Tweaking

I went to the doc in late May and have finally gotten my labs back. All in all, not too horrible. Seems I'm lapsing into anemia again even though I have been consistently taking two Poly-Iron capsules every day, they each have 150mg of elemental iron. I'm on the hunt for a chewable iron that I can add to my arsenal and will probably split up my Poly-Iron into two doses instead of one. This is definitely one of the reasons I've been feeling a little sluggish lately.

The most distressing lab result is my albumin, 3.7. Although it's in the normal range, it's the lowest ever for me and I'm not too happy about it. I'd been doing well doing my 2-3 protein shakes a day and thought that that was my maintenance level. Well, what I didn't factor into my plans was the increase in physical activity and how much I'd need to adjust for it. Right now, I am playing tennis 4-5 times a week and I don't see that changing, if anything, I may be playing more. So the plan right now is to add yet another protein shake a day. Yep, 4 protein shakes a day. The first one before I walk out the door in the morning, another around 10:30 AM, the third around 3-4PM and the last sometime around 9-10 PM. I then usually have 3 meals. I've been doing this for about a week and it seems to work. I feel a lot better, so we'll see how it goes. The weird thing is that my total protein is 7.4 which is well within normal, so I'm not sure what that means.

Speaking of tennis, have I told you lately how much I love it! I freakin' love it. Yesterday, I went to Friday morning drills for an hour and a half. Now, typically they have three courts which are usually divided based on skill level and I consider myself a beginner. Well, that morning there wasn't enough people to warrant 3 courts so everyone was on two. As soon as I noticed, I was nearly petrified. I mean, I've been swimming happily in the kiddie pool, now I felt like I was being tossed in the deep end. It was incredibly intimidating, but I jumped right in and within 15-20 mins, I definitely felt like I could hang. It was the most awesome feeling I've had in a while. The pace was much quicker, the players were so much better, but I was right there in it! I played my butt off and of course, made mistakes but I wasn't categorically worse. It was sooooo cool. The best part, the absolute best part was when a couple of people came up to me afterward and said I had great hand/eye coordination and asked if I ever wanted to go out and hit to give them a call. That has never happened to me before. It felt awesome. It was just so cool. I feel so much more motivated to improve my game. A big test for me comes later this summer when there is a big tennis tournament. I'm going to go out of my comfort zone and find a partner and enter in. I don't know how well I will fare, but I think it'll be good to test myself. I'm excited.