GYN Appt Canceled...AGAIN!

Dammit.

My first appointment was for April 22, a five week wait. Then it got changed to today, the 30th, so a six week wait. They called at 10 am this morning, four hours before the appointment, to tell me they had to cancel. Not only that, but I had an appointment with the wrong doctor, a man, and all my insisting I see the woman doctor was for naught. WTF??

I'M SO PISSED!! AND FRUSTRATED!!

I'm tired of the heavy periods, being crazy a whole week out of every month (and I mean crazy, like, really crazy--lots of rage, scary rage.), and this week I've had night sweats every night.

I can't take it.

First world problem. It's all about perspective.

When I'm throwing hammers out the back door into the yard and pacing the house with my hands clenched in front of me while screaming? That's not good. And also not normal behavior even for me. (Why the hammer throw? I was taking down the old crappy vertical vinyl blinds in the dining room and I couldn't get several screws out. I tried wiggling them around with the hammer to no avail. And that's when it went flying. For the record, the shit screw was about 5 inches long, stripped, and screwed into the frame. WTF? I had to use pliers to slowly unscrew it and get it out, but not before I made a big whole in the plaster, and which I had to spackle over. Urgh.)

I have an appointment for May 11, with the woman doctor I originally requested. She's the only woman in the area who takes my insurance, and she's a 90 minute drive away. Fuck fuck fuck.

My mom called her gyn to see how much a cash visit would be, and it's only $100-. He's a man, but he's a grandfatherly type who has treated my mom with a lot of kindness and compassion, so I would consider it. I'm also wondering if Planned Parenthood sees peri-menopausal women. I need to think about both.

My mouth is still sore, better than yesterday, so maybe it's for the best as I really didn't feel up for a long drive, but dammit, I'm having problems here and I need help.

Shifuckdamnpisshell.

I'm Down

Physically, that is. I was 189 this morning. I haven't seen that since high school. And I was in a bigger size then, a snug 16. I'm rapidly approaching a size 14 in pants. I've been a 14 on top for months. Of course, I also grew another inch when I was 19 from 5'9" to 5'10". I always wanted to be tall, and I got my wish.

My size 16 jeans, the new ones, are bagging in the seat and thighs. Petunia, the big hernia, makes them tight in the waist. I see my surgeon next month. I'm looking forward to it just because I like him and appreciate his expertise, compassion, honesty, and humor. Also? I'm hoping he'll help me fight my HMO to have him do the hernia repair.

I have some lose skin, primarily on my upper arms and upper thighs, tops of knees a bit, and my ass basically came to rest on top of my thighs. Honestly? I've seen much, much worse. A friend who is losing weight through just diet and exercise and has lost over 50 pounds in the last year also has loose skin. It's a reality of being obese for a long time and then losing. I would consider the arms, and if a panni gets thrown in with the hernia repair, I would do it, but everything else? Not gonna do it. I so do not like pain, and I have a low, low, low pain tolerance. So fuck that.

Anyways...so the remarkable thing about the weight loss--including the 13 I gained during 'carb week', i.e., PMS (UGH!! TG I see the GYN this week, amen), is that I ate all my meals out. I had eggs, Thai food (grilled chicken with salad, quesadillas with the tortilla being my only carb for the day (flourish), some fruit, more salad, steak, and so on. So pat on the back to me. Actually? It was easy. The carb cravings have abated, as they do every month.  I still want snacks, but I have the ability to tell myself "NO."

Oops, my battery is dying. I have to stop right here. Back later.

***
OK, we transitioned from McDonald's, which was full of screaming teenagers anyway, to Burger King, and who has electrical outlets, unlike McDonald's.

I also had ice cream while at my mom's, twice (two nights in a row). I hated to leave it, but it would have melted anyway, so just as well. (For the record:  Tillamook Marionberry and Dreyer's 1/2 the fat (lower carbs) S'mores ice cream. Both really good.)

Tomorrow I'm having dental surgery. I'm not looking forward to that but it must be done. I hope I get good pain meds, and I don't mean Vicodin (which does nothing but put me to sleep--no pain relief). I wonder if I should get a small bottle of vodka to swish my mouth--I've found that to be a very effective and instant pain reliever--swish and spit. I have eleven more months of teetotaling per my surgeon post DS surgery. I don't really miss it, but I do like a margarita on a hot day. Next year.

Well, this will be another busy week. Friday I took my mom to the doctor, out to lunch, the bookstore, Pier One, and dinner; out on Saturday for breakfast and lunch, we got caught in an abrupt thunderstorm without coats or umbrellas, then went home early, watch TV (HGTV), and went to bed early. Yesterday I went with my MIL to visit my FIL who is in the hospital still, fading, depressed, and just generally not doing well. It's just not good. We stayed a couple of hours.

Then we went over to the big fancy shopping mall for a garden show--we barely made it out of Macy's (I got two gorgeous blouses for $30-, good quality, good names), and I got some iris rhizomes for my garden, just barely. They were packing up to leave. I strongarmed my MIL to stopping for some food because I was starving and she only drinks those disgusting Glucerna shakes--she doesn't eat. I mean, rarely. (Only when everyone is asleep, and then she sneak eats sugar and ice cream). I had a bacon/egg spinach salad, very good. I didn't eat most of the spinach, but all the egg and bacon with dijon vinagrette. Very good.

Then I came home late after watching GAME OF THRONES (she DVRs it, we don't even have a TV service), and got stuck in a bad traffic jam. REAL bad. It took me 45 minutes to go about two miles. ^&%$ I wish I had known, I would have taken another route, but one assumes at 11:00 pm at night that there will not be much traffic. Silly me.

Into bed, read for a bit, then slept until 9 am. Wow.  And boy does our house need a cleaning. Nothing like three days away to see all the flaws. I don't know how much will get done after my dental work and then a gyn appt later in the week, plus therapy. *sigh*  It ain't easy bein' human. LOL

At least I'm trying.

Cheers

Eating Fool Followed by Cooking Fool

I spent the last week or so--through yesterday--craving and bingeing on carbs. It's hormonal, I've watched it happen over and over again every damn fucking month. I was doing much better than previous months, and then Monday I had to go to Target for something...groceries, I think (sale?), and I bought two boxes of PopTarts, one strawberry, one cinnamon brown sugar. Oh it wasn't spur of the moment, it was planned. Every damn bit of it. I actually ate a pack of strawberry ones in the car, dry, on the way home. I ate two more, toasted with butter, later that day. The next day I had a big dental appointment--I needed to have my trainwreck of a mouth evaluated for dentures--and I was stressing big time. The closer to the appointment time it got, the more stressed I got. I ate two cinnamon PopTarts; then two strawberry; then two more cinnamon. I expected GI fallout, but I didn't expect it to be immediate. As I showered and dressed to drive to my appointment, my stomach was already gurgling and bubbling. My normally comfortably fitting GV jeans were snug. It was gas. I farted all the way to the office. Then it stopped.

It started again while I was filling out papers and waiting. I held it through x-rays, reading as I waited for the dentist, talking to him about my medical history, past, current history (cancer NED: diabetes remission, HBP remission, in fact, low blood pressure "that's too low" he said. I know. I'm salting...), and my wreck of a mouth. He concurred on the dentures, a full upper and partial lower, he laid out a treatment plan and then offered valium for the day of treatment (actually, I'll take two the night before, then one one hour before treatment. I got it late in the day so my husband can take me and drive me home.). So the first of the extractions starts on Tuesday. Then we wait and pull the rest and the denture should be made by then.

So I'm holding it the whole time. I'm starting to feel like I'm going to shit my pants. The gas gurgles back up inside me and makes a loud, LOUD noise. I spent a bit of time talking to the finance / scheduling manager about DS surgery. I even gave her my surgeon's card that I carry in case of emergency (I thought I had more, somewhere), and we had a good talk. Side note: It's going to cost a fortune to fix my teeth. I'm not kidding.

I finally get out of there, drive to a Del Taco, rush inside--OMG TG the door is not locked--and I spend about 30 minutes in there. I carry around a little bottle of Peppermint body spray from Bath and Beauty that really covers up the smell of gas/poop. I was spraying. Luckily no one came in while I was in there. But aftewards, I felt SO much better. And I'm starving. I had planned on a Panera lunch. I hadn't been there since last May when I ate onions, which gave me severe diarrhea, which caused dehydration, which put me in the ER with SVT--supra-ventricular-tachycardia, or racing heartbeat. It was over 200 beats a minute (I want to say 290, but I'd have to check. Too high.) I had a Thai chicken salad and a cup of tomato soup and a few bites of baguette with green tea. It was really good and filling.

And I hated myself for eating the PopTarts. I came home and took the last PopTart and threw it out the kitchen door into the yard. The next morning it was gone, so something around here likes PopTarts. LOL

My hormones made me a crazy person. I mean...really, really crazy. Just emotional cycling up and down, rage sadness rage sadness anger depression rage. It's horrible. I felt like a tiger trapped in a cage. But then it passed, and I feel like myself. Today I was back at Target because I needed a new coffeemaker (The horror! Where will I go? What will I do? I must have coffee!). It was a cheap one I bought specifically to take traveling while we were semi-homeless living out of hotels. It was less than $20. I bought it in October so it lasted seven-and-a-half months. POS. So I did some online comparison shopping on my phone last night, and I found one I liked and that was on sale 20% off through Target's Cartwheel program. So I drove down today and bought it.  I wanted the rose-colored one but all they had available is the silver and black, which actually matches the kitchen. I made some coffee in it, and it tasted very good. I can brew it dark. Heh. It's got a lot of tech gadgets on it, so I'll be referring to the handbook for a while until I get it down. But it was a helluva deal.

Since I was there, I was going to utilize the free WiFi at the Starbucks inside Tarjay to do some websurfing. I was also hungry, so I got a chicken cobb salad out of the deli case. OMG, it was delicous. Grilled chicken, shredded bacon, bleu cheese, a whole boiled egg, ranch dressing (carrots and tomatoes, which I ignored. The former is too high in carbs, the latter is yucky. I brought them home for DH). I got full about 2/3 of the way through so I set a timer to check in fifteen minutes if I was still hungry and/or had room, I could keep eating, or otherwise take it home. I ate it. Well, I didn't eat most of the lettuce, maybe a 1/3 of it, less? I chucked it.

But here's the thing:  I had to walk through the bakery section to get to the salad case. I told myself I could have anything I wanted--cupcakes with frosting, Lofthouse cookies, muffins, cookies, cake, pie...and nothing appealed to me. Nothing. I walked by with not a care. Yesterday I might have bought one of everything.

I always want carbs, and three weeks of the month I can keep away from them. But that fourth? It's a bitch (and so am I LOL). I see the GYN next week, I hope she can help me. I also want to schedule a psychiatrist appointment to see if he has any advice or tweaks to meds he/she may know of. I can't stand being crazy one week out of the month. I can't stand to be around myself. It's pitiful.

***
I came home today and started cooking. I was only going to make this Paleo Chicken Pad Thai for the Crockpot. It just finished cooking about an hour ago, and it's very, very good although it tastes nothing like Pad Thai. I made it with skin-on chicken thighs, browned in olive oil and butter first, and I added a lot of cilantro. I made six thighs, not four. I used the whole can of coconut milk, two cups of broth, and upped all the other ingredients slightly. Like I said, it's very, very good, but more of a coconut peanut chicken than pad Thai.

So since I was cooking already, I browned up some ground beef with garlic salt, black pepper, and Mrs. Dash Southwest seasoning (chili powder and cumin are big ingredients--very good) for use with eggs and taco bowls for lunches; then I cooked some rice to go with the chicken for my husband's lunches. Then I made these cookies and OMG are they good. I'm going to have them for breakfast. I ate three for dinner. LOL  *I made them with butter instead of coconut oil, and they spread quite a bit. Regardless, they taste like anything you'd get at a nice bakery. Delish.

I also made a big bowl of my new favorite dessert, sugar free raspberry Jello with pureed cottage cheese. It is nummy, like raspberry pudding. I'm too full now to have any, but if I weren't it would be with whipped cream. :-)  I had made this with cream cheese and, although I liked the taste, the texture was very cement-like and felt like a brick in my stomach. So I tried the creamed cottage cheese and it is more of a pudding texture. Really good. It lasts five days if I have a little every night. Delish with lots of protein.

My weight? I had lost eight of the thirteen pounds, but that was pre PopTarts. I'm going to weigh on Monday after five clean days of eating.

Recipe:

32 ounces 4% cottage cheese, pureed
1 large package sugar free Jello, flavor of your choice--I like raspberry
2 cups boiling water

Mix SF Jello with boiling water until dissolved. Cool 20 - 30 minutes. Puree all 32 ounces of cottage cheese in a food processor. I tried it in a blender and it just came out lumpy, not the texture I wanted.

Once pureed until smooth, whisk into cooled Jello. Chill. Scoop some up or let it chill in small dessert dishes, but no matter what, don't forget the whipped cream! I really feel decadent (and healthy!) when I eat it. It really satisfies that sweet tooth.

***UPDATE***

Do not, and I mean, DO NOT make the strawberry chocolate brownie cookies. They are addictive. They are that damn good. I ate about four last night before bed, put them away, had a bunch this morning  with coffee (they fell apart so mostly pieces, but probably around four), so I put them in the freezer. Holy shit, they really triggered that chocolate/carb reflex. Man.

Also, if I were to make them again--I would make them AS a brownie--parchment lined pan, bake, cool, lift parchment from pan, then cut with pizza cutter. Cool, put in ziplocs to go right into the freezer for morning or snack portions.

Just be careful if you like the carbs. That's all I'm sayin.

Random

* I did not eat the PopTarts
* There was minimal fallout from the overindulgence in the chips
* I never took measurements. I never cared. This has never been about appearance
* Having leftover Chinese takeout for brekkie

Well Crap

I've been dealing with the food demons. I'm guessing this is going to be a lifelong thing. Sigh.

After ten days of too high carbs, I polished that off with a long weekend (3 days) of LOTS of carbs.

Donuts. PopTarts (with butter, of course). French Toast (SF syrup...mitigating...). Potato chips (Lay's sour cream and cheddar. With ranch dip.) Followed by three days of crapping my brains out, including in the middle of the night. Good times.

Today was my third day of my carb detox. Usually by now the carb cravings have stopped and it's less a matter of thoughtful eating versus ironclad willpower. Today I went to therapy and I talked about my THIRTEEN pound weight gain. Yeah, in ten days. I certainly didn't eat 13 pounds of food, and 3 pounds are already gone in just a few days, so I'm guessing that some of it is water weight. Plus, we're heading into the end of the month so my lady bits are kicking into gear and sabotaging my hormones / carb cravings. I think. I don't know. I see my new gynecologist at the end of the month. Whatever.

So today was my third day of clean DS eating. High protein and fat, low carbs (under 50). I made a batch of the almond cookies with a piece of strawberry  (one berry cut into eighths), and one SF chocolate chip. I don't really like SF chocolate chip so I'll skip that in the future. I have them with coffee when I get up, like a breakfast biscuit. But today I had to drive to therapy, 45 minutes away (but worth it), and I wanted a cup of coffee after. I have a Starbucks I like, the closest to where I live, and I needed to pee, so I went inside the store. Long line. Standing in front of the bakery case. Looking. Staring. Having already thought long and hard about a blueberry scone (SO good. Yeah, had two last week. *rolleyes*).

Then I saw that they had bags of almonds. I got one of those instead, then felt like I should get a gold g*ddamn medal for my bravery and perseverance. (Entitled much, Jules? Sigh.) And a big Pike Place with half/half, cinnamon, chocolate powder, two Splenda (I didn't have any Stevia with me, my go-to sweetener.). Very good. Satisfying.

Got Panda takeout as a treat because my husband hates any Asian food, so I eat it whenever I can when he's not with me. I got the hot & sour soup, green bean chicken (still in the fridge with half the soup), and holy G*d, they have spare ribs. They are delish! OMG, I hope they stay on the menu permanently. Wow. So tender, kind of Korean BBQ-y, with a bit of heat at the end. Wow. Then I remembered that I still had PopTarts in the cupboard.

I read for a while trying not to obsess about them. That worked. Then I remembered the potato chips (see above) and the dip still in the fridge. I ate a lot of chips. I finished off the dip. My tummy is gurgling and the gas is starting. A few chips is ok, half a bag? Not so ok. And I'm still thinking about the damn PopTarts (cinnamon, my favorite).

So I took a shower because I got cold. And I looked at all the different scents of shower gel littering the shower:  Guava/watermelon. Lemon. Fig/citrus. Emerald something. Vanilla something  (a xmas gift which I don't use because it smells like sugar cookies and yeah, trigger. I think my mom will get both it and the sugar scrub). Cucumber/melon. Grapefruit. And the nail polishes. Skincare products and makeup. Even a new brush (purple tie-dye and $2-!).

I'm trying to fill that empty hole inside of me with something. Food or shopping so far. I did take a hit off my mom's cigarette after one of the vet visits for her poor kitty (who at four-years-old was found to be full of tumors in his bones and spleen and spreading and had to be put down. Devastating grief all around.), the cigarette was nasty and I put it out and gave it back to her. Bleah. I can't believe I used to do that 20 times a day. It's been almost ten years since I quit.

No drinking, doctor's orders. I had two sips of champagne at Christmas, and that's been it for a year+. As a cancer survivor (Ocular Melanoma), if it metastasizes, it will go to my liver first most likely. I also had hepatitis (Not A, B or C, I got tested. I hear it's up to K, now), when I was 20 so I'm always conscious of what my liver is doing. As an obese person I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The MRI I had last June, to check for metastasis, also showed that nearly all the fat was gone from my liver post-surgery. WIN. So I'm extra careful about my liver. Plus, I've never been a big drinker. But I sure would like a few belts. One more year of teetotaling. It's for the best. Who knows what I'd do with alcohol. Sigh.

Where did this empty hole come from? Why can't I fill it? Food does't help. Cosmetics / shopping doesn't help. It's not something that can come externally, it has to come from inside,  internally, from me, my soul/heart/brain/spririt. I don't know how to do it. I'm trying, I'm really trying. But right now all I can think about are those fucking PopTarts. Lalalala! Make it stop.

Sabotage

I have been my own saboteur.

This past weekend, which started on Friday for me, found me eating anything I wanted. Granted, the portions were small because most of my stomach is gone and it's not stretched out, but I ate things like three bites of pancakes with butter and SF syrup. A slice of french toast, butter and SF syrup. Frozen yogurt. With fruit.

Like that.

I did this intentionally, with forethought, because I was 1. super stressed and 2. not wanting to lose anymore weight.

My weight is up 3 pounds today. No surprise. Actually, it made me feel happy.

Of course, there has been fallout, most of it involving the back exit of the body. *ahem* Along with gurgling, pressure, and gas.

I'm back to regular DS eating today because honestly? I'm tired of the foods I was eating. I'm craving protein so that should tell me something.

For breakfast today I had three slices of thick cut bacon, and three almond thumbprint cookies with dried blueberries from All Day I Dream of Food (low carb and high protein).

Lunch will probably be deviled eggs, and dinner I have chicken defrosting for my husband and I.

I really don't want to lose any more weight, but I need to eat like a DS-er for my health. My body is going to continue to drop weight whether I like it or not. Having a dysfunctional relationship with food is not good for my mind or body. Right now? Right now I'm sorry I had this surgery. Maintaining my new body is a lot of work. It's pissing me off, but everything is pissing me off lately. (Stress much, Jules?) I'll keep taking care of it, but I reserve the right to bitch at will.

&^%$#@!

Haggard

This is how I look most of the time: tired, droopy, fuzzy, sallow, and haggard. I don't like it. And having others tell me I look "healthy"  and "great" feels like a knife in the gut. I look neither. I look ragged...rode hard and put away wet.

Granted, this was also a weekend where I grieved with my mother over the loss of her darling kitty, Mr. Boo; visited my father-in-law (FIL) at the spinal center at the VA (talk about a dose of reality. Those guys/gals are BRAVE.); deal with my BIL's and MIL's selfish, narcissistic, dysfunctional kind of crazy (*rolleyes*); drove hundreds of miles, sometimes in miserable traffic=exhausted.

Also? Even though I look like the above most of the time? Inside? I feel great. But the above picture is the truth. I look rundown. Maybe I am.

I Don't Want to Lose Anymore Weight

I'm fine where I am. I'm healthy, I feel good physically, I wear "normal-sized" clothes now. It's enough.

What I am becoming is a wrinkly bag of bones. That I am not ok with.

I had the DS to become healthy. That is accomplished. It was never about looks or appearance.

Fat I could handle, wrinkles I cannot. I mean...even my wrists are wrinkled. This wrinkly thing has progressed quickly in the last few weeks. One day is was just barely, the next *bam* mega-wrinkled.
I don't like it.

You know what else I don't like? More surgeries. I'll need a hernia repair, and we'll see how that goes, but otherwise? I'm done with surgery unless my life is on the line. My pain tolerance is low and I never get enough pain medicine. Plus....as a redhead, I need more anesthesia and it takes longer to work its way out of my system.

My face has aged 50 years. I looked better at about 220 lbs.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm not going to intentionally sabotage myself. I am going to continue to eat healthily and appropriately (for my body's plumbing), but I really do not want to lose any more weight. I'm fine, right here, maybe plus 20 pounds. I may not have a say in this.

I do not like what I see in the mirror. I look skeletal and very unhealthy as well as unhappy.  I also feel vulnerable, physically.

I'm sick of all the male attention I'm getting. It frightens me. I trust no one in public. I don't feel I can defend myself. This is a new feeling for me. I always defended others. Now I feel weak.