This weekend was the first time in a VERY long time that my shopping cart at the grocery looked like that of a crazy healthy person. It was also the first time since I started this blog back in October/November that I let myself just shop. I used my credit card for groceries. I had a couple coupons, but I needed food. And I needed food that was good for me. I needed to surround myself with things that I could easily grab that would give me a healthy decision. It's not that my house was full of junk; on the contrary. My house had nothing. It's been a hard week. I spent $99. My budget is $40.
I did start a blog post last week (March 19-25) which I will share an excerpt from... the post as a whole is mostly irrelevant now, and you'll learn why... but I wanted to tell you what I had to eat that week:
Monday night for dinner I can't even remember what I ate. I came home from work, sat down, and then got back up when it was time for ballet class. I think I might have had some Lean Cuisine spring rolls. (Obviously, I didn't track my food this week or else I would know...).
Tuesday I hadn't fixed the stuff for my other lunch meal, so we called out for subs. I was good. I got my sub in a wrap which was tasty. I don't eat mayo or anything, so sandwiches are never all that terrible for me. They're not the best thing ever, but hey, it wasn't deep fried.
I came home Tuesday and cooked the stuff to make Chicken Bomb wraps for the next two days at work. I had the last serving of Eggplant Involtini and that was good again.
Wednesday I had my chicken bomb wrap at work... and then came home and ordered a steak and cheese calzone at the local pizza place because I so wanted to walk down the street and get it. Of course, the disgusting guy giving me the once over from the bar since I had on shorts and a tank top was kind of disturbing. Especially since he was drunk at 5:15. And had his girlfriend with him.
I ate half the calzone on Wednesday night and half on Thursday night. Friday night I ordered some fried food. Yesterday I split some McDonald's. Today I had Buffalo Wild Wings. Oh. And a whoopie pie.
I'm not a very good role model.
I've been talking myself out of some things recently. The more I think about it the more I was really telling myself in a few of these blog posts that something wasn't right. I've been terribly emotional. Emotional to a fault and so much more than normal (I'm kind of a crier anyway, so it's difficult to know when I'm just being me and when there's something that needs to be addressed).
The “today” I refer to above when I said, “today I had Buffalo Wild Wings,” that was a hard day. I spent the entire weekend out of the house because I was physically unable to spend any time alone with myself. On Saturday I borrowed a friend's kid and took them bowling. On Sunday I ran to the movies, saw Hunger Games (topical, because of the hunger part, right?) and then watched some basketball at B-Dubs. Monday morning at about 1 AM I woke up with heartburn. I used to have chronic acid reflux and would take Mylanta every night before bed. That was back when I weighed over 200 lbs. Now, I really don't need them very often; I've got some TUMS in the cabinet, but rarely need them. So I took a couple, chewed them up, and crawled back in bed. It wasn't heartburn. My stomach hurt so much I couldn't lay flat. I got up and laid on the couch at an incline. By 2 AM I'd vomited everything I had in my stomach.
My initial thought was that one of two things were happening: the first, I ate freaking McDonald's and B-Dubs over the weekend. My body didn't like it and thus is getting rid of it. The second, maybe something I ate wasn't cooked right or contaminated and I had food poisoning.
I tried to get up and go to work that morning. I got in the shower, which was painful. I had my clothes on the bed. I couldn't put them on. I texted my boss for fear of not making it through a telephone conversation without getting sick (and it's a good thing I did too, because that's what happened). In an attempt to not get too graphic, the crazy part was, when one has a stomach bug, there's usually a little more to it than simply vomiting... if you know what I mean. I didn't have that.
So I slept all day. Fast forward to Tuesday where I couldn't stop crying all day long, tried to get work done, made it through the day... cried at home. Wednesday I call the doctor because all of these symptoms feel like it did when it was first discovered that I had Mono. Of course when you're sick the Internet should probably be off limits so I'm reading things about people who have recurring Mono symptoms due to autoimmune disorders and blah blah blah and yea, thinking about all the things that could be wrong with you sort of sucks. I've always been a very healthy person. I was a healthy kid. The worst thing I'd ever had was asthma. I'd always wished I would have gotten at least one night in the hospital as a kid. I thought there'd be ice cream or something.
The doctor called for blood work and an abdominal ultrasound, both of which I've done before when they thought my Mono was gallbladder issues. I couldn't have the ultrasound until the next morning because I'd eaten already that day. They kept throwing CAT Scan around and that just made me more and more upset (not for my health; that shit is expensive) but the only reason they mentioned it was because you can have those after having eaten food. I went to the hospital and had my blood done. I spent most of the afternoon switching phone calls with the doctor's office. Later the nurse (who by the way was AWESOME and I'm considering a thank you note for how nice she was to me and you'll know why soon) called me to let me know that everything in my blood work was FINE. No infection. No elevated liver enzymes. The only thing that was low was my Vitamin D. My first reaction is “well, duh... I never see the sun!”
I have the ultrasound. I go to the doctor's office... and the entire time I'm getting all of this taken care of I'm emotionally miserable. I start to think it's something that isn't physical. I've been thinking way too much recently, about bad things and stresses and such, and I felt that maybe I was sick and my stomach was hurting in the same way your stomach hurts when there's a bully on the playground. I'd been thinking about seeing a counselor for a while now but I just hadn't looked one up. Honestly, I didn't know what my health benefits were (I'll admit I'm really stupid when it comes to that stuff) so I was afraid it was going to be similar to when I went through marriage counseling and we'd write these pretty big checks, which was always fine with an engineer's salary. Me alone, not so much.
When I went to my doctor's appointment after the ultrasound I was visibly upset. I was thinking about the fact that maybe I'm depressed (a word that has always haunted me for the finality of its concept in my head) and... so I ask the doctor if this could be anxiety or stress related. Let me back up for a minute, I say “doctor” but she's a nurse practitioner. My dad's a nurse. I have a great friend that's a nurse. Generally, when it comes to health care, they're a little bit NICER than doctors, right? Not this time. Actually I noticed it the last time I saw her for a cold. She was short and curt with me and like I was wasting her time.
She starts in on me. At no point does she ever express any sort of concern or anything to bring me relief. I tried to explain to her that back when I had Mono the reason why it took me so long to go to the doctor is I had a severe amount of stress from my living arrangements and trying to buy a house. She cut me off and essentially made me feel like, “yes... but you had Mono... so move on...” Wow. Needless to say I was crying when I checked out at the window and paid my copay. I ignored her recommendation for which counselor to seek and went home and found one on my insurance website.
But wait... let's not forget the thing in my blood work that was weird. My vitamin D was low (I don't have the number right now, but I plan to call the doctor's office tomorrow and ask them to fax me a copy of the labs so I will know). I asked the APRN how much Vitamin D I should start taking to fix that. Of course I get another smart answer (everyone else that day was nice to me, so I know it wasn't just me...). She tells me that my Vitamin D is so low that over the counter supplements won't help me right now. She said she would call in a prescription.
Here's how I know she was being bitchy...
She asked me which pharmacy I use. I said, “The Walgreen's on Valley Street.” I get notification from Walgreen's that my prescription was ready for pickup... 30 minutes south of where I live. Not 2 blocks away like the Walgreen's I told her. Obviously, she can't even listen to that.
Thanks to the nice people at Walgreen's for helping me not have to drive 30 minutes for some Vitamin D, I started taking it yesterday. It's 1 pill per week, 50,000 units of Vitamin D per week. To give a little perspective, your over the counter Vitamin D supplements range from 1,000 to 2,000 units per pill, taken daily, that's 14,000 units per week. “100%” of your daily recommendations is something like 400 units.
What I'm about to tell you is probably impossible, but I'm being honest. I took that Vitamin D at 9 AM on Saturday. By 1 PM on Saturday, I was not only NOT depressed, but I had energy, my stomach didn't hurt, and I'd made myself a to-do list and was cranking out the work. Usually, on Saturday, I want to call my family and I want to text friends and just be with people. I was back to normal. I didn't have anything to say to anyone... and that was fine. I was fine just hanging out with me, getting stuff done.
And that right there is why I think the counseling is going to be a good idea. I'm very practical. I'm always looking for a reason or a motivation, though sometimes that isn't practical at all. But I feel that for every reaction there was an equal or opposite action. This whole blog is about eating while alone and I haven't been able to do it. Have you noticed? I have. I've ALWAYS had someone to take care of, to give priority to. When I was a kid it was my dad; you'd be surprised what kids worry about and I always felt responsible for him. Then I got married and well, that'll do it. I've never had the opportunity to just take care of myself. Someone has always had me there taking care of them. And it's easy to forget about yourself when you want to put someone else first.
Relationships are so important and I have some fantastic ones. I have great friends. I have great family. I have an awesome vegetable-eating boyfriend. I also have myself. And it isn't for lack of trying. Going back to the practicality of it all, I KNOW that I'm happy and I KNOW I care about myself... it's just putting the plan into action all the time. I used to LOVE being alone... when there was never any time for it. That hour I had between when I got home from work and when my husband got home... that was my favorite part of the day. I need to find that again and figure out why that was so awesome. I used to LOVE having a self-made Buffy marathon and cross-stitching for hours. I haven't done that in forever.
I'm doing very good today too. I got up... had some coffee... and I've been typing this up all morning. I've got the windows open. It's 28 degrees outside but at least the sun is up. And I'm hoping for another day like yesterday. I'm not going to lie and say I feel 100% but the hopefulness is there. I'm not broken. I'm also really looking forward to eating all of the extremely tasty food I got yesterday.
A couple more notes. Where the Internet is dangerous when we're feeling bad, I think in a way it's also beneficial in the sense of giving you information that your APRN who is not willing or NOT ABLE (I mean, come on, she gave me a pamphlet on Mono... she wouldn't tell me what to expect...) to provide. There's actually a whole website devoted to educating people about Vitamin D deficiency and how dangerous it can really be. And although I don't believe everything I read unless there's some university backing it, and although everyone is different, it's interesting to be aware of.
Bringing it back to weight loss, some university studies have shown that those low in Vitamin D have a harder time losing weight and adding the vitamin back in can make a low calorie diet more affective. I'll let you know if that works... :)
I've gained a couple pounds back but nothing major. I haven't had the drive to go to the gym in three weeks but yesterday I started running. I got the “Couch to 5K” app and went out and did that. It was really fun! A little annoyed by the creepy man that looked at me funny, and only a little creeped out by the fact that I don't live in the best neighborhood to be just walking around, but come on, it's New Hampshire. Seriously? I'm not frightened.
Now to get back to my to do list, make lunch for tomorrow, and try to enjoy my day to myself.
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