Category Archives: Health

Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)

Posted on November 4, 2016 | Comments Off

When I got sick, my food got weird for a while. The day I spent in the hospital, all I had for food was a cup of chicken broth. The next few days were pretty similar and I slowly added more soft foods in. Even at Disneyland, I was eating soft foods with having a Dole Whip and soup. I’ve been keeping this toward soft and bland food for 2 weeks now.

I’m finally starting to eat a bit more normally, but I’m still restricting things a lot. I’m a bit paranoid because I know I ate poorly right before I got sick. I have no clue if that is what caused the stomach pain, but right now it’s not worth the risk. I’m trying to keep things very basic, but my calorie counts are much closer to what I know I should be eating in a day (compared to being under 800 calories in a day with the broth and limited soft foods).

I will be asking the doctor that I see next week if there are any food restrictions I need to be aware of to help my liver, but I don’t think I’ll be eating the way that I did before for a while. This could be a very good thing. Maybe this shock to my system will help me get over binge eating. I’m trying to not be too optimistic because I know that a relapse is always possible. But with the exception of the time that I was doing the RFO diet, right now is the longest I’ve gone without a binge episode.

Because of my restricted food and lack of bingeing, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently. Since getting sick, I’m down almost 20 pounds. It’s insane to me and I know that type of weight loss is not realistic and is a result of not eating enough several days in a row. I don’t want to gain the weight back, but I’m aware that some of the loss might be water weight and might come back before I’m able to lose it again.

I personally didn’t notice a huge difference in how I look even with that much weight loss. I figured that my clothes were fitting looser, but nobody could see that so I figured nobody would notice the loss. But this past week especially, people in my life have been coming up to me and saying how I look like I’ve lost a bunch of weight. It’s great to hear compliments like that, but I also feel like I don’t deserve them.

This weight loss wasn’t because of hard work. It was because I got sick possibly because of my eating disorder and the results of being sick (ironically, in the past I usually gain weight when I’m sick so this is very odd to me). I didn’t do anything to earn the weight loss. There’s a chance that it will come back so I don’t know if I want others to see it because I don’t want people to notice if I gain it back.

I’m trying to be gracious when people compliment me and say thank you. But when close friends say something, I’m usually honest and say that I only lost weight because I was sick and I didn’t do anything for it. It’s a confusing place to be in since I’ve been working so hard to lose the weight, but I don’t feel right that I made the scale because of this.

I don’t want this all to be in my head too much. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue the weight loss on my own and this will be a trend that is able to continue. It is weird to me to lose weight normally since I usually have only done it in an extreme way and it was expected that I would lose weight quickly. I hope that this feels normal to me sooner rather than later because I am loving the fact that I’m doing so great with food right now. I don’t want to go back, but I know that I have to work really hard to try to make that not happen.

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Posted in Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, health issues, scale, sick, weight loss

MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)

Posted on November 3, 2016 | Comments Off

When I did my breast MRI to check for breast cancer, I assumed that the next MRI that I would need would be whenever I get another one on my hips. Since I’ve had very limited MRIs (just my original hip one and the breast one), there was no reason I would think I’d be getting another one soon. But after my stomach issues, I was told I needed an MRI to figure out what was going on.

I ended up getting one scheduled earlier this week. I wanted to do it on a day that I didn’t have to work because I knew they would need to put an IV in me for contrast. I had the IV and contrast in the breast MRI and didn’t enjoy it too much, so I was prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. When I arrived at Kaiser, they were running about 45 minutes behind, so I sat in the waiting area reading a book and trying not to think too much about what was coming up.

When I was taken back to the MRI area, I was expecting to be led into a changing area where I would have to take off any clothing that had metal and I assumed I would also need to be either nude or down to underwear only under a hospital gown (that’s what the other MRIs were like). But to my surprise, the only thing required was to remove any clothing that had metal in it! If I had known that, I would have worn a sports bra so I wouldn’t have had to change. I didn’t get a fun hospital gown selfie, but I did take a quick photo of my MRI outfit before going into the machine.

mri

Once I was brought into the room, I laid down on the table that goes into the machine. The techs tried to get me comfortable with pillows and settled before putting the IV in me. I had warned them about my needle issues but said that since I was laying down that if I fainted it wouldn’t be a big deal. I didn’t faint (yay me!) but I did have a brief moment where I blacked out but could still hear everything around me. It wasn’t too bad and I was glad the IV was in and done.

I didn’t really do any research about abdominal MRIs before going in, but I assumed I’d be laying on my back and just be put into the machine. But they actually had to put this plastic and foam cage type thing around my stomach first and then I was strapped down to the table (I’ve never been strapped down for an MRI before). I wasn’t able to move at all, and it really sucked when they pushed me into the machine and all of a sudden my nose was itching like crazy and I couldn’t scratch!

I’ve got some issues with claustrophobia and this really tested me. I was completely in the machine and my nose was pretty close to touching the top of the tube. My arms were pressed against the sides and I did feel a bit trapped between the closeness of the machine and the straps holding me down. Fortunately, I could tilt my head back a bit and see a bit of the room behind me. So whenever I felt like I was going to panic I did that and tried to focus on my breathing.

The contrast in my IV hurt like it did last time, but it hurt much less than it did before. I’m thinking that is because my IV was placed in a better spot this time where my body wasn’t as crunched up. But they still removed the IV from me once the contrast was done so I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

The entire MRI time was under 30 minutes and while I had moments of panic in the machine it did go by quickly. I tried to talk to myself in my head and recite lines from scripts I know or plots from books to distract me and help pass the time. Once it was done, I was finally able to relax and only then did I realize that I was pretty tensed up the entire time inside the machine. It’s wasn’t too bad, but some of my muscles felt sore like I had done a workout.

While I’m not happy I’m going through this medical unknown right now, I’m working on thinking of the positives. I’ve had more opportunities to work on my issues with needles and I feel like it is getting better. I’m hopeful that maybe in a few years I won’t have even the little blackouts with needles. I also was able to test my claustrophobia and panic disorder and had to force myself to settle those issues without medication or any distractions.

I haven’t heard anything about the MRI since going in, but that’s a good sign. I have an appointment to discuss what’s happening and what the plan is with a surgeon next week, and if I heard something sooner that would only mean something really bad and urgent is wrong with me. I’m very hopeful that this is going be a situation that will just be something that needs to be monitored from time to time and not something that will require surgery soon. But no matter what the plan and situation is, I know that it will be fine and I will be ok.

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Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged doctor, fear, health issues, hospital, MRI, panic, sick

Learning Lessons (or What Being Sick Taught Me)

Posted on October 28, 2016 | 1 comment

I’m finally feeling almost 90% better now. This past week seemed to drag on as I felt off, but I’m glad that I almost feel like myself again. I’m questioning if the residual uncomfortableness is related to my liver, but I won’t find that out until I meet with the surgeon in a week and a half. And I think that going to Disneyland was good for my mental health and that helped me to feel better.

I’m still being very careful with what I’m eating and trying to take things easier than I normally do. I don’t want to do anything that will make me feel horrible again and being cautious makes me feel a bit in control in a situation that feels very out of control to me right now.

Now that I’m almost over whatever stomach thing I had, I’ve been reflecting a bit on what good things came out of this. Obviously, discovering that there may be a cyst on my liver is something good to learn about. If I didn’t have the stomach pain, I wouldn’t have known until it was worse and it may have been a more urgent situation. And I’m starting to wonder if my stomach pain was my body telling me to get checked out. I know when my mom found out she had cancer, it was because of a suspicious bruise that wouldn’t go away. The bruise had nothing to do with cancer, but it was what got her to the doctor and to do all the medical testing. Maybe my body was doing the same thing.

I’ve been on a pretty restricted diet since last Wednesday. At first, it was just clear liquids (chicken broth and jello) and has moved to soft foods. I’m starting to eat more normally now, but I’m still keeping things a bit restricted. This doesn’t feel like a weight loss diet, but that’s what it is. I’m eating mainly fruits and some vegetables with very little meat. This is not the most restrictive diet I’ve been on, but it’s up there.

But because of these restrictions I’ve been rediscovering foods that I love or that I forgot could be just fine for a meal. I’ve rediscovered cream of wheat (although the exact packets I loved before don’t seem to be in stores anymore). I make it with water and have a banana with it and it’s a pretty filling breakfast or lunch. I’ve had cheese and crackers for dinner one night when I was feeling a bit full and knew I still needed to eat something. And I’ve been looking at making the sautéed vegetables again that I used to have a lot when I was on the cleanse I did last year.

All of those foods are things that I could have had before, but I either forgot I enjoyed them or was so focused on other things that I wanted to eat that they just didn’t come to mind. These are all good and healthy things for me to eat and I need to work on keeping them in regular rotation. While I’m still a believer that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, there is a difference in how you feel when your calories are from a variety of foods versus a binge of one food.

I’ve also learned how to be gentle with myself. It’s not easy to take things easy, especially when you know you have so much you need to get done. I don’t want to be lazy and sit on the couch all day because that reminds me of myself when I wasn’t working hard at bettering myself. But sometimes, you need to have those days on the couch doing nothing. It was important for me to do that so I could get better and if I had pushed myself I know I wouldn’t be feeling as good as I do now.

And finally, I’ve learned to accept the out of control feeling again that I really hate. Right now because my liver isn’t healthy, I can’t take any painkillers. I hate the idea that I might be in pain and can’t take something to make it better. But I have to deal with that now and it’s been a good thing for me. I may have been taking too many painkillers for what I really need (I usually took 3-4 a week so it wasn’t close to what the maximum I could take would be). I’ve had to tolerate a bunch of needles lately. In the last month I’ve had 3 blood draws, 3 shots, and 1 IV for an MRI. And I’ve got at least one more IV coming up next week. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, and I can’t do anything to change it. So I have to learn how to accept something I can’t fix and make it the best situation I can.

While I wish I could have learned all these things without getting sick, at least knowing something good came out of it makes me feel a bit better about the situation. I know that I may need this positive thinking to continue as I do more tests on my liver and find out what a surgeon thinks needs to happen. Maybe I will learn more lessons from this whole liver situation to make it even seem more worthwhile that I had to go through something that isn’t that great. I know how easy it can be for me to get sucked into feeling sorry for myself (I had that happen when I got sick last week) and I am refocusing my energy on learning what I can from the circumstances I’m in.

1 Comment

Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged diet, food, health issues, positivity, sick

My Day At Kaiser (or I Guess This Was For The Best)

Posted on October 21, 2016 | 7 comments

If you follow me on social media, you saw that I spent Wednesday at the hospital. I was there for about 6 hours doing medical tests and things, and in the end I got some interesting news.

kaiser

First, I need to explain why I was in the hospital. On Tuesday afternoon/evening, I had a pretty bad binge episode. It wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever had, but it was pretty significant. I’m not proud of myself, but it is what it is and I can’t go back to change it. About the time I was getting ready to go to bed, I noticed some symptoms that usually mean I’m about to have a gallbladder attack. I wasn’t looking forward to having an attack, but this happens from time to time after a binge.

Usually my gallbladder attacks follow a very predictable pattern. I feel the signs that one is starting before going to bed and I usually can fall asleep before it happens. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night in pain and within an hour it is over and I am able to get back to sleep. But this time, it was very different. I couldn’t go to sleep and the pain was not ending. I didn’t get any sleep for that entire night because the pain was so intense. There were times in the middle of the night that I debated calling my mom for advice or going to the emergency room, but I decided to try to tough it out.

By the time my alarm went off on Wednesday morning, I wasn’t doing any better. I was exhausted from not sleeping and feeling horrible that I did this to myself. If I hadn’t binged, I wouldn’t be in pain. I tried to see if I could make it through the work day and go to the hospital after, but that wasn’t going to happen. So I made an appointment with someone in internal medicine for 9:45am and went over to Kaiser.

I was very honest with the doctor I met. I told her that I binged and that I have a history of gallbladder issues. But she didn’t feel like it was gallbladder stuff this time based on the pain I was in. So she ordered some blood work and an x-ray and instructed me to come back once those things were done.

The blood work wasn’t fun (I passed out a few times while the blood draw was happening) and while the x-ray was easy I was still in very intense pain. By the time I got back to the internal medicine department, I couldn’t find a way to make myself comfortable.

The good news and bad news was that there was nothing weird in my tests. I had elevated liver enzymes, but I had that issue the last time I had blood work and I knew that it was something I was supposed to work on. So the doctor ordered an ultrasound to be done so that my stomach, gallbladder, and pancreas could be looked at to see if there was anything that would explain the pain I was in.

The wait for the ultrasound was excruciating. I was sweating and crying in pain and it took almost an hour for them to get to me. And in the ultrasound, they had to press really hard where my pain was located and that was causing me to tear up and have issues breathing. I was really glad when that test was done and I went back up to internal medicine again to see the doctor for her response to my tests.

When I went back up to internal medicine, the first thing they did was give me a shot of a painkiller to help me a bit. At that point, I didn’t even mind that the shot was happening because I just wanted to get out of pain. It didn’t take the pain completely away, but it dulled things a bit and helped to make it more tolerable.

But again, the doctor couldn’t find what was causing my stomach issues. She let me know that it wasn’t my gallbladder as there was only one tiny gallstone in there and it was not in a place that could cause me pain. And everything else they were looking for looked normal. So her best guess was just really bad indigestion or a stomach ache or possibly a small ulcer. She told me to get some antacids and heartburn medication down at the pharmacy and said that my pain should go away within a week.

I was still really mad and embarrassed that I did this to myself. If I hadn’t binged, I wouldn’t have had this problem. And while I want to believe that this will stop me from binge eating, I’m not thinking that would be true. It’s a very tough addiction to get over (can you imagine an alcoholic having to have 3 drinks a day without going crazy?) but I’m trying to focus on getting myself better as much as I can.

But my appointment and time at Kaiser wasn’t a total wash. While my ultrasound was happening, the tech scanned over my liver and noticed what may be a cyst on my liver. If this is accurate, this would explain my weird liver enzymes on my blood work and would make things easier to figure out. Since the ultrasound isn’t the best diagnostic tool to look at cysts, I now have more blood work scheduled plus a MRI with contrast (which means another IV) to look more into things. And I have an appointment with a surgeon after that to hear what needs to happen if there is something I need to do.

If I hadn’t had the binge episode and the stomach distress I never would have found this possible cyst. It is something that explains the weird things in my recent medical tests which is a relief since I couldn’t figure out why things were so weird. But it also is now taking me down a crazy rabbit hole of more medical testing and doctors. I’m hoping that they will tell me that if it is a cyst nothing needs to be done with it. Some cysts go away on their own and maybe this one will do that. But I’m also preparing for more stuff I might need to do.

Either way, I’m a bit grateful that I did something stupid because it lead me to find out something that I needed to know was wrong with me. I wish that this liver thing was what was causing my pain or we could find out what was causing it, but at least I have some medication to take for now and a plan for what else I might need to do.

7 Comments

Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge, binge eating, hospital, pain, sick

An Overdue Friend Hangout (or A Medical Discussion Dinner)

Posted on October 19, 2016 | Comments Off

There have been some friends that I haven’t gotten to see in a while. It’s a lot of issues with scheduling with all of our crazy schedules, but also time flies by and we forget how long it’s been. So when a friend of mine invited me to dinner recently and I realized it had been months since we had seen each other, I said yes right away!

This friend is someone who I used to see pretty much every week, but our schedules haven’t been matching up lately. She also had some medical things to deal with that prevented her from doing too much stuff. But we’ve stayed in touch through texting so when we got together, it felt like almost no time had passed!

We went out for Mexican food and I was a little nervous about it. I’ve been doing really well with my food lately and I didn’t want to eat too much or something that I shouldn’t (there was also another dinner coming up that I knew would be a splurge). Fortunately, neither of us cared to eat chips and salsa, so we didn’t get any for our table. Not having the chips in front of me made me feel a bit better about things since I didn’t have to stare at them or try to figure out if I should eat some. And I ordered fajitas, so I felt pretty confident that I made a good food choice and started to relax more.

Once we had ordered our food, our conversation became all about medical stuff. I was telling her about my MRI, and she shared all the stuff that she went through recently. She found out that she has the BRCA mutation (the breast cancer gene) and went through some stuff to make sure she stayed healthy. She had a double mastectomy and then reconstruction. I hadn’t seen her since her surgeries, and it was great to see her (also she looked amazing!). I’m not sharing her name because I don’t want to share her story for her, but she knows who she is and I’m so grateful that she is my friend.

She has been so open about everything that she has done so far and has always been more than happy to support me and share advice and tips. When I knew I’d be getting my MRI, she was one of the first people I contacted for advice and to find out anything I should be prepared for. She told me it wasn’t that big of a deal and let me know that I’d be fine. When she’s done additional genetic testing, she let me know so I could see if my mom did that testing. She’s not afraid to tell the truth about what she’s going through and I really appreciate that honesty.

I’m curious if anyone at the tables near us at dinner could hear our conversation. We were talking about a ton of medical stuff like surgeries, IV issues, scars, and other things that most people wouldn’t usually discuss. I’m totally used to it since growing up I heard lots of medical stuff over dinner when my parents were talking. I love that I have a friend who is able to be as chill about talking medical things over food as I am.

We did discuss other stuff besides cancer and medical stuff like my workouts at Orangetheory, other mutual friends of ours that neither of us have seen in a while, and random comments about the people watching we were doing from our table. It was a really nice dinner and it made me realize that I should do dinners with friends more often when I can.

While we had a pretty quick dinner, it was the perfect thing for me that night. I needed to have some positivity in my week, and my friend did just that for me. I have been very set in my ways with my food, and I needed the push to go outside what I’ve been feeling have been safe foods (even though I splurged a bit at dinner, my weight wasn’t affected the way I was scared it would be). And I got some great advice about the cancer screenings I’ve been doing lately and how normal they really are so I shouldn’t be too worried about them.

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged breast cancer, cancer, dinner, food, friends

MRI Time (or Another Type Of Cancer Screening)

Posted on October 18, 2016 | 3 comments

Because I’m considered high risk for getting breast cancer since my mom had it, I do cancer screenings a lot earlier than most people do them. For the past 2 years, I’ve done mammograms. They aren’t fun to do, but I know I need to do them. There is a chance that I might not be doing them every year for the next few years, but that’s not yet decided.

But because my mom’s type of breast cancer wasn’t caught on a mammogram, there was some discussion that I would need to get a breast MRI in the near future. I got a letter from my mom’s geneticist that explained that a baseline test for me would be a good idea, and my doctor sent that to a geneticist at my hospital. And after my last appointment with my doctor, it was decided that getting a baseline MRI would be my cancer screening this year (it was instead of getting another mammogram).

I’ve had a MRI before for my hip. That wasn’t a great experience for me because I didn’t realize how loud the machine would be and how long I would be stuck in there. I also went into that MRI knowing that if my pain went away or decreased after the solution they used was injected into my hip, that was a clear sign that my cartilage was damaged and I would need surgery (the MRI was before I had a full diagnosis or treatment plan). I was out of pain within minutes of the injection, so I spent the entire MRI knowing that I would need surgery and that freaked me out a bit.

This time, things were very different for me. First of all, this MRI couldn’t be done at my hospital. Because breast MRIs require special equipment and they aren’t done that often, there is an imagining center that my hospital outsources them to. I’ve never had to do any procedures or appointments outside of the hospital that I go to, but I tried to think about it as a new adventure. I was able to get a Saturday appointment, so I went right after work this past weekend.

When I got to my appointment, I had a dozen or so papers I had to fill out. Most of them were pretty basic, but there were a few things that I had to think about (such as the dates of my mammograms and the date of my previous MRI). I was trying not to be nervous while filling out the forms, but I’ll admit that I was a bit shaky as I was trying to write.

After my forms were filled out, I waited for a bit for my name to be called, and then the tech that I was going to be working with brought me back to the changing area. For my last MRI, I had to be naked under the gown (they needed full access to my hip for the injection) so I just assumed this would be the same. I didn’t realize that if I had worn pants with no metal I could have kept them on. I should have worn yoga pants so I could have done that, but I wore jeans so I had to just wear the gown. Not a big deal, but something to keep in mind if any of you are going to get a breast MRI.

Next, the tech took me into the MRI room. They were able to arrange for me to have an open MRI machine since I do have issues with claustrophobia and I was grateful for that. The tech had me lay down face up on the bed for the machine so she could put the IV in my hand. I’ve said how much I hate needles and IVs are the same problem. I told the tech my issues and she was seriously amazing! She asked me if I knew any good or bad veins, and I showed her the vein that was used for both surgeries I’ve had before. She was able to get the IV in with one stick, and then she got ready to prep me for everything else.

For most MRIs, you lay on your back on a table that slides into the machine. For breast MRIs, you lay on your stomach on a ledge that is on top of the table. There are holes in the ledge for your boobs to go into (they want to keep the tissue separate from your body) and you have your arms out in front of you. It took a few tries for me to lay properly so that everything lined up ok, but the tech was really great again and helped me get into the position that was going to get the best images in the machine.

Right before I went into the MRI machine, I got my earplugs (you totally need those for MRIs) and the tech hooked up my IV to a machine. For the first part of the MRI, there would be some saline going into the IV. But about 2/3rds of the way though, there would be contrast going through my IV to get a different type of images. I tried not to think about the IV too much and was slid into the machine.

While I was face down, my face was close to the front of the room so I could see light. And they had a fan at the front and the back of the machine so there was air always moving around me. Some of the images took 5 minutes and some were shorter. Each time, the tech warned me how long the session would be and I tried to stay distracted or count down the time. It’s extremely loud inside of the machine, and since my hip MRI had my head out of the machine I didn’t realize it would be quite as loud as it ended up being. It wasn’t too bad (the sound was very muffled with the ear plugs) and I tried to use the variety of noises to distract me.

Then it was time for the contrast to go into my IV. My mom had warned me that the contrast sometimes hurts, but it was more uncomfortable than I expected. The contrast is a thicker liquid than the saline so it feels weird. It wasn’t unbearable or anything, but I think the shock of the feeling made it feel worse to me than it really was. As soon as the contrast was all injected into my IV (it was done by a machine and not the tech), the tech ran into the room and disconnected my IV so that I didn’t get anything else into my vein. That made the discomfort go away almost right away.

After the contrast went in, there were only a few more minutes inside of the MRI machine. And before I knew it, it was all done and the tech was pulling the table out of the machine so I could get up. She first had to remove the IV from my hand and bandage it up, but I was able to sit up within a few minutes of being done. My body didn’t hurt too much, but my abs were a bit sore because I think I was tensing my body up from time to time and that gave my core a bit of a workout.

I didn’t get any pictures of the MRI process. I was so tempted to ask the tech to take one while I was in the machine, but I didn’t want to distract her from her work or make her run behind with other patients. But I did take a picture in the dressing room after everything was done.

after-mri

I felt really great after the MRI was done. I was so nervous about the IV and I made it through that. I was nervous what the MRI would be like or if I would have any issues, and fortunately I didn’t really have any problems. I haven’t gotten my results back yet, but I’m not too worried. This is just a baseline MRI so that future MRIs can be compared to it. I also know that MRIs (just like being young and getting mammograms) can have false positive results, so if I do hear back that there was something suspicious I’m not super concerned. There is no reason for me to believe that there is anything wrong with me and that’s the mindset I’m sticking with.

I know that having cancer screenings can be scary. You are terrified that they will find something and that’s why many people don’t do them. I totally understand that feeling, but I also know how important it is for me to be on top of my health and this is just a part of life for me now. I don’t know if I will be doing any more cancer screenings before I’m 40 (that will be up to my doctor and the geneticist to decide), but whichever way it goes I trust my doctors and that they are looking out for me.

3 Comments

Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged breast cancer, cancer, doctor, health issues, screening

Staying Healthy (or 2 Needles in 30 Minutes)

Posted on October 12, 2016 | Comments Off

I’m usually pretty on top of my health. I have to be since I have some on-going medical issues, but it’s easy to let some of the regular stuff slide from time to time. Recently, I had my annual appointment with my doctor and she mentioned that it would be time for me to get blood work done again since it’s been a few years since everything has been checked. I know this is necessary, but I hate doing it.

And in the same conversation, she mentioned that flu shots were available and that I could get one while in the office that day. I turned down the flu shot then (I was still over getting sick and didn’t want to risk feeling off after the shot), but I promised her that I would be getting my flu shot soon. I don’t want to get the flu, but I do miss when they offered the nasal spray vaccine since I didn’t have to deal with a shot then.

While I wanted to put off the blood work and the shot, I had to get my blood work done sooner rather than later. I have to do a MRI cancer screening (more on that after I do it) and part of the stuff I had to do before the MRI was a blood test. So I had to get in and get it done so I went on my day off this week.

I was more than prepared to be at the hospital for a few hours. The blood work area can be super crowded and I’ve waited a while there before. And for my flu shot, I would have to go to urgent care because being a faint risk means I don’t want to sit in a chair for my shot (I’ve fallen out of chairs before and it’s not fun). So when I went to the hospital, I had my book and my phone to entertain me and I tried to keep my heart rate down and my breath steady.

I did the blood work first (that one is the worst one so I wanted to get it over with) and as expected the waiting area was really crowded. The way they do blood work at the hospital is that you grab a number, check in at the desk, and then you wait for your number to be called. I grabbed my number and waited to check in, and I noticed that they were on number 220 so I figured I had a while to wait.

blood-work

To my surprise, as soon as I was checked in my number was called before I could even sit and relax. I have no idea why I was next when there were plenty of other people waiting before I got there, but I went back to get it done.

Fortunately, the woman taking my blood was very understanding and didn’t make me feel bad for shaking or crying (yes, I was crying as soon as I sat in the recliner where they take your blood). She was very calm and was telling me step by step what she was doing and warned me before she stuck me. I was grateful for that because some people try to surprise me thinking it will make it easier, but that’s when I usually faint.

It seemed like it took forever (they needed 5 vials of blood) and my vision was getting dark and blurry from time to time. But I never fully passed out and that is a big accomplishment to me! I still hated the process, but since my MRI will involve an IV I’m glad that this longish needle time went better than I expected.

As soon as the needle was out of my arm, I took some time to calm down and wipe my face (I’m so glad I don’t wear makeup when I go to do blood work) and then made my way over to urgent care for the second needle.

Again, I was expecting to wait a while. I’ve been to urgent care several times and usually there is at least a 30 minute wait. And when I was checking in, the person next to me asked the receptionist how long the wait was and she was told 90 minutes. So I figured it would have some time to calm down and read while waiting.

Nope! Within a few minutes a nurse called me back so I could get my flu shot on an exam table (this is not normal, but I’m glad they allowed me to do it). The nurse was very nice and he understood my issues with needles. And he also told me when he was going to give me the shot so I wasn’t surprised. I’m not sure if my body was still in shock from the blood draw, but I didn’t feel the needle and I didn’t feel like I was going to faint.

By the time I was walking back to my car, I realized that only 32 minutes had passed since getting the parking ticket for the parking lot. I survived 2 needle encounters within 30 minutes and there was no fainting! This was a victory in my mind, but I know I’m not totally over my needle issues yet. But hopefully this will be like the dentist where it gets easier each time I go in.

My arm still hurts from the flu shot and I have a pretty decent bruise from the blood draw, but I’m glad I decided to do both my needle things in one day and was able to get it over with quickly and without too much drama. And in case anyone is wondering, my blood work came back with everything looking good!

Comments Off on Staying Healthy (or 2 Needles in 30 Minutes)

Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged doctor, fainting, health issues

Still Figuring Out Meal Planning (or Will Food Ever Be Easy For Me?)

Posted on October 7, 2016 | 4 comments

I’ve been doing pretty well lately with food stuff. It’s not something that I don’t have to think about any more, but I’m definitely spending less time every day thinking about what I want to eat or what I should eat than I used to. It’s nice not to have my thoughts always consumed by food (no pun intended), but I’m still figuring out what is right and best for me.

I know that I can cook and that I can use pretty much all fresh ingredients, but that’s not always easy for me. There are plenty of times that I realize it is dinner time and I don’t have something that I can make easily. I don’t want to risk going to the store because then I will grab everything that looks good to me at the time. So it’s important to me to have prepared meals in my house that are easy for lunches and dinners.

I’m still really loving the salads I can get from Trader Joe’s and I eat those pretty regularly for lunch (it’s easy to talk to customers and eat a salad). But I do need variety from time to time and some of my old standbys (like peanut butter and jelly) just aren’t doing it for me anymore. So I have to find other easy things to make and a lot of those things end up being frozen meals.

When I was younger, I did eat the frozen diet meals on a semi-regular basis. But honestly those meals aren’t that tasty, they have a lot of chemicals to cover up for things that are missing, they are expensive, and they aren’t a lot of food. So I’ve been exploring more frozen food options including ones that I used to consider not healthy options in the past.

I’ve been working on tracking my foods carefully and I can find ways to make the higher calorie meals work into my day. And I’m discovering that it isn’t as hard as I thought in the past. I’m not eating that high of calorie counts for my breakfasts and lunches, and if I’m not having a binge episode I do have lots of calories left for my dinner. So making stuff that I used to consider off-limits are now perfectly fine for me.

Taking away the stigma of bad foods and good foods has been really good for me. I’m exploring more food options that I never thought I could enjoy (like frozen tempura shrimp) and I’m really liking it. I’m getting more variety in my meals and that is helping to keep things from getting too boring too quickly. There are still some things that I’m trying that I know can’t be a regular part of my diet, but it’s ok to find things that are good splurge meals from time to time.

I’m eating more frozen foods than I would like, but considering the alternative for me I think this is ok. I still want to find a good balance between prepared and frozen foods and cooking from scratch and that just isn’t coming easily to me. I still get annoyed that my food issues aren’t going away as quickly as I would have liked them to, but I’m seeing progress and trying to give myself credit for it.

The baby steps of progress aren’t always easy to notice on my own, but when I reflect back on my meals for the past month or so and realize that my days under my calorie goal are outweighing the days over the calorie goal, I realize that I’ve been making progress without thinking about it or noticing. I’m still not ordering delivery food and that’s something I’m proud about as well.

Hopefully more baby steps happen to me this way and that recovery is in my future soon. It will be nice to spend even less time focusing on food when that happens and I’m excited to see what the next baby step I make will be.

4 Comments

Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, food, meal planning, meals, progress

Running For Cancer (or Health Supporting Health)

Posted on October 6, 2016 | Comments Off

I’ve been a supporter of breast cancer research for a very long time. Even before my life was personally affected by it, I would do breast cancer walks and purchase things that donated a part of the profits to research. Once my mom was diagnosed, I started to do more research on what those donations go to and started to be a bit pickier (sadly, some of those organizations don’t really give much to research or charity). But the Susan G. Komen charity gives so much to programs and education so they are one charity that I’ve continued to support.

Through Sweat Pink Ambassadors, I was given the opportunity to run or walk miles for charity this month. I knew I’d be signing up to do it even before I knew what charities were going to be supported by it. And I was very happy to see that Susan G. Komen was one of the options to put my miles and donations toward. So I signed up and got ready to start tracking my miles!

Between my workouts and any runs I do on my own, I know I’ll get a bunch of miles this month. Going to Tahoe helped a lot too! This is a great motivation for me to keep up my workouts and doing as much as I can with my run/walks to get more and more miles on my counter.

But more importantly than the miles, I want to hit my fundraising goal of $250. I don’t think it’s a huge goal to have, but I know that money will be put to such great use. There is a lot known about breast cancer, but there is still so much more to learn and educate others about. I know that most people are aware of the BRCA gene mutation, but a lot of people don’t understand what that means or what choices they have if they find out they have the mutation. There are ways to stay on top of your health, but I know some people are scared to see what they may find out.

When I had my first mammogram, I was terrified. I knew I didn’t have a lot to worry about, but I was still scared. Since my mom’s cancer was when she was older, I don’t have that high of risk now. If her cancer is genetic, I probably wouldn’t get it until I was post-menopausal. But just because that cancer isn’t going to happen to a younger person doesn’t mean that I can’t have a different type of cancer. So the days leading up to my appointment were scary and I tried to avoid looking up things online since that always makes things worse.

The mammogram wasn’t fun (I was expecting it to hurt, but it hurt differently than I thought), but getting my clean bill of health was worth it. When I had my second mammogram, I wasn’t as scared as the first time and again I felt great finding out that I’m perfectly fine now. This year, I will be probably getting a breast MRI to check for cancer (I’ll write about that when if it happens) and again I am scared. But fortunately I have the knowledge and education to know what is happen and the slim likelihood that anything is wrong with me.

I’m fortunate that I was raised in a medical home and I know quite a bit about breast cancer now. I know what to expect and why I shouldn’t worry. But not everyone has that luxury and fear can make people put off medical testing. And putting off that testing can make cancer caught at a farther stage than it should have been. So I want to raise as much money as I can for Susan G. Komen to get more education out there and to help relieve the fear so more women will get their annual exams and tests.

I would love your support no matter how big or small. If everyone who reads this gives $1, I will be ecstatic! I promise to keep working this month to get more and more miles and I may add some challenge for each donation I get (maybe doing 10 burpees for each donation?). I just want to make sure I do whatever I can to help make breast cancer less scary and more treatable. I would love if the survival rate at any stage gets higher so more people can see their loved ones come through this disease with a smile on their face just like my mom did.

fck-cancer

Comments Off on Running For Cancer (or Health Supporting Health)

Posted in Family, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged breast cancer, cancer, charity, fundraising, running

Being Hard On Myself (or Pushing Myself To Not Be Sick)

Posted on October 3, 2016 | 1 comment

Even though I was starting to feel better this past week, I was still feeling some of the effects of the cold I caught. The only thing really bothering me was feeling congested, and I really wanted to get over that. Since I wasn’t feeling too sick, I pushed myself pretty hard in my workouts and sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Monday’s workout was the one where I was feeling the sickest, but it was still so much better than how I was feeling before. Mornings are also the toughest time for me feeling congested. I knew it was going to be a hard workout but I had to try my best and see what I could do.

It was an endurance day, which is always a tough one for me. When we had 2 minute pushes, I ran for 1 minute of it. When we had a 90 second push, I ran the entire thing. It wasn’t easy at all and I had some trouble catching my breath at times, but I got it done. And since we didn’t switch between blocks, I managed to do a decent distance on the treadmill between my running and walking.

monday

I was so exhausted after the treadmill, but I knew I had to get through the floor work too. We had 350 meter rows to do and they felt really long to me. 350 isn’t usually too tough for me, but they felt more like 1,000 meters after being so tired. The rest of the floor work was arm focused and we had core work during each block. The core work was plank focused and because of my congestion I was really struggling. I had to take a bunch of breaks with my planks, but I was just glad to get through the workout after being so horribly sick the few days before.

Wednesday’s workout was a real interesting one. It was another endurance day and we started with a 10 minute block. My 10 minutes on the treadmill went better than I could have expected. We had to do 2 minute push paces twice and I was able to run for the entire 2 minutes each time. We also had a 90 second push that I ran and a 1 minute push to all out that I ran. That was more running than I usually do, but it felt really good and I didn’t feel too sick at that point.

We then had a 10 minute block on the floor that was arm focused before we switched to doing a partner run/row for the remainder of the class. One person was on the rower and rowed until they were tagged. The other person had some floor work to do like pushups, side planks, and weight work and then went over to the treadmill. The treadmill segments ranged from .2 miles to .1 miles. I wanted to run for all of them, but I had overdone it a bit during that first 10 minutes so I ran for 1 minute and then walked the rest of finish the distance. Then the treadmill person tagged the rower person and they switched.

When I was on the rower, I usually spent about 4.5 minutes on it and I was rowing almost the entire time. I did take a bit of a break before rowing each time to drink some water because I didn’t want to do that when the switch was depending on me being fast. I didn’t want my partner to have to wait for me so I only took breaks when I was on the rower. We got through a bunch of rounds of the run/row and at the end of the class I was feeling a little light-headed but much less congested than I had earlier that day.

Friday was another endurance day (I guess I lucked out with all the endurance days I had this past week). There were 2 long blocks on the treadmill and we had some really long push paces. I pretty much stuck with running for 1 minute and walking the rest. The exception was the 3 minute push pace where I ran for the first minute, walked the second, and ran the third. I was feeling a bit more congested that day so I was keeping my running a bit slower. I didn’t want to try to up my speed and I really did just want to focus on my endurance.

I’ve had my new goal of being able to do 2 miles in class when we don’t switch between blocks, and I thought my distance on Monday was pretty incredible. But after doing the warm-up and both blocks, I got super close to my goal but not quite there.

friday

I have a feeling that soon I’ll be at that 2 mile mark in class and that’s going to be an awesome day!

The floor was one really long block, which really did test my endurance. We had rowing to do before each set followed by a series of strength moves. Each round we added more strength moves on so the rounds got longer and longer. The one strength move we had to do every round was doing ground to press, which I’m usually great at. But again, the congestion caught up with me and I struggled. I ended up not making it through 4 of the 5 rounds we were supposed to try to get through. I know if I didn’t have to keep taking breaks to catch my breath I could have done it. And it’s tough not to push myself to do more. But I know that this cold might still take another week or so to completely get over so I’m working on my patience.

This week of workouts will hopefully continue on the great momentum I build this past week. My schedule will be a bit off since I have to miss my workout today because I’m out-of-town (more on that soon), but I’ll still get in my 3 workouts for the week. And I’ve realized that I need to start getting a 4th workout in again more often, so I’m seeing if I can fit in 4 this week. If I can’t do it this week, I know I’ll be doing it soon.

1 Comment

Posted in Fitness, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged fitness, Orangetheory, running, sick, struggle, tough, treadmill, workout

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