Week Twenty-Four

(The header is a dad and two tired sons at the end of hiking a leg of the Tahoe Rim Trail a few years ago.)

 

Hello to anyone who is still out there!

These week-to-week news blogs are losing some steam, as the changes are like the Geico ad where the sloth slowly draws a tandem bike in a pictionary game….but we’ll try to keep them up for a while, with a poem thrown in for ho ho ho’s.

We are ten weeks out from surgery now, and I can definitively say I am feeling better, but there is a long ways to go.  Weight held about steady for the week, down just a skosh from 122.8 to 122.6.

I talked to my dietician yesterday and she encouraged my to keep track of my calories and enter them into a phone app she told me about.  And she said to add a tablespoon of healthy oil (flax seed, avocado, olive) to whatever I’m eating to increase my calories.  I only occasionally hit our goal of 1800 – 2000 calories a day.  I just get too darn full, or I miss a meal and my stomach is too small to make it up on the next meal.

I got a Timothy’s buttermilk bar the other morning and was pretty excited how easily that went down.  I told my dietician, and she said I should look for healthier calories…rats.  I could do a cinnamon roll or buttermilk bar every day!

I’ve been diligent with my PT exercises, three times a day, and they are getting easier.  I saw my PT today and he added some more exercises and bumped up what I’m already doing….arrgh.

My days are pretty routine.  I get up between 6 and 6:30 and have my first breakfast by 7 am, cottage cheese, flax seed oil, and blueberries.  Then I do my exercise routine.  After that, I might drift off for a little snooze in my chair.  Maybe then a walk, a short errand, or a little work on the computer.

Second breakfast between 9 and 10 am.  Maybe a smoothie, maybe an egg, maybe granola.  Then exercises again.

And so it goes…..I won’t take you through the rest of the day, except to say I’m in bed by 9 or 9:30 and I read for a little while.  Current read is The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck….quite good.

I’m starting to get a little worried about what I’m going to do regarding Christmas shopping…have done practically zilch so far.  Carol has been going great guns on the presents.  I hope she lets me put my name on some of the packages.

We’re going to a party tomorrow night where many of the attendees will be my morning swim group, whom I haven’t seen for 20 pounds.  I hope I don’t scare them.  Fortunately we’ll be in clothes and not swim suits!

Okay, that’s about it for this week.

And here’s a little poem about being a little tense:

 

Intense

Let me tell you about being focused…..

I used to carpool to work

with a neighbor named John.

 

We parked the car in a garage

Near where I worked

About five blocks from John’s building.

 

I drove more often than John

Because my job seemed to have more crises

And I often had to stay late to work on them.

 

When I drove

I’d drop John off at his office in the morning

and continue on to the garage by my building.

 

On one of those crisis days

I told John I’d pick him up at his building

But that I’d be a little late.

 

When the issue was resolved

I left work to pick up John

But the problem continued to plague me.

 

I rehashed the situation in my mind

Kind of second-guessing myself

Wondering if I made the right decision.

 

As I was driving up the freeway ramp toward home

I turned to John to ask him his opinion

On my work crisis.

 

But John wasn’t there…I never picked him up.