Greetings from the middle-aged girl with pink eye

Oy, what a week I've had!  Somehow I developed a sty on the inside lower lid of my left eye.  I went to see a doctor on Tuesday and he gave me some cream to apply to the inside of my eye and then instructed me to put a warm compress on it four times a day.  So that meant contacts out, glasses on.  Okay, fine.  During the appointment, he proceeded to talk to me about weight loss and recent studies that could be helpful for "a person like me".  This was not my regular doctor and he seemed nice enough, but by the time I was done with my time with him, he had called me a middle-aged diabetic with a weight problem.  And you know what the saddest part of all of that was?  It was the fact that he called me  middle aged.  Egads!!!  Now that I think about that, it's pretty hilarious to me.  Yeah, I can accept that I'm a diabetic because I am.  And I can also accept that I have a weight problem because, helloooo, I do.  But to call me middle aged?  I told him, "Hey doc, I'm 41, hardly middle aged".  He laughed and he told me he was 40 himself.  Yeah, and your point is??

A couple of days after that, my left eye was starting to get really painful and pink.  I wondered to myself if I had pink eye.  How on God's green earth could I have pink eye?  I remember when I was a teen and one of my friends and I were at her house putting on eyeliner.  Back in those days, we put the eyeliner on the inside lower lid and we shared that black stuff with each other without thinking twice about it.  Soon afterwards, I had developed the absolute worst case of pink eye ever.  I don't do that sort of thing any more so I couldn't understand how it got passed on to me.  Of course, I work with high schoolers and I do shake a lot of hands throughout the day with college counselors coming on our campus.  But, pink eye ... seriously?  Yet, Thursday morning when I woke up, there were the telltale signs.  I decided not to go in to work because, if it was pink eye, it is incredibly contagious.  I managed to get in to see a doctor and after I described my symptoms, he took one look at me and told me I definitely had pink eye.  So I had to be quarantined Thursday and Friday as well as most of the weekend.  Let me just say, I can get bored very quickly.  I spent those few days watching my DVD's of The Big Bang Theory, my favorite show.  I played on the computer.  And I just felt the pounds creeping on.  It was hard not to feel that way because I was cooped up in the house not doing much of anything.  I did manage to get out and go for a long, brisk walk on Saturday however I did end up gaining a couple of pounds when I did my weigh-in.  Boo!  I have had to remind myself not to beat myself up about that.  Just keep walking forward.

This journey with weight loss is something that is a life-time journey and I can't forget that.  The other day I was looking at some pictures I had on my iPhone of when I was in the middle of Optifast, back when the pounds were flying off.  I was losing double-digits practically every week.  Looking at my face, I really could see how gaunt I had gotten.  My mom mentioned it to me once but I was just convinced that she wasn't used to seeing me thinner.  But she was right.  My hair was falling out a lot and I just simply didn't look like myself.  Now on Jenny Craig, the weight loss is slower and I have to understand that it's the way weight loss is supposed to occur.  I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing right now - eating healthier, exercising and working with my therapist to deal with issues as they continue to come up.  I don't have to race anyone to the finish line and I have to figure out how to combat that incredibly critical voice inside of me that tells me that I'm not doing it fast enough or good enough.  Sometimes I totally just want to slap her across the face!  So anyway, here I am.  I few pounds up, recovering from pink eye and maybe just ever so slightly middle aged.  I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow to do a check-up, have her look at my eye and to talk to her about this pain in my leg I've been dealing with for over a year and a half.  Enough is enough already!  See what you get when I don't blog for a week?  I'm all over the place.