Category: health

Birthday Cake Blues

I shared a picture of Bellana’s birthday cake yesterday. I bought it at the supermarket a couple of days ago. It’s huge and chocolate and it looks delicious and wonderful and I can’t have any. Well, if I wanted to trigger a round of dumping syndrome I could have some, but I absolutely do not want that to happen so I won’t be having any.

I really want some. Not in the same way that I used to want cake prior to the Gastric Bypass surgery. Back then I would have drooled for a while as I fought the urge to eat half of the cake in one bite and then I would eat half of the cake in one bite. Now I just look at it longingly and then forget it’s there for a while. The next time I find myself in the kitchen I’ll go through it all again.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… this is a weird new universe we’re living in.

Distance and Social Media Stupid

Yesterday I used the Distance function on the Indoor Walk setting on the Apple Watch Workout app for the first time. It said my longest indoor walk was 3.20 miles so I set my distance at 3.20 miles and off I went.

Today I went to do it again. This time, however, the default distance it gave me was 3.21 miles. Well honk my hooter, it wants me to set a new record? Off I went. I did it. 3.21 miles of walking in place. It took 45:07 seconds. My legs feel battered and weak, but I will be okay after I rest up a bit. I haven’t had any protein yet today so I think I’ll need some breakfast soon, yeah?

I expected to get an award from the iPhone activity app for setting a new distance record. I did not. I am sad.

So I reblogged a couple of pictures from the new film-only-photos page I started last night. I don’t know how long that page will last. I’ll probably either get tired of maintaining two pages or I’ll just forget that it’s there and post everything here like I’ve been doing for almost 14 years. You know, habits and all.

What I didn’t mention is that I did the same thing with Instagram. I started a new account there too. I already forget the user name so I’ll cross post something later on so I’ll have a record of it. Forgive me for being lazy, I just faux walked five kilometers.

Anyway, I was sitting in the car last night, waiting for Jen and Bellana to come out of the airport. The attendant at the parking lot told us not to leave our car unattended. Otherwise I would have gone inside too. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll make that new Instagram right now. It was amazing how idiotic the process was. For example: I did all of the setup for the new account and then clicked the final “create” button and… I got an error message saying I could not create a new account at this time. What? I started over and went through it all again and when I hit create again it told me there was already an account for that email address. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before? Also, who hacked my email and started an account with it?* So I made a new email address and did the whole process again and it errored again! This time instead of clicking the create a new account link I just logged in with the email that had just failed and… It said I was locked out due to a violation of the terms of service, or some shit like that. What the hell? How could I have violated the TOS when I haven’t even logged in yet! Ugh. I disputed the accusation and all it asked me to do was do a captcha and a two-factor authentication and then I was in.

I mean… really? Assholes? I know you’re facebook and I know that facebook is the root of all evil, but give me a friggin’ break.

Whatever. Yet another social media account to lose the password to and never log into again. Probably.

*After the second failed account creation I realized that I wasn’t hacked and I didn’t already have an account for that email address. Instagram is just fucking stupid.

Here’s the new Instagram account:

Faux 5K

Yesterday I said I was thinking of upping my faux indoor walk game and shooting for a 5k simulated distance instead of just a 30 minute time. Welp, today that’s what I did. It took about 44 minutes to go 3.2 miles. Just about what I was expecting. My legs are beat. Not quite numb, but really tired. I’ll still try to do 15 minutes on the bike later if I can. I won’t stress if I can’t though.

Bellana made it to Germany while we were sleeping last night. Her flight home from there is still showing as on time. It should leave in about an hour. Every finger I have is crossed with every other finger I have in the hopes that she takes off and lands on time. Jen and I are going to the airport to pick her up. I don’t want to have to wait any longer. I want her home!

So television shows. I have started watching season four of Westworld on HBO Max. I’m a few weeks behind, but I’ll catch up. The funny thing here is, I’ve been trying to watch an episode a night while sitting up in bed. I’ve tried twice, and both times I have managed to fall asleep just before the episode ends. Nice, Robert. What are you, some kind of rookie? I started over this morning to make sure I didn’t actually miss anything. With this show, you sort of have to pay a lot of attention. The tiniest detail in episode two can turn out to be the thing the whole series hinges on, you know?

Okay. Going to make myself some scrambled eggs and then punch in to work. Bellana comes home today!

43 Days

Earlier I mentioned that I was in the middle of a streak of doing a 30 minute walk-in-place thing a day, but I didn’t know how many days the streak had been running.

I went back and looked it up. June 1, 2022 was the first day. That was 43 days ago.

I also looked up what the longest single walk-in-place thing I’d done was. It was Thanksgiving 2020 and I did a make-pretend 5k walk. My exercise app has it on file as a 3.2 mile indoor walk. 5k is more like 3.10686 miles, but I think I rounded up to make sure I hit the goal.

I wonder… instead of doing a 30 minute walk each morning… should I do an approximate 5k? I would have to get started earlier in the morning than I do now. I bet I could do it. Thanksgiving 2020, I was pretty sure I was going to die. Today? I bet I could do it.

Maybe tomorrow.

The goal with all the walking of course is our planned trip to Disney World in January. I want to be able to walk from one end of Orlando to the other without getting too desperately tired. The more walking I do in preparation, the easier that trip will be.

I’m Pretty Sore Today

Yesterday was a tough one physically mostly, but also mentally.

I am not going into a lot of detail here, but the back story is this. Last September my parents moved from their house in Tewksbury to an assisted living space in Billerica. Over the course of the next eight months my mother’s dementia grew steadily worse to the point where she was getting up in the middle of the night and falling down. On May 9th she had a fall and was taken to Lowell General Hospital. The assisted living space said they could no longer handle assisting her living so the hospital started working toward finding a new place for her. She was moved into a nursing facility in Andover and she’s living there now. That means that my parents, who are days away from their 55th wedding anniversary, are no longer able to live together. It’s crushing to say the least. My father was still in the same room at the assisted living place, but that room was in the memory care unit, which he does not require. So yesterday we moved him to a new room, one that is not in the locked down memory unit.

We had movers pick up a piece of furniture at the house in Tewksbury and take it to Billerica. They then moved everything from the memory wing in the basement to Dad’s new room on the first floor, then they took some of mom’s things back to Tewksbury. I bounced from place to place with them and helped out a little. Mostly just by punching in the door lock codes getting in and out of the memory wing.

After the movers were done (huge, huge thanks to them) I went back to Dad’s new room and helped unpack. My sister and my two nephews were there too. We had everything wrapped up by about 2:00 with one glaring exception. Dad sleeps on a rented hospital bed. The company that rents the bed handles moving it from place to place. They initially said they would be there to move the bed at 2:09. Then 2:48. Then 3:30. I had to leave before they got there. I’ll tell you why right now.

We had broken for lunch at around noon. Dad went to the cafe, My sister and the kids went to Wendy’s, and I stayed in the room waiting for maintenance to fix something in the bathroom and switch on the Cable TV. I started eating my little four ounce of chicken lunch but kept getting interrupted. In the end it took me about two hours to get through it and I spent a lot of time taking a bite, then unpacking something for a few minutes, then going back for another bite. I don’t know if my bites were too big, or if it was something to do with being active mid-meal, but I found myself getting pretty nauseous. I pushed through it, but I was feeling pretty bad.

Later, during the time we were done with everything but the waiting for the bed I started feeling sicker. I think it was due to lack of protein? Maybe? Lack of food? Something? I only had a protein shake for breakfast so I hadn’t eaten much. I was just feeling sick to my stomach again and weak and I was getting on toward being nervous about driving. I had to leave and go get something to eat. Once I was home with food in me I felt better. I feel bad about bailing, but at least now I have another couple of food experiences to keep an eye on.

So stomach wise, things are good today. Thankfully. Dad wise, he’s in his new place. He’s miserable about being separated from Mom, but otherwise he seemed okay yesterday. It’s possible he was just putting on a brave face for two of his kids and two of his grandkids, but he did seem okay. Here’s hoping he still feels okay today.

The hang up for me, personally, at this point is pain. I more or less was on my feet yesterday from 7:00am to 3:00pm. It was rough for Mr. Out of Shape here. Sure, I have a lot more energy and stuff since losing 100 pounds in the last seven months (WOOHOO!), but I am still really fat and out of shape and that was a lot of work yesterday.

Then to make things work, I still did my 30 minutes of walking. It was after dinner when I was all settled and feeling better. Jen and I were in the living room watching the tube and I got up and started walking. My Activity App credited me for 18 minutes of exercise during the day, but I have a streak of doing 30 minute walks going (I don’t actually remember when the streak started so I can’t tell you how long it’s lasted) and I didn’t want to ruin it. So I started walking. 30 minutes later I was a mess, but happy. Today I got up as usual and did another 30 minutes before work and now my legs are going to fall off. Poof, no legs. Figuratively at least.

Here’s hoping the pain lessens as the day goes on, but we will have to see.

Ouch, babie. Ouch.

Weigh In

Happy 10 weeks since surgery day! How are we feeling, good? Are we excited for today’s weigh in? I sure am!

I lost 3.8 pounds in the last week. That’s down quite a bit from the pace I had been on over the last month, but it’s still triumphant. I was kinda hoping I’d get to 4.9 as that would change the 10’s column in my total weight, but I’ll take this and I’ll tell you why…

My weight loss since the surgery date has flipped into the 80’s. Barely. I have lost 80.4 pounds since the last pre-surgery weigh in. Amazing.

Even better, my weight loss since the first check in has increased to triple digits, babie! I am in the hundreds and it feels amazing! 101 pounds, to be exact. I can’t freakin’ believe it! Amazing!

The only thing that even hints of a negative here is that my weight is so close to dropping in the 10’s column that I am probably not going to be able to stop myself from stepping on the scale before next Wednesday. I know that sounds silly and all, but I’m trying to be disciplined here and I can see a small failure in my future… probably Friday or Saturday. We’ll see.

Happy 100 pound day! WOOHOOO!!!

Sleep Deprived

I have to be at my childhood house in Tewksbury by 7:30 tomorrow. Movers are coming to get a few things and someone (me) needs to be there to let them in.

I need to wake up at a ridiculous hour. Why oh why then am I still awake? What’s wrong with me?

Go to sleep!

Oh yeah, tomorrow is weigh in day. I’ll need to get up early enough to step on the scale, update the iPhone Health app, then update my spreadsheet. Nerd alert!

T-Shirts

I did something silly yesterday that I wasn’t going to write about but now feel like I want to share.

I have a drawer in my dresser where I stash t-shirts that used to fit me but don’t anymore, but I don’t want to get rid of for whatever reason. Yesterday, for the first time since the Gastric Bypass, I opened that drawer. There are shirts in there that were gifts that never really fit right and are basically new. There are shirts in there that date back forever including Rush tour t-shirts from 2004 and 2007.

I tried a few of them on. Some fit okay. Miraculously. Some still have a little ways to go. In true nerd fashion I walked over to Jen’s office to show off and get opinions on how things looked.

I am guessing I will need to buy a couple of work-appropriate collared shirts soon, but for casualwear (hehe) I might be all set.

I feel silly and weird and I am kind of enjoying it.

Relief

I was waiting on an insurance claim for my leave of absence from work in May. I expected it to be a formality that would be wrapped up in no time at all. I was wrong. I was stressing out over the open case the whole time and when I say I was stressing out… it was really stressful, you know?

I’ve been waiting for about a week now for the final document to come in the mail. Every day I was running up stairs and checking the mail box and every day I was left disappointed.

Until today.

I am so relieved. I am so happy that it’s all over. What an ordeal. Here’s hoping I never have to do anything like that again. At least if I do, I’ll know what to expect ahead of time. I won’t be this naïve again.

Sigh
of
Relief