Dressing Room Blues

A dear friend of mine died this past week.  And the funeral is Saturday. 

Friday found me in my kitchen cooking tons of muffins and boiling eggs for deviled eggs.  It's what we Southern women do when faced with a crowd of people.  We gather 'round the bereaved and bake. 

You'd have been proud of me - I did not sample anything but the broken egg whites of the boiled eggs.

But as I wrapped up my baking for the day and yearned to get off my aching feet, I suddenly realized that I didn't have anything to wear the next day.  Whatever "good" clothes I had were too small.  And I can't show up in sweats and a t-shirt, sneakers and flip-flops on my feet.

So at 7:30pm, I dragged myself out to Ross to find an inexpensive but presentable dress to wear to the funeral. 

There's not much out there for a woman my size.   And what there was looked more like Baptist Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes (very Eastery).  I took various dresses in various sizes back to the dressing room and proceeded to give myself a rather weepy fashion show.  One dress was okay, but the facing at the neckline kept coming out.  Another dress made me look like a cross between a hooker and a sausage.  The pantsuit I picked out had pants about 5 inches too long and the top's darts pointed straight at my bellybutton (the girls haven't sagged that much yet!).

It took three trips, but I finally found something acceptable.  It's a shell dress with a long-sleeved shrug to go over the top.  It's actually quite attractive.  The feeling of relief lasted about two minutes before I realized that I didn't have shoes either.  All the shoes I wear are either flip-flops or sneakers - which don't really go.  All of the shoes in that store had impossibly high heels, so I set off for Payless at 8:30pm, found a pair of sensible shoes (!) that were just dressy enough to work with the dress, and headed home to finally get off my feet.  This morning, I still need to find some panty hose.

As I was trying on dresses in front of the mirror, I was horrified.  No wonder my doctor thought I should give fen-fen a go.  My thighs were lumpy and there was no light showing between them.  My belly hangs down like an inflated apron.  I look like one of those fertility goddesses they dig up from time to time in ancient places.  It is incredibly depressing.  However, it is good motivation.  If I actually saw this everyday, perhaps the motivation to do something about it would stay strong. 

I'm hanging a full-length mirror in my closet and will dress in front of it every day.  Problems are hard to ignore when faced with the graphic evidence.

New Day, New me

My husband found this fun little thing where you can make a cartoon of yourself.  This is MY cartoon.  Only there's no application to make it weight-accurate.  If you add about 90 lbs to this, that would be me in my current state.  This?  This is me as I hope to be.  I wear glasses.  I wear tank tops all the time (because I'm always HOT).  I don't have a tattoo, but if I did, it would be a welsh dragon on my arm right about there.  I have bangs now, but that's pretty much my hair.

Not bad, huh?  But not me.  Not yet.

I went to the doctor last week.  My numbers are still looking pretty good, though my triglycerides are up and the VLD number is too high.  And of course, my weight is up - 230.  I'd been living on hospital food and the only exercise I got was getting from the parking garage to my mother's hospital room. 

Things are looking better though.  Mom's in rehab, strengthening the parts of her body that were so weakened by her hematoma.  And visiting hours are from 4:30pm to 8pm, so I can get back to work and mostly back to my life.  I go visit her every other day or so, and we're hoping that after her own doctor appointment on the 4th, she'll be able to go home.

Better for me too.  I can get back to some semblance of normal routine now.  And my doctor has finally accepted that I just cannot do Atkins, or even a modified version of it.  I just can't handle that much meat!  So now, he wants me to follow a modified Pritikin.  This one is more vegetable, fruit and grain-based, which is much more up my alley.  Little meat.  Fish, shell fish.  Egg whites.  Poultry once a week and red meat once a month.  This is much more doable to me.  All that meat made me feel sluggish and slow.  And not like exercising...  I'm hoping that this new diet will provide me with much more energy and a lightness to my step that's been missing for quite some time!  As always, I'll let you know how it goes!

Reality Bites

Sometimes I have a hard time with reality. Specifically, seeing myself in a realistic way. There's a big gap between what I know and what I see when I look in the mirror.

I know that I am overweight. By about 90 pounds. But when I look in the mirror - I don't see it. It's only when I catch myself unawares walking by a window or an unexpected reflection that I see the truth. I am FAT.

I have a big belly, a big butt, big thighs and my arms keep waving long after my hands have stopped. It's such a weird realization. And in spite of having inhabited my body this whole time, I am at a loss as to how it happened.

The last few weeks have been tough. On my exercise program. On my diet. On my nerves. And I'm not liking what I see in the mirror.

I went to the doctor for my regular 3-month checkup. My A1C was 5.4 - perfect! In fact, most of my numbers were good except for the triglycerides and VLDL which were out of whack. And my scale number was a shocker - 230.

What the heck have I been doing all this time???? All that effort to wind up in the same place I started. Seriously bummed here.

Doc wants me to go mostly vegetarian. Fresh veggies, whole grains, lots of fruit. Meat once a month, poultry once a week. Tofu, fish, shellfish are okay, as well as egg whites. This is much more up my alley. Atkins just doesn't work for me. I don't eat meat that much and it almost always disagrees with me. So trying to eat more was sheer hell.

Here I go again. Mom's gonna be okay. Dad's fine. Now I really must get down to the business of taking care of ME.

Journey (crossover from SayreSmiles)

I know I've been AWOL. I haven't followed any diet except what's available in the hospital cafeteria or any exercise plan but getting to and from hospital rooms and waiting rooms and my car in the parking garage. The following will explain why.

As I washed my hands in the sink in the ICU waiting room bathroom, I glanced in the mirror. I wasn't terribly shocked by what I saw, but it didn't help my mood any.

It's been days since I wore any make up. My eyes are puffy, my face dry and a bit red. My hair doesn't really look like anyone's paid attention to it in a long time. I looked like a tired, worn out bag lady. The kind you see sitting on the bench outside the convenience store because that's the most entertaining thing she can find to do. Bedraggled. I think I've been waiting to cry.

It's been a hell of a month.

Two weeks ago, my mom called me,"Dad's in the emergency room. Please come get me (she doesn't drive)." We went, found him awaiting pacemaker surgery, and sat. They wheeled my tired, gray-faced father away. We sat there looking at each other, lost in our own worlds of possible loss and wondering what was next. Luckily, we didn't have to go there - he was wheeled back an hour later, pink and chatty and a heart that worked again. She spent the night on my couch and the next day we collected him from the hospital and took him home. He's a new man.

Then Saturday, my dad called me, "Mom's in the emergency room. I think she's had a stroke." He said don't come, we're fine - but then he called every 20 minutes or so to talk, then cry. I'm not sure how many calls later it was when he said, "I am not a comforting presence. Your mother wants her daughter. Please come." So I gathered books - A Walk Through Wales for him and Mama Makes Up Her Mind to read aloud to her. When I arrived, he went home to put the house right, feed the chickens, feed the cat and give her her insulin and compose himself so that he could be there for Mom.

So began the week. Much of my days on the Neurology floor was spent watching Mom, feeding her and letting Dad go tend to his home or sleep. He was exhausted with worry. He wouldn't sleep at home but stayed on a little cot in Mom's room.

I noticed, while watching Mom, that her stroke symptoms seemed to come and go. That there was a particular order and duration. From just being a tired, bedridden lady, she would lose feeling, then use of her left hand; her toes would start twitching, then contracting; her hand would contract; her right eyelid would puff up and then the left side of her mouth and she wouldn't be able to talk. It seemed to cycle through in 5-10 minutes, then she'd be fine for about an hour and it would happen again. Then the "spells" started lasting longer until finally they were lasting between 45 and 55 minutes start to finish. For her, they were aggravating. For us, it was scary. She remained lucid during them, but unable to do anything. The most frightening thing was that this might be her life. Upsetting to us, but devastating to her. We would still have her but she would lose her life as she knew it and be trapped in this strange new reality.

There were tests. Lots and lots of tests. Multiple MRIs and CAT scans. Brain-wave activity scans. Conflicting results. Was it a stroke? Seizures? Was it that rather small hematoma causing big problems? She had a spell on the brain-wave test which didn't show up - not electrical. Her MRIs didn't show a stroke after all... there was no damage to the brain itself. The CAT scans didn't show any new bleeding. My mother, the enigma.

Finally, by process of elimination, the neurologist and neurosurgeon decided to treat the hematoma and see if that did the trick. Surgery was today. Two small holes were drilled into Mom's skull and her brain was rinsed and drained of the hematoma's blood. We waited in the cafeteria for a while, then moved up to the ICU waiting room when we found she was in recovery. We waited a long time, me, Dad, John and Fr. Mike. We talked a lot to pass the time. We engaged other people in the waiting room. It helped.

Dad was regaling us with funny Mom stories - stories about how she was returning, in spite of the spells. Things she would say -quips, comebacks, jokes. She laughed.

Dad was gone when I first heard her laugh. She was in the midst of a spell and unable to talk. I asked her if she could feel her tongue. Ysh, came the reply. So we experimented. She gritted her teeth and talked through them - and you could understand her! Revelation! "Mom, you're gonna have a great career as a ventriloquist when you get out of here." She giggled. "You just have to find a dummy... or maybe you could use Dad." She laughed. Nearly guffawed. It was beautiful. And I realized I hadn't heard her laugh in so long...

You see, that was one of the most sobering things about all of this. My mother had slipped away and no one had realized it. Little by little, she'd stopped laughing. She'd gone still and silent so gradually that it became the norm. I talked to her on the phone everyday, but I couldn't see her and know that the rest of the day was spent quietly in her chair. She'd say she had a headache. Ever since I was little she'd had headaches. This was not unusual. She'd say she hurt. But she had arthritis and bad knees. Not unusual.

We might never have known anything was wrong until it was too late if she hadn't decided that she wanted to have cataract surgery. When she mentioned her headaches to the eye doctor, he refused to operate until the source of the headaches was discovered. And so began the rounds of testing that discovered the sub-dural hematoma.

A plan was in place for dealing with it.... until this. This emergency that threatened to take her away altogether.

Thank God. This emergency is what is giving her back to us. She laughs. She jokes. She's been my mom again.

Right now, she lies in ICU. Her color is beautifully pink. She has a fancy new Klingon haircut and holes in her head. She's sleeping and healing. And I hope she's having beautiful dreams.

So now we wait. Wait for her to wake up. Wait to see if this solved the problem or if the doctors start all over again. Wait for her to come home, and start living her life again.

And I'm still waiting to cry.

Health Matters - for Everyone

Sorry I've been AWOL lately. The Tuesday after my last post, I got a phone call from my mother saying that my father was on his way to the emergency room.

He'd been at work and started feeling bad, having a hard time breathing. No pain, really - just feeling really tired and shaky. He was concerned enough to go to the doctor's office, where they promptly put him on an EKG and took his pulse. Afterwards, he was sent directly across the street to the emergency room.

When Mom called, he was still awaiting a diagnosis (they took him in immediately, thank God), so I wrapped up work and went to pick her up. We fed the chickens, locked the doors and gathered clothing and a book for Dad.

We arrived at the hospital and were directed to the Cardiac unit. I found him behind curtain number four, looking a bit gray and very tired. The doctor had decided that he needed a pacemaker, as the bottom half of his heart wasn't firing but for every third or fourth beat. And his heart was beating oh-so slowly. When he arrived at the emergency room, it was at 30 bpm. At one point during examination, it dropped to 23. Not too long after that, his heart would have stopped altogether - thank goodness he was already in excellent hands, monitoring every single beat.

As you can imagine, he was scared. Dad is a big man. A strong man. Even with half his heart beating, he managed to have high blood pressure. But this situation could have easily killed him and he realized that. He would have left my mom, a farm, 15 chickens (I think), a diabetic old cat, and lots of children and grandchildren who would miss him desperately. This was the wake-up call of all wake-up calls.

I got Mom there in time to see him (and he, her) before the surgery. Shortly after we arrived, they wheeled him out - and an hour later, they wheeled him back, pink and chatty.

Amazing, the things that modern medicine can do.

His heart rate was a normal (for him) 65 bpm and his blood pressure stabilized to a normal pressure. He hadn't eaten since breakfast (it was after 7pm by now), and was thrilled with the two little pork chops, yams and greens they brought him for dinner.

He teared up as he told my mother that he loved her.

The next day, I took him home from the hospital. He can't drive until everything heals up, or he runs the risk of unplugging himself. Mom started calling him "Whack-a-Mole" because he keeps dodging that mallet.

There were lots of messages on the answering machine, one of them from Mom's neurologist.

My mom has cataracts - to the point where it's not safe for her to drive. She was hoping to have cataract surgery this winter so that she could drive, read, sew, or watch TV and actually see what was happening. But she's had a bad headache since July and the eye doctor wouldn't do the cataract surgery until they knew what was causing the headaches. An MRI was scheduled.

At 9pm the night we brought Dad home, the neurologist called back to tell her that she had a subdural hematoma and that she had to go to the neurosurgeon the next day. I took her.

When asked about the pain of her headaches, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most painful, she said that since July it's been a 10, but had gone to a 3 in the last week.

This is good news. The thinking is that her blood-thinning medication is causing the bleeding in her brain, but the fact that her pain had lessened so much in the last week indicated that there may be some spontaneous healing taking place. She was advised to go off the blood thinner for a month, then have another scan so they could compare.

If we are lucky, there will be no new bleeding. Which means no surgery. Because unfortunately, the only treatment for that is to drill holes in the skull to relieve the pressure. Yeah.

It's been a shocking week. And a cautionary tale for those of us who are following in their footsteps. My dad is a big man. Really big. He has, all his life, eaten whatever he wanted without much regard to fat content or sugar content or anything else. He has diabetes and now a heart condition. He's always gotten plenty of exercise, though he has slowed down rather dramatically in the last couple of years. My mother is not big like Dad, but she too hasn't been as conscious of her diet or exercise habits for much of her life (being a mother to 6 people is a lot of exercise in and of itself!). Sure, some of this is genetic, but a lot of it could have been warded off with good diet and exercise.

My inspiration. Because I am BOTH of these people and I got to see my future should I continue down the road of diabetes and obesity. I have reason to live. I have a son - and I don't want HIM sitting in the waiting room of the hospital one day, waiting to hear if I will survive whatever ailment befalls me because I couldn't stick to a diet or skipped my walks more often than not.

It's not fair. The knowledge of how to stay healthy wasn't as well known in my parents' young and mid-adult years. It is common knowledge in my own time. And it won't be fair to my son to not take advantage of that common knowledge now, while I'm still relatively healthy and can come back from my own diabetes and weight problems.

If you can't do it for yourself, do it for someone you love.

Running and Science

I'm listening to today's Science Friday from NPR (you can listen on your local NPR station's website). They're talking about running - the science of it, and why people are designed to run.

It's interesting to hear that not everyone experiences the endorphin rush from running...

I have a hard time sticking with an exercise program and I wonder if this might be why? My husband is almost addicted to exercise. He HAS to run or bike or do something nearly every day or he doesn't feel right. I have always wanted to feel that way, but I just don't.

I exercise because I have to, because it's necessary for being healthy - but I don't get that rush that he obviously does. I have to force myself out the door, even when I've established the habit of exercise, it's not something I feel physically compelled to do. And I have been feeling like there must be something wrong with me that I don't feel the same way about exercise that he does... that so many people in the world seem to feel.

While not common, it does occur often enough that science recognizes that lack truly does exist. Gotta wonder... if science recognizes this, and deems it an unwanted trait, will it come up with a treatment for lack of desire to exercise?

I kind of hope they do - because not desiring to exercise could be a death sentence for people who don't get up and do it anyway.

Fighting my way out

Sorry for the long silence. I just didn't have much to say. I got over whatever it was I had, but since then have been doing nothing. Not watching my diet, not going out of my way to exercise.

I feel it.

Like Mr. Incredible trying to escape the black blobs that grew and grew until they engulfed him. (First 30 seconds of this clip - you can stop it after that)

It seems overwhelming and hopeless when that last little glimpse of skinny disappears.

But it's not. It's NOT!

I can do this! I can get my weight down. I can fight my way out of these cells that threaten to take over my whole being. It will take some work. Some willpower. Determination. Movement. Water. Good food. The recipe is so simple - but I seem to have a hard time following the directions.

I can do it. You can do it. We CAN do it. And we will!