My life with a fuqd up achilles
*results not typical
Dude. Seriously. I'm in awe. But we'll get to that part later.
I went to the gym yesterday and worked my patooty off. According to Google Maps, the closest Gold's Gym here is 16 miles away. It's a trek, that's for sure. The next closest one is 30something miles away. Makes me appreciate the abundance of Gold's at home. Anyway... the gym I went to is pretty new and HUGE. I'm guessing it's so big since they don't seem to have any others in the immediate area. It's so big that one of the employees couldn't remember where the elliptical machines were. I eventually found them upstairs with a stellar view. I could look down to the first floor where all the bikes and treadmills were. Perfect for people watching. My goal was just 20 minutes on the elliptical. I tend to go overboard when I haven't been to the gym in awhile, and then get so sore it's hard to go back soon. I ended up doing 32 minutes, 2 minutes going backwards. Seems so easy, but damn, my thighs were burning during those 2 minutes. I'll have to work on that. Afterwards I headed to the locker room, and whoa, it was beautimous. Insanely awesome. Washed my hands and rinsed my face, and turned around and dum-dumdum, a scale. A real medical type scale. Ooooh, I have an opportunity to see if mom's scale is whacked. It was a couple pounds more than mom's but then again I had just finished guzzling 2 bottles of aquafina. So, mom's scale is actually accurate.
We have now arrived at the part of awe. I have actually lost about 10-11 pounds in 2 weeks. Crazy. Never happened before. I'm shocked. I'm super pumped. I still don't know what I'm doing different, but maybe it's just cuz I'm not paying much attention to it. So, I will try to continue to not think of it. Ha, yah, let me think about not thinking about it. Loverly dilemma.
how not to spend the day on your spouse's birthday
I get allergy shots. They are shots filled with stuff that I'm allergic to, like grasses, trees, molds, nuts, etc. I've been getting them for about a year and a half. I'm in my last series of bottles - maintenance - but I'm still creeping up to the maintenance dose.
After getting back from Raleigh last night, I crashed really early. Woke up this morning to go get my shot and to do some shopping for a present for Mike's birthday (which is today). After getting my shot, I went over to Encore Records and got him the KGSR Broadcasts volume 14. I then proceeded to Crate + Barrel to look for something I had in mind. While walking around the store, I started coughing a lot. This is odd, as most people who know me can attest to. I do not cough cuz I really really really hate when other people cough - don't ask, it's just a weird peeve of mine. I thought, hmm weird, but no biggie. Maybe I inhaled some dust or some raunchy old lady perfume. And then it starts to get really difficult to breathe, so I'm coughing a bit more. I also start itching the inside of my ear. I didn't find what I was looking for so I left the store, and started leaving that shopping center. I realized my breathing was worse and my throat was feeling really constricted. I called Mike at home and asked him to have an allergy pill ready for me when I got home cuz I thought I was having a reaction. Of course, Mike, the ever sane one, told me to screw that and go to the ER. I say nono, I just need a Zyrtec. So I zip home at lightning speed, and he's at the door waiting for me. Upon seeing me, he says "oh shit! fuck that, I'm taking you to the ER now!" Apparently I looked like one of those people in movies who gets stung by a bee and swells up beyond belief. Or, like Will Smith in Hitch after he ate something I think.
We get to the ER, Mike drops me off at the front so I run in and tell them what's going on, and at this point I'm crying cuz it's just starting to hurt so bad. I do not joke when I tell you, they made me fill out forms before doing anything. I was having more and more trouble reading, so once Mike got inside with me he helped me fill them out. Luckily as Mike was finishing that up, a nurse came up behind the admin chica, took one look at me and came running around to get me with a wheelchair. They did all the prelim stuff, blood pressure (crazy low), pulseox (crazy low), heart rate (kinda high), etcetc. Then they took me to another main room. I think they called it the "Crash Room". Dunno what that meant, but I sure got seen quicker than ever in an ER. There was a dude in an area beside me bleeding all over the place, so it must have been a pretty important room. A nurse gets me to take off my top and put on one of their lovely fashion pieces, and in doing so, everyone can see I'm covered in ginormous hive-type things. I start to notice them on my arms too, and they are swelling up like mad crazy too. They give me an IV, take some blood, pump some saline, benadryl, pepcid, and I think a steroid too. Since my BP was so low, they were going to give me epinephrine, but they kept taking it and it was on the rise. The doc said he would like to avoid giving me that cuz it would make me feel like complete ass. A considerate doc, who knew.
After waiting for a bit, a new nurse comes in and tells me she'll be giving me a breathing treatment. She hooks me up with that. Too bad it wasn't the happyfun breathing stuff. No such luck, just air laced with meds or something. Doc comes back, declares I look SO much better, but he wants to keep me a little while longer. Wait a bit, more checking, apparently I no longer look like a victim of Rocky Balboa (or even Rocky himself), so I'm told I can go. They give me my scripts and a paper that tells you all these wonderful things about what was wrong with you and what to watch out for and expect. It would apparently be very common if I had another occurrence, but unless it gets as bad, I should be ok. All said and done, we were in and out of there in exactly 2 hours. Excellent, if you ask me. I love Seton Northwest!
Afterwards, I got home, ate a bit, watch a bit of TV next to the fire, and then napped. I feel much better. Not 100% quite yet, but definitely a major improvement.
Um, Happy Birthday Mikey! 
Too Much Food
I've kept meaning to mention this, but I've just not gotten the chance to. On September 17, 2006, I started a diet. OOOh, *gasp*, shocker, I know. But, I don't start diets on a whim. My desire to lose weight is so strong that when I decide to start a diet, I commit fully.
I was on Weight Watchers for a year, and Jenny Craig for a year, and in those two years I only lost 17 pounds. So, I feel like most diets just don't work for me like the average dieter. One thing I did try for 4 months in 2005 was a low-glycemic diet on my own. I did it to the extreme though. No bad carbs at all - no rice, no pasta, no bread. I lost around 20 pounds doing that but that gets tiring quick. I consider myself extremely successful for managing that for 4 whole friggin months. One thing that did teach me is that out of all the different programs I've tried, the whole low GI was by far the most successful. So, recently while cruising online, as we all do, I ran across some stuff about Nutrisystem. They had recently redesigned their entire system to low-GI. OMG, I thought. So I looked some more. I was most curious about price, mais naturellement, and was still interested. For about $300, I could get food for 4 weeks. That includes three meals and one dessert. The fact that I hate to cook, and would by far rather not eat than have to worry about actually having to deal with the whole thing, this was looking mighty interesting.
I figured I'd try it for at least one go around. When you first purchase it, you get an extra week for free. So I got 5 weeks for just under $300. One of the shockers upon receiving it all, was that none of needs refrigerating or freezing. Wow, another reason to love it. It's not like I have a ton of room in there. I took some pics of all the stuff after unpacking. My main goal with this was not to lose weight, but to simply eat more regularly. With this, I just have to add stuff like salads, veggies, diary/protein. I did a breakdown of what that's costing me daily versus the way I'd been eating out, and the difference is crazy. The NS stuff alone costs me about the same, if not less, than what I was spending on going out to lunch everyday. Throw in some veggies, yogurt, salad stuff, and it's still nothing. I can already notice the difference in the bank account. Now I just gotta get Mike to stop eating lunch out everyday. HA! We shall see.
Another thing about me and diets is, I can tend to get a wee bit obsessive. In the past, I would weigh multiple times a day and store it in a spreadsheet along with every bit of food I would eat and all it's nutritional info. It was crazy. The only way I got over this was to stop weighing completely. I even started telling my doctors to not tell me what I weighed. I'm not that bad anymore, the only place I will weigh is at the doctor, and I don't mind seeing that anymore. So, I've gone to the doctor a couple times recently. Once a couple weeks before starting NS, and another time the other day. So, from those weigh-ins I have lost 5 pounds. That is so astonishing to me! I find it hard to eat so much frickin food sometimes, but I'm so excited. I'm totally diggin' the Nutrisystem thing, and am gonna keep it up. My next order from NS ships any day now. I know it sounds expensive, but it's actually saving me time and money, and I'm actually losing weight. Craziness.
So, I'm gonna try to keep y'all posted on my progress. Wish me luck!
(oh, and if anyone is interested in NS themselves... email me. as a member, I can give out $15 off referall coupons)