My Grandma, Leila

Originally posted in September 2013

Sorry y'all, it's been a really long time.  I have thought about writing some pointless stories, but haven't gotten around to it--I'm pretty busy living them out in daily life.  But I recently attended a fundraising kickoff for the ALS Association's Walk to Defeat ALS.  And that's how I ended up here, writing a pointless story for you.  Except this one kinda has a point - it just takes extra long to get there.

Eleven years ago I got married.  I was thrilled that both of my living grandparents were able to attend: my mom's mom, Leila, and my dad's dad, Fred.  Not long before my wedding, I talked to my grandma a couple of times on the phone.  Something seemed strange about the way she was talking, as if she was having a hard time making her words come out.

By the time she came out to Arizona for my wedding in June, she had also been having some issues with one of her legs.  I can't remember if she thought the problem was her knee or her ankle, but something was going on.

I traveled to Indiana two months later to attend my cousin's wedding.  Since my new husband wasn't able to make it, I had the opportunity to stick to Grandma like she was my date.  Her symptoms seemed to be a little worse, and I remember trying to help her through the buffet line and getting up to get things for her, like a piece of wedding cake.  It was kind of baffling what could be causing these issues, but I never could have imagined the truth.

On December 30, 2002, she received a diagnosis.  Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  I had heard of Lou Gehrig's Disease, but I had no inkling what it actually was.  Oh, how I wish I never knew, how I wish it never existed, how I wish it was curable - or even treatable.

In the days that followed, I learned what ALS was all about from the ALS Association website.  It's a motor neuron disease that basically leads to paralysis and death - usually when muscles used for breathing are unable to work any longer.  The kicker is that the mind is unaffected, meaning the person with ALS is completely aware of what is happening to her body.  There are two typical types of onset - one involves mobility and the other involves the mouth and speech.  Grandma seemed to have both, but her speech was gone quickly.  That made it even harder, as attempts to communicate became more difficult.

My mom could not bear the idea of sending Grandma to some nursing home or hospice to die.  With no other reasonable alternatives, the decision was made to bring Grandma to Arizona to my parents' house.  They made some modifications, including creating a new entrance to a room that became Grandma's bedroom, altering the bathroom according to recommendations from ALS Association, and dealing with the popcorn ceiling, which harbors dust and can become a breathing hazard.  At first it was difficult because while Grandma loved to see her family, she didn't necessarily want to be here.  After Grandpa died, she stayed on the farm in Indiana until her children practically forced her to move into town following an episode of severe sickness that happened when she was snowed in, alone.  Now, she wasn't even permitted to finish her life in her own home, her town, her state, or even her region of the country.

We could appreciate that this was not what she wanted, and we had no choice but to support her decisions to establish a DNR, to refuse a feeding tube, and to refuse a ventilator.  Unlike many people with ALS that I have met or heard about, Grandma did not want to fight.  She learned what this disease would do to her and wanted it to be over with as soon as possible.  Maybe she just longed to see Grandpa again, and her mom, and others who had gone to heaven before her.

I believe without a doubt that her unwillingness to fight contributed to the speed at which her ALS progressed.  I was a newlywed, working full time, and attending evening classes for my MBA.  Once she arrived in Arizona, it was already February.  I regret not finding more time to visit with her.  They said that the average person with ALS lives 2-5 years after diagnosis.  I really thought I had more time.  We made plans to participate in the ALS Association's big fundraiser, which was called Walk to D'feet ALS.  (It is now the Walk to Defeat ALS.)  The Walk was scheduled for the fall.

In the month or two before Grandma passed away, my mom's siblings came to visit her.  It was a hard time.  Mom had to hire a 24 hour nurse, who slept on their couch.  Grandma wasn't able to speak, and was losing the ability to swallow, too.  It had been some time since she was able to walk, and other simple abilities, like sitting and using her arms, were disappearing.  She had the look of someone who was suffering.

That July I had signed up for a summer elective course that was going to be all day Friday and Saturday, for two weeks.  Mom was preparing to go to the NOMOTC Convention in Albuquerque (National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs, Inc.) and Dad was going to drive her there.  They were leaving Saturday morning, 7/19/2003.  The Wednesday before, a bunch of us got together at their house to see Grandma.  Things were not looking good and my mom pulled me aside to give me instructions on the off chance that Grandma passed away while they were out of town.  The doctor thought she would last another few weeks, but we weren't sure what to think.

We had a good visit although it was hard for me.  For all of us, I'm sure.  I don't even remember who was there.  I had decided to make a present for Grandma - her birthday was coming up next month.  I had bought a wooden 8x10 picture frame, some pink rose paper, pink ribbon, and cardstock.  I used a calligraphy style marker and wrote as neatly as I could: "Grandma, You are so loved."  When I finished putting the materials together in the frame, it was done prior to that Wednesday.  I couldn't explain why I felt a nudge to bring it that night to give it to her early - not to wait for her birthday.  I'm so glad I listened to that feeling.

When I gave it to her, I told her I made her a present and didn't want to wait for her birthday - this way she could have it now and look at it whenever she wanted.  I positioned it so she could see it and I read it out loud to her.  She was completely immobile by then save for her eyes.  She looked at it and she looked at me.  Her facial muscles were stuck in the same expression, so I didn't have any nonverbal cues to figure out what she was thinking or what she might have wanted to say to me.  I wanted to know if she liked it, if she understood what it meant from me, if she knew there were many people who loved her and were unable to express that love to her to its real depth.  That she was important, and her life mattered!

All I had were her two eyes, looking at it, looking at me.  She gave me a long look.  One I took to be the fierce attempt to tell me she loved me and my gift meant the world to her.  And almost immediately I doubted what I thought I saw, doubted myself, inwardly chastised myself for inventing this because it's what I wanted it to be.

I tried to stay close to her during that evening.  Sometimes I put my hand on hers, and tried not to feel awkward because I wanted to hold her hand but wasn't sure if it would be uncomfortable for her - what pains she was feeling in those dying parts of her body.  I just couldn't believe how fast we had come to this point, where she was barely living and we all wanted to hold on to her.  I told her I was going to have my class on Saturday and promised to come see her as soon as it was over.

Saturday morning, I was sitting in that class.  Mom and Dad had left for Albuquerque.  My sister had left for work.  The only souls in the house belonged to Grandma, my sister's dog Wrigley, and Grandma's nurse.  After her family had left the house, Grandma decided she wanted to go to a birthday party.  A heavenly birthday party for her husband, my Grandpa, who had died in 1996.  July 19 was his birthday.

~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*

In November 2022 I will Walk to Defeat ALS for a 20th time in memory of my dear grandma.  Now, it's worse - now, I have known of more people who have had ALS, more people who have also died fighting ALS, even some my age.  ALS is still considered one of the rare and orphan diseases, but it's more common than you think.  Those fighting ALS and caring for those living with ALS need my help and yours. There is no way to know if another person I love, or even myself, will be next.

And that brings me to the reason for this story.  At the fundraising kickoff for the Walk to Defeat ALS, I learned that the walk makes up about 2/3 of the annual budget for the Arizona Chapter of the ALS Association.  The AZ ALSA provides durable medical equipment to people with ALS (PALS), it provides services to PALS and their caregivers, and ALSA funds work to find treatment and a cure.  Please join the fight if you are able.

My page:

Scottsdale Walk: 20 Years for Leila - Walk to Defeat ALS®

Thanks for reading my story.  Thanks for your prayers and words of support.  Thanks for your monetary donations to the ALS Association.  That support for ALSA is the point.

Love,

Wendy

Nostril Technician

On the way home last night, Katy Rose and I had a little conversation in the car that I decided to commit to memory so I could blog it.  This is the kind of stuff that makes me laugh and will quite possibly provide me with good material for eliciting cooperation during her teenage years.  Then again, perhaps it is merely an indication of a potential future in science or medicine.  Observation, diagnostics, experimentation, even an attempt to rate the level of pain.  Well, alright, maybe I’m overreaching a bit.  But it is, if nothing else, a brief pointless story.

Katy Rose: Mommy, my right nostril hurts.

Mommy: Does it hurt on the inside or the outside?

KR: On the inside.

M: Does it hurt all the time?  Or just when you touch it?

KR: Well, it hurts when my finger is in it.

M: Oh!  Well, problem solved – don’t put your finger in it.  I know the hole is just big enough for your finger, but that doesn’t mean you should put your finger in it.

KR: Well, it also hurts if I push on the outside like this, or if I go like this (rubs nose back and forth with back of hand) to itch it.  Can you see in it?  Is it pink?  I think we should get the thermometer when we get home.  My other one, the left nostril doesn’t really hurt.  But my right nostril hurts like a hippo sitting on my belly!

M: Hmm… maybe you shouldn’t touch it at all then.

Tales from the Potty: Church Time & Sucker Punches

For some welcome change around here, I actually have a little funny story for today’s Pointless Story Hour.  In case you’ve forgotten that these are pointless stories, this entry will remind you because we have a long way to go to the little, funny part.  You know you love it.

It all started in high school . . . (insert flashback harp strings sequence here)

When I was a shy high school student, I learned that my greatest fear was not, as I had previously imagined, death by fire.  Nor drowning, nor large spiders.  My greatest fear was realized in the term of English classes designated Speech Class.  I was terribly afraid of having to stand up and talk in front of a whole class, and quickly sought to identify classmates who were worse at public speaking than I was.  It’s not that I was unfriendly or antisocial.  It’s that I was mortified of being The Worst Public Speaker.  I was the girl whose yearbook inscriptions historically contained gems like:

“Wendy: You’re so sweet and quiet.”

“Wendy: Wow, Latin was hard this year.  Have a great summer.”

“Wendy: You are so quiet.  You should talk more.”

So I struggled through the class, and got a little better each time I had to deliver a speech or a monologue.  But I came to realize that my fear of public speaking…well, it sucked.  I didn’t like being afraid of this.  I felt like it was something that would dog me my whole adulthood if I didn’t do something about it.

At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I got involved with my church’s youth group.  This only happened because my mom forced me to go on a retreat with them.  Being shy, I fought her about going because I didn’t know any of the kids.  On the retreat, I made great friends, some of which I’m still in touch with today.  I had my first kiss thanks to my first game of Truth or Dare, and met the guy that became my first boyfriend.  We ended up dating for 3+ years.  But I digress.

As I got more involved at church, I decided I wanted to train to become a lector.  What could better cure me of my fear of public speaking?  Not only is it a huge audience – a whole church full of people – it’s also specific words I had to deliver.  On one hand, this was good, because I didn’t have to write it myself, and I had a guide to teach me where to pause and what words to emphasize.  On the other hand, it could be bad because if I screwed up, I’d be screwing up Liturgy in front of the priest and a whole church full of people who were depending on me to deliver a reading from the Bible.  But there was something about this challenge that made me excited to tackle it.  So I did.  I was a lector in high school.  I don’t think I did it more than a handful of times, but it did wonders for me.  When I went to college, I decided to minor in Speech Communication.

As an adult, I enjoy public speaking.  I crave opportunities for it because I know I always have room for improvement, and practice is the only way to improve.  I must be in the minority though, especially in my family.  I have three sisters, and I was maid of honor for one of them.  The other two, who chose each other as their maid of honor, both allowed me to make toasts for them at the wedding reception where they were the maid of honor.  I wasn’t fantastic, but I also wasn’t afraid to stand up and take the microphone.  It’s not that I don’t get nervous, because I still do.  But I think a little nervousness keeps me on my toes, so I don’t get complacent or overconfident.

Last summer, we joined a new church.  We were putting Katy Rose into preschool, and the school happened to be at this church.  We didn’t feel a strong connection to the church where we had been registered, so it wasn’t a very difficult decision to change parishes.

In addition to volunteering with the preschool, I decided now was the time to get involved again as a lector.  I had wanted to lector for many years, but never made it a priority.  So I got in touch with the person that is in charge of the ministry.  Almost two weeks ago, I went to a training session with him and one other new lector.  He showed us the ropes and we did a trial run with a reading to the empty church.  Last week he emailed all the lectors and asked for our availability for the different weekend mass times in February and March, and I specified that I was available at 11am and 5pm masses on Sundays.

Last Friday morning, he emailed me to see if I could sub for the first reading at 5pm on Sunday, 1/29.  I accepted the assignment, and went into “cram” mode to prepare.  I figured it was better to just get on the first horse, so to speak.

The procedure at our church is for the lectors to come in with the procession and leave with the recession.  Our church is set up like a semicircle.  I had chosen our seats in the second pew, all the way to the left next to the musicians, so I would be as close as possible to the ambo when it was time for my reading.  The only bad thing about it was that we were visible to probably half of the church, and especially the priest and deacon. 

I processed in, delivered my reading, and was okay with it.  Mike thought I might have been a little too slow or had paused too much, so I will work with that in mind when I prepare for the next time.  We were almost to the end of the mass when Katy Rose received a nature call.  Knowing there was a small bathroom just behind the front area with the altar, I asked Mike to take her there.  I was afraid I would miss the recessional.

They went off to the potty, and thank God the choir was making music.  After a moment, through the music I could hear what I knew was the voice of my child crying very loudly.  Terror struck me… what on earth is going on back there??

Mike appeared next to the hallway with a serious face, beckoning me toward him.  Terror quickly turned to dread.  I’m betting she had an accident and is covered in pee.

I quickly walked over, painfully aware that pretty much everyone in the church can see the three of us as we skipped over there directly from the second pew.  Yes, Katy Rose is, in fact, crying very loudly, just steps from the rest of the congregation.

“What is going on??” I asked, seeing that she was not (hooray!) covered in pee.

Mike looked at me with a guilty and sympathetic face and explained that while he was trying to get her situated, something happened.

“I accidentally hit her in the face.”

Simultaneously, several emotions registered inside me.  Horror that my child took some kind of hit to the face.  Sorrow that she was upset.  Embarrassment that we are all here with this loud situation.  Sympathy for my husband and what was clearly an accident.  And somewhere in there, I was laughing at the hilarity of the situation.  Sometime (probably soon), I was going to tell this story of how I almost screwed up my first time as a lector because my husband accidentally hit our kid in the face during a potty break.  It’s the kind of thing you can’t make up. 

She wasn’t obviously hurt, so I figured the majority of the issue was hurt feelings as opposed to actual pain.  Once I calmed her down, she took her sweet time and wouldn’t let me leave her in Daddy’s care to wash her hands.  I was starting to freak out a little bit about making it back to our seats before the end of the mass.  Thankfully, there were some long announcements and I didn’t miss the recessional.  Phew!

Next time, I think I’ll insist she goes to the bathroom before mass starts.  No more sucker punches during church.

Some Cheese with That Whine? How About Civility, Respect, and Understanding?

Let me preface this post with a light warning: I am about to delve into thoughts that wander into politics a bit.  I am not here to inflame or accuse.  My intentions are to express my thoughts and opinions and to do so with honesty and compassion.  I don’t believe in bullying, but I do believe in self-defense.  I also believe whole-heartedly in love.  So there it is.

Unless you ignored all the TV and radio news, internet news, and social media the last couple of days, you’ve all heard about and/or seen the story of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer arguing with President Obama on the airport tarmac this week.  Because a picture is worth a thousand words, a particular photo of Jan Brewer with her finger apparently wagging in the President’s face has generated heaps of commentary.  Most of the comments I have read imply that Brewer is without class, disrespectful, and an embarrassment to the State.

This shouldn’t come as any surprise, because that’s what people do—make fun of Governor Brewer.  I’ll admit her public speaking skills leave much to be desired.  And I’m not always sure I agree with her positions.  But she has done something important to me—she has stood up for what she believes is right.  Those of us that believed in SB1070 when she signed it into law didn’t make a lot of noise.  So at first, it seemed to me that just about everyone was against 1070.  The more I talked with people, I realized I knew a lot of people who felt the way I did.  We just weren’t out there screaming about it.

One of the things I like about Governor Brewer is that she really tries.  I heard the text of the letter she handed to the President, and it sounded good.  Respectful of the President, putting our best foot forward, excited about the state’s economic recovery, and nicely inviting him again to visit the Arizona-Mexico border.  In the conversation on the tarmac, the President brought up Brewer’s book and expressed that he didn’t like the way she portrayed him in their meeting in D.C.  I don’t see how that’s relevant to the purpose of his visit, which was job creation.  He hasn’t even read the book, either.  I think it was inappropriate and rude on the part of the President.  And he is still ignoring Arizona and our immigration issues.  I’m injecting a bit of my own assumptions and opinions here, so please be patient with me.

When Democrat Janet Napolitano was governing Arizona, we had the same immigration issues.  I actually voted for her the last time, before she went to D.C. to head up Homeland Security.  How is it that the same fight Napolitano fought under President Bush is portrayed differently now that it’s Brewer and President Obama?  Brewer is doing the same things Napolitano did, sending the invoices to the Feds, and we still get zero response.  Except Brewer is vilified while Napolitano sits, lips mostly zipped, in her ivory tower.  Napolitano, as far as I’m concerned, has completely abandoned her former state.  She should know these issues better than anyone, and it’s as if she’s been brainwashed since she got to D.C.

Yesterday, as I saw comment after comment assuming things that people couldn’t know, I started to feel very sad.  It reminded me why I generally don’t like talking about politics – because my natural tendency is to mediate and everything out there in the media and social media feels so divisive.  It is easy to get caught up in the arguments.  We all have our beliefs and most of us probably feel attacked by the other side at one time or another (or maybe all the time).

Last March, my husband and I went to Tucson for a benefit concert.  The show was absolutely wonderful and had a large number of acts, both big names and not-so-big names.  The show was organized by Ron Barber, one of Gaby Giffords’ injured staffers.  The beneficiary was the Fund for Civility, Respect and Understanding.  The emotional atmosphere, the music, and the guest speakers led my husband, at one point in the show, to proclaim that he wanted to do something.  He needed to do something.  Something to help people, somehow.

I wonder how many other people felt that way after the Tucson shooting, or some other tragedy.  Wanted to reach out.  Wanted to extend a hand in the spirit that we are all neighbors, we’re all in this place together…  But how long does that last?  Why are our politics and debates and rhetoric so ugly and mean?  As soon as someone decides an appropriate amount of time has passed, we see how nothing really changed from that event, or the next one, or the next one.

How many of us identify ourselves as Christians?  I’d venture to say a majority of us.  How easily we forget the Ten Commandments.  How effortlessly we ignore God’s desire for us to love one another as He has loved us.  How quickly and repeatedly we abandon attempts to live like Jesus did.

I’m not perfect, I don’t know everything, and I’m not always right.  I try to remind myself of those truths when I find myself making assumptions.  The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know what really happened on the tarmac.  But I am compelled to refrain from condemning either person because of a photograph or an article about the event.  There are always multiple sides to a story. 

Yes, personally, in my gut, I do feel the President can come off looking like a bully.  Like the time he told John McCain that the election was over.  Jan Brewer is no saint, but I think she isn’t one to kowtow to anyone that she knows doesn’t have our state’s best interests at heart.  If you ridicule someone for expressing a belief that is different from yours, then you are a bully.  My first instinct is to say, “Shame on you.”  But upon reflection, I remember I should instead act with civility, respect and understanding.  That also implies I should act with love.  And one of the greatest, and most challenging, aspects of real love is the necessity of forgiveness.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me.

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

Do you blog?  Do you journal?  If you do, what happens if you don’t do it for an extended period of time?  If you’re like me, you feel like you’ve somehow let someone down for failing to record your life.  As if anyone actually cares about gaps in my own personal history.  We’re only human, we aren’t here forever, and no one escapes that reality.  So why do I care if I’ve let months or years (gasp!) go by without putting down any record of my thoughts or experiences?  Now don’t worry, I’m not hugely upset about it.  It just makes me wonder why this bothers me.

I started a journal when I was in 9^th grade, using a notepad of multicolored, lined paper that I figured my sisters would never want and therefore would never find if they went snooping.  And yet I have always written in a way that, while honest, wouldn’t leave me terribly embarrassed if someone were to read it.  I thought that as my life went on, I might want to come back to my thoughts and relive them down the road, just for fun.  Or maybe I would have kids someday and when I’m gone they might want to know what my life was like.  Is it just me?  Do you feel this way?

Recently I discovered a daily diary that my great grandmother used many, many years ago.  She didn’t write every day, but the days she did write made me wonder about her quality of life.  She would note the weather, visits to or by family members or friends, and then physical ailments.  Many times she would end the entry with something like, “Lord, please take away my pain.”

At first I felt very sad for her, seeing all of that documentation of pain in her daily life.  Then I thought perhaps it was just part of letting your troubles go up to God.  I don’t know.

I don’t remember if I wrote my feelings down during the two times in my life that I was close to suicidal.  My depression during my college years was not something I understood, and I did not know how to seek help on my own.  While depression is something I continue to battle as an adult, I feel fortunate that someone intervened in my last semester of college before any hideous, morbid thoughts on my part had an opportunity to develop into actions. 

In my journals, I’ve been up and down.  I’ve written about school, dating, fun, sadness, hopes, fear, work, friends, and family.  But there is one section of one of my journals that immediately comes to mind as the darkest of my entries.  It starts on the page I wrote in on 9/11/2001.  After several months, maybe even a year, I ended up marking the edge of those pages with a black pen.  I think I knew that this was something important in history, and maybe one day a young person would be interested in my account the way I used to ask my grandmother about living during the Great Depression.

I know I’m just me, just as important as the next person.  Contrary to Ron Burgundy’s assertion, I know I matter to my family and close friends, and that’s all that matters.  So it’s not important to me whether anyone reads my blogs or journal entries.  Perhaps I am simply interested in the preservation of history.  (Is this why I can’t seem to throw anything away?? J)  Looking forward into the uncertain future of life in the United States, I truly hope that 9/11/2001 is the only event that ever turns the edge of my journal black.

Finding my Way Back to Healthy

More than four years after the birth of my daughter, I have reached the weight I was at when I first found out I was pregnant, 182lbs.  Six months after she was born, I had lost some of the weight and was about 202lbs.  But over the next 3+ years, I gained an additional 30lbs or so.  Yikes.  So there I was, at my daughter’s fourth birthday, knowing she only knew me as the blob of a human I thought I was.  I couldn’t stand it. 

I had tried Weight Watchers in the past.  The first time I did it, I lost 20lbs within a few months.  It all came back.  A few years afterward, I quit smoking.  I put on some more weight as a result.  Then I signed up to do Weight Watchers again.  I did it for a year.  I didn’t lose any more than 5lbs.  I gave up, and then I got pregnant at my heaviest weight ever, 182.  Anyone who knew what I weighed insisted that I “carried it well” or otherwise intimated that they never would have guessed I weighed so much based on how I look.  That’s sort of comforting, for about a second.

During pregnancy, I had a few food aversions.  But what I craved, I ate.  And ate.  I gave in to every food indulgence I was allowed and I did it in excess.  What did I eat most during pregnancy?  Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.  Vanilla pudding.  Ice cream.  Lots of milk.  And obscene amounts of peanut M’n’ms.  Carbs, carbs, and more carbs.  I stopped looking at the scale when I visited the OB after seeing I was up to 232lbs.  I’m sure there were several weeks left in the pregnancy at that point, and the quickest weight gain usually takes place at the end of a pregnancy.  So I truly don’t know what I weighed right before giving birth.  I was too afraid to know.

I remember bringing my favorite Quizno’s sandwich over to my parents’ house and my mom warned me that I shouldn’t be eating a lot of stuff like that.  She told me she gained 60 or 70lbs with her first pregnancy and it was a nightmare taking it off.  I totally blew her off, thinking I was going to breastfeed and do yoga, and that everything would be fine.  Sadly, Mom was so right (as usual).

For a while after the baby was born, I knew I had a grace period for taking the weight off.  It didn’t make it any easier knowing how heavy I was, but I tried to cut myself some slack.  Then she was six months old and I didn’t feel I had the luxury of the grace period any longer.  Friends tried to extend it, but I knew at her first birthday that it was long gone. 

I tried increasing my exercise.  I tried watching what I ate.  My breastfeeding efforts had not gone as planned, and I stopped pumping when she was six weeks old.  My exercise and eating efforts were half-hearted.  I was tired and stressed out.  I was depressed.  Nothing about my lifestyle was conducive to weight loss.

Finally I tried hypnosis.  It was promising at first.  Then I was traumatized by an incident that left me back at square one.  I kept going with the hypnosis, and over the next 22 months I did make progress in other areas of my life, like stress management, organization, etc.  Practically every area besides the whole purpose behind starting the hypnosis program – weight loss.  Finally, in January 2011 I decided to strike out in some other direction and stop going to the sessions with my hypnotherapist.

One of the things I learned with hypnosis is that diets don’t work.  If you lose weight on a diet, you’ll just gain it back (likely plus more) once you stop doing the diet.  So I resisted every program out there.  Then I tried Dr. Natasha Turner’s Hormone Diet.  I lost about 6lbs at first on the 2-week “detox” beginning, when I cut out a lot of specific foods and added a lot of healthy foods.  Once the detox was over, the weight loss started to stall out.  Then I saw myself in pictures from my sister’s wedding in April.  Ouch. 

Finally, I decided to try Medifast.  I hear radio commercials all the time for their local Medifast Weight Control Center.  But online I discovered I don’t have to go to the center.  I can order the food myself and they can provide one-on-one health coaching for free.  So that’s what I did.  I ordered a month’s worth of meal replacements and signed up to get a health coach.

I received my food and talked to my health coach on the phone, and I got started the next morning.  April 30, 2011, a Saturday, was my first day.  It wasn’t a picnic the first few days, but I was ready and so I dug in my heels and did what I was supposed to do.  The first week I lost more than 10lbs.  Since then, my weight loss averages 2-2.5lbs per week.  Four months down, 47lbs lost.  It’s kind of unbelievable—I am not 100% sure the reality has sunk in that I am 182lbs again, for the first time in five years.

My daughter now weighs the equivalent of the weight I’ve lost.  When I pick her up, she is really heavy and I can’t carry her for too long.  How is it that only four months ago, I lived as if I carried her 24/7?  It’s no wonder my body was breaking down.  My knees and ankles gave me trouble, I developed mild plantar fasciitis in addition to my ankle tendinitis, and my energy was low.  Even though I knew my husband loved me, I didn’t feel he could possibly be attracted to me in the shape I was in.  My wardrobe was so limited and I was embarrassed that size XL t-shirts fit me, or at least I had no extra room when wearing them.  I’m only 5’2”, so if XL isn’t big enough, I am waaay out of proportion.

Now, I have purged my closet of almost all the clothes I wore four months ago.  I’m wearing things that are sizes like 16, 14, and 12, as opposed to the one pair of size 20 jeans I wore for a year and a half until they developed a hole in the inner thigh from my legs rubbing together when I walked.  Now, when I lie on my side, legs stacked, my knees feel too bony one on top of the other.  I can actually feel my hip bones, ribs, etc. when I try, as opposed to knowing everything is “in there somewhere.”

I’m hoping to continue until I reach the top end of the normal BMI range for my height (which would be 136).  I don’t know if my body will cooperate in this goal, and I think I will be happy wherever my weight loss stops.  I know I’ll lose another 20lbs at the minimum.  My ultimate goal would be to lose 100lbs, which would put me at 130.  At 5’2”, 130lbs is certainly not underweight.  My lightest adult weight was about 125lbs, when I was a senior in high school.  When people see pictures of me at that weight, they think I look too thin.  But the problem with me then was that my weight wasn’t a result of healthy living.  I was a smoker, I didn’t eat correctly, but I was very active, so I ended up being pretty thin.  But I didn’t have muscle tone.  This time, when I get to a healthy weight, I will have muscle tone, I will eat healthy, and I am not a smoker.  It will be a kind of me I have never seen.  And it will be wonderful.

For now, I continue the Medifast 5 & 1, which means I eat a Medifast meal every 2-3 hours, at least five times per day.  One meal per day is Lean & Green, which means I have one serving of lean meat (or meatless protein) and three servings of non-starchy veggies.  Drinking a lot of water helps (on my best days I reach 100oz of water by dinnertime, not including coffee, tea, or zero-calorie beverages).  Once I reach my weight loss goal, I’ll begin a transition period.  I will likely need a 12-week period to transition from Medifast 5 & 1 to healthy eating with my own foods.  I may continue using Medifast meals as part of my regular diet.  There are some that I really love.

From there, I hope to continue using Dr. Anderson’s Habits of Health to live the best way I can.  I’m not finished reading his book, but one thing I’ve learned so far is that there are not just two kinds of people: healthy and sick.  There are three: healthy, non-sick, and sick.  Right now I’m closest to non-sick, on my way to sick.  I’d rather be healthy.  So it’s up to me to regain my own health.

Alpha, Omega... Who Needs the Middle?

Did you ever see that email forward that described a study that said if you completely misspell words that the human brain can read the message anyway as long as the first and last letters were correct?  Like this:

Dsd ywu eevr sce taht eimal frrwaod taat dserciebd a sdtuy taht siad if ycu cmlpoeetly mpssiell wdros taht the hmaun biran can raad the mseagse awynay as lnog as the fsrit and lsat leettrs wree cceorrt?

I was always fascinated with that concept, that explains why we can all be bad spellers and fail to catch our own mistakes.  It is because of our amazing brains that we need spellcheck!

Speaking of amazing brains, (yes, here’s the part where I start bragging about my child), my Katy Rose certainly has one.  It seems only last week I was still trying to show her the correct way to hold a crayon or marker.  Now, she is picking them up and holding them without me even mentioning the correct way to hold it.  I can still remember thinking the way we were supposed to hold our pencils was dumb, so I fully expected her to resist.  There I go, making assumptions again.  (Yes, I said it, but that doesn’t mean you need to call me an a#$.  This is a family-friendly blog.)

You may remember I was recently elated to discover that Katy Rose knows how to make smiley faces.  She has really expanded on this talent, and now makes smiley faces on just about every object she draws.  She made a picture at dinner the other night of a cherry tree with a swing, a pumpkin, a sun, and other assorted goodies.  Yes, everyone gets to show their happiness, including the sun, the cherries, and of course, the swing.  I have joined the ranks of parents who are happy to plaster their kids’ handiwork not only on the fridge, but on any available posting space at my work station.

When I came home yesterday, I was blown away by the work she did at Grandma’s house.  She used four pieces of paper from a square notepad, and drew a puppy along with some “words” on the first one.  Then she duplicated the same puppy and words three times!  One for Grandma, one for Mommy, one for Daddy, and one for herself.  Is it just me?  Come on, this is incredible, right?  (“Yes, Wendy, of course it is.  She is an Artist Genius, obviously.”)  Thank you, that’s what I’m talking about!

The really cool part is what she wrote on the pictures.  I asked her to read it to me.  Under the puppy, she made an F and a W.  This spells “Woof” to Katy Rose.  Above the puppy, there is an S and a D.  That spells “said.”  Then above the puppy’s head is a D.  That means “the” (think “de” since she isn’t good at saying the “th” sound yet).  And at the top next to the D is PPE.  That spells “puppy.”  All together, the picture says, “Woof, said the puppy” (or “Woof, said de puppy”).

Wf, sd d ppe.  She’s got the basic first and last sounds down.  Do you realize what this means?  My kid can already spell like the rest of us!