Finding a better way to deal with stress

Since it was raining today, Sara and I met up at the mall to do our walking indoors.  It was nice to have a change of scenery from our usual Sunday walks and there's nothing wrong with window shopping since I left my wallet locked in my car.  We walked for about an hour and then chatted afterwards.

Can I get a cutie patootie neurologist, too?

Later in the day, I was feeling a little frustrated and anxious about my upcoming doctor's appointments scheduled for this week, especially about my visit that's coming up tomorrow morning to see the neurologist.  I need to write down all of my concerns and questions just to ensure that I am getting all of my needs met and that I walk away not kicking myself for not addressing everything.  In the face of these sort of appointments, I tend to forget half of what I want to cover.  As I started thinking more and more about this particular appointment, along with all the other ones that are coming up, my stress level was starting to go up.

In the past, the way I "dealt" with the stress led me to eventually going into the fridge and finding something to soothe me in the moment ... and continuing to go there for the rest of the day.  Instead of doing that and going down a road I want no part of, I laced up my shoes and decided to go for a 5K.  I have a course I do - I call it the Kick Ass Kathy 5K (yeah, okay, I'm a geek but I know you love me for it!) - that surrounds my house.  It's 3.2 miles complete with some hills and I get lost in the music blaring out of my iPod.  It gets my heart pumping and I feel so good taking care of my body.

I am going through some heavy duty emotions in dealing with all the medical issues.  What will the answers be?  Will there be answers?  Will I be just as frustrated, if not more, after seeing the doctor?  Lord help me, but what's wrong with me???  Handling these open ended questions is extremely difficult and trying for me.  Yet, I know I do have to handle them and not shy away from any fear I am feeling.  I can turn those fears over to God and, if I continue to feel the fear, keep doing it.  Both my parents are very concerned about what's going on with me.  No matter how old you are, you want them to kiss it and make it all better.  My dad always seemed to have the answers to life and I would look up at him with these big brown eyes as a little girl and hang onto every word.  I wish he had the words now to magically make this all just disappear.  I do know I am doing the right thing for myself by pushing the doctors to keep going until we find out what's wrong.  There's something wrong, I just know there is.  If you are a praying person, please ask for my good health and peace.  Thank you all and I'll be sure to post updates when I have them.

Don't mean to complain, but ... seriously??

You know that saying, "When it rains, it pours?"  Well, I learned this week that that is the biggest friggin understatement ever.

As a follow up to my whole anemia vs. what's really wrong with me saga, I was able to get an appointment with a neurologist for Monday.  I already had meetings scheduled at work, but lovely friends/co-workers stepped in to cover for me so that I could keep the appointment (I just work with the best people ever.  Hands down.)  At the appointment, I am hoping there will be some answers.  I also need to face the very real possibility that it may be time to transition from a modified program on Optifast to getting back on food to lose the rest of the weight before going on maintenance.  That's only if they can't find out what's going on, but it's something I have to give serious consideration.  I'm not ready for that, at least not in my heart.  Yet, I wasn't ready to go on the modified fast either.  Ultimately, my health is the most important component of this and with incredible lightheadedness and weakness in my legs every single day, it's something that may be the common denominator in all of this.  Everybody reacts differently to taking products into their body and mine may just have had enough of it after eight months.  However, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Later that afternoon, I have to see my worker's comp doctor so he can look at the progress in my arms.  I'm still in major pain there and it hasn't gotten better since I saw him last month.

Then, later that evening, I have my Optifast class where I'll be stopping by the medical office before the meeting starts and review the findings of my appointment with the neurologist.  It may be at that time that I make some difficult decisions on whether to stay on the modified fast or do something different with the Optifast products.

Meanwhile, in about the last week or so, I have had horrible spots appear on my body that are very itchy.  I mean itchy!  Have you ever had a cast before and found yourself desperate to scratch the inside that you grabbed a wire hanger to stick down in there and go to town?  No?  Just me??  Well, memories of the summer I broke my arm during sixth grade came flooding back as I have been dealing with these spots that are overwhelmingly begging me to scratch them with every fiber of my being.  Come on Kathy, you know you want to scratch right there.  Right.  There.  Here's what my legs look like, just to give you a visual reference.

The pics don't even do justice.  My ankles are swollen and these spots are all over my legs with some now on my tummy, arms and back.  These are the prettier spots ... some are very splotchy and just kind of yucky to post on the blog.  They itch like mad so I decided to go in and see a doctor today to get some sort of relief.  [As a side note, when they were taking my vitals, the nurse was able to use a regular-sized blood pressure cuff on my upper arm for the first time in my life - up to now they've always had to use the thigh cuff to measure my blood pressure there.  That was a huge victory.]  The doc took pictures for dermatology but told me that essentially she thinks it's a bad rash since she was able to rule out other causes.  We couldn't pinpoint what it could be ... I have cats but they're indoor cats and don't have fleas, I haven't done any activity out of the ordinary lately, haven't eaten anything weird, nothing like that.  The doc told me that I wouldn't hear from her unless dermatology had concerns and wanted to see me and to just take some prescription-level ointment and Claritin.  The last time I had pics taken for dermatology was when the odd-shaped mole on my back led to a concern from the dermatology department and, after performing a biopsy, it turned out to be a form of deadly cancer, melanoma.  So, I was hoping I didn't hear a peep back from dermatology today.

I heard back from them.  

They want to see me after getting the pics and written report from the doc.  So I get to do that on Tuesday.  Meanwhile, the cream is not alleviating that feeling of wanting to scratch my skin, so I'm going mad over here right now.  Also on Tuesday, I meet with my physical medicine doctor to see how the progress is going on the back pain I'm trying to deal with.

Speaking of that, I had the second appointment with my acupuncturist today.  I practically cried during the portion of our visit where we talk first before she works on my body. We talked about body image and why in the hell I am hanging onto clothes that no longer fit me.  They are in boxes, ready to be donated to charity, but I haven't made the call yet.  In those boxes are a shitload of clothes that are from 1-9 sizes too big (I can't explain why I'm cussing so much tonight, but sometimes polite words just don't do it!).  I was wearing pants to our session today that are four sizes too big, held up by a belt that is also way too big on me.  I told her everything that is going on and the stress I'm feeling.  It just feels like my poor body is falling apart.  I know it's not and that it needs time to adjust to the drastic and sudden changes, but it feels a bit overwhelming.  Couple all of that with a stressful job that I happen to love, trying to go to school at night, not getting more than 3-4 hours of sleep at night, being in pain every moment of the day and just being pulled in so many different directions ... well it's no wonder that I just need to chill out as much as possible!!  I totally fell asleep on the table during acupuncture with numerous needles sticking out of me.  You can't even begin to imagine how soothing it is.  No, seriously, it's an incredibly calming feeling, especially with soft music playing in the background and the lights turned down low. 

Even with all the worries, fear and stress I'm feeling right now, I need to stay in the positives:

• I get to get some extra sleep this weekend
• I get to spend some time getting some extended physical activity in that I desperately crave
• I get to spend some girl time with a friend on Saturday that I haven't seen in a few weeks
• My health is so much improved ... no more high cholesterol, high blood pressure or high blood sugar.  In fact, those things are normal now.  The nurse practitioner at the Kaiser clinic referred to me as a "patient who used to have diabetes" when she was describing my situation to a colleague.  What do you mean used to have?

At the end of the day, my worst day in a thinner, healthier body is so much better than my best day in a 417-pound body.   This is a time of challenge for me, but I am rising to that challenge and feeling so much stronger as a result.

Eek, running on empty

This last week has been so stressful for me.  Actually, it's not just this last week but probably since this last month or so that I've returned back to work from summer break.  Ah ... those were the days!  I was able to get up at a leisurely hour (somehow I figured out how to get 8 hours of rest each night), go walking for a few miles and pretty much do what I wanted.  Getting back to the pace of working, going to school, doing my program, exercising and just life has left me exhausted.  I came home today from work, had my dinner and then found myself crawling into my bed for a little nappy-poo.  I don't even remember falling asleep. 

The truth is that not getting enough sleep is completely dangerous.  I was shaky at work today from it and that's just not good.  A couple of people have noticed it on my face, although I'm trying to do a good job at masking it.  Don't ask me why I feel the need to cover it up.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I just want to appear like I'm handling things or some such load.  The truth is no one can function well on three hours of sleep a night and that's what I've been sporting lately.

So, to that end, I'm doing what I can to clean things up a little bit.  A friend and I started a walking group at work, which will begin on Monday.  I sent an e-mail out to people in the office saying we're going to start walking and asking if they'd like to join us during lunch.  We'll still leave time to eat food, but this is really our way of getting out and exercising at least every day and destressing.  I'm totally all for having less stress in my life.

I also have become somewhat addicted to blog reading.  It's not a bad addiction in the grand scheme of things, but between the blogs I was following through Google Reader and messages coming into my e-mail, it was too much for me to handle.  So if you have a blog and I've stopped "following" you recently, I definitely am still reading but I need one list to work off of, which are all the blog links posted on my site.  That way I can see when people have posted something new, I'm not trying to maintain too much and it's just more manageable to me.  I get so much from what other people write about.  Often times, the things they go through are the very things I go through as well. As I continue to lose weight and change so much in my life, it's vital that I stay grounded and follow the example of what is working for others as well.  I need to make the time for that, just like I need to make the time for exercise and sleep.  We're in this together ... and I wouldn't have it any other way.