Good Stuff

I like to pass along good stuff so here we go:

1. Diet Root Beer. God help me, I love this stuff. I'm probably drinking too much of it, but it's such a treat. I'd rather have this than some kind of cookie. I love it ice cold poured over ice. YUM. It's caffeine-free too so instead of dessert, I'll have a big glass of chilled root beer.

2. Grill Mates® Mesquite Marinade. This stuff is amazing, I've been making it for a few weeks now and can't get enough marinated baked chicken. As long as I watch my bake time (375° for 45-50 mins), the chicken is perfect, moist, juicy and goes down easy, MUCH easier than when I did it the old way. I think has a large part to play in my weight loss this month as I've eaten A LOT of chicken instead of sausage and other processed foods.

3. Good Sense Roasted & Salted Soynuts. I first tried soy nuts like a year ago and when I saw them in the store, I figured, why not? They are a great snack, especially when I find myself wanting to mindlessly munch. Per serving: 140 calories, 7g fat, 10g carbs, 5g fiber and 10g of protein.

Setting the Tone

I've been doing a lot more reading on OH lately, trying to find to confirm a few things I have come to fully accept on my own in the past month. First, this morning I weighed in at 253.0 lbs, down 2.8 lbs from yesterday, 11.4 lbs for the month and down 263.6 lbs total. Assuming I end the month, month 19, exactly where I am right now, that's the most weight I've lost since September. What was so special about this month? I think I found a good sense of what my nutritional balance. I really feel like I have found a way to manage my nutritional goals with my desire to eat a wider variety of foods, some that I would normally not consider "good" during a weight loss phase. For example, in the past I was convinced that cheese was a big no-no, and frankly I do have to watch my cheese intake, but it's not that I can't have cheese, I can't have large quantities of it, I shouldn't eat it without eating another protein with it, and "real" cheese is 10 times better than processed cheese food. Where I would put cheese on everything, probably easily eating 8-10 oz of it in a day if I let myself, I now spread out 2-3 oz of real cheese (Muenster, swiss, provolone, Monterrey Jack, Cheddar, etc.) over the course of the day. It satisfies my need and desire for cheese, but doesn't clog me up too bad. I've also been able to manage low carb bread and tortillas really well. Instead of 5-6 servings in a day, I now maybe have 2, usually a slice of toast with my breakfast and a slice mid-day for an open-faced sandwich.

What's happening is that I'm consistently, day in and day out, eating meals that I can see myself eating once I'm done losing weight. A big goal here is to find a way to eat that'll last a lifetime. I don't feel like I'm dieting, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything anymore. I don't really see my "diet" changing all that much when I reach goal. There are really delicious, more nutritionally sound lower carb versions of anything I think I'd might want post-goal. Looking at my food logs, I am averaging somewhere between 50-80 carbs a day which is surprisingly fine. For awhile there, I was pretty convinced I'd have to consistently stay sub-40 in order to lose weight, but that hasn't been the case, in fact, I discovered something else surprising. If I am within 90% or greater of my protein goal for the day by the time I am at my last meal, as long as I have protein at that last meal of the day, I can have a high carb side like potatoes or rice OR even a small dessert and it have no effect on my weight loss and it will NOT derail me. Now, I do not do this two days in a row, but I've done it 6 or 7 times this month. The amazing thing is it doesn't trigger the carb-crazies where I feel like I need to eat every sugar-laden food within a 10 mile radius. It's funny because I used to read about DS-ers on OH who would do something similar and would continue to lose regularly. I didn't buy it at the time, but now I think I understand it. I don't look to have a higher carb serving at the end of the day, but if I am out to dinner or at a celebration, I know I can eat a little bit of rice or potatoes and not stress about it. It's kind of cool because a lot of stress of maintaining a good level of nutrition has dissipated. I feel much more comfortable about it and feel like when I hit goal, it won't be like hitting a brick wall. Yes, I'm impatient and yes, I want to be at goal already, but I don't know how well I would handle a situation where I would need to drastically change my eating when a weight loss number is reached. There are a few folks on OH who brag about eating all manner of candy, cookies, pastas, rice, etc. in order to slow or stop their weight loss. Sounds awesome at first. The fat girl in me is saying "hell yeah!" -- eat 1/2 a dozen Krispy Kremes in order to MAINTAIN my weight! Woo-hoo! But long term that has got to suck. Sure there are enzymes and such to be taken, but I personally don't think that situation would be good for me, I don't think I could handle that very well. I know me and I just don't think that would be a position I want to be in.

In my mind, the day after I reach goal won't be too much different than the day before, as I hope for it to be 5 years afterwards. Remember, my goal is 199. That still puts me at like a 27.9 BMI, smack dab in the overweight category. I'd still need to lose 25 more lbs to get a "normal" BMI. Plastic surgery should address most of that. I just want a sustainable healthy way of eating, and everyday I learn a little more and more about what that means for me. I'm so over "dieting", I don't ever want to have to do that crap again. The DS has done and will do the bulk of the work for me, but I still have to do my part.

Anywho, I only have 36.4 more lbs to lose til I reach the 300-lb loss mark. Craziness. I'm 3 lbs away from Dr. M's goal for me, plastic surgery time, according to him...uh...no. My flab has quite a bit of fat within it so, when that changes, I'm guessing in another 60 lbs, I should be okay with looking into it, honestly, probably not for another year.

This fall, I am going to my alma mater for a football game. I haven't been back since 2005 and hadn't seen many of my college friends since then. I'm really looking forward to it, although I'm pretty sure a particular person is going to be there that I am not sure I want to see, yes, we're talking about Guy. I would really, REALLY, like some closure with him. I ain't gon lie, I wanna see him, rather, I want him to see me. For all I know, he could be married by now, actually that would be perfect because then the door would certainly be closed!

Oh well, I'm hungry, time for food!

Mothercrapper!!!

I had a mid-week tennis lesson yesterday and typically I leave them somewhat fatigued, but on a high, usually feeling like I made some progress. Yesterday was different. My teacher introduced another level of complexity which completely threw everything out of whack and once again, I was lobbing ball over the fence. God, I hate that. Not getting the balls in court is bad enough, but when they're sailing 45° over the fence, that ain't good. Sigh. She had me work on what she is calling split stance and staying on my toes so that I work on moving to where the ball will land so that I can hit it within my natural stroke. Totally screwed me up and it's frustrating enough for me to lose a little sleep over it. So yeah, I will be hitting the tennis court this afternoon for sure!

My appointment with the endocrinologist is exactly one week from today. THANK GOD. I've been waiting for this for a month! Still working on a list of every possible question I want to ask. Dr. R. is going to get an earful, I hope he's ready, I will be.

Have I mentioned lately that I have nothing to wear? No? Ok. I have NOTHING to wear. I have 3 pairs of jeans and two good shirts. That's it. I'm compiling more clothes to take to Goodwill and it includes almost everything I've worn all winter. I'm trying to talk my sister into flying to meet me back home so that she can go shopping with me. We are only 1-2 sizes away from each other and she has such great style I'm hoping some of it would rub off on me!

Weight this morning, 255.8 lbs. Haven't made much progress within the last week, but no worries. I'm just happy to have made some progress this month at all.

This weekend is going to be spent at my desk. It's the end of the quarter and that means I'll be spending most of it working, running reports, updating pricing and product info, etc. I'll also be finalizing the photos for BP and her family. I want to get them all done and printed before I go home in about a week and a half.

I'm not sure what my problem is lately, but I have been spending more money on food than I usually do. I mean I'm buying all kinds of protein, my freezer is filled with all manner of beef, chicken, seafood and pork. I don't know why I keep buying the stuff, it's not like I go through a lot of it, it just keeps calling my name or something. I bought a corned beef which I am going to cook tomorrow. I had some on St. Patty's Day and wanted more. I also bought more shrimp, I love to cook it with butter, Adobo and some garlic. YUM. I guess this is a good thing, much better than the food aversion I had last year, that sucked.

Anyway, speaking of food, time to go get some!

I'm tired

I don't know how else to put it. I'm worn the hell out. Yesterday was Easter and since I was going to be spending it at BP's house and since this was the first time in a year that both her daughters would be in town as well as her sister, I offered to do some family photos for them. I haven't been taking as many photos lately, certainly not as much as I'd like so I thought it would do a good thing and get some practice in. Now, I last did photos for this family way back in 2005 at another of her sister's house in NJ for her son's 1st birthday party. All her siblings were there as well as their mother. It took FOREVER to get all these very lively, boisterous folks to take decent photos BUT I got some great photos of their family which turned out to be a wonderful thing since their mother passed away a few months later. I ended taking the last photos of them and their mother together. So anyway, I told them the day before to get dressed and be ready to take photos, no t-shirts, no sweat, they had to look decent. I got there a little after 4 PM, only BP was dressed. I didn't start taking pictures til just after 7 PM, I took my last photo around 10. Yes, three freakin' hours. Three hours to take some family photos of FIVE people. Ugh. In all honesty, it wasn't that bad, I mean, BP's sister totally cracks me up and I enjoy being creative with the camera, but I certainly didn't expect it to take that long. Anyway, it was totally worth it when I saw some of the photos I took. They came out great! I'm so happy! All that work paid off.

I was so excited when I eventually got home, that I just had to download the pictures to my computer (instead of the crappy laptop) and view them on my nice monitor. They look even better! There is some tweaking to be done, but I'm really happy with the result. I ended up going to bed around 1:30 AM which sucks because Monday's are crazy and I usually have to get up at 7 AM which is exactly what I did, 12 hours later, my brain is mush and I could go to bed right now if it were dark out. I think I can manage a couple more hours then it's night time for me!

Yeah, baby, yeah!!!

Big congratulations to Tiffany over at Change is Good, she's in ONDERLAND!!! WOO-HOO!!!! Save a seat for me, girl, I'll be there soon enough!!!!

Par-tay!

The dinner and party Friday night were great. We went to the same place where we had our Christmas party. I had the scallops again (YUM!) and nursed a couple of Diet Cokes while everyone else drank away. Needless to say, I was the designated driver. Turns out the Diet Cokes were a bad idea. I couldn't sleep that night, too wired. It was rough getting up yesterday morning, but I had lots to do. Yesterday was BP's surprise birthday party and I'm exhausted. The plan was for her sister to take her out to get their hair and nails done, then arrive back at her house around 7:00 PM for the big surprise. I was to arrive around 4:00 PM to leisurely help BP's husband and daughter set up for the party, decorate, cook, whatever. Instead I got a frantic call from BP's husband around 3:00 PM telling me to get over there as fast as I could and then I spent the next 4+ hours running around like a crazy person cleaning, decorating, running out to pick up the cake, ice and other last minute stuff. I then spent the whole party playing photographer and making sure that I took good pictures. The best part was that her other daughter flew in from California and surprised her. She was shocked! She cried and cried. It was great, I'm glad she had a good party. Alls I gotta do now is process the photos and get them back to her in a book or something.

I got a couple of interesting comments at the party. One lady flat out didn't recognize me at first, took a couple of seconds and she was like "Omigod!". It was funny. The other one came from a lady I hadn't seen in probably two years, she said "You look different. What's different about you?" At first I was taken aback, but I just said that I lost a lot of weight. She's English so I don't know if in English culture it's poor manners to talk about people's weight or not. Anyway, no big deal. The food at the party was great, there was shrimp and ham and chicken and green beans and more ham and more shrimp and potato chips. I only ate the chips during the decorating frenzy because they were the only things out and I was STARVING. I did try a green olive, but couldn't muster a second.

Oh yeah, Happy Easter, y'all! I'm exhausted, it's late morning and I'm barely getting started. Weight this morning, 255.2 lbs! Woo-hoo! Down 9.2 lbs for the month and 261.4 lbs overall. Just a few short lbs away from Dr. M's goal for me.

To answer Ann's question about tracking food, yes, I track my food. I did it for years way back when I was a hard-core low carber and I did it for the first full year post-op, and now I still do it although, not every single thing every single day, but what usually happens is I track about 3/4 of my food each day so that I can see if for the last 2-3 meals of the day, I need to focus on protein/calories or not. I no longer trust my non-tracking guesstimates anymore because more often than not, my guesstimates come in way low on protein and way high on carbs.

Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

I have found the secret to DS success -- switch things up! From here on out, I am going to eat higher calories/protein for 7-10 days (2800+ calories, 240+ grams protein) then change to lower calories/protein for 7-10 days (2000 calories, 150 grams protein). This seems to be the way to go for me. The few days I've been eating more, hunger hit me like a ton of bricks, and I've finally started losing weight again....down to 256.2 lbs this morning with a grand total loss of 260.4 lbs! Slowly, but surely.

Support Group last night was pretty good, the speaker was boring, but it was fun to see all my DS and WLS homies, always a pleasure. A few of us will be running the Peachtree Road Race in July so that leaves us like 3.5 months to train. Speaking of, I check my bank account today and the PTRR committee has already cashed my check, translation -- I'M IN!!!! Woo-hoo!!! That race is going to kick my ass, but I am going to try my best. I've been slacking on the running lately, opting instead to focus on tennis which I enjoy 100 times more. Running sucks and it's hard, I'm happy that I can physically run, but it's not fun ... at all ... not even a little bit. Oh well, after July 4th, I'm probably done with running although I may do the same 10K in September that I did last year, just to improve on my abysmal results of coming in next to last! My big focus is joining my first tennis team sometime this summer and I have a LONG way to go before that...I haven't even learned how to serve yet!

Tonight is my company's anniversary dinner/party and I've decided to write a little speech. I know I bitch and moan about the business a lot, but besides the DS (and post-op life), it's by far the most difficult thing I've ever done. I'm proud of my company and how far we've come. It's so easy to get lost in the minutiae and to see the forest for the trees and all that. We focus so much on making things better, focusing on and picking apart all the things we are doing right, we forget and often fail to acknowledge all the things we are doing great! My speech will focus on that.

Anywho, I'm going to run to Marshall's and/or Kohl's to try to find something to wear. God help me!

Hollow Leg

What I ate today:

M1: 2 eggs scrambled with 3 slices of American cheese on a Low Carb tortilla
M2: 2 Mesquite baked chicken legs
M3: 2 slices of cotto salami, 2 oz deli turkey, 1 slice of cheese on Double Fiber wheat bread w/ mustard
M4: 6-7 oz homemade chili
M5: Grilled cheese sandwich on DFW bread
M6: 1 Mesquite backed chicken leg

It's just almost 8 PM and I'm STILL hungry. I know this is the classic indicator of not consistently eating enough -- either that or I have a hollow leg ... Sigh...time to incorporate a shake or two in my routine. I know that's also a lot of cheese, but I am trying to finish up what I have so that it can be done and over with. I have a helluva time moderating my cheese intake, so it's either all or nothing and at this point, it should probably be nothing ESPECIALLY with the constipation I am having with taking so much calcium.

I went shopping at Ross today. I have quite a few social activities over the next 3 days and am way past tired of wearing the same few things over and over. I was mildly successful in that I found a nice blouse, but that's it. I tried on a 14/16 blouse and it fit (yea!) but was too short (bummer). At least I know I can get into 14/16's. Pretty awesome. I tried on two pairs of pants, one a size 18 (fit) and a size 20 (also fit). I just looked weird in them, I think it may be the cut of them, boot cuts that are snug in the thighs, but flare out past the knees. Maybe it's a mental thing, I don't know, but my hips are so much wider than I would like. It sucks. For now, pants-wise, I will stick with what I have until I can trim down some more in my hips. Thanks to Tiffany, I'm set for a good while. The back of my thighs look gnarly too.

I took a good, long hard look at myself in front of a well lit mirror today. Gosh, I look so different than where I started. Sometimes it just sneaks up on me when I least expect it to. I've sort of transitioned into being fairly comfortable in my own body although I do, at times, feel like I'm not as "small" as I am. I remember when I would compare myself to pre-op photos in order to see the big difference, now I could look at photos of myself 6-8 months ago and see a significant change. Craziness...

Today I did something that completely shocked the hell out of me...I jumped up and down on one leg! I inadvertently jammed my left foot in the corner of my kitchen cabinet hard enough that I actually jumped up and down a few hops. It stopped hurting for a few seconds while I realized what I just did. Pretty cool, huh?

Today is also BP's birthday, the big 5-0! Not too much going on tonight, but we're throwing a surprise party Saturday night. Tomorrow is support group meeting and Friday night is our company's 3-year anniversary so we're throwing a company party. Good times.

Stupid Tornado.....

So we had some crazy weather Friday night through Saturday in Atlanta! Friday night, a tornado actually touched down in downtown Atlanta, passing over the CNN Center, the Georgia Dome and Philips Arena which are all within a block or so of each other. Luckily there were no serious injuries, but from what little I could see from news footage, the damage was fairly severe. Then it started all up again Saturday. Early in the morning some strong storms passed through around 6:00 AM in my area and woke me up, but they weren't strong enough to get me out of bed. Saturday afternoon, different story. I was on Skype with my business partner talking about a problem employee. She has a TV on in her office, I don't. She makes a remark about impending storms so I check out the weather online and see a very ominous looking line of storms heading our way. This is just before noon. Long story, short. I spent the next two hours running between the living room so that I could watch how close the TORNADOES were to me and cowering in the bathtub with a giant pillow over my head on the phone with BP trying not to cry. Looking at the images on the TV screen, it looked like certain death was headed my way. I was really, really scared. BP lives right in the middle of the two major lines of storms/tornadoes so all she got was a little heavy rain. I got strong winds, heavy rain and hail. Truly frightening. Y'know it's never a good thing when you hear the freakin' tornado sirens go off in your neighborhood. Some areas got hit really hard and Thank God it completely passed me.

Onto more happy things... the applications for the 2008 Peachtree Road Race came out today and I'm so excited! I've been waiting for this for weeks! What they do is they put the application in the Sunday edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution every year which begins the mad dash to yours in because they only accept the first 45,000 apps and choose another 10,000 from the remaining ones. Yes, it is a BIG deal. I was up early this morning and got two papers, one for me and one for a friend in Alabama. I ain't trying to play around so I already filled mine out and put them in the mail. It's less than four months away so I really gotta buckle down with my training. It's going to be awesome!!!

Got a tennis lesson today and that's pretty much it. Weight this morning is 258.2 lbs. Ugh. Still battling the Big C and making little progress. I may need to cut down on cheese as that seems to be a binder, I can't cut calcium, that's not an option. Anyway, time to go eat and maybe get a little work done before I head out!

73°

Yeah, that means I am out of here in about 1/2 an hour to go enjoy the sun! Thank you GOD, finally some semi-consistently warm weather. Yea! I am so over being cold. I swear, it's been like 6 months of freezing my ass off. Ugh. Only problem, of course, is that I have NO true warm weather clothes. Not an immediate problem, but it definitely will be in a few weeks. Oh well.

Weight-wise, I am holding steady at 257.0 lbs (random aside -- I almost typed 357.0 ... good grief), that's up 0.2 lbs from my lowest a few days ago. I've been drinking water like a mad woman hoping to stave off chronic constipation and any chance of getting hemorrhoids. I've only had them once and that is enough to know I don't EVER want to have them again.

Tonight is my weekly Lost get-together at my friends house, very much looking forward to it!

Tennis Follies

Tiffany's comment in reference to her fear of balls coming near her face from my post yesterday gave me a chuckle. It's funny because there is one situation in tennis that causes me to freeze in my steps and flat out panic and it's when the ball is coming over the fence toward me in a tall arch and it looks like it's heading straight for my face.

I don't know what it is but it's like everything is moving in slow motion and my brain and my feet completely disagree as to what to do. My body is saying "here comes the ball, hit it!", but my brain is like "oh my God, it's coming at me! Run! No, duck! No, run! No, duck!" So anyway, my tutor and I are on one side of the court and another player is on the other side and we're taking turns hitting the ball back and forth and we're in a good rhythm and I'm feeling pretty good, most of my shots are returnable, but then he lobs the ball back at me and everything slows down -- it's like a movie -- and I hear my instructor, who's to the right of me say "Watch it!". Now, by that she means "Tia, it's closer to you than to me, you go ahead and hit it", however ... my brain hears "Watch it!" and translates it to "stand there like an idiot and watch the ball come at me." Long story, short I stood there like an idiot and caught the ball mere inches before it hit me in the face. I look at my instructor and we both start laughing... Good times. LOL! Yeah, well, it was funny to me. I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, weight this morning, 256.8 lbs, down 0.4 lbs. Ok, I'll admit it, I'm shocked I'm losing weight like this. My only hope is that it continues like this for the next six months, but in reality it's probably makeup loss for the past couple of mediocre months. I don't care, I'll take it!

Half the woman I used to be...

Despite a few glitches, I had a good day yesterday. DST didn't mess me up til this morning. Sucks. Anyway, I had a really great tennis lesson yesterday. There was three of us, the expert/instructor, a player who has been playing for 18 months or so and me. I like lessons more than just practicing by myself, definitely more fun and more tiring. Things are finally coming together a little bit, my footwork, ball tracking and form are improving although ball control is still all over the place BUT much better, I only hit one ball over the fence. I'm happy about that. In the very beginning, I probably hit about 1/3 over the fence and it's such a pain to go fetch them afterwards. I thought for sure I'd be sore this morning, but I feel fine.

I had a great dinner last night pork tenderloin, roasted potatoes with a mushroom sauce and a salad, no dessert. Yum. I ate my share of pork and only a couple of pieces of potato and I even ate some of the portabello mushrooms, crazy, I know. Weight this morning was 257.2 lbs. Amazing. Down another 0.8 lbs, for a grand total loss of 259.4 lbs. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I've lost more weight than what I weigh. I'm only 7.2 lbs away from Dr. Marchesini's goal for me, 40.6 lbs from losing a total of 300 lbs. That is really, really exciting for me. After that, it's just like 16.8 more lbs to Onderland!

Speaking of the good doctor, I just found out he is coming to the states in June and I am seriously considering going to see him. A good friend of mine lives in Philly so I might try to arrange something with him as well. I've never been to DC so it might be cool to see our nation's capital and do the touristy thing while I am there. We'll see.

Oops...

Raise your hand if you forgot Daylight Saving Time... Yeah, me too.

I feel a little unsettled. How did I completely forget DST? Not even a clue, usually I overhear something on the news or a friend or my parents will remind me or mention it in conversation. It sucks because I got up what I thought was 6:30 AM in order to get a few things done early as I have a busy day today, but turns out, it was a full hour later. Dangit. So I had to rearrange some things and my day will probably run longer than I had planned. Oh well.

How about some Sunday morning irony? After years and years of constipation due to my iron supplements, I was rejoicing in discovering an iron supplement that didn't clog me up only to discover the Calcium supplements are taking it's place in that realm. Sigh. Now I either have to take stool softeners or greatly increase my magnesium. One of these days I will find the right balance.

Weight this morning was an even 258.0 lbs. This was after I stayed at 259.2 for a day, then went up to 260.0 yesterday. The poop gods smiled upon me this morning. Ugh, I hate constipation, it's such an annoyance. Anyway, total loss so far is ... 258.6 lbs! Wait. Holy crap, I just realized I've lost 1/2 my body weight! Woo-hoo!!! I'm doing a happy jig!!!

I love my DS!!!!

Later!

Lots of running around today. I have a staff meeting at noon which means I have to be out of here around 11 AM in order to be there with enough time for prep. We are meeting one of our vendor reps, our favorite vendor in fact, and they are going to do a demo/walk-through of sorts of some new technology they've implemented. Then it's down to the nitty-gritty business related stuff and that'll take a couple of hours. After that, I am going to try to sneak in a nap, for some strange reason fatigue hit me like a ton of bricks, along with a headache, around nine o'clock last night so I took a couple of Tylenol's and went to bed. By 4:30 this morning, I was wide awake and have been working since then. After my nap, I have to train an employee on some new functionality I built (woo-hoo!) and hopefully roll it out late this afternoon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can sneak in an hour of tennis before dinner, then I have a quick conference call with the company's shareholders and hopefully it won't take forever 'cause Lost will be on promptly at 9 PM.

One thing I don't think I have mentioned before about my company is that it is almost entirely comprised of women. We've had exactly 3 men work for us in the history of the business (and only one currently) which I think is kinda cool. It wasn't intentional, it just turned out that way. It's something I am proud of though, a technology company almost completely run by women. Many of our investors and advisers are men, but for the most part we are a mostly-female crew. We have our moments, for sure, but that has been the case for every company I've ever worked for.

I don't know if it because I got up earlier than normal today and thus had more time to clear the plumbing, but my final weight this morning was 259.2 lbs! Holy Mother! Pretty awesome! I think I must have been stalled or maybe I'm shedding pounds as I shed the stress of the last few weeks. At this point, I don't care, every lb loss is one lb closer to goal aka The Promised Land. Buh-bye 260's! Nice knowing ya!

Times like these remind me of a poem a friend sent to me once (in old Black Southern vernacular):

Good Lawd sends me troubles
And I gots to work 'em out
Then I luk around an see
Theres troubles all abouts
An when I se my troubles
I jes luk up an grin
To think of all the troubles
Dat I aint in!

IRS

I got my taxes done this afternoon with the same accountant who does our company's finances, he worked his magic and sifted through all the paperwork and receipts I brought and I got decent Federal and state tax refunds. This, coupled with Mr. Bush's economic stimulus check, I'll be able to pad the nest egg OR do something more fun with it like take a trip in the fall. I'm fairly certain I will be taking two of my teenage nephews to my alma mater for a football game. They will freakin' love it and I will be able to see many college friends who haven't seen me in a while. There are also a couple of people there I want to visit, one of them is a old mentor of mine, well, she's not old, but she had a HUGE influence on me especially during my senior year of college. I remember wanting to be her, she was the epitome of grace and strength. I hope to take her out to dinner and mostly share my deepest gratitude.

I also went out and paid a very ridiculous $3.15 per gallon of gas! That's it, that's what my refund will be buying...

Weight this morning was 261.2 lbs, down 1.4 lbs from yesterday, for a grandtotal of 255.4 lbs lost. I'm getting closer to being able to say I've lost 1/2 my body weight. Crazy, ain't it? I have lost all that weight and still haven't lost 1/2 my body weight yet. Just a few more pounds though, less than 3, I think.

April 4th

That is my appointment date with the Endocrinologist ... a whole month away. Good grief! Don't these people know I'm impatient?!? They will let me know if something opens up before then, but I doubt it. I am off to see my parents toward the end of the month anyway, so I might as well just keep things as they are.

Onward...

What?!?

Wonder of all wonders, I got my MRI results yesterday. Late in the day, I was chit-chatting with BP and the doctor's office buzzed in telling my results were done and the doctor wanted to discuss them with me. I certainly wasn't expecting a call so quickly, the nurse on Friday told me that it would take 3-5 business days, so I guess less than one business day was enough. Waiting the 3 mins for him to get on the phone was excruciating but when he actually did get on, he gave me some news I was expecting and some I sure as hell wasn't. He confirmed the prolactinoma (he called it a microadenoma -- same thing) and said that medication would be the proper treatment for it ... then he dropped a !@#$-ing bomb when he said "there was also another anomaly..." At this point, I kinda heard what he said after that, but not really ... "abnormality .... brain fluid .... fossa ... blah blah blah." Yeah, I would like to say I caught everything he said, but frankly, I was just flat out shocked that there was something else going on, my mind just went all the way left! He said he was making an appointment for me with a "hormone doctor" and that his office will let me know when that is. Good grief! I was so discombobulated that I forgot to ask him to fax me the results! Fifteen minutes later, I did and when I got them, I could barely understand them, I don't really speak doctor. From what I could glean, however, is that the MRI showed results consistent with Chiari I Malformation. What the HELL?!?

Great. Now I have something else to obsess over! Ugh. After a good 30 minutes of searching online, I know it's not anything to panic about, but damnit, not what I was expecting. I am not experiencing any of the symptoms from it so it may be a non-issue for now, I guess I'll have to wait and see. Hopefully, the doc's office will call me today and I can see, what I assume to be, an Endocrinologist soon. One additional tidbit was that he expressed concern about dosages of medications given my DS so when I meet with the Endo, he will be able to advise me on that. Looks like I will be sending an email to Dr. M. soon. I can't complain too much, it could be far, far worse news.

Anyway, enough of that. Weight this morning was 262.6 lbs. Woo-hoo! The scale is my friend again. I've dropped, but not completely cut out, the amount of high-fiber wheat bread and cheese I've been eating and mostly cut out a lot of the frankenfood as well, been eating more chicken, pork and seafood. I've also dropped my protein down to the 150 grams per day range while keeping my calories high (via fat). Seems to be a good combination for now.

Month 18

Thank God that month is over, I am happy to see March start and feel like I can start fresh. February had so many ups and down on the DS level and in life in general. My starting weight for the month was 264.0 lbs, the very next day, I weighed in at 265.6 and I've been up and down the same couple of pounds all month, finally ending up a little over at 264.4 lbs which I am fine with given the tumultuous nature of my life the past 3 weeks. According to DS lore, my weight loss window has closed, of course I believe that to be patently false, so the next 6 months present a challenge for me. I am anticipating having a final diagnosis and begin treatment for my hyperprolactinemia in 1-2 weeks. This will hopefully get my hormones in order and start the long process of reducing the tumor. This will also allow me to start losing weight like I have in the past. My goal is a measly 60-70 lbs away, absolutely doable in the next 6 months.

Post-MRI, I feel like a weight has been lifted, it goes to show you the kind of machinations that go on in my head. I actually feel better now that it's over, no small part due to the fact that I actually got a good, restful sleep last night. It was one of the nights where I don't even remember falling asleep and the time between when I pulled the covers up and woke up this morning felt like 10 minutes, instead of the 8.5 hours that it was. This morning I feel refreshed, for a change.

Food and water has been mediocre. I have been getting in my protein, for the most part, but have incorporated cheese, Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat Bread and Dreamfield's pasta into my day to day. All low carb items, but notorious problem-causers for me. I also probably had one or two too many pieces of birthday cake and probably went out to eat and had one or two too many non-DS friendly foods, it was my birthday, afterall, and what a change it was to actually celebrate multiple times with friends and acquaintances! I'm reining all that in for this month as I am really anxious to see what I can do on the scale this month. Addressing the tumor issue should allow me to trust my body and trust that the DS still works well for me.

My hand still hurts from yesterday and there is a visible 1/3 inch scratch from where the technician/nurse was trying to find my vein. When I look at it, it's nowhere near my vein which makes me wonder what the hell she was looking at. Anyway, today is supposed to be sunny and somewhat warm which means I'm fixin' to head out the door in about 15 minutes! Gonna run some errands and later go to the park and play some tennis. I'm supposed to go see either Juno or Vantage Point this afternoon, but haven't decided which. I'm on a Lost kick, so Vantage Point it will probably be.