The pain we put people through

After finishing Vineman and getting checked out by the med team, Mighty Mo was holding on to me as I hobbled to the car.  I think as much for his relief as my neccesity which I very much needed as I was shivering and shaking too much to walk very well. As he hugged me and nursed me along with an arm around my waist, he leaned his head into the crook of my armpit and started a short conversation with me. It started with, "Daddy, I am so happy you finished and you're alive. I was very nervous for you." Then we talked about if I would ever do another. 

After he and Maisy Daisy passed out in the van on the way back to the hotel, I mentioned the talk with Mistress and she provided the back story. Mighty Mo, as many followers know, has had Colitis since he was born. Only in the last year have we been able to keep his condition in a remission like state and he live a mostly normal childhood. Apparently he was so stressed out about me while I raced that he had a flare up during the day and he was in tremendous pain and nausea and in constant urgent need of a rest room. 

Well I felt and still feel horrible about this, something he personally has not mentioned to me even several days later. I am jaded enough to think that he has had too many days, weeks, years in his eight years of life like that and to him its just living.  The other side and probably the truer side is that he doesn't want me to think I did it to him doing something I wanted to do. 

It's one thing to put yourself in a risky painful situation, and iron distance racing is all that regardless of your ability. No one finishes unscathed from that distance on the body. Its wholly another to have that risk affect your child in such an adverse and painful way. While I am comforted that once again I have proven the doctors wrong, I don't enjoy knowing what it did to my son's health.  I am not a risk adverse person, but it's pretty humbling for me to know my personal risk taking is causing such a physically painful experience for my child. It very much must frame any future ideas I have about doing endurance pursuits.