Tag Archives: sick

Mixing Up The Workout Week (or Still Working On Being Easy On Myself)

Posted on July 17, 2017 | 2 comments

This past week of workouts was another 3 workout week. I originally planned for it to be a 4 workout week, but some plans for Saturday changed that (more on that later this week). But honestly, having it be a 3 workout week was probably for the best since it was another tough workout week. I hate when my body isn’t willing to do what I know it can do and I struggle with not pushing myself to do more than I’m able to do. But this week allowed me to practice being easy on myself and hopefully that will get me ready for this week since it’s Peak Performance Week again!

Monday’s workout was not what I was expecting. First, I arrived at the same time I usually get there at but all the treadmill cards were already gone! It’s pretty rare for me to not get a treadmill card (maybe under 5 times in the 3 years I’ve been working out) so to have to start on a rower was very weird. But while I was preparing for that weirdness, we also found out that the workout was going to be a 3G workout too. That time on Monday may be 3G from now on so that will be different. But maybe that will be a nice since then in a 4 workout week I’ll pretty much have 2 3G and 2 2G workouts each week.

With the 3G workout we had 2 blocks at each station and we switched between each block. On the rower we started with increasing row distances and had squats with medicine balls between each row. And on the second block we had decreasing row distances with shoulder work with the medicine ball between each row. That went pretty well for me even though I wasn’t going that fast and didn’t have times that were close to my PRs. On the floor, it was a mix of upper and lower body work. Between the 2 blocks we had bicep curls, lunges, deadlifts, hip bridges, shoulder work, and back extensions.

But the treadmill is where I really struggled. I can do fine in switch or partner classes so I thought maybe started on the rower would have been ok for me. But I think I’ve realized that the problem comes from not warming up no the treadmill. Maybe my hips need that walking time to get ready to run? I’m not sure but whatever the reason the treadmill was not my friend during class. When I got to the treadmill for the first time, we started with a 2 minute push. I started by running but had to stop within the first 30 seconds. My hips were hurting so badly and I was scared that I would hurt myself if I kept running.

It’s frustrating to not be able to run and it seems like this is happening more and more often. I need to look into more stretching and hip strengthening work because there is something happening that I need to work on. I did everything in that first block as a walk and just tried to think about it as something I had to do to stay healthy and safe. But fortunately the second block had 30 second all out paces so I did run those and felt a bit better about myself. But for this class, I had my lowest calorie burn ever (even lower than when I was on the bike or just starting out). That’s tough to see since I know I worked hard, but again I also know that I tried my best given the pain I was in.

Wednesday ended up being my best workout of the week. It was an endurance day and we didn’t switch between blocks. What we had were 2 different 11 minute distance challenges. Lately when we’ve been doing distance challenges, I just try to run for the entire distance. But I’ve been feeling like I’ve been burning myself out lately and I haven’t been doing a lot of speed training. So I decided to follow the coached program and run for the push paces and walk for the base paces.

The first challenge was decreasing push paces so I tried to bump my push pace up .1 mph each time. And for the second challenge it was increasing push paces. But since I knew what I was able to do with the decreasing push paces, I went even faster than I had with the same time in the first attempt. It wasn’t my fastest running ever, but it was pretty good. My distances aren’t records for me, but I’m still happy that I went further on the second attempt than I did on the first and that I did get my speed training done.

Once I got to the floor, I was a bit tired from the running, but nothing too horrible. The first block on the floor had squats, abs, and lunges and then we had a 2 minute row for distance at the end of the block. The second block was strap lunges/squats, pull ups on the straps, and more lunges. And again a 2 minute row for distance at the end of the block. I was feeling a bit off (my period was starting and I’m still having issues with feeling sick when I have my period) by the end of the floor, but again it was nothing too horrible.

Friday was another off day for me. I knew it was going to be a strength day so I assumed I’d be doing a lot of walking. But within the first 2 minutes of the warm up in class, my nausea took over and I was feeling like I needed to throw up right away. This is exactly how my period was for me as a teenager (and the reason I went on birth control originally to stop my periods) and it’s annoying that I still have the same problems now. Fortunately I didn’t get sick, but I did step out of class to take one of my anti-nausea pills. Most of the time those pills kick in right away, but I don’t know what happened because I never felt better in class. I tried to focus on walking on the inclines the best I could, but I was taking breaks every few minutes to put my head down because I was pretty much dry heaving. I wasn’t feeling so horrible that I didn’t think I could continue with class, but it was pretty bad.

Once I was on the floor, I decided that I was going to take it easy and just do what I could. There were 3 blocks on the floor and the first block was triceps, chest, and squats with burpees. Fortunately most of that didn’t seem to make me feel that nauseous. The next block was squats with shoulder work and then rowing. I wasn’t focused on making my rowing fast or strong, just good form. I did the 400 meter row in just under 2 minutes which really impressed me. I wasn’t expecting to be even close to what I can normally do. The last floor block had arms, strap rowing, and running man work. During that last block I was finally feeling a bit better although still not 100%. I was pretty happy that the workout was done since I knew I just needed to get home to rest.

It’s weird to me how much having my period back affects my workouts. But I guess I should just consider myself lucky that I got a 15 year break from this and only started to have my period again at the end of last year. But I do need to think up a better plan on how to handle the issues I have in my workouts during that time. I don’t want to have to take a week off each month because I feel horrible.

I was originally going to work out on Saturday, but I had some plans change and ended up cancelling that workout (more on that later this week). But it was probably better that I skipped the workout since I was feeling so off. And I know I needed the rest and break time so that I could do the best I can during Peak Performance Week! I’m excited to see what I’m able to do now and can’t wait to report back to you all next week!

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Default ThumbnailRowing And Partners (or Enjoying A 4 Workout Week) Default ThumbnailJust A Normal Workout Week (or Being Ok With Being Ok) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running And Hills (or Back To A 4 Workout Week) Default ThumbnailA Short Workout Week (or I Would Have Ended On A High Note) Default ThumbnailWorkout Celebrations (or A Week Of Awesomeness) Default ThumbnailBeing Patient With Myself (or Being Ok With A 3 Workout Week)

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Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)

Posted on November 4, 2016 | Comments Off on Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)

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

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MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)

Posted on November 3, 2016 | Comments Off on MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)

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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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 sautĂ©ed 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.

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Recovering At Disneyland (or A Never-Done List)

Posted on October 27, 2016 | Comments Off on Recovering At Disneyland (or A Never-Done List)

After going the hospital last week, I spent several days not really doing much. I worked from bed, I rarely left my house, and I tried to make myself get better. I wasn’t getting better as quickly as I wanted to, but I was finally noticing some improvement toward the end of the weekend (during the headshot day). And it’s a good thing that I was getting better because I had a Disneyland day scheduled for Monday and I didn’t want to cancel it!

My friend Michelle knew that I was at the hospital last week and what was going on with me. She was checking in with me to make sure that I still wanted to go to Disneyland. I knew she’d be ok with me if I had to cancel it, but I was feeling like I could do an easy day there (no crazy roller coasters) by Monday and around lunchtime we headed down to Anaheim.

On the way, we picked up one of Michelle’s friends who also has a pass for Disneyland and has Mondays off like we do and we were at the park by about 1:30 to have a low-key day. I’m glad all of us have passes because there was no pressure to get a ton of stuff done and I didn’t feel too guilty about being limited in what rides I was ok with going on.

Since I am on a soft food diet right now, I knew my food options at Disneyland would be limited but there was plenty that would be ok. And one of the first things we did in the park was to go get a Dole Whip!

dole-whip

It turns out that Michelle’s friend had never had a Dole Whip before, and as soon as I found that out I decided we needed to figure out what else she hasn’t done at Disneyland before so we could check things off of her list of never-done things! We ate our Dole Whips during the Tiki Room show and then were off to our next ride!

I was limited in what Halloween things I could do, but the Haunted Mansion is a smooth enough ride that I was totally ok riding it! I love how it is decorated for the holiday season and every time I ride it I notice more and more stuff. And it was a gloomy day outside with lots of clouds so it seemed like the sky matched the ride.

haunted-mansion

Our next stop was the Jungle Cruise (another smooth ride) and we had a pretty fun skipper on the ride. Lots of good cheesy jokes and there were a couple of jokes that he said that I had never heard on the ride before! We were trying to figure out what other rides would be easy smooth ones, and we saw Buzz Lightyear and headed over to that. Michelle and I have been battling each other on that ride since we started going to the parks together. This time, I was beat but I have a feeling I’ll have a comeback soon.

buzz-lightyear

Next was another never-done thing for Michelle’s friend: the Nemo Submarines! None of us are huge fans of going in the submarines (they are a bit tight inside and sometimes they don’t smell very fresh), so we watched the video in the alternative viewing room. The video is just as good as the ride, plus since it was a grey day outside I knew that the stuff in the water wouldn’t have been as nice and bright as it is in the video.

We then tried to ride the monorail (riding in the front of it with the driver was another thing on the list), but the monorail ended up breaking down in the station while we sat on it. It was unfortunate, but we figured we could walk over to California Adventure to continue our day. But right when we were ready to ride the monorail, it started to rain pretty hard! None of us were prepared with umbrellas, so we just tried to walk as quickly as we could across to the other park.

We wanted to ride Radiator Springs Racers, but it was closed before of the rain and possible threat of lighting. And by that time, we were all feeling a bit hungry (Dole Whips aren’t that filling). And all I really wanted to get to eat was soup in a bread bowl. I hadn’t had one in a while and was really craving it. Plus, it was a soft food that I could eat and I knew it would fill me up! We found a table out of the rain near the bread bowl place and sat down to enjoy our dinner.

By this time, my stomach was starting to hurt a bit again. It may have been due to hunger or walking more than I was used to, but our dinner break really helped to get me feeling almost normal again. After dinner we were headed over to the Little Mermaid ride (another thing on the never-done list) and realized that after the rain stopped there was a gorgeous sunset right behind the ferris wheel!

mickey-sunset sunset

The last 2 rides of the day were going on Little Mermaid and then Soarin’ Around The World, but we weren’t done yet! We were getting ready to head over to the Animation Academy to draw a bit (another never-done thing) and we decided to look around the stores a bit to see what they had. Sometimes there are some really cute things and even though my budget didn’t really have extra money, I was happy to check out what was in stock.

One of the things I love checking out are the Dooney and Burke Disney purses. They are limited edition collections that are released from time to time. There have been a few patterns that I love, but I never have been able to get it because all the purses were sold out. So we were totally surprised to discover a new pattern in the store that was Disney villain themed that we had never seen!

birthday-purse

It turned out that pattern was released that day and there were still a few purses left in stock! Michelle was celebrating her birthday the next day (which is why in that picture you see the birthday button) and decided that the purse was going to be her birthday present to herself! It’s such a cute purse so I’m super excited for her! And to know that we happened to be in the park during the first day of the pattern release made us say that it must have been fate for her to get that purse!

Our final stop of the night was one more thing from the never-done list for Michelle’s friend: the Animation Academy. We ended up doing the last 2 classes before park closing. The first one was drawing Sally from “Nightmare Before Christmas” and the second one was Winnie The Pooh. I think that my Sally looks much better than last time and my Winnie The Pooh wasn’t too bad!

sally winnie-the-pooh

My Sally is the big one on the right and my Winnie the Pooh is the one in the middle.

After drawing, California Adventure was closed (Disneyland had one of the separately ticketed Halloween parties so we couldn’t go back) and we went to the trams to get back to the car.

I’m so glad that I didn’t skip going to Disneyland. I think knowing I had this coming up helped me get better and kept me motivated. And I was able to push myself to see what my body was able to handle and realized that while I’m still not 100% I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was. I’m glad that I had done the earlier trip to ride all the Halloween rides since I only got to do 1 of them this time. But even with doing the easy low-key rides, I still had an amazing time with awesome friends!

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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.

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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.

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Being Sick (or Feeling Off)

Posted on September 28, 2016 | 1 comment

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I was having some trouble with my workouts because I was feeling off one day and sick another day. Fortunately, I’m finally feeling more like myself now but this bug that I caught just took it out of me like I wasn’t expecting.

This all started on Wednesday when I was feeling fine except for a weird sensation in my throat. It’s almost like a feeling of insatiable thirst. Whenever I get this, I’m usually about to get sick so I was trying my best to take care of myself. I was drinking lots of water, eating as healthy as I could, and making sure I got extra sleep.

Thursday morning, I woke up at 4am feeling like I had daggers in my throat. That’s never a good feeling and I was on my phone right away to see how early urgent care opened at Kaiser (urgent care is a $45 co-pay for me but the ER is a $500 co-pay). It wasn’t going to open until an hour before I had to start working and I didn’t want to ask for time off, so I decided I was going to make it through the work day the best I could.

I did let my manager know that I was feeling sick, but since it was only my throat hurting and no other symptoms, I was guessing that I had strep throat and figured I would go straight to urgent care after work and get whatever prescription I needed. My throat continued to feel worse and worse as I worked and I finally asked my manager if I could end work an hour early to get to the hospital. I promised I’d make up the hour and she let me log out.

I had an interesting adventure at Kaiser. I was starting to feel a bit more sick than before and I got really confused on where to go to check in for urgent care. Somehow, I ended up signing up for a nurse’s visit to get a strep test without confirming that I didn’t need a regular appointment. It was all corrected in the end, but I was so confused and my head was starting to hurt.

Before I had my tonsils out almost 8 years ago, I got strep throat pretty regularly. I was used to doing throat cultures and just assumed things would be easy for me this time as well.

kaiser

It wasn’t easy this time and it hurt so much that I almost punched the nurse helping me! I felt so horrible after that and kept apologizing, but she was really nice about it all and said that it happens all the time.

After being at urgent care for almost 3 hours, it was figured out that I didn’t have strep and was sent home with instructions to get rest and drink plenty of fluids. I thought maybe I’d only have a really bad sore throat for a few days and would be done with it.

Turns out, I was pretty sick with a cold. The entire weekend was spent on my couch trying to catch up on sleep (since I wasn’t sleeping well at night), drinking lots of water, taking decongestants, and just getting through the day. I hate being sick like this because I really wanted to get stuff done and was supposed to be working over the weekend. But the best thing for me was to lay low and just let this bug get out of me.

Even though I’m finally feeling a bit better now, I’m still feeling off. Being sick with a cold is usually a longer recovery process than any of us would like to put up with and I’m trying to be patient with my body. I know that I might not be totally better for another week or so and I’m trying to be easy on myself. Sleeping is getting better so my mornings are better than they were over the weekend, but I’m still getting really exhausted by the end of the day.

It’s been almost a year since I was sick like this. If I get sick once a year, that’s not too bad. And once I’m feeling better, I’ll be getting my flu shot so I can do my best not to catch the flu this year. Hopefully I won’t have to be doing another sick day post for another year and I can remind myself that sometimes we don’t get to control how we feel and we just have to get through it.

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Taking It Easy (or Trying Not To Be Hard On Myself)

Posted on September 26, 2016 | Comments Off on Taking It Easy (or Trying Not To Be Hard On Myself)

This past week of workouts were a bit off for me. Part of the problem was that during the second half of the week I wasn’t feeling ok (more on that tomorrow), but the workouts just didn’t seem to mesh well with me for some reason.

Monday was a strength day so I didn’t get to do much running, but it was still a pretty good workout for me. I walked all of the hill work for the push paces, but we also had some flat incline pushes. So I was able to run those plus the all outs which were on a flat incline as well. I was even able to do 6.5 miles an hour for one of my 30 second all out paces. That’s a little too fast still for me, but I can handle it for 30 seconds especially since the treadmill takes a bit of time to get up to speed.

The floor work on Monday was a lot of arm work and for some reason when I started I had some weird shoulder pain. I’m not sure what caused it because it’s gone now (maybe I slept funny?), but it made me a bit concerned so I did lighter weights than I normally do. I didn’t want to hurt myself so I knew I had to take it easy. I was also having that same pain for some of the body weight work that we did (walkouts were the main one that hurt), so I did my best but also wasn’t able to do as many of each thing as we were supposed to do. I didn’t feel great about my workout, but I also didn’t know that I would have a worse workout later in the week.

On Wednesday, I was feeling a bit off. I thought I might be getting sick, but I didn’t feel too bad so I figured I’d be able to do a pretty tough workout. This day was endurance, strength, and power so there were more opportunities for me to get some running done. For the endurance section, we had a couple of 1 minute push paces followed by 30 second base paces. I’ve been doing a lot of 1 minute run/1 minute walk things, so this was pretty good for me. I think that 30 seconds to walk between running is a bit short for me, but it was nice to try and hopefully will make future runs a bit easier. During the strength section, I walked since it was hills. I thought about trying to run on hills again, but since I was feeling off I didn’t want to push it. And for the power section we had some 1 minute push paces followed by 30 second all out paces. I was able to run for all of that which was awesome and I finished with a 1 minute all out pace at 6.3 miles an hour.

On the floor, we had rowing for each block. The first block was 200 meters (I forgot to track my time), the second block was 300 meters (I did it in 1:09), and the third block was 600 meters (I did it in 2:41 which shocked me!). The rowing didn’t feel as awkward as it has in the past which may explain how I did some really great times on my rows. It was another day focused on arms and I was able to use some heavier weights than on Monday since I wasn’t having that weird shoulder pain. Even though I was still feeling off at the end of the workout, I was feeling great about how I did in class.

Friday was not a good day for me. I’ll explain more about what happened to me on Thursday, but I decided to stick it out and do my Friday workout. But I knew I had to take it easy no matter what I did. So I skipped the treadmill and went on the bike. It’s been a while since I’ve used the bike and it was a bit weird at first. But I got back into the groove pretty quickly. I didn’t focus a ton on what the workout was that day (sorry Bruce), but I tried to increase the gears on the bike when we had push paces or all outs. I wasn’t doing as much as I used to during my 4th workouts of the week on the bike, but it was better than doing nothing.

For the floor work, we had 300 meter rows (I did them in 1:24, 1:19, and 1:13 which is weird because I usually don’t get faster throughout the workout) and some arm work where we were either in a plank position or on our backs on the weight bench. It was tough to do those things because I was feeling dizzy in those positions, but I did better for things where we were sitting down or standing up. I had to use some lighter weights again and they felt really heavy to me that day. But I just had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t hurting myself by doing a workout and it was better to do this than to not come to class.

I don’t have the highest hopes that this week of workouts will be better. As I’m writing this post (on Sunday), I’m still feeling off. I’m sure my Monday workout will be affected by it but I’m hoping by the end of the week I’m back to normal again. I don’t like to take it easy because I’ve been making such huge improvements lately, but I also know that it’s better to take it easy than to overdo it and not be able to work out the next time.

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Lots Of Different Workouts (or Struggles and Successes)

Posted on March 21, 2016 | 1 comment

I did a 4 workout week for the first time in a while, and it was a pretty awesome week. I did have some not-so-fun moments, but overall the workouts were pretty great. I think what helped the most is that each day was significantly different from the others. The workouts at Orangetheory are never the same, but I think this week had more variety than ever.

Monday was a bit of a tough day for me. It was a strength day, so that meant extra hills on the treadmill. I’m not sure why my body was struggling so much, but it became extremely difficult for me to do the hills. I really wanted to push myself more, but my body was just not having it. So I kept my inclines low (lower than I normally would) and just focused on getting through the treadmill time without too much pain. It’s so frustrating to have a morning like that, but I don’t really know what caused it so I really couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Since the treadmill time was a bit of a disappointment, I worked extra hard on the floor. I was using 20 pound weights for my arms (it’s starting to feel more normal to do that) and even though my arms felt like jello after each set, it was exactly what I should have done. We also had to do some hip bridges during the floor work. I usually avoid hip bridges because they cause me so much pain. These were supposed to be done on the TRX straps, but I know that there was no way I could do those. So I tried doing them on the floor and to my surprise not only could I do them, they weren’t painful for me at all! I think some of the stretching work I’ve been trying to do at home is finally helping my hips loosen up and maybe breaking up some of the scar tissue I’ve got.

Wednesday was actually pretty awesome. We had a partner workout that day and it feels like we haven’t had one of those in a long time! Fortunately, my friend Dani was in Wednesday’s class so she was able to be my partner for the workout.

Wednesday Workout

Normally during the partner workouts, the person on the floor controls the pace. The person on the treadmill will do the treadmill portion and then normally row until the floor person is done with their round. Then the floor person taps out the cardio person and they switch. But this time, the treadmill person controlled the pace. It was a run/row (most partner workouts are that way) and some of the cardio segments were really long! I felt guilty that Dani was stuck on the floor while I was finishing them (Dani felt the same way so it ended up being ok). The row parts were all 100 meters, so I was able to sprint through those. The treadmill parts got a bit long, but I did every part at 3.5 miles an hour and at 6% incline. With the partner workouts, we had the entire class without any breaks so it was non-stop work and I was exhausted by the time it was done.

With Wednesday being so much fun, I had high hopes for Friday. But Thursday night/Friday morning, I got really sick. I’m guessing it was food poisoning and by Friday mid-day I was feeling almost normal again. So I figured I could go to my workout (if nothing else, maybe sweating would help me get better). It was a switch day so that helped to make the treadmill time a bit easier for me. And even though there were only 2 groups in the class, we had a mini-tornado format (where you rotate between treadmill, floor, and rower). I tried my best with the treadmill, but I was feeling pretty nauseous during class (my friend David who works at Orangetheory commented that I looked like I had no color left in my face after class). Even with feeling sick, the floor work wasn’t too tough on me. The only thing that was making me feel sick was going from laying down on the weight bench to sitting up or standing. So I took my time but while I was working tried to use really heavy weights.

Since I made the deal with myself that 4th workouts of the week wouldn’t be on the treadmill, I did my Saturday workout on the bike. It was not a switch day, so I’m glad I stuck with the bike. It was an interesting format to the workout. There were 6 blocks, but really only 2 types of blocks. We would do a long push pace to an all out pace and then we would do an all out pace, walking recovery, and an all out pace to follow. The first round of the push to all out was a little more than 4 minutes and got shorter for the other 2. And the all out, walking, all out were 1 minute each, then 45 seconds each, and finishing with 30 seconds each. On the floor, we followed a similar pattern. We had something specific to do for the longer blocks and then the shorter ones we did rounds of squats. My legs were shaking by the time we were done, but it felt great to get through the workout and feel so much better than I did the day before.

I’ve got another 4 workout week planned for this week. Rumor has it that the first week of April we will have another Peak Performance week, and right after that will be my next 5K. That means that I might not be able to do as much during Peak Performance week as I would like do (depending if the week is the same week as my race), but hopefully that will put me in a good spot with how I’ll do with my 5K. As much as I would like to PR at my race, I don’t know how realistic that will be for me. But for these next few weeks of workouts, my goal is to push myself as much as I can to give myself the best chance to have an awesome race!

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