Month 20

A blur. My lowest weight for the month was 251.2 lbs, it went downhill from there. I started my Dostinex and ever since then I've been retaining water like a freaking sponge. I'm also retaining water because for a good 2-3 weeks I hadn't been eating as much protein as I should have, especially over my trip and the two weeks I have been battling this annoying cold & allergies. I still have some residual sniffling and a cough that is sloooowwly resolving. My sense ofsmell and sense of taste are also slowly returning which has made it incredibly difficult to try to get the nutrition in that I need PLUS it's been easier to get in crappy food instead of good protein. So, for my sanity's sake, I am putting down 251.2 for the month which isn't remarkable, but here's what is. Remember that new scale I got the measures body fat, skeletal mass, etc. Well, a day like today is exactly why I got it. Early January, I had, on average, 130 lbs of body fat, as of today, that's down to 110-111 lbs, pretty awesome! This gives me much comfort when I step and the scale and it !@#$-ing reads 268.8 lbs! Yes, my friends, 268.8 lbs! That's almost 20 lbs of water and most since I got back. I'm really panicking too much because I know it's water weight and I know what I have to do to lose it. Sigh. My clothes still fit fine, but I certainly feel and see it in my legs and feet. If I have learned anything over the last 20 months is to stick to the plan and everything falls into place. I've been so out of whack this month that I know when things get back to normal and I know I can trust my DS to get me to where I want to go.

This month I also did some shopping! I bought two dresses which is something remarkable for me, I am so very excited to wear them and I will get my first opportunity this weekend. I spent a couple of hours on the phone with my sister, S, as she guided me through the wonderful world of shoes. If you thought my sense of fashion when it comes to clothes was lacking, my notions of cute shoes is downright abysmal. Most of the comes from the fact that I have large feet, well, I had prohibitively large feet pre-surgery, around a size 13, now I wear a size 11.5 wide. This barely puts me in the range of cute shoes. What's funny is that I just realized this a couple of weeks ago when I was going through a pile of shoes my mom had set aside for me and much to my surprise, a lot of the 11's (what can I say, we're tall women) were barely too small. What a shock! Long story, short, she walked me through a couple of shoe stores online and I feel fairly confident in the 3-4 pairs of shoes I bought, one of them even has 2 1/2" heels! Awesome!

I didn't play as much tennis as I would have liked because I did go out of town and it's been raining more than usual lately, but I have been enjoying myself when I do go out and I absolutely love my tennis lessons. The running hasn't been happening because I do not like it but I do have to get serious again because the 10K is in only a couple of months and I would like to be able to run 1-2 miles at a time without stopping. I swear, once that race is over, no more running for me. By then I should be starting on a tennis team and can occupy my time with that. I mentioned before that tennis is huge in Atlanta so there are like three major tennis leagues, from what I can gleam, USTA, ALTA and T2. BP and her husband are in all three and probably play tennis 4-5 times a week and that's seriously running around the court, competition. I'd like to work up to that so that tennis will be my primary source of exercise OR I might take up something else. I really want to get into some kind of martial arts, I think, maybe kick-boxing or something. I don't know, we'll see.

I do still think a lot about goal weight. I was flipping channels last night when I caught the tail end of Celebrity Fit Club. I guess it's a show where celebrity's compete to lose the most weight or something, but I happened to see the weigh in of one celebrity (I forget her name, starts with a T) and one of the judges gave her a big congratulations because she had finally reached a normal BMI. Then on the flipside, this past weekend, I saw a show on Discovery Health about a 627 lb woman who had a RNY and one of the things she said was that she had no expectations of ever being a size 10 which caught my attention and at another point her doctor said that for people like her, getting to "normal" wasn't the goal, that for her she would always be obese, but by losing 200-400 lbs would be such a great benefit. Things like that make me go back and forth on the whole goal weight issue. Despite all the gyrations I often go through, I am sticking to 199 as my goal, the one thing I am changing about goal is when I would like to get there. Instead of trying to reach that by my 2 year anniversary (which at this rate ain't happenin' -- possible, but not likely), I am giving myself til the end of the year. That's 8 months to lose 50 or so lbs. This will give me the opportunity to develop long-term, sustainable, healthy habits which is very, very, very important to me. I want to get to goal, but I want the tools in place to stay there. I don't want to be spending much time still trying to figure things out.

In May, I am cutting back on the cheese and low carb breads. I need to give my innards a rest. I need to give my whole system a rest, being sick for almost two weeks is not fun. I'm also getting rid of my glasses and getting contacts AND will be doing something with my hair, I'm not sure what, but I suspect it will be much shorter in length. I'm mildly excited about that.

Anywho,

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.