Am I writing too much?

Yeah, I need to cut back on my blogging, but honestly, blogging is for me to work through this whole process.

Today I have six days until my VSG and today was stressful. Still is. I wish I could fast forward to The Day.

Today I took the kids to the dentist. My son who has autism has two interproximal cavities. That means a sedation appointment. Major stress. Thankfully they are small, so I can deal with those after I am healed. My daughter needs sealants again and the dentist's new office is to hell and back.

There were a lot of car accidents on the road and the traffic was really messed up.

I am stressing over my daughter's birthday and because I have not bought her presents yet. We are taking her to a game place and my anxiety is high over the cost and over just being in the place. Loud and I hate playing the games because I hate throwing money away.

So I am stressed. Last night I woke up and forgot to put my CPAP back on and slept most of the night without it. Plus, I woke up and had an email from someone who got mad at me about something that I did online.

Just for reference, I am stupid and if there is a good way or a bad way to take what I say -- always assume that I meant the good way.

Right now I am at about a 10 on the anxiety scale. Time for xanax.

What Might Have Been.

I wasn't going to write about this, but I am writing about this. Friday was a day of ups and downs. It started out with Charlie having the day off. Charlie is my 14 year old son who has autism. We went swimming and played in the water and that was a great time and a great workout.

Then we drove up to see Dad at work, which meant that Charlie would get to ride across the Kensington Bridge, which he loves because of the way the bridge makes the tires sound. We went to lunch with Dad and the pizza place that we went to had an item called a Savage Calzone, which is a calzone with no bread. How cool is that? It was awesome, but I only ate a bit and brought the rest home.

On the drive home, I got a call from the surgeon's office that my insurance approved my surgery! YAY! And I asked if they had any cancellations, could I move that surgery up? Yes! They said I could do it next Thursday! YAY!

As soon as I got in the door, I got a call from them that they had not been aware that the cancellation time slot was not to be filled and I was put back to my original date. :( But I was ok with this. I really was. I sort of panicked after I thought I only had six days to surgery.

Just minutes after that call, I got a call from someone who works with The View. Yes, the television program. They offered me the chance to be a guest of The View in New York City! YAY!

God, I love Rosie!!

They are doing a program on VSG and want pre-op participants to question a surgeon as they talk about Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy. I am so passionate about this, because I believe in this surgery.

Being able to be on The View would have been so cool and I accepted their invitation with a surging in my chest. I told my husband, who said he could watch the kids. However, there were two things keeping me from being able to actually do it. Finances and the fact that traveling just five days prior to my surgery would expose me to a lot of bugs. I am laying out a grand for my deductible. That's a chunk of change. Airline tickets were $500 and then there was the cost of a hotel...

But the kicker was the exposure to illness just five days before my surgery. If I got sick, most likely I would be getting ill either days before my surgery or right after it.

Apollo 13: "Jim, that's a lousy time for a fever."

 So I bowed out of The View.

Man, that really hurt. I wanted to fly there, stay in a hotel and be on the freaking View. But you know what? My HEALTH comes first.

So. A lot of ups and downs. It has been a roller coaster ride. I am trying to center myself and go on with life.

But hey! My surgery was approved!

I just wish that this climax to my six month's of hard work was not so anticlimactic. It deserved it's own moment.

Who has my back?

I am very happy to have received the call that my insurance company has approved my surgery! I think that this is the last thing on my list of things to think about, things that I needed to "worry about" over the surgery.

Now my focus is on staying healthy and preparing my house and my mind for the surgery. I am taking a friend's advice and plan to get my nose into a book that will keep me from trolling negative surgery stories and worrying my way into "worst case scenarios". There will be ups. There will be downs, but this is for me and I am grabbing it with both hands.

I believe that God has got this for me. I don't have to worry. February 4th is my day.

The coming holidays.

I have 6 minutes left before my kids are on Christmas break for nearly three weeks. In fact, before I finish this post, one of them will likely be home.

We have plans to make Christmas cookies this weekend. My son who has autism does this every year. He has no idea how hard it will be for me this year.

Because I don't want to pig out.

We have plans to see the autism friendly Nutcracker on the 23rd and then visit my husband's elderly aunt on the 24th. We never travel on the 25th.

By the time the kids go back to school, I will have gone from 6 weeks & 4 days until surgery to  4 weeks.

I guess I am writing this because I want to stay centered. Not because I think I am going to overeat, but because I am afraid that I will overstress. I am afraid that my pool will be jammed with people vacationing in our town. I am afraid that I will really have a hard time.

People will drop by, our house will be in disarray -- and by that, I mean, it will be a horrific mess. I will end up with hot flashes from anxiety and embarrassment.

I have to find something to wear for when we visit my husband's 87 year old aunt. God I hate dressing up. How to hide all of my lumps?

She still has the picture up of me when I hit 150 pounds on my last diet. She points to it often and asks, "Where is that girl?" This lady is in a size 22, herself. I wonder where HER thin person is.

Stress.

I guess I will try to use this time to really examine my eating triggers and see how to find a way to deal with them without food.

How hard can that be?

Vaccinating with Carbs

Last night I had to go pick up dog food at the store, I was grumpy and cranky from having said NO to myself too many times. I was really hungry.

As I was shopping, I felt like buying the whole store, but I kept reminding myself that I have food at home. I even felt like going out for take out fast food just so that I could eat it in the car.

Why?

Well, when I am deprived, I tend to want to eat alone so that no one will see me, this is guilt and it is a sense of having to "succeed" in front of people, but to eat on my own alone.

I went home and had a decent meal. This morning I had a good breakfast.

When I get into "the zone" of dieting, when I am eating way too little for my body, I get nuts and rebound. I need to remind myself to be moderate.

This is so important. Moderation. I can have the bread.I just need to stop before I eat eight pieces. Carbs are not the devil if taken in moderation.

I think that eating some carbs is like vaccinating. You get some of what can kill you, but it's a little bit, rather than the full virus.

Remember that carbs are the only food your brain eats.

A dream speaks to me.

I had my endoscopy and after a night of surfing you tube videos and watching so many ladies with complications, I was ready to throw in the Gastric Sleeve towel.

Well, I reminded myself not to make decisions during stressful times and I laid down and took a nap. While I was sleeping, I was dreaming about a friend of mine who is emotionally tied to a man who is just so bad for her. While he is not a physical abuser, he is a drunk and a drug addict. He adds nothing to her life but trauma.

In the dream, she was laying in a bed across from me and she was laying facing this boyfriend. Meanwhile, on the bed just on the other side of her, there was a good guy. Nicely dressed, calm, patient and loving and he was just waiting for her to see him. But she was focused so heavily on the guy in front of her that she couldn't see the nice guy.

I woke up saying,  "You have to let go of the crap you are holding onto, to have hands free to grasp the good that is waiting." I feel like I was spoken to by my inner ME.

And I know that a dream is not merely a movie or commercial that plays briefly in my head, it is my own mind telling me things about my life, if I am willing to listen.

I am still Sleeveward Bound.

Anxiety Girl

I have been Anxiety Girl lately:

Able to Leap to Conclusions at a single thought!
Able to keep magnifying situations to an impossible conclusion!

Yesterday was a tough day. The kids had been off of school for five days and then Charlie, our son who has autism, twisted his ankle and we ended up in the ER for three hours, getting an x-ray.

To relax, I went for a swim at the hotel pool that I swim at every day and Creepy Guy was there. I think he was. Creepy Guy is a guy who was making deep conversation with my nine year old daughter in the pool. Without going into a long drawn out story, I have decided to change my fitness membership to a club that has a pool and leaving this hotel for good.

SO with all of these thoughts in my head, and having watched The Walking Dead last Sunday, I had nightmares that were horrific. I mean, these are the kind of nightmares where I am afraid to go back to sleep at 3 am.

I had been worried about whether when I go to see my surgeon on Monday, whether they would just schedule me in, now that I have been diagnosed with sleep apnea. But I just now called the doctor's office and they said that I would still be going through the rest of the four months of dieting. That reassures me, because I believe I have more to work through mentally before I do this.

I am trying to settle myself down and relax. It's just hard when there is so much at stake and I keep asking myself:

Am I really unable to do this on my own?
Am I really this fat? - I don't really feel that fat, but apparently I am. I see it, but there is a subtle disconnect.

Ug. Well, I have to go get my driver's license renewed today and return library books. I could also do some housework first, which I should do. I am just being lazy woman today.

Sleep Study - Part II completed.

Yawn! I am tired from last night's sleep study. I did the titration study, which is required if they find out that you have sleep apnea, which I do. I was told that my initial study diagnosed 44 episodes of stopping breathing in an hour. Apnea is diagnosed as moderate if you have more than 14.

So here is the photo of me wired up and ready to put on the mask. I didn't photograph the mask. They used two. The first one was a nose only mask, but not the one that goes into the nose. This one is more like the little nose cup that they use at the dentist office for nitrous.

Halfway through the night, the technician changed my mask to a mouth and nose covering mask. This was because I was beginning to cough from the air drying out my throat. I slept MUCH better after that.

It did take me about two hours to fall asleep though. If I was able to read my book until I was tired, I think I would have dropped off sooner, but they wanted me in the bed, room darkened at ten and I wasn't tired yet.

So, today I am home and now I am off to go wash the glue out of my hair. Hot water and Dawn Dishwashing liquid (diluted). I wish I could go back to bed, but I have a repairman coming at nine.

My Stress

1. I realized that I had more money in the checking account than I should. Then I realized that our home equity bill had not come this month. In checking on it, it is due on the fifteenth. Apparently the bank mailed them late.

Wonderful.

Now I have three hundred bucks to last the rest of the month. :(

2. There was a lady at my pool who was new and I was the only one there with her. As I was getting into the pool she said, "I am bi-polar. Do you lose weight when you swim? My son is going to jail for possession of marijuana..."

I didn't know what to do. I was trying to get my twenty minute lap swim in. I tried to be polite, but finally had to say, "I have to get this swim done so that I can get home before my kids get home." Sorry! I swam longer just so that she was able to finish her swim, dress and leave before I got out. I didn't want to get into a locker room conversation with her.

3. I dreamed last night that I had a black thin thing like a string coming out of my right wrist. Painless. But I pulled on it and it was a long worm. Then there were two. I know, you are saying, damn, why did she TELL me this, well, believe me, there is a lot more that I am not writing. Let's just say I didn't get back to sleep.

4. I am on two facebook gastric sleeve boards and daily someone posts something scary. I can't take reading it. I won't post those things here because I haven't discussed the truth of them with my doctor. Gah. I hate being stressed like this.