Rolling In The Deep

I'm now a little more than two years out from my surgery, and my weight has settled around 164. No longer obese!!

It has been really, really getting used to being a "normal" size. To not ease slowly into every chair lest it breaks; eyeing narrow retail stores to see what I'm in danger of knocking over; walking down the street and noticing people staring at me without wondering if they're secretly weighing me in their minds.

I'm even wearing crop tops!

I recently started a new job and, lemme tell you, it is AWESOME not being the fattest person in the building. To walk up the stairs to my office without having to hide for 20 minutes while I catch my breath. To step on the elevator and not have people directly check the weight capacity and do mental arithmetic to see if I'll cause us all to plummet. I've even noticed people speaking to me more as a peer, as though they assume I know what i'm doing and am capable of understanding.

It's pathetic that it took losing almost 200 pounds to realize people didn't take me as seriously when I was fat. Iw was more than capable at my job, but I got the sense that my shallow colleagues assumed that not having my weight under control meant I didn't have anything else under control.

Since losing weight, I did deal with serious depression and ended up committed after a suicide attempt. Then my house burned down. I took two years to find a job. I got very badly addicted after so many pain pills following so many surgeries. I was robbed three times, losing literally everything I own.

But.. I've never been happier. I've found the love of my life, I have a great job now, my house is being rebuilt, and I'm a healthy weight for the first time ever.

I recently got a new tattoo, and the message means a lot to me. It's from the Lord of the Rings: "It's only a passing thing, this shadow. " How right you are, Samwise.

Lesbian Pants

I had a few nice moments today.

I was on a fun work trip to reward our top performers and saw quite a few colleagues from other departments--many of them haven't seen me in months, so I was delighted (and a little embarrassed) to find myself complimented throughout the day. Everyone was amazed at how healthy I look, both from the weight loss and from the heart surgery. Instead of hanging out at the snack table guiltily devouring cookies and pumpkin pie cheesecake, I talked to people about hiking, camping, bicycling, and basically being a normal adult. It was pretty awesome!

I also was really happy to be able to get on and off of the bus without feeling like I was squeezing down the aisles and hitting people's elbows with my stomach and ass. What a difference.

Plus, when I went on this same trip last year, I could barely walk around. I was so fatigued and winded from the heart and breathing problems that even walking from the bus to my table inside was difficult. This year, I couldn't wait to do more. We played paintball last year and, although it was totally totally fun and I really really love shooting at people, I ended up having an asthma attack merely walking out to the starting line. I spent the entire game last year wheezing and desperately hiding behind a wall while my face mask fogged up with my heavy breathing. I had to sit out the second game, and barely survived the third. This year...totally opposite! I was active, I ran behind targets, and I (along with my assistant manager) ended up winning against three guys! I'm a really good shot, and being able to scamper around the game site this year gave me much better vantage points from which to totally demolish the guys! I did get hit in the face (thank goodness for masks) but it was still awesome.

But one of the greatest things was my pants. I've had this pair of camouflage pants for years and years. I call them my lesbian pants. I wore them in college when I was going through my militant phase, and they always make me feel cool. They're baggy camo cargo pants that hung low on my hips, and they're so worn that the bottom few inches have torn away. They're splattered with paint and starting to get little holes, but I love them and used to wear them all the time. When I finally gained enough weight that I couldn't wear them, I kept them in my closet hoping that one day I could put them on again. Last year, I had only been on Weight Watchers for three months when I went paintballing but I decided to try on the pants...and they fit! They were tight, but I could wear them and felt like a badass again.

I wanted to wear them again this year because, well, I don't exactly have many paintball clothes nowadays and what's better for paintballing than camouflage? So I put them on this morning and they were TOO BIG! They hung down on my hips like they used to, and maybe even a little more. I wore them anyway with a tank top, long sleeved shirt, fleece vest, and hoodie (it was cold and I wanted lots of layers in case I got hit). I ended up having to keep one hand on my waistband the entire time I was paintballing because my pants kept slipping off! Like, my pants are literally FALLING OFF OF ME. That is so amazing. Pants that a year ago I was celebrating fitting into are now too big!

I'm sure I can find some way to repurpose the pants, but I don't think I can wear them again--at least not without a belt! What an awesome feeling.

Work, Bitch

Apparently my cardiac rehab is working--I not only feel stronger and healthier, I also lost 3.4 pounds at weigh-in this week. Nice!

I'm now down to 215 pounds even, down 89 pounds from my starting weight of 304 last August. 89 pounds...that's pretty crazy. That's more than my 9 year old nephew. That's more than my old Rottweiler. According to the list, I'm one pound away from having lost a NEWBORN CALF. Whoa.

As much as I hate going to rehab three times a week, I have to admit it's kind of nice. It's strange to have basically a regular gym schedule. And they don't just turn on the machines and let me go--I have to be hooked up to the heart monitors, they come and take my oxygen and heart rate and blood pressure while I'm working out, and every session they try to increase my time, my incline, my resistance, etc. After my heart surgery I was scheduled for 18 sessions, so I think I still have around 4 weeks to go.

Yesterday, though, was TOUGH. I kept bitching about the stationary bike (I'm not used to working the fronts of my legs, so it makes me tired really fast). Well, after they were nice and tried to switch things up for me, I wanted to go back to the stationary bike so badly! They had me on something called an Arc Trainer. I guess they're all the rage but I've never even seen one (obviously I don't exactly frequent a gym). It's basically like a nightmare mashup of a stair climber and an elliptical machine. It's fucking horrible.

The nurse had me start the Arc Trainer and I seemed to get the hang of it. Thinking I would be fine, she set it for 20 minutes and said that I didn't have to do the full 20 but just see what I could get through. Then she went to go make her rounds to the other rehabbers. After about 60 seconds, I was sweating and panting and my butt and hips were screaming in pain. After maybe three minutes, I thought I was going to pass out. I slowed down long enough to turn my playlist to "Work Bitch" (I love Britney, especially when working out now, and ESPECIALLY this song) and I powered through. I got to five minutes and started looking around for the nurse, trying to make eye contact. After about seven minutes, my chest was burning like it hasn't burned since before my surgery. I didn't want to stop and admit defeat so I kept going, but the machine started beeping some kind of heart rate alarm. I kept going, gasping for air, glaring straight ahead, determined and frustrated and possibly dying. Finally the nurse rushed over and told me my heart rate was way too high (duh) and had me stop. That was 11 minutes of pure hell. Seriously, it's like a torture device with fancy foot pads. So they put me on a range limiter for another 10 minutes as a cool-down and then I got to go home. In the car, my lungs and chest were still on fire and I was coughing up phlegm just like before my surgery when I was in a constant state of cardiac asthma.

Anyway, I survived and I told them I am determined to try it again on Monday. Just maybe for five minutes instead. My legs and ass are sore, and I have hip muscles that I've never felt before. Ouch. What am I going to do after my rehab is over? I don't have anyone to push me like that, and I don't know if I can push myself like that. Working out sucks but...well, if I keep seeing results at weigh-in, maybe it will be worth it after all.

A Whole New World

So...it's been awhile.

I'm kind of a different person now.

Weight-loss wise, I'm still trucking along slowly but surely. Not much has changed there...I'm struggling with sweets, craving all kinds of shit, and compulsively tracking and weighing my food to keep within my daily Weight Watchers points. It's rough, yeah, but after more than a year on Weight Watchers, I feel like I'm sort of a pro.

Plus, I'm now at 219 pounds as of yesterday's weigh-in. That's 85 pounds down from 304! It's been a little more than a year (I started last August) and I'm still doing the 1-pound-up-2-pounds-down dance, but it's working.

The REAL change, though, is that I have a new heart valve. And this one WORKS! If you're not familiar with my health struggles, here's a recap: in 2007 I had a root canal that, unbeknownst to me, introduced some bacteria into my bloodstream. I became extremely sick and was hospitalized in December of 2007 with streptococcus, double pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, severe dehydration, malnutrition, anemia...not a pretty picture. The antibiotics didn't work, I almost died, and the bacteria turned into endocarditis on my tricuspid valve. Little bits were flecking off into my lungs and causing major breathing and infection problems and nothing helped. I eventually had open heart surgery in late January 2008 at the age of 25. While recovering, I caught mono and within a few months, the artificial heart valve stopped working. It was frozen in a half-open position which allowed blood to pass but which caused serious problems for me. I couldn't do any of the activities I used to do. I'd get out of breath walking up a single flight of stairs, I couldn't run or play, and my asthma got worse and worse. I rapidly gained 50 pounds and stayed that way, fat and sick, for about 5 years. Last August, I joined Weight Watchers hoping to lose some weight and become active again. I lost weight, but wasn't active. Walking was still nearly impossible for me. I was thinner but still miserable and totally sedentary.

This summer, things got worse. My oxygen was dropping down to 80% just walking out to my car (I started keeping an oximeter with me to check my blood oxygen because I always felt like I was just about to drown and could never catch my breath). My resting pulse was around 130 beats per minute. Those are not the signs of a healthy person. It became so bad that I stopped going to meetings at work because I couldn't walk there (I'm a department manager, so this was not so great for my job). I stopped making plans because I couldn't go anywhere.

Then I went to Bonnaroo in June. I've been to Bonnaroo 5 times before this year and each year since my surgery was a little more difficult. After losing so much weight (around 70 pounds at the time), I though I could handle parking in the 'normal' campground instead of the handicapped area. WRONG. We missed shows because I couldn't get there, it took us 2 hours to walk to Centeroo, and I was thoroughly miserable the entire time. It was the saddest Bonnaroo ever...which is even sadder because PAUL FUCKING MCCARTNEY WAS THERE and I was too busy just trying to breathe and not die to even enjoy the show!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, when I got back from Bonnaroo, I started going to my doctors and asking for tests. I needed to know if there was something else going on. My doctor and cardiologist and nurse practitioner checked my blood, my urine, did x-rays, EKGs, ultrasounds, etc. I'd been feeling like shit for 5 years, but it was like since I had lost 70 pounds, they were taking me seriously for the first time. The cardiologist said, "With how much weight you've lost, you should be feeling great." So instead of passing my symptoms (difficulty breathing, high pulse, severe fatigue, exercise intolerance, dizziness, etc) off on my weight, they started searching for real answers. I had them check for thyroid issues, vitamin deficiencies, lupus, internal bleeding, hepatitis, everything I could think of that would explain my problems and why I wasn't getting better.

They finally did a tranespophageal echocardiogram and determined that very little blood was actually flowing through my non-functioning mechanical valve. A cardiac surgeon met with me and wanted to try replacing it again. I was terrified. Seriously terrified. I mean, it was bad enough the first time. I wasn't sure if I could deal with the pain, the scars, the risks, missing work. However, I'd worked so hard to lose weight that I felt like I'd made a commitment to my health and I should try the surgery if they thought it might make my life a little better.

So I scheduled the surgery. I had to wait one month, and it was a fucking horrible month. I made all of my FMLA and short term disability arrangements, assigned my work duties to my employees and assistant manager, and made thorough user guides for all of my job responsibilities. To be honest, I was fully expecting to die during surgery. I spent that month making my final arrangements, writing out a will, gathering information for my cemetery plot, and saying goodbye.

The surgery day came and when they strapped me to the table in the operating room, tears were streaming hot down the sides of my face. I knew it would be the last time my eyes would be open.

But around 12 hours later, my eyes did open again. I made it. Well, just barely. That first night, my pulse kept dropping down to the low 40s and they had to put in a pacemaker to get me regulated. But when they turned off the pacemaker the next day, my pulse was steady. My blood pressure was good. I was alive.

They replaced the broken mechanical valve with a bioprosthesis from a cow. As a vegetarian for more than a decade, I was really upset about using a cow's heart. But I asked my friends and family and Facebook to have a Beef Free Day on the day of my surgery--I was overwhelmed to find out how many people committed to not eat beef that day. It made me feel better. We saved part of a cow, and part of a cow saved me :)

The surgeon was horrified by the condition of the mechanical valve. It's not like you can just peek in and see how your heart valve looks, so no one really knew how bad it had gotten. The surgeon was so blown away he took a picture of the valve to show my family...brace yourself for something seriously nasty. The mechanical valve they took out is below (shown from both sides).

Yeah...no wonder I felt like shit.

Within maybe 48 hours, I was able to get up and walk around. And I COULD walk around! Even with the bandages and open incisions, the IVs sewn into my skin and the telemetry wires coming out of every opening in my gown, I could walk. Once they got the catheter out, I started walking. That first day without the catheter, I walked halfway around the cardiac ICU floor of the hospital. I could not have walked that far before the surgery! The next day, I made it a full lap in the morning. Then I made another lap after lunch. That day, I ended up walking 6 laps around the hospital floor. I NEVER would have made it 6 laps around the hospital floor before the surgery! Seriously, I can't really express just how bad it was before, and how fucking amazing it was after. The fourth day, I walked 20 laps around the hospital floor! The patients in the other rooms all watched me and the nurses encouraged me as I shuffled around over and over, clutching the heart-shaped pillow to my chest incisions. They have markers every 25 feet along the wall, and one lap is 500 feet. 20 laps is 10,000 feet, which is nearly two miles! Sure, it took me all day...but I walked TWO MILES! If you've read my other posts, it took me four days to walk a single mile back in March. Two miles in one day is a total fucking miracle for me.

The fifth day, they sent me home!

I still had a long recovery ahead of me. They had to cut a bunch of muscles and nerves to get to my valve, so I can't lift more than 5 to 10 pounds. I have a total of 8 incisions (two of them very large) and 7 holes from the pacemaker, IVs, etc. I've been off work for just over a month now. But I AM RECOVERING.

My first week home, I had to have someone with me 24/7 in case anything went wrong. My amazing girlfriend, who had stayed in the hospital with me the whole time (just as she did in 2007 and 2008) took care of me when I got home. That first full day home, I asked her to take me for a short walk. We got dressed (in my sexy Velcro bra the hospital gave me, and with the heart pillow held tight against my chest) and we walked around outside for 10 or 15 minutes. Here's the crazy part: that was the first time we'd walked anywhere in the neighborhood in the 4 years that we've lived here.

After that, I started walking a little more each day. Some days the pain was bad and I could only do 10 minutes, but I still made myself walk 10 minutes where before, I would have just stayed on the couch. Then the neighborhood suddenly seemed small. We started going to parks near us. After the first couple of weeks, we even tried hiking. I went from not being able to walk from my car into my desk at work, to hiking for an hour without stopping.

Last weekend, we hiked for 4 hours and it felt completely amazing!

I've been eating a lot while I've been at home on short term disability so I'm not losing weight any faster, but I'm getting stronger. I feel healthy. I feel GOOD. I feel like the world has opened up to me. We went to St. Louis for a funeral and I actually felt guilty about not walking during the day we spent in the car. After the funeral, we went to the St. Louis Zoo and walked around for 2 hours. Before, we would have shuffled from one bench to the next and missed half of the zoo. This time, we went on every single path...AND we parked in the free parking down the street instead of wasting $15 for a close spot.

It really is a whole new world for me. There's so much I want to do now. I'm still in pain and I'm still healing, but I should be returning to work next week. Now I'm already planning to take advantage of our on-site gym and personal trainer for the first time since I started working there. I've completely stopped taking my inhalers because, as it turns out, I don't even have asthma...all of my breathing problems were cardiac-related.

Also, my cardiac rehab starts tomorrow. I'll slowly learn how to move my body again. I'll get faster, and stronger, and healthier.

I couldn't be more excited.

Bonus: here's a picture of me before Weight Watchers, and a picture of me last week. I still have a long way to go, but look at the difference! I might need a new cardigan soon!

One Foot In Front Of The Other

It really doesn't look like my 100 Mile March is going to get anywhere close to 100 miles.

I've walked every day so far since March 1...and I just barely made it to 1 mile. One single mile.

That's 1 mile TOTAL.

In four days.

Walking every day.

I SUCK!

Okay, I was really sick all last week and stayed home from work for two days and whatever I had moved into my lungs and now I'm coughing up wicked phlegm and can't breathe.

Plus, I haven't walked in forever. I haven't been on a treadmill since before my open heart surgery, losing an entire functioning valve, and decreasing my lung capacity by around 50%.

And, you know, I'm actually pretty proud that I've walked every day so far. Even though I've felt like shit. And even though the treadmill is set on 2 miles per hour and I can only walk for 2 minutes before stopping to hit my inhaler. And even though the most I've walked at a single time is .25 miles, and even though I have 98.93 miles left to go this month if I actually want to do the 100 Mile March. Because I'm actually trying--sure, it's only a few minutes at a time, but it's more than I was doing before.

(Oh, I've also gained four pounds since my last weigh-in two weeks ago, so I'm nervous about Wednesday. But I'm super bloated and menstruating and I'm basically a walking phlegm factory, so maybe enough bodily fluids will leave my body by Wednesday to at least keep me from gaining weight at my Weight Watcher's meeting. We shall see.)

This is going to be one loooooong March.

100 Miles

I'm a little bit nervous about what I may have gotten myself into.

I signed up the for 100 Mile March.

Ahh!

Now, it's not exactly 100 miles at once...because then I would just die. But you're expected to walk/run/jog 100 miles throughout the month of March. My company is participating and was asking for volunteers, so I got all optimistic and signed up.

Then I tried to ACTUALLY walk, and now I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do it at all.

There are 31 days in March, so if I walk right around three miles every day, I'll be able to do it.

Unfortunately, there's a huge disconnect between that math and what I can actually do.

I picked up my treadmill from my girlfriend's brother's house (because I obviously was never using it!), plugged it in, and hopped on. I started for the first minute or two thinking "Wow, this may actually be do-able!" By the third minute, I was panting and my lungs were burning, even though I was walking at roughly the same slow pace I'd do strolling through a museum. So slow, but so painful.

By the fifth minute, I was wheezing and if my girlfriend had been able to hear me, I would have called to her to bring me my inhaler.

And by the eighth minute, I couldn't breathe, my heart was pounding through my chest, and my teeth were hurting like I was about to have an asthma attack. I turned off the treadmill and collapsed in the closest chair.

I ONLY WALKED .2 MILES.

NOT EVEN A QUARTER OF A FUCKING MILE.

And I was DYING.

I mean, it's no secret that I am lazy and I hate to exercise. I haven't been able to trust my heart or lungs enough to really do much of anything. I really try to avoid moving at all if I can help it.

But I thought I could at least WALK!

Back before I got sick and had my heart surgery, I would get up in the mornings and go for a nice brisk walk. I was hitting around a 15 to 18 minute mile, depending on how many times I broke into a jog. So when I turned on the treadmill yesterday, I figured it would take me maybe 20 minutes to walk the first mile, and hopefully I could get through three miles in a little under an hour.

WRONG.

If it takes me eight minutes to get through .2 miles, each mile will be 40 minutes. That means I'll have to  spend 120 minutes, or two whole hours, walking every night to do this 100 Mile March.

I just don't know if I can do it.

I'm determined to try, but I'm going to try not hating myself if I can't do it. I'm going to try hard. I haven't been using my daily inhaler with any regularity for the past few months, so I'm going to start using it again. It's not like losing weight is going to regrow my damaged lung tissue. But an inhaler along isn't going to get me through 100 miles.

Tonight, I want to try to hit at least .5 miles. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to do a full mile.

Maybe not, but at least I'll be trying.

I Work Out (No I Don't)

There's something I'd like to share: I am lazy.

Seriously, I'm super lazy. Always have been. When I was in third grade, I would sit down in the middle of the soccer field and search for four leaf clovers. When I was in softball through elementary and middle school, I was the catcher so I wouldn't have to walk anywhere (I was a terrible catcher. I don't know why they let me do it. I would squat there, chewing sunflower seeds, halfheartedly tossing the ball back to the pitcher. By the end of the inning, the pitcher was always worn out from retrieving my errant balls and my sweaty face mask would be dotted with sunflower shells. Oy.)

My favorite part about any of the sports my parents forced me into was always, ALWAYS the snacks. Little Debbies, fruit snacks, Hi-C, Squeeze-its...they totally made it worth suffering through one crappy game after another. The entire time I was shuffling up and down the basketball court or relaxing in the dugout, I was fantisizing about the candy the parents would pass out when we were done. Working out was awful, but the candy reward got me through.

As an adult, I am even lazier. I ask my girlfriend to get everything for me. I have to sit down if I walk more than half a block. At Disney World, I had to have the next bench or low wall in sight before I waddled any further. Last year, I had to leave a haunted house through the emergency exit, not because I was scared but because I was so out of breath I thought I was going to pass out. Between my non-functioning heart valve and the chronic lung problems that began when I got sick in 2007, I have a good excuse to be lazy, and I pull the "heart problem card" all the time. I have my employees pick up papers from the printer for me, I make excuses to get out of meetings on the third floor because I don't want to climb the stairs, and I have even put off going to the bathroom because I didn't want to walk that far.

Seriously. So lazy.

Yes, the sloth is my spirit animal.

So one of the things that makes me nervous about Weight Watchers is the activity portion. I know that one of the major components of staying on Plan is to add activity to my life, but I have avoided it at all costs. I feel like I can't work out. I self-diagnosed myself as exercise intolerant. It's just laziness, but I don't trust myself to do too much.

One major scare a few years ago, the year after my open heart surgery, really made me never want to work out or increase my heart rate again. I had taken a tour of Mammoth Cave and we were on our way out. The exit required a trek up exactly 440 stairs--before we even hit the stairs, I was already out of breath, heart racing, and the very last person in the group except for the guide who was turning off lights behind me. I started up the stairs and barely made it a quarter of the way before I stopped, my legs quivering, pouring sweat. I began having my first true asthma attack...and guess who hadn't brought an inhaler? The asthma attack was bad enough, but looking up the remaining stairs made me want to die. The group slowly disappeared out into the sunlight and I was left with my nervous girlfriend and a guide urging me on. I got up another quarter of the way and then stopped and truly started to freak out. There was no other way out but up, and those two were NOT going to be able to carry me. Sooo...my asthma attack turned into a panic attack, and I was then convinced I was having an actual heart attack. I was so scared.

I was crying by then, shaking, and absolutely humiliated. I eventually made it up the stairs, one at a time, and had to make the ultimate walk of shame to the bus where the entire tour group was staring at me. Of course, I had to shoehorn myself down the bus aisle and I knew my face was a gross combination of green, gray, white, and bright red. I can't think of a time I was more embarrassed. That experience left me terrified of having another episode like it, so from that moment on I avoided all physical activity at all costs, particularly activity where I knew I'd be stuck if I couldn't go on (like hiking, which I love). And the longer I avoided moving, the less I began to move. By the time I started Weight Watchers, I was coming home and sitting on the couch for an hour before cooking supper, and then sitting on the couch for several more hours while my girlfriend got me drinks, food, and whatever else I needed. I pretty much only stood up to go to work or use the bathroom.

I'm extremely happy to say that things are changing.

It started when I was on the steroids--I had insomnia for several days, and instead of watching the television all night, I started cleaning. I organized cabinets, folded laundry, collected items to donate, sorted through junk drawers, and did everything I'd been putting off for years. I figured it was only because of the steroids but...well...I haven't stopped. I'm sleeping normally again and I've been off the steroids for a week, but instead of coming home and turning on the television, I'm straighting up the house, playing with the dog, or finding something to tidy up or repair.

This weekend, we went to an outdoor Christmas event and I didn't sit down once. I wandered along the canal and went into stores, when just months before I would have preferred to sit on a bench while my girlfriend walked around. On Sunday, I suggested we go to a Christmas display at the art museum and I walked so quickly through the grounds that my girlfriend struggled to keep up. Tonight, I went downtown and actually walked three blocks to meet up with my family, and then walked around for a little while, and then walked back to my truck--I NEVER would have agreed to do that before! I guess it's true what the commercial says: a body in motion stays in motion (yes, I realize that's a law of physics and not just a commercial). I'm definitely in motion.

And possibly even cooler? I haven't used my inhaler for weeks. I usually take a daily inhaler and then carry another one for emergencies--I stopped using both. I carry them in case I need them, but I have been walking around like a normal, healthy person and I haven't used an inhaler! Do you know how huge that is for me?!

Even though I don't see myself ever joining a gym (just the thought makes me anxious) or jogging around outside, I don't think I need traditional exercise to move more. I AM moving more. I'm walking, I'm going to events, I'm doing more now than I ever thought I would again. I had almost resigned myself to a life like the mom in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (I do need to talk about my grandmother at some point...I love her so much but ending up like her is my worst nightmare) so it feels incredible to finally get out and enjoy life. By the spring, maybe I'll even feel confident enough in myself to go for a hike--that would make me so extremely happy. No matter what the scale says tomorrow at weigh in, I am proud of myself. I feel like I'm slowly reclaiming my life, and it's awesome.

Plus, it doesn't hurt that the house is finally clean!