Thursday December 8, 2005

I just realized as I was sitting here avoiding work again that I hit the 10 week mark yesterday. It’s so strange! In some ways I feel like nothing has happened because my body feels almost normal again as far as discomfort, etc. goes. Then I realize how far I’ve come and it seems like such a short amount of time.

I’m doing OK foodwise as far as I’m finally able to eat enough to keep me going. In fact, I scared myself the other day because I went over 1,000 calories. My doctors have not placed a limit on me as far as how much I can have but I really do try to stay at or below about 850 calories a day. For those of you freaking out right now, it is totally normal for a relatively new GBS patient to eat that few of calories. Just a few weeks ago I was barely getting in 600 a day. The main point right now is to monitor my carbs and to make sure I get the 60-80 grams of protein in a day. Lately I’ve been tolerating the shakes a little better so that has made life easier. I wish they weren’t so strong tasting but at least they don’t make me sick. I’ve bought milk that I can tolerate now. I have the Carb Countdown chocolate and the lactose free fat free stuff too in the regular white milk. This stuff has a shelf life of like a month so I can drink it slow. I use the chocolate to put in my chocolate protein drinks to help with the taste.

I need to start exercising but I’m just not ready yet. I want to find a place where I can swim. I am hoping to get in on some New Years deals at the local gym. There was an awesome deal at a gym that is opening in January but I wasn’t about to fork over 500 bucks (two year contract paid in advance) for a facility I hadn’t even seen yet. There are a few other health issues I need to address before I embark on swimming though.

Emotionally, I’m doing pretty ok considering everything. I’m still working on the sticking up for myself without being a looney toon thing. That is going to take a lot of time though. You can’t go from a lifetime of passive aggressiveness to all the sudden being healthy, ya know? At least I’m not taking my frustrations with others out on myself anymore. I’m not having the daily crying spells like I had initially. The crying spells are completely normal and to be honest I’m a bit surprised I’ve mostly stopped. The sudden thrust of estrogen and just the stress of everything really makes people an emotional mess after the surgery for quite a while. I will admit to crying about the Angel Tree in Wal-Mart though.
At this point I realized I should pause and explain something I said above about the estrogen. Real quick health lesson: fat tissue stores estrogen. As fat tissue disappears in a rapid pace, the estrogen literally gets dumped into the person’s system, therefore it’s like PMS all the time. Interesting, huh? But yeah, fat tissue is a treasure trove of icky stuff that gets dumped into our system as we lose weight.

Hmmmm well, I can’t think of anything else to update. I don’t know any more weight loss stats but I will probably weigh when I go to Tulsa this weekend. Wonder if it’s weird for me to show up on a Saturday? I can tell in most my clothes. The shirt I’m wearing today has always been a bit full on me but today it feels just the same level of tightness that it did last year but the difference is that I have a second shirt on underneath it!

Jamie

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