#156 Surgery Follow Up (12/11/12)

My polyp removal was a success.  My uterus is in good shape.  My right fallopian tube is good and clear.  My left fallopian tube has a small polyp that he left alone.  The doctor showed me a picture, it looks like a little rubber nub.  It isn’t cause for concern, and once you start to play with the fallopian tubes, things can get fried (his word not mine) pretty easily, so he left it there.  This is a bit step forward.  We have clearance to go ahead on my next period.  Which would be now, but because I have one more tooth that should be fixed before pregnancy, it will be in January. 

The countdown is on.  Approximately 38 days to my first IUI.  We are hoping the stars align and we are one of the few that gets a home run on the first try.  Not holding my breath, but hoping.  I went through Deb and my plan for pregnancy with the doctor and he did caution I may want to try more than three times, I mentioned, I realize that, but for now, this is the plan.  Virgos, we need a plan of action first, winging it doesn’t work. 

OT – I’m slowly getting my groove back towards weight loss.  The show The Walking Dead is helping with that.  We’ve signed up for Netflix and now I mostly limit my Walking Dead watching to when I’m working out, thus motivating me to get on the treadmill.  Whatever works I guess.  We’ve also been pretty good about eating healthy too.  

#153 Update in General (11/08/12)

Well, I was right, I didn’t get in and out of IM appointment as quickly as last time.  I got in to see the nurse right away, but then was waiting for the doctor for two hours.  Apparently the doctor I was supposed to see got snowed in, so he was filling in.  He said I was a low risk patient for surgery next week.  That is good news, nothing I didn’t know though.  As a precaution he might order a nebulizer before surgery to make sure my asthma is calm.  Not a bad idea, so that at least made it a little worthwhile for an appointment. 

While I had someone, I asked him about weight loss and nutrition.  He in general said to go to a nutritionist, as he didn’t want to give me bad advice.  So I did say what we were doing for Carb/Protien/Fat proportions, and asked where squashes fell in the vegetable category ie potatoes > broccoli.  It is somewhere in the middle, which is what I had figured.  Overall, our diet plan is pretty good, from what he was saying.  The problem is sticking to the plan. 

As far as our “diet” is going, the past few months have been a valley of denial.  Not going completely off the rail, but we’re not really making progress either.  My wife stopped logging onto MFP a while ago now.  Without her doing it along side, I’ve been lazy with my logging, and not doing it to the extent it should be done, as well as missing days entirely. 

I’ve stopped walking at lunch, even before the snow arrived.  The main reason was sweat.  The more I walked, the more I wanted to walk.  That is great in theory.  The downside to this is; it is a break at work, and the first place I sweat is my head.  My hair was beginning to look pretty slick in the afternoons.  Yuck.  The doctor gave me an idea though.  Nearing the end of the day, go up and down the flight of stairs in our building a few times.  It is only a few minutes of workout, but it is more calories burned than walking, and it is at the end of the day, so I wouldn’t need to worry as much about the sweat in my hair.  So I’m hoping to get that into action, maybe even today.  I say this as I snack on Kellogg’s Krave cereal, with 0 nutritional value, other than “fortified vitamins” I’m sure, as an after lunch snack.  It is a good think I only have a measured portion of this, as this cereal is a very moreish item.  If left unchecked I’m sure I would eat the entire box.  Alas, I think we will buy these anymore once the box is done. 

 

On the hopefully up side of our diet, we have purchased a book; A Year Full of Recipes.   So far this is inspiring us to cook from scratch, thus having less processed foods.  With some modifications to reduce oil used and various spices we don’t care for, these recipes have been a hit, and most meals being between 300-500 calories with sides on the recipe.  My wife has been doing the cooking so far, which is a lovely thing for her to do.  They are very filling dinners that are fairly nutritionally balanced, without overdoing it on the calories.  Yes they have some deserts, and we will probably make them, but the idea is only have deserts once/twice a week, instead of every day, which is a routine we have fallen into, even if they are small desserts.

 

I hope this meeting with the doctor is enough to help get me started again, be more focused on losing weight, while I have the time, before I try to get pregnant.  In the past year, since we bought the Wii Fit, I have lost about 12 pounds.  That is one pound a month.  This is not a large progress, but it is solid progress in my eyes.  We’ve made small changes here and there, but seem to lack the combination of using the small changes together to make a larger difference.  Hopefully over the next year we can work on that.  The one thing is though, we have been at this a year.  We haven’t been 100% goal oriented, but have majority kept going, kept plugging away.  I think this is the longest period of time where weight management has been at least remotely on my mind.  Some things have taken the focus off, Deb quitting smoking, going on a vacation, clearing a hoarder house, and a cruise full of buffets, but we have kept going and kept most of the weight loss off, so now is a time to start going down again. 

Everything in life has peaks and valleys, but at least life isn’t flat and boring.  

Sorry for the long winded post, just a lot to say today I guess.

#128 Timeline of IUI (09/11/12)

Well, it has been a fairly long journey to get to this point, and it is going to be a bit longer.  The trip started pretty much at the beginning of this year when my wife tried to quit smoking.  That took a few months, then testing for Rubella, and getting on the wait list for the fertility clinic.   It was about five months ago that we got the phone call about when we might get our first appointment.  After testing, purchasing sperm and more testing we now have a new timeline. 

The surgery to remove the polyp in my uterus is scheduled for mid November.  That is another two months away, then another cycle after that for our first attempt.  Late November would be my first ovulation after the surgery.  That is too early in my opinion, no healing time.  However the next ovulation would be over the Christmas/New Year period, which after reading a few other blogs, I’m not convinced our clinic will be open those days.  I’ve emailed the clinic to check. 

On the upside, that gives me more time to lose weight, on the downside, that is lessening the possibility of my Grandma flying over for the birth, even now that is a remote possibility.  My boss is happy of the delayed timeframe.  She is in slight denial that I would be leaving for maternity leave.    

As my other posts before this one, New Month, New Vigor or New Month, New Motivation, I need to kick up my weight loss again.  I don’t think I’m the only one that goes through this cycle of three steps forward and two steps backwards, or should I say three pounds lost, and two pounds gained.  As long as it doesn’t turn into two pounds lost and three gained, repeatedly it is still technically progress. 

So now I need to get rid of the cruise pounds, and continue on my weight loss lifestyle.  Going from full buffet for a week to normal is a hard transition.  I just had three cookies with Tea Tuesday.  Not a good diet choice.  Our vegetables haven’t been cut yet for our lunch salads either; Sunday had very good reasons, Monday medium good reason.  But tonight it is the night they have to get done.  I think my body is craving the veggies again. 

My current goal is to work out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, NO EXCUSES.  The closer I get to possible pregnancy the more worried I am that I will be put on bed rest because my body can’t support the weight of baby and pregnancy gain.  Well, today is Tuesday, and I have a million other things that need to be done, but I NEED to put working out in the top three. 

On the fertility goals, I have also put an email into our friend who is a Fertility Acupuncturist, who owns a clinic that focuses on Fertility, which also has massage, and chiropractic, along with a few other services. Currently I have three extended medical plans which has coverage for such things, and two of which have amounts that expire at the end of the year, thus, I might as well use them up.  So I am trying to be one relaxed cookie by the time I go for the first IUI treatment.  If only the plans also covered Manis/Pettis, that would be the ultimate relaxation day. 

#126 Catch Up (09/10/12)

Well, it has been over a week since my last post.  First major concern, last Friday, I found out, or donor for sperm is no longer in the system, and may not have sperm available for second pregnancies.  We are now having regrets not purchasing the full six at the time of purchase.  Alas, all things happen for a reason.  We will see how things go.  But it was a shock to our planning.  We are soon going to blitz through the sperm banks again and look for CMV positive donors as well, as a possible to save the current purchased items for my wife who needs CMV negative.  There are multiple options, but while we have the subscriptions for full profiles, we might as well use it. 

For the past week my wife, my MIL and I have been on vacation.  We went on a Cruise to Alaska.  It was a fantastic experience.  I had been worried about sea sickness, as I’m very prone to motion sickness in general, and while in Mexico, on various excursions on boats, experienced it to a varying degree.  Alas, I had my herbal Gravol in my pocket and took it when needed and was good to go.  I’ll post a few more pictures in a few days, with a bit more detail of our trip.  But here is one of a bear crossing our pathway while at a park in Juneau, and a rainbow we saw while on our boat.

The cruise was a floating buffet, so it was hard not be eat a lot.  It was diet killing, but worth it, I think.  In the end, I gained about 6 pounds, hopefully I can burn then off quickly.  Not holding my breath though, but will be working on it diligently. 

It seems Sunday was a day of days.  We got off to a slow start to have a morning to relax, watch some TV and started laundry.  While we were going through flyers to make up our shopping list we got a call from my FIL.  My MIL had slipped in a grocery store and was being attended by EMS and would be taken to the hospital, he just didn’t know which one yet.  Thankfully nothing got broken, but did end up with a lot of pulled ligaments in the back/inside of her legs. 

In the evening, while I was trying to take out the food processor to cut celery and cucumber for lunches, I sliced my thumb pretty good.  I yelled out ouch, and my wife yelled if I was ok, from upstairs, and I said “Not really.”  I had managed to get to the sink before blood started flowing quickly, but couldn’t get anything to put over it to stop the bleeding.  She rushed in and handed me some paper towel to be able to get me to the first aid station in our house upstairs.  We were on the debate on stitches or not, but once my thumb was above my heart for a while it stopped bleeding, one trip to emergency in a family per day is plenty.  So she put on a make shift butterfly bandage and taped/splinted me up so I couldn’t move my thumb and bust open again.  By this time it was after 10:00 pm and we still hadn’t had dinner, my MIL didn’t want the casserole I had made, she only wanted mushroom soup, so we made her some, then dished out the casserole for the three of us and took the plates/bowls to their house. 

While we were there, MIL finally reached the point where she needed some pain killers.  She hates taking anything, even for a headache.  So my wife went to our house to get something for her.  While there she let out the dogs for a quick run outside.  When she went to let them in something happened.  And this part is a good chuckle, only because he is ok.  My dog Tuffy was running full board into the house, but he missed the first step by a hair and ran straight into the slate riser.  It resulted in a temporary TKO (Total Knock Out).  My wife said Eep, and while she was wondering what to do, he regained consciousness.  He was a little wobbly for a bit, but seemed fine otherwise.  The story reminds me of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, so I have to chuckle. 

Now we are finally back on track, ready to work off the cruise pounds and process crab apple trees, browse sperm, and follow up when my Polyp surgery is.  Never a moment to say, what should we do today, there is always a long list of things to keep us busy. 

#119 Too Much (08/21/12)

Do you ever feel like there is just too much going on?  Like you are juggling and you start with one ball, then add another, and anther.  Three balls not too bad, but then more keep coming, you keep adding to the circle of balls you are juggling until you feel if anything else comes at you everything will come crashing down. 

Crohn’s is somewhat new to my life.  My mom lived with it from her 20’s and in the end died from a spinoff of the disease.  It is funny though, it never seemed to be a topic of discussion in our house growing up.  I knew she didn’t eat green vegetables as they hurt her stomach, and a few other things here and there.  She occasionally had to have Boost meal drinks on top of her meals to help boost her calories.  Over the years she had multiple surgeries to remove pieces of her intestine.  I’m pretty sure she was on prentizone to help manage the crohn’s.  Even though I lived with someone majorly affected by crohn’s all of my juvenile life, I don’t know much about the disease, probably more than the general population, but not much.  Now that I have it, (one juggle), my Virgo self needs to research it (two juggle). 

In the attempt to lose weight (three juggle) in order to get pregnant (four juggle) my wife and I are eating healthy, which is helping for the diet requirement for Crohn’s which was suggested, basically eat from the Canada Food Guide, and minimize animal fats. Originally I didn’t think that was much of an issue, but my wife brought up the question “Does that include dairy and eggs?”  In our house that is a major source of protein. Thus we may have possible major changes in diet (five juggle), but at the very lease tracking my diet through My Fitness Pal back to a higher degree of accuracy to get a better view of my macros, including the vitamins I take to make sure I’m getting the nutrients I need, especially for when I’m pregnant.

Also along the trying to get pregnant list, the polyp is the next issue (six juggle). Not a major thing (hopefully), but still something bugging my noodle. 

Then we have the general living category, learning to can fruit and deal with a mass harvest (seven juggle).  My job, thankfully isn’t that stressful, but does occupy a fair amount of my day (eight juggle), preparing the house for before I get pregnant (pre nesting), like personalizing the master bedroom (nine) organizing our storage (ten), clearing out non essentials to make room for baby stuff (eleven), preparing for the cruise (twelve).  That is a dozen things up in the air right now, some more stressful than others; the last one a good one, but we’ve never been on a cruise so I don’t know what to prep for. This is all stuff that is either a have to deal with or really want to deal with but I’m feeling very overwhelmed.  I just feel I could sleep for a week to let things settle in my head then have a game plan.  But for the most part, everything is happening as it happens.  As long as the dozen juggles doesn’t turn into a baker’s dozen before the cruise, I think the cruise will give me the much needed rest from the regular day to day to come back with Vim and Vigor to attack the next thing that needs to be dealt with.

#118 Fruit Trees Galore (08/20/12)

In case I haven’t quite mentioned this in my blog yet, between our house and MIL’s house we have a lot of fruit trees that need to be dealt with.  There are six apple/crap apple trees, one Nanking cherry tree, a Saskatoon (?) berry bush (still developing though), and two large trees yielding berries yet to be identified, maybe chokecherries. 

As a starter tool for something to use for this fruit we bought a dehydrator.  It took us a while to give it a go, but finally have tried it.  First round we made some strawberries, apples, and pears.  We need to tweak our strawberry process; they aren’t quite like the Special K Red berry version yet, but still taste nice on cereal.  The dried apples were good.  We left the peal on and they turned out nice.  Next time I think we will try and make apple chips and see what happens.  The surprise was the pears.  They were fantastic.  I can’t wait to make a LOT more of those.  Each food processor tray holds about two apples or pears or about one pound of strawberries. 

To help picking the nanking cherries we picked a cherry picker from Lee Valley Tools, as seen below. 

This is a fantastic tool.  I highly recommend it if you have berries en mass to pick and process.  In the process of learning to pit these lovely cherries my wife came up with the best method.  She would slightly crush the berries between two bowls of slightly different size, kind of like a pestle and mortar action on a larger scale.  She would then put them into another bowl for my MIL to take the pit out.  By crushing them first, this saved breaking the skin by hand and squirting juice across the table. 

On the first bunch of cherries we just boiled them down a bit and froze half of the portion and made the other half into a version of pudding that we usually make with rhubarb.  It was very good. 

On a more recent use of the food dehydrator, we made fruit leathers.  This was a good experience.  On the second batch of cherries, which we weighed this time to be around 10 pounds, we boiled again as above.  In one pot, though, we added pineapple, and some strawberries to the cherry mix.  Once both pots had cooled we put the mixed bunch into our blender and crushed it up.  It was still very sour due to the Nanking cherries, so we added some corn syrup, and blended some more.  For some reason part way through this exercise our blender started leaking out the bottom.  It had slightly come unscrewed. 

Once we got the flavour tamed a bit, we poured onto the sheets of the dehydrator.  I am very glad the dehydrator we got had a fruit leather liner for each tray.  On some of the trays we sprinkled coconut, and some shaved almonds, and one plain.  Originally we were going to freeze the other pot of just cherries, but ended up whipping that in the blender, adding corn syrup and making just a couple trays of just cherry flavour.  Then we still had some blended smoosh left.  My wife wanted to try and add some bananas.  (I can’t eat bananas, as they cause my stomach a lot of pain.)  So for the last two trays it was a banana/cherry mix with coconut or almonds. 

What did we learn from this experience? 

1.      Mixing a small amount of the cherries with some of the apple sauce I’m sure we will be making, in order to create the fruit leathers will be a good way to utilize the cherry flavor.  These leathers were very strong flavor so we can cut them down quite a bit with apples and or maybe trying melons, but the apples are free. 

2.      We need to watch the amount of corn syrup we put into the trying to be healthy snack. 

3.      Putting a small nut under the fruit sauce to create a peal spot is probably a good idea, but yet to be tested

4.      Don’t put too much sauce on the liners.  Put it in the middle then shake to even out, but if it is too much, or too close to the edges, it will leak over and make a mess. 

5.      Make sure the bottom of the blender is screwed on tightly, along with the top is on before you hit go. 

The next tool we purchased for handling the mass amount of apples is a food mill.  From what we have looked up the best way to process crab apples is to boil them whole until they are very soft.  Then put them through the food mill.  In theory the food mill will push the sauce through the mill, and keep the seeds and such in the mill to be cleared away. 

I think before we have MASS quantity ready, we will do a test bunch and see what happens.  If we wait, I have visions of I Love Lucy in the factory and things getting out of control and food getting everywhere.  The test will have to be before we head out on the Alaska Cruise at the beginning of September.  Stay tuned for Experiments in the Kitchen: Testing Crab Apples.

There is still more cherries to be picked though, trying the food mill on them might be the easiest way to get the pits out.  We’ll see.

#68 Writing....To save my life? (06/06/12)

The past couple days I’ve been wondering if I should bother writing my blog.  Due to the lack of progress in weight loss I’ve been in a slight funk.  The fact that I only have three people reading, I was almost saying why bother writing.  An email from Dharma (thanks Dharma for the encouragement) kept me coming back, but I was lacking the passion to write.  I had hit a dead zone kind of. 

However, on the flip side of things; I have three people (usually) reading my blog myself, Dharma and Partschick (my wife).  That is more than the one person and doing it just for me.  The email from Dharma was a nice reminder that it isn’t just me going through these things. 

Now that I’m slightly coming out of that funk, I realize how much the blog helps me, the most important reason I am doing this.  If I wasn’t writing and logging my food with some encouragement from my MFP pals I truly believe I would have quit ages ago.  Having a record of my thoughts is important to me, to keep me going, through the good moments, and especially the bad.  There are many ups and a lot of downs.  This isn’t a journey that promises smooth sailing. 

My weight loss is a journey to save my life.  Being morbidly obese is not healthy and will take me to an early grave.  It is not a might, it is a fact.  In order to avoid this early trip to bed with the worms I have to change my life. 

My weight loss is also a journey to create another life.  Being morbidly obese makes getting pregnant more difficult.  So the more weight I lose before going to the clinic the better.  Unfortunately my wife and I won’t have an OOP’s we got pregnant, we are having to work on it, so I’m hoping to lose as much as I can before I get my first appointment. 

By having a blog to record small steps and remember them is what is keeping me going.  I realized today how when I’m not in a funk, when I’m writing, it is like it has to come out of me.  Maybe it is a way for my body to communicate with me without my brain distorting the truth.  Then I can reflect on what I have written and see where I am, and where I have been, and where I need to go.  My voice seems to come out of my finger tips a lot better than in real life.

Many small steps will get us to our long term goals.  This journey will not be one gigantic leap.  Having the patience to last through all the small steps, even the ones going backwards, is a virtue we all need to learn. 

So in a way writing this blog is saving my life.  It keeps me going, it acts as a reminder, and it is a record of where I was, and what I was thinking.  So when I get to the end of my journey at a healthy weight, whatever that magic number is, however many years it takes, I will be able to go back to what I wrote to keep me from going back to where I was, where I am now.  I just have to remember this journey is measured in years, not days or months.  It is years now to lose the weight, and years will be added to my life, both measured in experiences because I am healthy enough to do things I want to do, and the longevity of my lifetime. 

#49 Eating Healthy; Does it take more time? (05/11/12)

Well, I’m sitting here eating my air popped popcorn with a Kernels Sweet & Salty shaker on it.  It had been measured into a Ziploc baggie for me to take for lunch.  This made me think of a conversation I had last night with my mother in law.  She laughed at the comment I made in my blog about healthy cooking/eating not taking that much more time.  She doesn’t agree. 

That got me to thinking how much time does my wife and I use to cook/eat healthier.  Once a week we cut a lot of veggies and fruit.  It is usually my wife cutting as I’m cleaning the kitchen or something.  Or we share the cutting.  The man hours into cutting is about an hour and a half.  That does our veggies for our lunches for the week and any leftovers goes into a stir fry at the end of the week.  For other dinners we have some frozen mixed veggies for stir fry or whatever was on sale at the time.  We currently have a fairly stocked freezer of frozen veggies. Measuring when cooking meals to make sure portion sizes are correct does take a little extra time, let’s say 10-15 minutes per dinner meal to measure and log the recipe.  We re-use recipes so that adds up to about an hour and a half per week, including all logging of all food.  For snacks we are now making our own prepackaged popcorn to have under 100 calorie snacks on hand.  That will be about an additional 30 minutes per week. 

Overall I think the weekly total for added time would be around 3.5 hours, so an average of 30 minutes a day.  Not usually a constant 30 minutes, but here and there for logging and measuring.  Allowing an extra 5 minutes around meals isn’t that bad.  Planning is a big helper.  Doing healthy on the fly is a little harder, depending on what you have on hand for groceries. 

In the end, I think the extra 30 minutes a day is well worth the trade now, to gain the years at the end of your life later.