What I learned

It's all a learning process, isn't it.  I suppose there are people, like Rene Zellweger, who learned healthy eating at her mother's knee, but for the rest of us, it's a process. 

I thought that this weekend, either Susan or I would win, in the clash of the titans.  I thought either I would succumb and eat everything in sight, or Susan would suddenly take up eating salads with no dressing as well.  Well, the truth was somewhere in the middle, where the truth usually hangs out.  I indulged.  She held back.  I'm not sure anyone won, because neither one of us ate especially healthily, but it was better than it could have been.

Today I stopped on my way home to see another friend, and we went to lunch.  I had a salad of fresh spinach, cucumbers, onions, and a lovely piece of grilled salmon, with four tasteful breadsticks (I ate one) on the side, as was the dressing.  I was so happy.  I was so happy to be eating that bowl of raw spinach, I kid you not. 

However, then the drive home was stressful and I sort of indulged, so it wasn't as good as it could have been, but at least I got that bowl of spinach in me. 

So I learned that it's harder than you think to eat out and eat clean.  Unless you turn into one of THOSE woman, can you grill this, make sure no one uses butter, etc, etc, etc.  I don't want to be one of those women.  I'd rather stay home.  I learned that your habits can influence those of the people around you, even over the course of three days.  I learned that a month seems to be enough time to root good habits at least a little bit.  I was in that funny place of enjoying and not enjoying.  Some of me liked the stuff--the intensely flavorful meat at Olive Garden, because, of course, of the enormous amount of salt they use.  I liked the zeppoli too, because who wouldn't, really?  Sort of beignets, with chocolate dipping sauce.  What's not to like?  But I could taste the fat more than I ever could before. 

I learned, I suppose, that it feels better in the end, to have eaten well, as in healthily.  The momentary pleasure of the "false" food doesn't begin to measure up to the way you feel, day in, day out, when you feed yourself good food.

I only have one question.  Why did it take a health scare and 56 years to learn this?

Oh well.

Going Back

This weekend has been an exercise in going back, back to my old habits. I must say, I feel awful this morning. I have pain issues, but mostly i feel bloated and nasty and not the way I have been accustomed to feeling. I am all full of salt, all the fat places are puffed up and I miss all my veggies and fruit. We went to olive garden last night. the salad was only iceberg, the breadstick was precoated with grease, and really, I simply don't find the ubiquitous cheese grinder at all necessary. I wondered about those people, the ones who purposely ate un healthy for whatever reason, and truly I thought they were exaggerating, I thought they were making it up or at least being holier than thou.No. Not at all. A weekend was enough.I'll eat the breakfast of the house this morning, but I will be extremely happy to go back to what is now normal for me tomorrow.

R & R

I am spending the weekend at my friend Susan's house.  I was meant to teach at a bead shop here, in the Philly area, but my classes didn't run.  I decided to come anyway.  The time was blocked out, I had shuffled around appointments, no reason not to come.

I have known Susan since 1975.  One of the things (besides similar, very off, senses of humor and love of words and languages) that has connected us all these years is the fact that we are both, Not Small Girls.  We've been Not Small Girls together for all that time.  There's a picture of us on a teeter-totter at the Copenhagen harbor.  We were both so happy that day, since it had never been easy, for either of us, to find partners for that particular piece of playground equipment.

I was a bit apprehensive about coming here this weekend because of this.  Clearly, we did not get to be Not Small Girls by eating lettuce leaves and exercising frenetically, though when I could walk without pain, we did take very long, brisk walks together.  I was more concerned about the food.  Simply put, I viewed weekends here as a license to eat.  To overeat.  It started with the trip down:  a bag of chips, one notable time I managed to eat Brie and crackers while driving, plus probably a specialty Starbucks something or other from one of the rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike. 

I came supplied with chocolate, partly for me and partly for my putative students.  The dark chocolate is one of my daily indulgences (I'm allowed!  It's good for me!) and keeps me from eating worse things.  The other, I brought because I didn't let on that I'm not teaching.  I also had a box of skinny Triscuits (you didn't seriously think there wouldn't be Triscuits in this story, did you?).  I managed to eat maybe a third of those, but I also had a salad for lunch, on the way down. 

It's Sunday morning.  How has it gone so far?  Well,  Friday night was Friendly's and I had a prime rib supermelt.  I also had a side salad, and I only ate maybe a third of the fries.  I did have a Happy Ending Sundae, though, with honest-to-God full fat ice cream and unreconstructed caramel sauce.  I was stuffed.

Yesterday I had an English muffin with butter and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, and light cream in my coffee, because that's what there is here and I'm not putting in skim milk.  Just not.  Lunch was  steak panini at a previously untested place and it was very good.  It was also huge (I should have only eat half and I knew it, but I went on) and a smattering of home-made chips and fries, but not many of either.  And then I said I had to have a salad for dinner, so we went to Panera where I had the strawberry poppyseed chicken salad, which was primarily lettuce and fruit.  And it felt so good to be eating that.  I literally had felt off balance from not getting my greens.

Susan also took me to a delightful sort-of, not really gourmet grocery store, The Fresh Market http://www.thefreshmarket.com/
and I bought all manner of wonderful cookies, etc, there.  I also bought no-salt cashews (I just ate a handful) and olive oil and champagne vinegar.  But I had to taste all the cookies, and a cookie here and a cookie there is more than I've been doing.

The balance so far?  Passable.  Not the stuff-fest it would have been (which right there is proof of the ripple effect of healthful eating.  I'm sure I was the reason we held off from the mozzarella stuffed breadsticks yesterday) but not what I've been doing at home.  So in the middle.  I feel puffier, I'm sure there was way more salt than I've been accustomed to.  But I took my blood test before I left, and I moved the appointment to July 3, so I have lots of time to get over this weekend.  Get back on the wagon.

The other aspect of this weekend has been the R&R of the title.  I was terribly stressed.  Partly from constant pain, yada yada yada, but also from a variety of outside influences in my life.  A lot of people have been leaning on me fairly hard, as well as a couple of occurrences outside of anyone's control, and I was majorly stressed.  It was manifesting itself in a herpes flareup, a quite bad one--and that seems to have vanished from Friday to today.  Also, my husband works from home and seldom goes out and all the constant companionship was taking a toll on me. 

This morning Susan went to play golf.  I will soon leave to visit the shop where I was to teach, but the morning alone has been delightful.  I didn't have to talk, explain myself, interact, be nice, be anything but me.  I read.  I mostly read, I played a little Scrabble on the phone and other than that--nothing.  Silence, blessed silence. 

I spent money instead of making it this weekend, but I needed this time.

Clothes, again

My room is silting up with clothes.  As "they" do every summer, this summer, "they" declared it the summer of brights!  And for one, "they" and I were in synch.  So I've embraced them, the brights.  They make me happy.  But now I'm at the point where I have to keep cycling things in and out.  I'm not really complaining.  This is a dandy little problem to have. 

Back in April, when I hauled myself off to the doctor, I could barely fit into size 22 skirts. They were getting snug.  That's fat, I'm sorry.  Just fat.  I'm not that tall.  Jeans were a joke and I'm sure that in them I bordered on the risible. 

I like fashion, and clothes, though, so I just kept switching off to things that I could wear, where I looked presentable, but those choices were getting smaller and smaller.  I did order some new clothes, though. 

I like them.  I really like the skirt in blurred shades of red, yellow, orange--a bit of green thrown in.  A pencil skirt.  The last time I wore that pencil skirt, though, I took it off without undoing it.  It's a 22.  I can probably wear it a while longer.  I think, because of my Caesarean flap (my little pet...) that a garment has to be at least two sizes too big before it falls off.  So anyway, I probably have a bit longer, but IT is a bit longer than it used to be, too.  I have a sateen skirt from Talbots that I also really like. It's red.  I like red.  It comes off without being unfastened, as well.  Both of these are pretty nice skirts and so I can't just wash them hot and hope they'll shrink, as I've done before.

I ordered some new clothes.  All the summer stuff is on sale.  (This is ironic, since today is the Solstice).  I decided to go with 20s.  (There is a whole thing about plus-size women never trying on clothes before they buy them, and I agree.  I do that.  Dressing rooms are simply too dispiriting for me).  A cargo skirt, size 20, is sort of big.  I'm not sure about it.  I went way out on a limb and ordered red skinny jeans.  Well, they're skinny at the bottom, but not so skinny at the top.  So I'll try them, and they might fit for a while--and there are always belts, which I probably last wore in 1992.  A long top.  But then, a size 20 skirt that I ordered in a fit of optimism, prior to April, certainly fits better than it did, but is not quite comfortable. I'm afraid we're going to go right through fits to doesn't fit, because I'll have neglected to try it on one week.  It wasn't cheap, that's the thing. 

Where did I first notice that my clothes were getting bigger?  My nightgown, of all things.  I noticed one day that it was hitting my knees and I hadn't ever felt it hit my knees before.  The bathrobe that I got for Mother's Day is also getting bigger and bigger.  Again, these are good problems to have.  I'm not sure if I'll give them away, or stash them--I know you're supposed to give them away, and in the past I have, but then gained the weight back, and my beloved wardrobe was gone.  But you are supposed to give them away.  As incentive.  So I probably will.....

Added to the problems of trying clothes on today is the fact that it hit 101 and who knows how anything fits? 

And, in other news--tomorrow I go for my blood test.  This will determine if I have to go on cholesterol meds, and more importantly, where I stand in the diabetes sweepstakes.  All I can say is cross your fingers.  I don't want more meds.  This is what all this is about, not the clothes.  The clothes are an off-label side-effect, more or less.  The point is to be healthier.  The point is to take charge of my life.

My cousin...who is more obese than I am, trust me on this one....is on blood pressure and cholesterol meds and is flirting, too, with diabetes.  But her side of the family doesn't have it and mine does, so my chances are better than hers.  But--and I'm truly NOT trying to be holier than thou, here--I look at her, and I wonder why she won't do anything.  Of course, all my salads may not have amounted to a row of beans (get it, that's funny, right?) and I'll be there whether I want to or not.  In which case I can throw my words into one of my salads and eat them. 

The Breast Stuff

As I mentioned earlier, besides the business of having to have a hip replaced (once in a while this really hits me), I had some issues following a mammogram.

I'm writing this partly for the women who have dubious mammograms and have to go for additional tests, so that they can see there can be a good outcome.  I'm also writing it simply so that women who have to have additional tests have some clear idea, in plain language, of what happens to them.  I googled a lot, and all I got was a whole lot of statistics.

I had not had a mammogram for probably 10 years.  My self-exam schedule was spotty at best.  I'm not sure why.  I'm not sure if it was denial, indifference, stupidity, or just what.  It was dumb, in any case, since my mother died of breast cancer.  Following my visit to the doctor, in early April, I got myself to the imaging center as well.

The initial mammogram was fine.  The technician made it as easy for me as possible.  I was able to maintain my dignity while the two of us hefted my breasts around.  Was it painful?  I think not as the last one was.  There were, though, a few moments where yes, it was quite painful, and I might have bitten my lip.  As I left, she said that the letters had just gone out that morning, but if they needed additional images they would call me.

So when I got the phone call, I knew that it was not exactly good news.  I started googling at that point, about what it could be, what happened from there and what the chances were.  In the end, though, you can google till the cows come home and you're not that much further than you were, because what you're reading about is all those other people and this is you and no one can say what will happen to you until it happens.  I read a lot about calcifications and honestly couldn't figure out if they were good or bad.  (Indifferent, as it seems to have turned out, and useful as markers, in the vast wilderness that is a breast).

I told someone very close to me, who assured me, IMMEDIATELY, that they always, always, always err on the side of caution and that I shouldn't worry.  I'm not sure how much that helped me, but the sentiment was nice.  I did not, however, tell my grown daughters.  I most emphatically did NOT want them to worry.  Let them worry if there was something to worry about. 

I went back for the additional images.  The mood was a tad more somber.  They show you the  images.  What I had was two cloudy bunches, more or less, that no matter how much they squished, they couldn't quite make go away.  The doctor who reads the mammograms came out to tell me that, more or less, and that I was going to have to see someone more specialized.

The GP's office sent me to the office of a woman doctor.  I googled her, of course, and was somewhat consoled.  She specialized in breast-conserving surgery and it looked like the treatment of choice was targeted radiation, that only took a week.  That made me feel better.  As it turns out, I never saw her, I only saw her PA.  She, again, was very nice to me.  She used her little netbook style ultrasound to try to find the masses.  I think my rather large breast defeated it.  But I was most thoroughly palpated (felt up if it's not a medical professional doing it) and I was most thoroughly ultrasounded, with the result of exactly nothing.  "I can't tell one way or the other," she told me earnestly.  "I can't send you away feeling warm and fuzzy and I can't tell you anything to help you get your head around an eventual diagnosis."  So I left there sort of up in the air, with an appointment for the premiere place in the area, for a mammogram, real ultrasound and possible biopsy.

I won't lie.  I spent some time in panic.  I couldn't look at a shampoo or hair product commercial, for wondering if I was going to lose mine.  Every time I put on makeup, I'd contemplate my eyelashes--I am inordinately vain about my long (still long at 56!) eyelashes--and wonder if I was going to lose them, and then go through the hierarchy of awfulness.  Hair--awful, of course, because, well, it's HAIR, but then again, camoflageable, sort of.  And if all else failed, I saw some pictures of women who had lost their hair to chemo and had mehndi done on their heads.  I sort of liked that route. But eyelashes?  Really?  Oh, no.  OH, no.  And seeing the above person, close to me?  Like that?  Probably not something I could do.  And so I'd have all these thoughts, in way less time than it took for me to type them, and then I would put them out of my mind, because what good does stewing do?  None.  But sometimes I would have all those thoughts, and I would cry some very bitter little tears.  Not for long, but I would cry.  And think of my mother, too, whose cancer was diagnosed much too late to cure, but who went through chemo and who eventually died because it attacked her liver.  And I didn't want to die like that, so I supposed that not having eyelashes was indeed a fair enough trade.  And then I would just stop thinking about it for an hour or so.

All of this happened fairly quickly, so there was not a lot of time between appointments.  I went to the Women's Health Center, where they were also very nice---of course they were, because they could see I was there because I had suspicious mammograms. They weren't going to be not nice to me.

I was shown to a waiting area and told to put my belongings in a locker and wear the key, and to strip to the waist and wear the kimono thing.  So I did. They got me very quickly.  I didn't like this part mostly because I don't like not wearing a bra.  I find it hard to feel dignified with them flapping below my chin.  But I did my best.

I had more, even more targeted mammograms.  Smaller plates, to isolate the areas.  It hurt.  They finally arrived at two areas and then sent me down to the ultrasound room.  The technician there had me lie down, and there was more sliding of the roller on my breast--which sounds like not a lot, but is quite a lot.  After a while, she went off and got the doctor, a young woman, who also ultrasounded for a while and finally said she wanted to do a stereotactic needle biopsy.

In this procedure, you lie down on a table with a hole in it and the breast in question hangs through.  More mammogram images are obtained and they find the places to do a needle biopsy.  Oh, boy.

So I was all lined up to do this.  The young woman doctor was talking to me and then we got to medications.  Remember, I have a very bad hip--and I was, at that point, taking ibuprofen like it was candy and had recently been started on Meloxicam.  I fessed up.  It's idiotic not to.

I couldn't have it that day.  I had to let all the NSAIDs get out of my system.  They increase bleeding risk.  As she said, I wasn't going to bleed out from a needle biopsy, but there was a chance of a hemotoma, or infection.  So I was to go home, take only Tramadol for the pain and come back in a week.

Told the person close to me--got what showed me the true feelings--"You mean you have to go through all that AGAIN?"  Well, yeah.

So I virtuously avoided NSAIDs.  Back to, oh, 1979, before they could be had over the counter and any pain I had just had to be suffered through. I spent more time shedding bitter little tears in corners and wistfully thinking about my hair.   I finally reported back, freshly showered, no deodorant, no body powder and wearing the bra I had designated the mammogram bra, since it had never been touched by either of those things and it was easier, at this point, to just keep one for that.  Since it seemed that getting mammograms had become part of my life.

Since I had done all the preliminary work, I was to go straight to the biopsy.  I was in the chill room with the table with the hole, half undressed.  They made me tell them what was about to happen and handed me a marker and mark the proper breast.  I made an X.  The doctor marked the proper breast.  There was a social worker type woman there, who I think was supposed to distract me, but ended up merely annoying me, but it was for my good and my comfort, I'm sure. I climbed up on the table and they were very kind and concerned about my bad hip, made sure I was comfortable, because once they start, you can't move.  The table was in the air.  The technician was on a chair, arranging the plates. The doctor was asking for the views she wanted.  They took pictures upon pictures upon pictures.  A little to the left.  A little to the right.  On and on.  My breast got very sore and they weren't even close to the biopsy part, where I was to get some numbing stuff.

And then.   The doctor, a brash, confident, likable young woman, said, "I've looked for a good half hour and I can't find anything at all I can justify sticking a needle into."

In other words, I got a get out of jail free card.  Where did they go?  No one knows.  I know (and I could not conceivably make this next bit up) that someone I know but have never met, in Calgary, was praying for me, hard, and she believes that when she prays unselfishly, God answers her prayers.  My cousin was certainly praying, and my husband as well (his mother also died of breast cancer).  The person close to me might have, in their own way, have been praying.  In any case, I saw the pictures when it was there and I saw the pictures when it wasn't there.  And they were gone.  So I can't tell you what a stereotactic mammogram is like, because I never really had one.  I have to go back in October.  I got to keep my hair, and my eyelashes.  I never had to worry my daughters.  I suspect that I will have more images done on that breast--it was always a little different than the other, a little odd.  Not bad odd, just eccentric, sort of.

I am relieved.  All the people who knew were relieved. I  get to worry about regular things, like what to make for dinner, and why is that piece of hair pointing up like a horn, and I understand, even now, even with my little brush with the C word, that I am very, very lucky and that I'm part of the statistic where the need for additional images turns out to be nothing.  I will indeed go back in October.  I know now that I need to.

I also understand that this is inconclusive and that I really didn't go through anything except being slightly incommoded and a little scared.  Nothing like women who have real diagnoses, lose their hair, their breasts, (their eyelashes)--everything but their spirit.  I salute them.  I'm a lightweight.  But, if there is someone starting on this path and this helps them a tiny bit, then I'm glad I could.

Father's Day

My husband has been endeavoring to eat better, get healthier, whatever, since Ash Wednesday.  He gives up most indulgences for Lent (making it annoying to live with him, since I give up things like driving really slow in front of people who are tailgating me, instead pulling over for them to pass, but that doesn't show up the way not eating chocolate does).  After Lent, instead of going back to his evil ways, he kept on eating healthier.  And, then, just over a month ago, I caught up with him.  In honor of Father's Day, however, I decided that I would get him his favorite treats, or at least some of them.

His gift was M&Ms with the Mets logo, and a dispenser.  He didn't scarf those down, those are still on his desk.  I made guacamole, with 6 avocados.  He ate most of two bowls of it, with the attendant tortilla chips.  I had some of that--and a few more chips after I was done with the guac.  I also got him gelato, and the piece de resistance was dinner.  It was, drum roll please:  hot dogs on the grill.  My husband would live on hot dogs if not for the fact that they shorten your life.  But not a dog except for Hebrew National 99% fat-free franks has crossed our threshold in months--so it was Deutchmacher on the grill.  He asked for three.  He ate three hot dogs for dinner.  I also made potato salad.  My father taught me to make potato salad.  It's not a complex recipe and the entire secret lies in adding the potatoes to everything else, not dumping stuff on top of the potatoes.  Over the years, though, I've lightened it up substantially.  I've omitted the oil for years.  I use light mayo.  More carrots go in.  More eggs, for protein.  It's still good, and indulgent, and tasty, but not what it started as.  So today....vinegar and oil.  The dash of sugar.  Liberal salt.  And real mayo, lashings of it, as the Brits would say.  The result?  A time machine to 1967.  God was it good.  Rich.  Tasted SO good.  But here's the amazing thing.  I knew it was going to be different, so I only took a bit.  That bit was more than enough. 

In fact, I let my hair down a bit today, too.  I had a turkey sandwich with my own home-made garlic mayo on it.  (It was good).  No salad.  And guess what.  I felt hungry afterwards, where I previously felt that a sandwich was the only thing that made me feel as though I'd had lunch and could possibly fill me up.  No one stopped me from eating a salad, I just chose not to.  I think I decided to let today be a day from the past, to see what it was like and how I would feel.

Well, my husband spent the evening on the couch passing gas and belching, from all the unaccustomed food and said that he might need to take a Prilosec to sleep.  I have no such issues, but I will say I noticed a difference.  I still feel full.  In the past, I would have had that food, and more and now, instead of writing about food, I'd probably be grazing for more.  The truth?  I would probably manage to have another small meal before I went to bed.  With dessert.  That would be an important part.  Okay.  More truth.  I might have a forkful each of a couple of things--the beans, so shoot me!, and the brown rice salad.  Shoot me again.  But if I ate, really ate, I'd be so uncomfortable--!

It's nice to see how far I've come.  It's nice to see how the portions are sort of regulating themselves now.  (Sort of).  I have to be honest, though, and say that I found the case of the potato salad sort of fascinating.  So is it better to make my "light" salad, so that you can have more of it, or is it better to make the retro, extremely tasty version, and be satisfied with really just a spoonful? I know why it's better, of course, and why it's more satisfying.  It's the fat. The fat conveys the flavor better and the fat satiates better.  I'm wondering if this isn't also sort of a part of clean eating--make more stuff with normal amounts of fat, rather than striving for absolute low-fat this and that--and let the nature of the beast dictate the amounts?  However, I am well aware that it's early days.  I could backslide, oh, so easily.  I could be at that table, scarfing down God knows what, before I know it. 

Today was interesting. I feel like we were living like Henry VIII before this.  I'm surprised there's not a picture of one of us heaving a turkey leg over his shoulder.  I also feel like I--not held back, because I didn't, actually, but was held back, by my new habits.  I wonder how I'll feel tomorrow, but I think possibly not bad, because I was not that indulgent today. 

Transplanted

This is from another blog...but I was thinking about it today.  I feel like the moral of the story might be, home-made is better.  Also, we learn something from every diet.  Just bought brown rice today.


Strangely enough, for someone who's been occupied with her weight (I'm not going to say struggled, because I don't always struggle with it) almost all of her life, I haven't been on that many diets. I think that may be because for the most part, I think they're nonsense.

I started gaining weight, or not looking like society's norm, in about 2nd grade. Not a clue why, really, I was as active as the other kids, rode my bike, lived with my skate key around my neck, all of it. My daughter began to gain at about the same time, so I'm going with genetic predisposition. Whatever, that's when it started.

My mother was slender. Not skinny, but slender. I don't look like her, not one little bit. I'm my father all over. This drove her crazy, and either because of her own inner demons, or society's pressures or something I don't know about, she equated slenderness of body with purity of character. This isn't true, of course, but she thought so, and so that made it so. So I heard quite a bit about it over the years. Some nice, some not so...let's just say that a lot of the time my self-esteem took a beating, but I didn't lose any weight because of it.

I began to lose weight the last two marking periods of my senior year. I think the gym teacher was getting bored with us--she had been our gym teacher since we were in 7th grade, and we had done just about everything possible to do in a gym. (This was in the days when you had gym--I want to say every single day, unfailingly). So, for the last part of our senior year, she let us do gym projects. They could be nearly anything, as I recall, and losing weight was one of them. For whatever reason, I chose that one. I weighted 150 pounds, and I lost 15 pounds, to weigh 135. I looked good. My classmates said things like "No one could call you chubby any more." I didn't lose it very healthily--I skipped lunch, and other things teenage girls do. I didn't go to the prom, in spite of it, but I enjoyed short skirts and platform shoes, and all that stuff. It was good. I kept the weight off through the summer, too, but fall arrived and with it college, and maybe the freshman 15, maybe more--I have never been very big on weighing myself, so I didn't.

The next time I lost weight was in the spring of my junior year, as I was in the second semester of my junior year abroad. I had a schedule of classes that dragged me all over the city I studied in. The layout of the town made bus service nearly impossible, so I walked. I figured out at one point, that I was walking nearly 5 miles a day, what with one thing and another, and this is a town with big steep hills (imagine a steep hill. Now imagine one twice as steep as that, and you've probably got it. I lived at the top of one, so every trip out ended with a trudge up the hill. I do know how to conserve my energy when climbing steep hills, though--!) so the workouts were twice what they would have been. I didn't have a scale there, but I dropped about a clothing size. I bought a white denim skirt in size 42, (German) which is about a 12. Not bad for me. Various things happened to me when I came home, including a pregnancy....I gained weight. The pregnancy never came to fruition, but the weight stayed.

The next time was when I moved to New York. This was absolutely not a diet, but I think New York is the world's greatest free gym. I walked everywhere in Manhattan, being way too cheap to pay $0.50 to go 10 blocks, and then the subways themselves...no elevators, no escalators, long, long platforms--I lost weight. I don't know how much. I had a bunch of size 13 skirts, I remember, and I looked pretty delectable. I was 22. Of course I looked delectable. My weight bounced around during my time in New York, but another great diet arrived in the spring (do we sense a trend here?) of 1980.

I decided to lose weight. I didn't own a scale, and didn't buy one. I went exclusively on how my clothes fit me. I probably dropped twenty pounds, at a guess, because I went down two sizes. It helped that the New York City Transit Authority went on strike, and I began walking to and from work--two hours each way. It was quite nice, actually; my route took me over the Brooklyn Bridge. That ended when I got a separated tendon in my foot from all that walking, but the strike ended not long after that. I know what I weighed at the end, though, because I went to the doctor for my foot. He weighed me and the result was 165. He couldn't believe it--I didn't look like whatever his conception of 165 was. He told me I needed to lose 30 pounds. I shrugged. I was pretty damned happy with my home-made diet and my undefined weight loss.

Two more things came out of that diet. I saw my friend Susan, after a long absence, and she looked at me and said, "You're so thin!" (Susan has struggled herself, over the years). And, a while after the diet ended, and I was settling in to being the weight I was, I was out with a girlfriend one night, drinking. We were in Maxwell's Plum, which, for those who don't know, was a pick-up joint extraordinaire. The decor was hyper-Victorian, and the clientele was on the prowl. Not much was going on for us that night, but it was crowded, and so we were sharing a barstool. The guy next to me got up and left, and since at that place there was no way of knowing who was with whom, I looked at the woman who had been next to him, mentally shrugged and sat down. She never opened her mouth. He came back, then, having apparently only been to the men's room. He looked at me, and said to her, "I guess you have to be fast around here." Pause. "It's okay, though, she has enough to put on the seat." Oh, I thought, not with me you don't. I probably wouldn't have been so pissed if I hadn't just lost a bunch of weight, but really, this was for nothing, it was to make himself look good in front of her. So....I thought that anything I said would just sound stupid and defensive, so I looked around for something else. Well, this guy had a fresh, unopened pack of cigarettes on the bar, and a fresh mug of beer. So...I picked up the pack of cigarettes, opened them, shook out half of them, and stuffed them in his beer. Then I shook out the other half and stuffed them in his beer, too. No one said a word. The bartender just got him a fresh beer. I told my girlfriend we should go and we left. I'm willing to bet he at least thought twice before he put down another woman.

I lost weight after my first daughter was born. I was nursing; it was fairly easy. Also, I walked every night. Huh, funny how that works.

I gained and lost, gained and lost, but not a lot. Then we moved to Germany, where the tyranny of thinness is truly alarming. It's different than here. Men openly say that they won't date a woman who weighs more than 50 kilos. (110 pounds). Men follow their women into dressing rooms and tell them what to buy. Fat people are sometimes openly mocked on the street. One of the biggest women's magazines has a diet that they run every January--they give you a total of four weeks of menus, shopping lists, before and after stories, the whole nine yards. I did the Brigitte Diet one year. I lost weight, quite a bit of it--I want to say about 16 kilos--better than 35 pounds. It was a restrictive diet, though, and very much, "If this is a chicory salad, it must be Tuesday." To this day, there are some vegetables I only know the names of in German, because I only bought them for the diet. The best thing was that someone else had made up the menus, so there were no leftovers. The worst things were the boredom, the brownness of the food (LOTS of whole grains) and the gas. The diet ended one Saturday morning, in town, when I ate an apricot Danish. I had followed it to the letter for more than two months, but there was no margin for error--and with the Danish, it was done. I held on to that weight loss for a while, I forget how long.

PT, the Gym, and Pain

What, pain again?  Well, first we'll talk about PT.  Then working out.  Then...yeah, pain.

I have been going to PT for 4 weeks now, I think.  Sarah, my therapist and I have become good acquaintances.  We each have two daughters, 20 months apart--mine are 26 and nearly 28 and hers are 4 and 6, but 20 months is 20 months and not that many women have children that close together. 

Your physical therapist is by necessity very intimate with you.  Sarah straps a belt around her, puts a towel over my groin, and yanks on my leg for a while.  We have conversations, all while I'm lying down.  I've devised a method to count my reps and still talk.  (I love to talk).  I almost always feel good when I leave--but I'm also in pain.  The manipulation, while a good thing, also is painful.  It pulls my leg past where I feel safe letting it go, takes me literally out of my comfort zone.   But the sessions start with heat, also on the groin, and when I started, I couldn't relax my leg while the heat was being applied, and now I can.  In fact, I nearly doze. 

Then when we're done, I drive around the corner and go to the gym, which is in fact, upstairs--the same building. I chose it that way.  I figured I'd get to the gym at least twice a week this way.  And I do.  Sometimes three, but at least two times.  Once upstairs (I take the elevator now--I am simply not torturing myself with two flights of stairs, which is what there is) I do the elliptical.  This particular elliptical isn't frighteningly high to get on, and doesn't make me hurt to use.  I'm doing 11 minutes now.  My feet often hurt.  I'm going to say that I'm not getting as winded--I must not be, because I can't remember.  After that I do things where I sit.  I'm ready to sit.  Also...work my upper body.  In spite of being in not great shape (or maybe sort of passable shape, I have no idea, my hip has me so thrown) I'm so solid and so muscular that I can tell a difference almost right away.  I can lift more dishes out of the cupboard.  I stood around holding the cast iron frying pan the other day, while people made up their minds about what I was supposed to cook.  I can reach higher.  (I can make my boobs bounce and when I've been working out for a while, I can do them individually--probably a skill that generally involves a pole, but whatever).  I've been finishing up with crunches on the balance ball, 100 of them.  Today I was considering shooting for 200, but I had to be back out, in normal clothes, by 2, so I passed.  I might start working up to 200, though.  The stronger my core is, and the more I can engage my lower abs, the easier it is to walk and to stand.

And then, after the ride home, where I sit for 20 minutes (ish), comes the pain.  It is a deep pain, from above my left hip, through it, down my thigh (oh...my thigh....), to my knee, and then down my shin and to my arch.  It hurts all the way down.  A shrill, pulsating pain.  The heated seat in the car helps some.  But the pain stays, will stay now, for the rest of the night.  It abates a bit when I stand, but then, if I stand too long, it gets worse.  It improves when I walk, but then, again, if I walk too long, gets worse. 

It is of ultimate good.  The goal is to improve range of motion (which has occurred, to an impressive degree) and more, to strengthen the left adductor muscle, which is what they cut for the hip replacement.  Also, the gluteus, or as Sarah calls it, the butt muscle.  Well, yeah, the butt muscle.  I suppose.  Those muscles have atrophied.  This bothers me, a lot more than you'd think to look at me.  I work to build them up, I work all the time to build them up.  I make them do the bulk of the balancing or pushing when I'm working out.  I'm coaxing them all the time. 

I want a good outcome from this. I don't want a revision, I don't want an infection, I don't want the recovery time to be longer than it needs to be.  I don't want a shrunken leg, I want to wear flattering shoes again, I want to be as normal as I can for as long as I can. 

I want to climb a flight of stairs without holding on.  I want to take a long walk.  I want to climb to the Schloss in Marburg, and I want to climb the hill in Montmartre, which I've never laid eyes on, but have certainly read enough about.  I want to climb a Wendeltreppe, should one present itself.  I want to go out in Paris (my older daughter wants us to take a trip to Paris together) in high heels. 

When I am eking out the last painful rep (to help the range of motion, to build the muscle) it's easy to want to roll over, shove the knee pillow between my legs and doze off, but I want the other stuff too much.  There is a picture of my great-grandmother, my mother's mother's mother standing with billowing breasts and a basically billowing body, and she used a cane, (to hit people sometimes) and I don't want to be her.  My father's mother's mother was tall and skinny, but those genes went to someone else--someone who wasn't me or my cousins. 

Age now keeps receding.  56 is not what it once was, to the point where no one knows exactly what it is, and what should be.  But whatever it is, I want it to be the most current it can be. 

Eating Clean

I thought about this concept quite a bit today.  For one thing, it's fascinating to me how quickly my tastes changed and really, how little I had to do to make them do that. 

I ate my salad for lunch today. It contained:  a whole bunch of greens, from a giant box of them I bought at Sam's  (Right, I know, I didn't buy it at the local farmers' market.  It's one step at a time here), a can of tuna fish, packed in water, the remains of the barley from Sunday (and I have to be honest and say I probably ate most of that pot myself, no one else seems to have my same enthusiasm for barley), some cucumbers and I think some raw mushrooms, and definitely cherry tomatoes.  I will be honest and say that the cucumbers had been served in a Knorr salad mix, which I now buy by the box from Amazon.  It's dill and herbs and you add water and oil.  I add a third of the oil called for.  And I threw on some of Marie's Raspberry Vinaigrette.  So it probably wasn't completely clean, with the packaged dressings, but it was close.  It was certainly more filling than the sushi and made me feel better afterwards than the pizza. 

Dinner was two pork chops, broiled with BBQ sauce, divided among three people.  I also made an impromptu potato salad making a dressing of Greek yogurt, Meaux mustard, a splash of balsamic vinegar and a dash of olive oil.  I added scallions and celery.  (It was good).  No salt, by the way.  I also made a salad of hearts of palm--canned, because I have no idea how else you would get them--and cherry tomatoes, with a splash of Newman's Own sesame marinade.  I haven't looked at the label, but I'm hoping it's okay.  So there was the BBQ sauce tonight (most of which fell into the broiler pan) and the marinade.  Otherwise it was clean.  I guess.  I hope.

My Dunkin Donuts iced tea, large, with two granulated sugars (not the liquid stuff, which is awful) tasted very intensely sweet to me this morning.  The last time I tried to scale back to one, it was not good, but maybe it's time to try again. 

I must be better off for all of this.  I'd like to say I'm packed with surplus energy, but honestly, that's not quite the case--but I feel less sluggish.  I felt so strange after the pizza, and I suppose that's how I felt all the time.  So I suppose I have to agree--our food is anesthetizing us, against feeling life, and enjoying real food. 

Do I feel militant about this?  I'm not sure.  I've always been of the school of thought that said, do you want to live forever or do you just want it to feel that way?  But now I'm thinking they might be on to something. 

I know in my heart that I've made these changes for good, since my former way of eating was unsustainable, at least in good health.  However, I have to say that to a significant degree, I'm sort of standing back watching myself and wondering how well this is going to work and how well I can keep it up. 

I made the changes in my diet by playing to my strengths.  Other than McDonalds, (and Doritos.....) I'm not a huge junk food eater, or a huge candy eater.  So I stuck with the things I like that are good for me and I'm doing my best to avoid the things I like that are bad for me. 

I mentioned portion size before.  I would have to say that was probably my biggest downfall--I can eat a lot.  I like a lot.  I like, I'll confess to it, mindlessly shoveling something in...it's soothing.  But after a month of decreased portion sizes, I don't think I could stuff if I wanted to.  As for the shoveling, I did have a few fits of that, but I tried to keep it to Triscuits. 

I don't know.  I'm doing my best.  Soon I'll get on the scale again, but since I'm having such clothes success, I wake up, think, gee, I ought to weigh myself, and then forget.  As I said before, we'll see what the numbers tell us.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Yes, I know, how original. 

Anyway.

Today at work, my boss offered to buy lunch and produced a Chinese/Japanese menu.  I've been consuming uncommon amounts of sushi lately (and sashimi) because it's...okay food.  Good for me.  Clean.  I got a combo, which was, frankly, precious little food.  I wanted my salad, with the tuna and the barley and the cucumbers and the tomatoes, but I was polite and ate the sushi.  And then I was very hungry when I got home, also tired and not terribly interested in cooking.  So we ordered pizza.  I at least made it somewhat healthy, with tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, onions and garlic, rather than all manner of meat.  I was worried it would be a trigger.  I like pizza, especially that one, and I was concerned about it being here.

Before it arrived, I ate:  2 leftover barley patties, a small piece of brownie and a piece of toast with butter and lox.  And then I had 3 slices of pizza--pretty moderate slices. 

Reader, I was stuffed.  STUFFED.  Now, at nearly 11, I'm still stuffed.  Also, I feel not quite right, as though I hadn't eaten properly, which I hadn't.

This is a change, a huge one.  I haven't been making a huge effort to eat clean, but my tiny bit of OCD finds it too hard to keep track of what's going on in packaged food, so I don't.  My meals are pretty dull, ingredient-wise.  Lean protein, a bit of a starch (mostly at dinner, and I'm trying harder and harder to make it whole-grain) and a lot of veggies.  Mixed in with the protein, on the side, all over the place, really.  Plus fruit, more than I've ever eaten in my life. 

So the result was that the pizza, which, with those toppings, from that place, is pretty much my favorite, frankly, tasted sort of icky.  I feel sort of icky.  I'll be happy to eat my salad tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to eating my salad tomorrow, believe it or not. 

I'm far from fanatic about eating clean, and I'll be honest and say that a lot of my salads come from McDonald's, and that the occasional Quarterpounder with fries still tastes good, but clearly I'm changing.  This was in just over a month.  It will be interesting to see where I am in two months, in six, in a year. 

The changes in eating have produced changes in me, as well.  I wrote briefly about the clothes.  Yesterday when I got ready for the gym, I noticed that my sport bra felt a little loose.  When I came home I dredged out the gray sports bra, which is the companion to the one I was wearing, the white sports bra.  Gray has always run a little small.  The last time I tried to wear Gray, in fact, I pulled and strained and almost in fact strained something and simply couldn't hook it.  This time Gray fit perfectly.  So I had a little fit of trying on clothes again.  The water-color print pencil skirt can now come off without my unfastening it.  I figure it has two more weeks before it's just silly.  I can wear the tuxedo jacket I just bought, which was too small when it arrived.  My other cream tuxedo jacket is still a bit tight, but not bad.  There are skirts I can wear again, or nearly wear again.  Skirts that can get cycled in when the other one gets cycled out. 

I'm pleased about all this, of course.  I went to sleep thinking about the gray sports bra and making up outfits in my head.  I think, though, that I won't let myself be really pleased till I get my blood work results.  Since the previous rather awful ones were on the heels of a whole lot of uncontrolled eating, I'm hoping that this will bring a rather dramatic improvement.  I really want to stay off meds.  So I'll go on with my salads, and I think I'll avoid pizza from now on.

Clothes

It's really all about the clothes, isn't it, in the end?  No, not really, HONEST, it's about my health, but just as a side effect, it's about the clothes.

So I've lost some weight.  God knows how much, because...well, I said.  So some weight.  More than 10.  Probably not quite 15, though I'd like to believe it was.  Enough, however, to now notice a change in my clothes.  Also, this morning, although I could scarcely spare the time, I tried on some skirts.  They fit.  They didn't used to. T-shirts that were bulging--or causing me to bulge, more accurately, are now hanging loose.  My bras are fitting differently.  Bracelets are bigger.

I've written lots and lots about how scary it is to lose weight.  I was apparently talking through my hat.  I was very invested in the duality of losing weight and at the same time saying it was okay to be...large (I have trouble with the F word and even more with the O word).  That's a hard place to be, because it keeps you with one foot in each camp.  Funny, this time I don't find it even remotely scary.  I want to see who I am under all that.  I want to see who comes out.  I feel different now when I shower--I keep wanting to hit the wrong places, or something, or I reach for a spot and my hand keeps going, if that makes any sense--and rather than feeling, as I used to say, unprotected, I think--huh.  So this is what it sort of feels like to be little.  I want to really know what it feels like to be little.

Pain, etc

Today is damp and raw.  Lovely June weather.  I spent last night in a great deal of pain, sigh.  The meds kicked in this morning, so it's not as bad as it was.  My therapist keeps reminding me that I have arthritis, I will be at the mercy of the weather and I can't do all that I think I can.  It's a fresh amazement every time, I'll be honest.  I was in denial for a very long time, and honestly, I just got the diagnosis fairly recently.  I do NOT think of myself as someone with arthritis.  This is probably because it's in one place, not my whole body. Sometimes it makes me angry, because I can trace when and why it started and it was due to vanity and insecurity and was completely unnecessary, possibly even slightly illegal (what?  Someday I'll go into it).  Most days I just deal with it. 

Also I've now lost on the order of 15 pounds.  If I put my hands on my waist and push, I can feel my hip bones.  I find this fascinating.  I go back and forth on whether or not there was a psychological component to my weight gain--was I hiding?  Covering something up?  I've gone that route in the past, I think partly because it absolves me of being a complete glutton.  But lately, since I've been eating so much less, I'm forced to concede that well, maybe I was a glutton.  I'm probably still a closet glutton, or a glutton who's not giving in to gluttony. 

But this is about the time when weight loss starts to gain momentum.  I've made progress, it's gotten more routine, and things are starting to happen.  So there are gains (sorry) that I don't want to lose (sorry again) and so I'm more apt to stick to eating right.  By the way, I agree with every single person who says that this is not a diet--this is the way I have to eat forever.  Do I feel like I can eat like this forever?  Yeah, probably.  I don't feel as though I have a lot of choices.  I'm curious to see what the doctor will have to say when she sees my weight loss, because it's irrefutable.  You can't argue with the scale, either up or down. 

Last night, though, all I wanted to do was eat.  I could barely hobble into the kitchen, and I wanted to hobble in there, and then eat bread with butter, cookies, chocolate--not to mention eat another meal of last night's tortelloni.  I managed to hold myself to my bowl of fruit with yogurt, though.  And I'm a better woman for it this morning, I suppose.

A Tale of Three Doctors

After not having seen a doctor for years (except the Urgent Care Clinic, when I had a sinus infection) I suddenly found myself dealing with all manners of doctors.  We can talk about the breast people another day, right now I want to talk about the orthopedic surgeons.

First let me say that I think my GP's office means well, but they are, as my husband sometimes says, in the ultimate know.  They sent me to an erroneous breast doctor, which ended up costing me a fair amount of money for not much, and then sent me all around to orthopedic surgeons, too.

So when I finally saw a doctor, I first saw KA.  (I'm going to use initials to be fair to them).  KA is a ball-of-fire African-American man whose resume terrified me when I looked him up, but who turned out to be wonderful.  He was all enthused--said I needed a new hip, but that was really all that was wrong with me, if I got my hip fixed, it would fix everything else.  Alas, he's a knee guy, so he couldn't continue to be my doctor.  So, after building me up, and incidentally hooking me up with some good pain meds (non-narcotic), he sent me to JP.

Ah, JP.  I didn't like him when I made the appointment, honestly.  I spent most of April and the beginning of May in doctors' offices and I had some firm opinions.  (Some of these opinions were formed during my father's 17-month decline and death, when I dealt with the medical community almost daily).  First of all, I believe that a doctor works for you.   You pay his salary, you buy all the cool gadgets he's got, and if you (and all your friends) stop being his patients, then he has no one to practice medicine on.  So, the appointment-making process irked me, but I kept an open mind.

The waiting room and the checking-in process was not all it could have been, either.  There was a low-level attitude of, we think you're stupid and probably lazy and that's why you're here.  Then I foudn the reason for this.  JP is a man who is probably right around, if not at 70, and a dour doctor of the old school. I admit it--I'm overweight (more then than now) and middle-aged and didn't necessarily look like an ideal candidate for anything.  He treated me like I was, if not dumb, then certainly just slightly sub-normal.  (What I generally do with doctors is pick up their language fast, which throws them off and makes them respect me).  He said that hip replacements were largely successful, but there were impediments to that. I said, yes, my weight.  He said, yes, many people understand it's their weight, but in his experience, no one manages to lose any without gastric bypass surgery.  (What?)  He asked me questions and then seemed dissatisfied with my answers.  The height of it came, to me, when he asked what I wanted from the surgery and I said I wanted the pain to stop.  He responded that they didn't prescribe narcotics.  Also, once he had opened the door to weight, there were other things, like my telling him that I had lost weight, and it helped and his dismissing that.  Or getting me on the table, not telling me to take off my shoes, then taking them off, as though I were stupid.  Oh, and asking me questions, which were clearly stated on the 6-page, very redundant, questionnaire. 

I left in a fury.  I also left my x-rays, which I then had to get more of.

So then I called my sister-in-law, who's a nurse.  She asked around and found the name of someone else--with whom I was supposed to have an appointment, and who was supposed to be good.  So I made yet another appointment with him.

His name is, sadly, VD.  Yes...but anyway.  VD was everything JP was not.  His office was pleasant, as was the staff.  It didn't hurt that his assistant, who conducted the preliminary interview, started it by telling me there was no way I looked 56.  I don't honestly care if she meant it--it was certainly what I needed to hear.  Anyway, VD, bless him, told me the same as everyone else, that I needed a new hip, and probably yesterday.  I said I wanted some time to lose weight, because I was aware that my weight was a very negative factor in the surgery.  He looked startled and said, "Not really," and then had me hop up on the table.  He basically checked where I carry my fat, and said that, nah, I wasn't so bad, and that it was the initial incision and its healing that caused problems.  After that, everyone pretty much healed at the same rate.  I said, well, I wanted to anyway, and could I please do physical therapy?  His attitude was more of, it couldn't hoit, than, absolutely! but he prescribed it.  Needless to say, when my hip finally gets sliced into and they cut out a bit of me and put in some stainless steel, he's the one who'll be doing it.

I don't really feel I need to hit anyone over the head with a  conclusion here.  Some doctors are good.  Some suck.  Some need to quit, and some need to remember that they're not God (and that they shouldn't be taking kick-backs, which my cousin suspects JP of).  Also, continuing in my spirit of stating the obvious, there's more than one doctor, they work for you and they CAN be fired.  Keep looking.

So for the moment, as you know, if you've been reading along, I'm eating better, losing weight, working out, and making progress at physical therapy.  It would give me the utmost pleasure, somewhere along the line, to waltz into JP's office, in a pair of high heels (it's a theme) and a size 8 (or 10 or 12) dress and...thumb my nose at him. 

Because that's very mature.

PT Evaluation

I have gained 28 degrees of movement in my left leg.  This may, or may not, sound like a lot, but it means things like, I can tie my shoes without ending up in teeth-clenching pain.  It means I can wear the fabulously expensive (and fabulously comfortable) Merrells  (http://www.zappos.com/merrell-evera-mj-sunset?zfcTest=fw:1, yes, I found red, high-heeled Merrells) because now I can reach over and fasten them up.

My therapist told me that when I came in, she was not particularly optimistic about my prospects.  (I knew that).  She said my range of motion was so limited that she seriously didn't think there was anything to be done for me.  Honestly, I knew better.  I knew I needed an expert, and I knew there was no magic bullet, but I did know that this was a possible thing. 

And it turns out it was.  Is.  I'm not sure how much more progress I can make, but apparently to have even made this much will ensure another three weeks of therapy.  I have so many exercises now that to run through them all, if I do crunches as well, takes a good 45 minutes.  But that's fine with me.  The more I do, the better my chance of coming back as a regular person is. 

I was always very flexible.  I had noticed, of course, that I had tightened up, over the years, but I had no idea how badly.  I think back on all the times when I effortlessly assumed lotus pose, simply because it was an alternative way of sitting on the floor with my legs crossed.  Now I can't even get ONTO the floor.  Sad.  I miss me.  I miss being that pretzel girl.  But I am also endlessly optimistic.  I believe that with work I can become appropriately flexible for a 56 or 57 year-old woman.

Pain

Pain is a remarkable motivator.  Pain, and I'm not saying this to be dramatic, is my constant companion.  Except maybe when I'm sitting.  Sometimes.  Which is sort of evil in itself, because I'm sitting there, feeling normal, and then I stand up and WHOMP! it hits me again.  But pain is what got me to the doctor.

I think I know why my hip deteriorated.  It's a long story and actually sort of boring, but let's just say that for the last seven years, the pain has been increasing steadily.  Late winter it finally got to the point where I more or less had no sort of life--pain prevented me from a five-minute walk.  Going grocery shopping, even with that walker in disguise, a shopping cart, left me in a sweat.  I finally decided I had to see a doctor, and so I finally made an appointment. I didn't exactly pick one out of a hat, but I more or less did.  I went to the same practice my father had gone to, before he died, just less than a year ago.

The first visit was awful--because I hadn't been in so long.  My primary reason, of course, was the pain in my hip, but there were many more things to be interested in.  My blood pressure.  The fact I hadn't had a pap smear since 2002.  The fact that I hadn't had a mammogram in that long as well.  I still haven't gotten my colonoscopy, to be honest.

Well, those things were addressed, and I'm the proud owner of four meds a day, two for blood pressure and two for pain.  Does this make me happy?  Not in the least.  But it does give me something to work toward.

So here's what I found out, when I wrenched the attention back to my hip.  I found out that the cartilage is completely gone and that it's bone on bone and that I limp because of the loss of cartilage--my left leg is now 4 (or so) mm shorter than my right one.  I found out that the only way to fix that is a hip replacement.  I'm 56.  I've heard both--you're too young!  and, better to do it now, while you're young!  I don't feel as though I have a huge choice.  The pain is too intense.  I've been attending physical therapy (which also causes pain, but at least I think it's getting me somewhere) and so I can do more things than I could before, but the pain in there.

The pain is always there.  The pain is there when I cook, when I work out, when I walk, when I drive, when I sleep or try to sleep.  When I have sex.  When I brush my teeth, when I go to church, when...you get the point.  And one of the most frustrating things is that it's unpredictable.  I have no idea how bad it's going to be at any given moment.  Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes (and I don't cry that easily) and sometimes it recedes and I'm nearly my old self. 

I'm a little afraid of a replacement.  The doctor I finally fetched up with (and more about him and the others, another day) seems to think I'm a fine candidate.  I'm looking forward to a lack of pain.  I'm looking forward to going on walks.  But I'm also looking forward to high heels.  That was something I googled as soon as I started thinking seriously about a hip replacement and before I had even seen a doctor.  Could I wear high heels after?  (The answer, if you're interested) seems to be yes, if I'm good about PT and if I'm patient.  I'll probably never be able to wear skyscrapers, and those vertiginous platforms are probably out, but I think I can probably do 3" again, if I'm good, and patient.

And then, with any luck, the only pain I'll have to worry about is if the shoes pinch.

For the first time

Diet Coke was introduced some time around 1980.  I could look it up, but I remember my first taste.  My friend Judy gave me some and I liked it from that very first sip.  I couldn't even tell you how much of it I've drunk over the years--whole barrels, I'm sure. 

Well, today, at lunch, something I never thought would happen, happened.  It tasted funny.  Now, this has actually happened before , but only in Germany, where they make "Coke Light", as it's called there, with saccherine, not aspartame.  On one of my trips to Germany, I bought one, might even have scard up some ice somehow, and prepared to enjoy that first hit--as with all drugs, nothing like the first hit--and was mightily disappointed.  Ick, in fact.  So, for the balance of that trip, and all subsuquent trips to Germany, I rely on coffee for caffeine and mineral water, or beer (it is, after all, Germany) for fizz. 

But today threw me for a loop.  I can only chalk it up to the fact that I've been eating cleaner lately.  Not so much stuff with additives.  I'm the very furthest thing from an apostle, but essentially, if I don't know what's gone into it, I'm not much on eating it. 

I'm finishing the glass.  It's not that bad.  But honestly, until this very day, I never knew what people were talking about when they referred to "the aftertaste".  I couldn't taste it.  So, it's Poland Spring carbonated mineral water, or Gerolsteiner if I feel like going that route, or iced tea, I suppose.  That's sort of too bad.  I used to like real Coke, but I don't any more and now apparently, I don't like Diet Coke.

Now, let me just add here:  I never subscribed, and I never will, to the concept that aspartame is killing us all, that it's all a giant cover-up by the government, and of all the things said about it, the thing I believe the least is that it turns to formaldehyde in your body.  It has also never increased my desire for sweets, because I still am not a sweets girl.  (Bag of Doritos.  Candy Bar.  Oh, bag of Doritos, every time!)  Contributes to metabolic syndrome?  Maybe. 

In the end, however, the reason I don't drink it here will be the same reason I don't drink it in Germany:  I don't like the taste.  And....largely....I feel like that should be the main reason for condemning any foodstuff (except maybe bacon fat, which is just disgusting).  If you like it, have it in moderation. If you don't, then don't. 

Simple, right?

In the last month

So, okay, this is what has happened to me in the last month:

One month ago today I went to see an orthopedist, because I have osteoarthritis in my left hip and I need a hip replacement.  He was dreadful.  He was simply dreadful.  He, among other things, told me I was never going to lose weight without gastric bypass surgery and that anything that could be done to alleviate present pain would have a negative outcome on future surgery and told me, without my ever having mentioned them, that I couldn't have narcotics.

So okay.  That was a Monday.  And then on Thursday I went and, well, tried to have a breast biopsy for some suspicious stuff except that after a half hour of mammograming, they couldn't find the spots and sent me home.  So that was good.

Then on Friday, I saw the GP, who gave me the rest of the results of my blood work, which was basically that I'm a fat, middle-aged woman.  My cholesterol is up and so is my blood sugar.  Interestingly, she gave me six weeks to see what I could do. 

I saw another orthopedist, who was much nicer (and he's the one I'll give money to, when the time comes) and who prescribed physical therapy.

So.  I forgot the handout about how to eat with diabetes, but the main thing I got was to cut out carbs.  And I told the nice doctor that I wanted three months to try to lose weight before we decided anything about surgery. 

And then I came home and I started eating differently.  I'd like to say I had some epiphany or something, but it was mainly that I didn't want to tell people I had Type 2 diabetes, because, well, I hate being cliche.  I started eating less meat, fewer carbs, and more vegetables and fruit.  And after a physical therapy session, which I purposely had at the one at the gym I belong to, I went upstairs and worked out. 

In the last month, I've lost 12 or 13 pounds. I say this imprecisely for two reasons.  One is that the scale fluctuates wildly and the other is that I fluctuate somewhat, though less since I started taking a diuretic for my blood pressure.  (Just if you're interested, that pisses me off, too). 

I have a big bowl of fruit every night, with some Greek yogurt stirred in.  Then I don't graze all night--AFTER 11. 

I eat salad every day.  I'd like to say I don't remember the last time I had a sandwich, but that's a lie, since I went out to dinner and had a French dip, but I'll say I don't rightly remember the last one I had here at home.  I do have skinny cheese, an egg and either ham or salmon, every morning on light crisp bread (what, you say, LIGHT crisp bread?  Is it even visible?) and that sort of gives me the carb fix.  I won't lie.  When my husband makes toast, I salivate--the smell of the yeast! 

So here I am.  I feel kind of piggy today, because I had spaghetti for lunch (with spinach and tomato sauce, mostly to finish the sauce, which was a second-time leftover) and then out to eat for dinner, but there was no way I could finish all those fries, I had a salad and right now I feel completely stuffed and, frankly, kind of icky. 

But this is my belief.  That everyone, really, knows how to lose weight.  The question is whether or not they do it.  How much they fool themselves into believing they can get away with.  What they try to slip in.  God knows I've done it.  And not to diss Weight Watchers, but I got way too good at the system and started not losing weight on it.  This is easier. 

Do I feel better?  Well, honestly, I probably won't really feel better till I get the new hip (and funnily, the second doctor actually examined me and said that my body configuration--not a ton of fat on the hips, basically--was not one that was terribly concerning for complications) but I will say that I do have more energy and the ability to do more things.  I went shopping this morning!  In a department store!  I couldn't have done that a month ago, in fact, a month ago, I wasn't able to do it when I tried.  So actually doing my exercises helps, with my range of motion and my strength and stamina.  Then I end up in probably worse pain than I would have been in because I'm not a sitter-arounder by nature and I do too much--but that's okay.  I did it. 

I'll be back to keep track of progress.  The interesting/noteworthy/scary thing here is that...it's not hard.  It's not actually hard.  I'm just doing it.  I more or less made the most of my natural inclinations, which is that I like real food, I'm not that much on sweets and I have fairly good ability to make good choices.  Portion control is huge, but the interesting thing about portion control is that it gets easier as you get used to less food.  So I have to say there's not a lot of suffering going on here, which may be disappointing on some level, but whatever.  I'm happy with two squares of chocolate, so that's fine. 

Right now I have two goals.  One is the end of the month, which I see the GP again.  I want my numbers to be good enough that I have evaded medication.  I think I probably will, because the time before the last bloodwork was pretty much Molly bar the door, as far as eating goes, and they STILL hadn't gotten me to where I absolutely needed meds, that second, or I would die.  So when I do get tempted, I realize I'm working toward that, and while 20 pounds is probably unrealistic, I'd like it a lot if I could manage that, so that's a deterrent when I want to indulge.  (And when I do indulge, I'm fully aware that it's indulgence and not regular life).  The other is the end of the summer, when I see the orthopedist again.  I'm not sure what I want him to say, because he was encouraging anyway--but I guess I want to have made the effort.  And you get to the future perfect (interesting name for that tense in this case) by making the effort every day in the plain present. 

So here I am. I guess I could say I'm working toward the future perfect.