EKG done. I've never had one done. We found a clinic close to where I live, so I'll schedule a time at some point in spring. It comes with a host of other tests and is not cheap, but getting some measurable idea of my bodily condition for the first time in my life won't hurt. If the EKG results will not show any problems, then according to the Medic, the Run will not pose any risk to my heart.
• Kidneys, though, are another ballpark entirely. Worst case scenario is something I can't pronounce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis, but that can be lethal. The way I understand it is, that feet muscles are some of the largest in the whole body and if I damage them a great deal during the Run, then the breakdown products will enter the bloodstream, overburden the kidneys and send me to ER or worse. Need to make sure that doesn't happen. The Medic told me he has never seen or heard this being caused by sports.
  
• Good news is, the body has a lot of natural fail-safes. In other words, it is much more likely, that unendurable pain or vomiting will stop me long before any permanent or lethal damage occurs.
• Dehydration is a real danger, he says they occasionally get people in ER due to severe dehydration caused by physical activity. This, however, is easily averted with sufficient liquid intake.
• Spraining an ankle or similar joint / muscle damage can easily occur and the Run would have to be cancelled, but the damage would not be permanent.
• Hallucinations, especially in the dark, due to sleep deprivation are quite possible but nothing a good nights sleep afterward won't cure.
  

 

That's about it. Oh, and I probably won't be walking for a few days after finishing, but I kind of expected that.

He also, very usefully, pointed me to a TV clip about the endurance walk around Lake Mälaren near the Swedish capital Stockholm. https://etv.err.ee/944457/pealtnagija-eestlannast-ultrakaija-on-jarjest-kondinud-ligi-88-tundi. Got a number of useful details from watching, but mostly got the confirmation, that if they can walk for 80+ hours, my 48 hour run is certainly within the limits of the human physique.

The Medic also proposed two ideas, which, technology permitting, we'll probably go for. 

1. If it's possible to publish real-time heart rate data from my smart watch, he will be monitoring this throughout the Run. Like telemetrics in F1, he quipped, where you can spot the overheating of the right front break, for instance, before the driver feels it.
   
2. During the run he might take a quick fingertip blood sample during a toilet break and have a look at the main indicators using a portable quick analysis kit to make sure nothing is too far off the healthy limits.

I thought the medical prediction might be scarier. Good to go, for now, it seems.