Quick Update

1. HIP

My swelling continued to go down, my PT said today. I think it's the new anti-inflam because we're not doing anything else significantly different, or at least anything that would affect my inflammation that quickly.

She also tested my flexibility because I was complaining that my leg felt tight, particularly in the quad. Yeah, well... NOT. I'm still hyperflexible. The pain I'm feeling IS nerve pain. It's sinking in slowly. VERY slowly. Each piece of information sits, absorbs, and is added to a previous piece of information.

It's hardly a wonder I'm not religious - if I need 3 weeks of continuous examples, education, and proof that my pain is not muscle/tightness related, think how much proof you'd have to show me to convince me that God actually exists! (This is not a comment on anyone who IS religious, by the way. It's just the way I am. I don't take things at face value. Sorry!)

Talking of which... my PT is a believer and has taken my studious silence during a recent chat with her intern about where she worships, as agreement with the same. Now my PT includes instruction on how to pray for better health and to put my fate in God's hands.

Sorry folks... I don't see God poking my nerve endings. I'm going to stick with trying to fix this one myself.

And lest you think that I am a horrible heathen (which you may very well do anyway), I am at least not planning on telling her that I am a non-believer. She is a nice person who is just trying to help me and, quite honestly, I don't want to have "that" conversation with her (and she is the type that would have "that" conversation.) I respect her right to worship whomever she wants and neither want to be converted nor engaged in a religious debate. So, I'm staying "mum", as wel say in Blighty.

Last note on this: pain is still pretty constant. Not much change there, although I take my friend, e's point, that my overall trend may be slowly downwards by small degrees; it may take a while to register that there's a difference.

2. WEIGHT

Today 147.8lbs and 36.3% fat. So, my tally is 13.2lbs lost and 2.8lbs to go to my target. 6.3% of my bodyfat still to lose. Blech!

On the plus side, with all this physical therapy focusing on strengthening my trunk, I'm going to end up with six-pack abs!

Inch by inch

Today my physical therapist told me that the swelling in my sacrum/low back area, had subsided a tad. It was a small change but the only positive one in the two weeks I've been with her, so we had a mini celebration. (Basically, a quiet and brief "woot")

Who knows what made the difference between Monday and Wednesday? Who knows if it was anything I changed that recently or just accumulative effects of everything I've been doing over the last two weeks.

All I can tell you is what changed:

• On Monday, at my doctor's appointment, he did some osteopathic manipulation on me, cracking my lumbar and hip areas. Not as much as the previous time and I didn't feel any immediate relief, but who knows?
• Doc also gave me a different anti-inflammatory. I was taking plain-ole Ibuprofen in prescription strength (600mg) before and I have been taking that, in one dose or another, for many years for headaches, aches, and pains. Instead I'm now taking an NSAID that is typically prescribed for arthritis patients, Meloxicam.
• I started sitting less at my chair in my office and just less overall. What I discovered was that standing wasn't a whole lot better, either. My back got really tired really fast and I felt as though I was going out of alignment big-time; I would end up standing with all my weight on my good leg and then that hip would start to hurt. Walking around and sitting or laying down periodically seemed to help overall. Basically, not doing anything for too long seems to be the key.
• I've also been cutting back on caffeine and sugar. I've gone down to only one sugar in my coffee and am trying to only have one cup of coffee in the morning. When I was pregnant I only drank one cup in the morning and, in the first 6-7 months of my pregnancy, my hip symptoms all-but went away. I have no idea if this has anything to do with anything, although I do know that sugar and caffeine can be inflammatory.

Any one of these things could be the difference... or not. It's so hard to tell, especially when I am personally not feeling any improvement from the pain and tightness side. In fact, I would say that, without the ability to stretch things out or get massage, I have felt tighter and more pain overall. Not that my pain is a 7 out of 10 or anything but the things I could previously alleviate with self treatment, I can no longer affect, so they persist.

I have been keeping a pain journal but it has only served to confuse me more about what may be making a difference and what may not because the same thing on two different days can produce different results. Plus, my pain is often diffuse, varies throughout the day, and can present differently - as burning, as tweaking, as stabbing/acute, as sticking/popping/clicking, or as aching - in different areas, at different times. There are some constants, of course, but I can't say I've felt any positive improvements in any of them; as I said, I'm actually feeling a bit worse.

I'll spare you the details but my PT has an educated explanation for everything that is happening to me (including the wild fluctuations in case/effect and pain) and so I still have confidence that I am getting the best possible care. So, the journey continues. I'm doing as I'm told: doing the exercises, doing the icing, doing the resting, doing the journaling, doing the change in body mechanics, doing the NSAIDs... I just have to keep in mind that I'm trying to undo possibly 4.5 years of misdiagnosis, wrong treatments, and bad behaviors.

As I said to a friend recently however, hope without proof or progress is hard. At least this little budge in my inflammation is a positive sign we may be on the right track.

This week's mission: no sitting

I have been keeping a pain journal over the last week or so at the suggestion of my new physical therapist. Our goal, of course, is to try and determine what actions aggravate my pain symptoms.

So far it has not been incredibly helpful. My pain levels have always seemed to spike and subside without any real 'event' to pinpoint. The journal is mostly confirming this, although it is beginning to help us hypothesize some scenarios regarding my level of activity.

In short, I generally report better pain levels on days after being active. That is not to say hiking and running around like I used to (oh that would be wonderful again some day, but clearly not yet) but just days where I'm not sat at my desk for most of the day, the way I am M-F when at work. When I'm really busy, like last week, I can get so engrossed in what I'm doing that I can easily sit down one minute and, four hours later, look up to find I haven't moved, eaten, or drunk anything. When I do go to stand up again, my brain begins to clue-into the pain I have been ignoring, presumably because I'm always in some sort of pain and have become accustomed to putting it to one side most of the time, at least mentally, and when my brain is otherwise engaged. I also feel a slight clunk in my sacrum area (probably actually my S.I. joint, but I'm still learning to pinpoint exactly where that is) as if everything is trying to realign as I stand.

The mornings after these kinds of sitting days, I notice that I have more nerve pain (I have begun to differentiate now between nerve and muscle pain) in odd places, like down my leg into my knee, sometimes in my calf and ankle, up into my groin and psoas and often on the opposite side to my primary injury. It's not pain all at once, everywhere, but it's like someone is randomly poking you with a needle from the inside out, at different spots at different times, whether sitting and resting or standing and moving around.

This is not to say that I am pain free on days when I am active, or the day after. I definitely experience some of that same stabbing pain, only less, and some soreness in my muscles of my leg and lower back - more like a soreness, as I said, though, or a dull-ache - not the stabbing neuromuscular pain of other days.

So, my PT is hypothesizing that my SI joint issue is aggravated by compression and sagnation, meaning that sitting compresses my SI joint, putting pressure on it, and that my inflammation is made worse by periods of inactivity, where fluid has time to settle and build.

This would be good news if this was the case because the alternative would be that my joint is made worse my compression, load-bearing, and motion - meaning, sitting and laying down more would be the prescription. As someone who likes to be active and who, mentally, feels like this kind of prescription is a death sentence (almost literally), I am hoping against all hope that the first one is true.

My PT told me the story of a woman who was told by her surgeon that she needed back surgery but that, after the surgery, she would not be able to sit for some time because she would be pulling ont he muscles he cut through and would be hindering her healing. She was, understandably, pretty freaked out by this because the idea of completely eliminating sitting from her life for a while, was pretty daunting. So, she did something really smart: instead of waiting until after the surgery to figure this out, she decided to practice for a month before the surgery, by only laying, walking or standing for three weeks. You've probably already guessed what happened to her - after 3 weeks, she was cured. She had no back pain whatsoever and didn't need the surgery! Wow!

So, for the next week, my mission is to all-but completely avoid sitting. I'm going to stand at my pub table to work on my computer (as I am now) and if I need to rest I'll lay down or I'll walk around a bit to avoid stiffening up.

Meanwhile I'll keep up my walking now the weather is better, as a control, and see how my pain journal looks this time next week.

Of course, if this doesn't work, I'm going to have to try a week of not walking. However, based upon the fact that my symptoms have not got any better on this decreased activity plan that my PT has me on (and, in regards to the nerve pain, sometimes worse!) I'm going to guess (hope?) that it's the sitting thing that is my nemesis.

I'm also going to tape-up my hips while I'm standing and walking, again as my PT suggested. She did this to me last week and I had an instant feeling of relief and decompression in my lower back and sacrum area. (Further proof this is an SI joint issue, she says.)

My inflammation is not down yet but I'm hoping that we can get beyond that this week with this new plan because I've been doing my exercises 2-3 times a day, icing 3 times a day, changing the way I bend down and pick things up, and generally being very cognizant of my back, and yet nothing feels remotely better yet. I need some progress in order to feel like I'm on the right track and even the PT said that I should have started to feel some kind of incremental improvement by now. So, something is still wrong and unaddressed. I hope this is it.

Wish me luck and, if you're on FB and want to send me a nudge every once in a while to be sure I haven't forgotten myself and started sitting down again, go ahead!

On a completely unrelated note....

This weekend I FINALLY met a goal I have had for the last 2 years - I did a one day photography workshop with Penny Silvia, the photographer who has been taking pics of me, Joss, and Daisy since I was pregnant.

Although it was a crash course for amateurs in how to utilize your camera's settings and I definitely cannot claim pro status yet, I already found the information I learned incredibly helpful yesterday when the family went to Tahoe. I think I got some really cute pics of Daisy in the snow, that I am really proud of. Here is one I LOVE here, and you can see more in my photo set on Flickr, if you'd like to provide some feedback! :o)

The nature of love

I heard this on NPR this morning. It's one of the many stories that come out of the Story Corps series that touch my heart and leave me sitting in the car long after I should have got out, with a lump in my throat.

I have thought about sharing many of them over the years but this one was too wonderful to pass up. It speaks to me about the nature of love. So pure, so honest, so authentic. It's the stories and moments like this in life that make it worth living... at least for me.




On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to confirm that I have not given up on FRIDAY MOTIVATION posts. However, since I have been more focused on my physical therapy and trying to follow that plan, losing weight/gaining muscle has not been at the top of my list.

But, I have been trying to keep my weight down, by cutting back further on calories, especially given my decreased overall activity on the new therapy plan. (Something which pains me, by the way, my exercise is for my mental as well as physical health and I'm having a really hard time not "going for it" at the gym and not doing any yoga.)

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I'm still hovering around 148lbs... if I can at least not put on weight while I'm on this limited activity program, I'm going to consider that a win.

From counter-productive to counter-intuitive

As you know, I have a new physical therapist - Marcia. I've been seeing her for about a week now and it's been a difficult 7 days. Not because of the therapy or the pain (no change there yet) but because of the prescription. Essentially, she is undoing everything I was doing to self-treat for the last 4.5 years; every piece of advice and diagnosis I've received from countless doctors, surgeons, physical therapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths.

It's proving to be not only a physical adjustment but a mental one as well.

In the last few visits, I've had the opportunity to quiz Marcia more about my diagnosis and prescription for recovery; to try and understand it from different angles. I'm not sure I'm 100% in-tune with it yet but, oversimplified, this is what has begun to sink in.

The pain(s) in my hip, buttocks, and leg that everyone has been treating as muscular are, in fact, neuropathy - nerve pain. This is wild to me. Just WILD. Not a single medical practitioner until this point has even mentioned nerve pain. Not one. The continued diagnosis of tight this muscle and irritated that ligament has been such a constant in the last four years that I can't even begin to get my head around the fact that the pain I'm feeling in many instances (obviously not all) is not muscular.

I believe and understand what Marcia is saying intellectually but there is still some part of me that won't grasp it, refuses to grasp it. It's like saying that the last four years, or at the very least the most recent two (since my surgery) have been a lie, a mistake, a serial misdiagnosis. I want to believe and trust that she is right - because she sure sounds like she knows what she's talking about - but to do that I have to have faith in the fact that she, this one person, has looked at the same person, the same symptoms, and come up with a completely different diagnosis. That's hard to grasp.

Of course, once you accept that your problem is not muscular but neurological, then you have to accept that the solution, your treatment strategy, and everything you've been doing up until this point, has been 100% wrong. And, in some cases, even counter-productive. Again, this is tough to accept; it's a big paradigm shift.

The nerve pain is not only made worse by excessive stretching (my previous self-treatment MO) but, my increased or hyper flexibility from the stretching, is preventing my muscles from protecting the irritated nerves and, therefore, continued stretching only serves to make the muscles spasm more, in order to try and protect the nerves. Basically, everything is freaking out, one thing trying to protect the other and actually making things worse. My pattern of stretching, doing yoga, and massaging only served to make my joint more unstable (hello pops and clicks) and my muscles more freaked out (hello IT band syndrome, psoas pain.)

So, yoga, at least for now, is out. (There's another big adjustment.) Anything that involves twisting or stretching my lower back or side-bending, is bad. No touching the toes, no picking things up below waist-height without bending my knees, no sitting straight up out of bed, no turning around in my car seat to grab Daisy's binky. In fact, Marcia taped my back after today's appointment, to help me understand all of the movements I make in a day that can potentially inflame my back. I have 3 layers of thick tape - one vertically to prevent forward flexion, one diagonally, to prevent twisting, and one horizontally to prevent side flexion - and feel as though I have a mini corset on.

For a good hour, the lack of mobility made me feel like I was a zombie. I got used to it as the day progressed, however, and have identified my sitting on the floor, legs crossed, as being the primary culprit, pulling and tugging on the tape. Otherwise, I have found that I do a pretty good job of avoiding any of the offending movements, probably because I have subconsciously been modifying my movements for some time and, also, I admit, because I knew the tape was there. Of course, when you have an active ten month old, avoiding sitting on the floor isn't always the easiest goal to meet.

In addition to the taping, Marcia has got me doing some core strengthening exercises and icing at least three times a day. In fact, I think that ice and rest is going to be a frequent prescription for my aches and pains in the long term. Learning what makes my symptoms flare up and avoiding that whenever possible is the primary objective - but that's in a perfect world; for the real world, RICE is going to be my new best friend.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have not felt a significant difference in pain or discomfort yet. My pain and irritation usually fluctuates (sometimes wildly) from day-to-day, week-to-week, and so it's hard to determine what, if any benefits, I am getting from the new course of treatment. One thing I am very cognizant of, however, is that my previous pattern has been in place for four years and so it's going to take more than a week to undo the habits and damage done.

Right now I just have to have a bit of blind faith that Marcia is significantly smarter than about 10 other people who were equally, if not more, medically qualified on paper. So far, I have to say that it's hard to stay the course and not jump back into old habits, especially when any benefits from the new plan will be small, incremental, and long term. There is nothing to tell me I'm on the right track yet and for this impatient, results-oriented A-type personality, that's the toughest adjustment of all.

Going backwards

... to go forwards.


That's the highly abbreviated version of the plan my new physical therapist prescribed for me today.


I'll start with the fact that I cried.


Yes. Me. Tears. WTH?


From the moment that Marcia, my new PT, started talking, I began to get a lump in my throat. I think that it was a combination of stored-up anticipation and last-ditch hope being released, as I began to realize that this chick was no ordinary PT. My new doc was right - she is the bombdiggedybomb of physical therapists and, given that she will be PT #5 for my hip, I should know the difference.


Then, when I started to talk (and she actually listened!), to explain my five years of pain and failed treatments, the way my life has been impacted both physically and emotionally, the sense of hopelessness that I will ever find relief, and the simple things that I wanted to achieve by being there, the tears began to flow.

Just from looking at the diagram of my body on the intake form, where I'd scratched angry Zs and diagonal lines to show pain, ache, and burning in various places, she was able to hypothesize 90% of what I was going through and why, before I'd even given her the verbal ins-an-and outs. I knew this because, in a stroke of luck, she was training an intern from Sac State that day and, through her explaining her thought process and strategy for quizzing me, I was able to learn not only what she knew, but also what that knowledge was telling her. Her experience was skipping her ahead, joining the dots almost quicker than I could place them.

She would be examining me and asking me questions and saying things to the intern like, "Typically in patients experiencing xyz, the abc nerve is also inflamed and patients will also describe discomfort doing 123 or 456,"meanwhile I would be nodding profusely, as she named seemingly disconnected symptoms that I hadn't yet described.

Then, she grabbed a life-size skeleton of the pelvis and lower back and began to explain to me, not in lamens terms, but in real medical language that assumed I was an intelligent and engaaged adult, how my SI (sacro-illiac) joint, pelvis, pubic bone, and lumbar spine worked together, where the nerves came in and out, what differnt kinds of nerves produced different kinds of pain and why, how they played off one another, how inflammation played a role and how my surgery had resulted in some problems and my pregnancy in others. It was a comprehensive explanation that I will spare you the specifics of because, although I got the general gist of it, I couldn't even begin to remember 90% of the terminology. However, the fact that it all made sense to her, that everything came together in an explainable story, made me want to jump up and kiss her. I was close, let me tell you.

I also liked the fact that she stopped me a couple of times as I went to bend down and pick something up, or get on the treatment table in a certain way, or try to turn over from front to back. She stopped me and showed me how my movements could be affecting my pain and inflammation right now.

The end-result of all of this is the following:

1. Nerves around my hip, specifically in my SI joint, were/are inflamed after my surgery and never really got the opportunity to calm-down. They're now causing irritation and inflammation in other nerves - in other words, the inflammation has been spreading. This is the cause of a lot of my referred pain and muscle pulls. So, strategy #1 is immediate and short-term: to reduce the inflammation through ice, anti-inflammatories and avoiding activities that irritate those nerves. This includes repetitive motion of my hip particularly with impact (walking), anything that involves bearing weight on that leg singularly (yoga, lunges), and stretching my leg across the plane of motion that replicates the pain (yoga and many of the stretches that previous PTs gave me). I am now icing my lower back three times a day with ice directly on the skin which, she believes, provides a deeper kind of numbing and cooling for those deep nerves that are pissed off in my lower back and hip.
2. My hip and groin on the right side is hyper flexible in one specific plane of motion and impinged in the opposing plane of motion. The hyper flexation is causing instability in the joint overall (popping and snapping and clunking). So, strategy #2 in the short term is to stabilize the muscles all around that joint properly, ensuring a more natural range-of-motion and pattern of movement that will, in turn, begin to alleviate some of the core nerve irritation/inflammation and prevent further injury. I already have some exercises to start me on that journey.
3. Long term, her goal for me after the short-term goals are achieved, is to get me to a place where my physical check-book is balanced. She explained to me that it wasn't that I would never be able to do many of the activities I did before I was injured and that now irritate the injury, but that I would just need to balance those negative activities with the positive ones. So, maybe I can ski again one day but maybe I can only ski one day at a time vs. two in a row and instead, on the second day, have a day of rest and self-treatment. I liked the way she explained this. It made sense to me. Just don't go into the "physical red". I can do that.

So, I'm off on the new plan... stepping back on some of my regular physical activities for a while with the goal of forging forward with renewed knowledge and awareness of my body and what makes it tick (or, specifically for me, click). I already did the icing at lunch time and about to do it again after I publish this post.

Wish me luck...

A sad story about Richard Gereis

There are moments in life that crystalize for you that you are no longer as young as you used to be; that you're no longer the hip, young generation. In fact, you're one of those respectable folks that teenagers would think are grown-up or even, God forbid, old.

Usually these moments are brought on by things like an aching back after a night dancing like a fool at a club too young for you, listening to the DJ and not knowing who the hell recorded half of the song sor why on earth they became so popular, and then the hangover that never now seems to last for the entire week afterwards.

Today, however, Hubby and I had one of those moments in the most bizzaro way. We were at a Starbucks and it involved Richard Gere.

Well, let me explain. Richard Gere wasn't actually there. (Shame, I know.)

We were at a Starbucks in a Target to be exact. We were there doing very adult things like purchasing formula and yet another Congratulations card for a friend who just had a baby. Truth be told we go out after work with Daisy just to get out of the house. We both have about a ninety minute time-limit on how much time we can spend watching her walk in circles around the living room, picking up and walking with the same toys. We're impatient and we hate to do housework on work nights, so we go out somewhere, anywhere, just to avoid all those mundane, responsibility-type things. (Yes, this is why my house does not look like a model home. I'm over it.)

But I digress...

So, we're ordering our mochas and lattes, when the pimply-faced boy at the cash register stopped and asks us if we know who "Richard Gereis" is. He said it exactly like that: Gere-is.

"Do you know who Richard Gereis is?"

It stopped Hubby and I in our tracks, not sure how to respond. Was this some kind of competition, I wondered, where, if we could get the right answer, we got a free latte? You know, sometimes they have those "Question of the Day" chalk boards with a different piece of a trivia for customers to guess? I actually looked for the chalk board but couldn't find one.

"Gereis?" Hubby repeated, being sure to get this "is" part in, for clarification. Of course, we had immediately jumped to he of Pretty Woman fame but, at the same time, were both wondering together, yet without collaboration, if there was some new alternative rock-band or extreme snowboarder who had come onto the scene under our radar and didn't want to appear "out of touch" by admitting our ignorance. So, we hedged our bets. Well, Hubby did, I stayed silent for the same reasons he sought clarification: I didn't want to look stupid.

"Yeah, you know, he's an actor. What movies has he been in?" the Pimplehead asked us. Again, we both looked at one another a bit puzzled.

"Do you mean Richard Gere?" Hubby said now, more confident in putting himself on that limb because the guy had at least verified that the mysterious Mr. Gereis was a movie actor.

"Um, yeah, I guess. Do you know of any movies he's been in?"

I still thought that this was some kind of quiz for a free latte, so I dove in with gusto. "An Officer and a Gentleman!" I almost yelled, determined to save my $3.50. Pimplehead looked at us with a blank expression. I realized with growing horror that he had no idea what I was talking about. "Pretty Woman??" we both offered-up, less enthusiastically.

It took him a moment but he finally seemed to have a flash of recognition. "Oh yeah, I think I remember the guy in that," he said.

You think you remember "the guy"??? Seriously? I was so stunned that it took a while for my old, slow brain to realize that, not only did this kid not know who Richard Gere/Gereis is but that iconic movies that were indelibly inked into my teenage psyche, didn't even exist for him. It was almost as though he was inquiring about some long-gone movie star from the silent era and, worse still, he thought that Hubby and I looked suitably old enough to know who the ancient Mr. Gereis is (or, presumably from pimplehead's perspective, potentially even "was!")

So, there it was. No free latte prize. In fact, the reward for our knowledge was somewhat unwelcome: a sinking feeling that we were old, unhip, and outdated; the realization that someone we considered to be "contemporary" is actually now so virtually irrelevant in popular culture that the "younger generation" (gulp) have no idea who he is.

If you're wondering why he was asking, by the way, it was because a customer before us (presumably someone of a similar age) told the female barista that she had eyes like Richard Gere (which she didn't.)

And why "Gereis"? The only conclusion I can reach is that the customer in question asked the girl if she knew who "Richard Gere is" and she, in all her youthful ignorance, had heard "Richard Gereis".

Sigh... Wasn't Pretty Woman like, just a couple of years ago or something?

Turns out, not so much. Pretty Woman was released a wopping 20 years ago, which explains why pimplehead missed it - he was probably just getting out of diapers. In fact, if I am off on his age by a few years, it's possible that he hadn't even yet been conceived. Worse still, An Officer and a Gentleman, is now celebrating the (gulp) 28th year of it's release.

Hubby and I are somewhat shell-shocked, although we did joke on the way home that it was probably just as well we didn't ask the kid if he'd ever heard the story about the gerbil...
--------

2/3/10 - edited to add

Hubby bought a burger at Carl’s Jr today and the chick working the register commented that his picture on his debit card didn’t look like him. He said “I know, I’m getting old”, and she laughed. Then he said “a young kid asked me who Richard Gere was yesterday”, and she said “who’s Richard Gere?”.

Back on the hip wagon

It's been a while since I posted anything about my hip. Hopefully a long enough hiatus to ensure that you're not all groaning in misery at the mere mention of it - but then, maybe not! ;o)

Anyway, if you've been following my titbits on Facebook, you'll know that I finally decided to make a doctor/PCP and medical group switch, and today was my first appointment with my new PCP.

Since my insurance is an HMO, my medical group is a big deal, in fact more of a big deal than my PCP, ultimately, becuase it dictates which specialists I can see. Long story short, I was originally with Hill Physicians when I first moved up to the Sacramento area several years ago and was very satisfied with all the referrals I received BUT hated my backwater doctor at the time. I switched to a younger doctor, with computer medical records (woot), who I loved (love) but she was a part of Mercy Medical Group - sort of like a mini Kaiser around here. Unfortunately, the "mini" meant mini service and mini options but with all of the same restrictions as KP. I had to fight to get my hip surgery done arthroscopically because Mercy didn't have a surgeon who had done it before (finally having to get a surgeon affiliated with Hill to scrub-in, so I wouldn't have to have open surgery). I then had to go out-of-network and out-of-pocket for physical therapy after my surgery because the Mercy therapists kicked me out the minute I was walking. Finally, to get the Osteopathic Manipulation my doc felt I needed to progress, I had to drive 45-60 minutes each way, to a town called Lincoln, on a 2-lane highway.

Although I loved my doc and honestly believe it is unlikely that I will ever find someone with a bedside manner that so completely suits me, the reality is that, aside from all but the basic cold, flu type illnesses (which I rarely have), she refers me out and so I spent more time with disparate "specialists" than I did with her. And, as I said, the specialists in Mercy are not all that special, in my humble (yet increasingly experienced) opinion.

It pains me to have to start this whole process again for the third time but I've plateaud with my hip in a place that is not acceptable for me at this time in my life. I honestly don't know if moving around like this is the solution but what I do know is that I've got to keep trying. I won't rest until I turn over every rock, trying to find the magical combination of treatment and care that will help me get to a better place.

Unfortunately, I've eliminated "recovery" or "pain free" from my vocabulary these days, as I'm not sure these are reasonable goals. Honestly, I'd just like to be able to get in and out of my car without worrying about twisting or turning the wrong way, pulling something, or clicking or popping something. Not to have to think about every little movement and make adjustments all the time would be victory for me. I want to be able to chase Daisy around the garden and perhaps even ski down a bunny hill with her for the first time - no black diamonds or anything, just a gentle little slope and some amateurish ploughing. Beyond that, I don't know what I'm going to achieve but I know I'm going to work hard to make it the best result I possibly can.

With all this in mind, I went to my doctor's appointment this morning.

The new guy is literally a quarter of a mile up the street. I practically passed his surgery every day without even paying it a second notice! I found him through my health insurance's online doctor site, by looking for another D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy.) I have a lot of respect for doctors who do the extra time (2-6 years more than a regular doctor) and become a D.O. and, so far, I like their approach to treatment, so it was important to me not to lose that, if possible, in the switch.

Doing a little research on him, I was intrigued. In these days of computerized medical records, where doctors half-listen to you while they busy themselves with typing on a keyboard or fighting with an "F" button of some sort, he is an old-fashioned type doctor with an old-fashioned family practice. He "specializes" in total health care, from infancy and childhood, through adulthood, everything from pediatric to women's health, dermatology, nutrition, chiropracty, osteopathic manipulation, in-office minor surgical procedures and physical therapy - all in his surgery. (I KNOW!) I met with him briefly before I made the switch and he bristled at the very mention of referrals. "We like to take care of as much as we can here," he said. "For us, it's about continuity of care." Although I know this could either be a blessing or a curse, it was different enough to make me curious. The PCP >>> referral route hasn't served me too well as yet, so a truely different approach is probably my best chance yet at a different result.

Not that old-fashioned equals "old" or out of date, at least where it matters. No, he doesn't have computerized medical records and has had his local practice for 20 years but he's a fit, energetic, attractive, 50-ish man, the chief physician for the local Hill Physicians region and is involved in academic testing on the California Osteopathic State Board. These things tell me that he stays up-to-date yet is experienced enough to know what's what, especially within his own medical group - and knowing how to negotiate the system is an under-valued quality in a doctor, I am finding.

In person he turns out to be the typical "A-type" personality. A short, brusque, multi-tasker, who knows what he's doing and likes to get to the point. He is constantly on the move with purposeful energy, walking around his surgery simultaneously signing-off on charts, texting on his mobile phone, making and answering calls between patients, and conversing in harried-tones to his staff. He takes notes by verbally recording his voice on his smart phone, presumably because he doesn't want to take the time between patients to sit down and write (or type) something. He moves from one task to the next fluidly and his staff orbit around him in the kind of practiced way that makes you realize that he demands a lot of them but is admired by them; they've also obviously been with him as a team for some time.

His bedside manner isn't touchy-feely and sitting in front of him to explain the reason for your visit is an exercise in summation and verbal bullet-pointing - state your needs up front and remove the unecessary words; get to the point! He's a jolt to the system if you've been used to someone chatty and sympathetic, as I have. And if you're looking for someone to talk about how you're "feeling" non-medically... this guy is not for you.

But, I think I'm going to like him. He's definitely an adjustment for me but one I can easily make with my "get on with it" personality. Although I like to think of myself as a fairly friendly individual, I have come to value expertise and capability over friendliness. I've had friendly and look where it's got me. I go to the doctor to get "fixed" not to socialize, so I can look past this if I get results.

Within five minutes, we'd moved beyond my long-winded hip history (which he rushed me through) and determined that there wasn't much point in looking at what had already been done: Surgery - check; Orthopedists - check; Physical Therapists - check; Osteopathic Manipulation - check; Results - notsomuch. What did I expect to gain from seeing him? he asked me. I couldn't provide a concrete answer because I don't know what it's realistc to expect. It's an open-ended objective, really. We settled on someone different doing something different for, hopefully, a different result.

He immediately whisked me away to his manipulation treatment room where he cracked (and I mean popopopopopopop) my back, my ribs, my hips and pelvis in 3 swift and yet painless movements that took less than 30 seconds to perform. He then told me that I hadn't had really good physical therapy until I had been to a local lady, just half a mile away. He said she was the (and I quote) "best in the west" and if something was "fixable" to any extent possible, she would be the one to fix it. He told me she wasn't within my medical network but that he knew her well enough over the years that he his patients had a special cash rate with her of just $45 per visit (only $20 more that I would have to pay with insurance anyway.) He scribbled illegibly on a pad to refer me to her as we walked out and back to the front desk, mentioned a follow-up appointment in two weeks and said goodbye as his receptionist took his cue and had three appointment times/dates ready for me to pick from.

Not ten minutes after I had first shook his hand, I walked out of there, having been assessed and dismissed in short order. It was like being at the Dennys of doctors: good, solid food you can rely on, dished-out quickly by a busy and well-practiced kitchen. (I like Dennys, by the way. If you don't have a favorable opinion of Dennys, just replace with your favorite fast-and-yummy diner-food joint.)

Of course, as we say in the UK, the proof is in the pudding. Meaning, the results will speak for themeselves. But right now, I'm just happy to be on a different course.

I called the Physical Therapist, by the way, and have an appointment for 8:15am tomorrow morning. So, more after that...

It occurs to me...

... that the expectations of the political process in this country are ridiculous.

1) At the local level, we elect individuals to represent us in Congress based upon, what we believe to be, shared beliefs, values, and policy positions. We send them off to Washington to deliver on those promises and then, over the next two to six years (depending on whether they are a Congressman/woman or Senator) we judge them on their ability to deliver what they promised during the elections.

2) We do the same thing at the Presidential level. We pick one person based upon what they represent, to get things done.

3) As a citizenry we then spend the next two to six years complaining because these people as a collective group do not "meet in the middle", "compromise", or "work together".

4) #3 requires that the people in #1 and #2 give up something because, let's face it, no matter what words you use to make it sound nice, compromise requires the person on each side of an issue, to let go of/give up something. This, by default, means that some of the things that the people in #1 and #2 promised, cannot be delivered upon, at least to the extent to which they were promised.

5) We make the President a separate branch of government that has really little or no real influence on what goes on in Congress, thus making it all but impossible to affect any real change because he/she needs to persuade a group of more than 500 people fighting at the local level for their own constituents vs. the greater good, and/or playing partisan politics and infighting for their own professional gain.

6) We give the minority in Congress the ability to filibuster bills that the opposing party brings to vote, thus ensuring that the minority can scupper the efforts of the elected majority, and preventing the very changes that the majority of voters mandated by electing the party in the majority in the first place.

7) We then criticize the people in #1 and #2 for not doing what they promised to do, although when they actually do #3, they can't deliver on a lot of what they promised, and when they don't do #3, the opposing party does #6 and kills it anyway.

It's like putting a CEO in charge of a company and then asking him/her to lobby all the employees to create, vote-on, and enact his/her company decisions! No company could ever be run that way. Why do we expect that our country can?

Now, let me be clear: I am not a fan of many of the people in Congress, even on my side of the aisle (I am also not one of those people who thinks it's as simple as saying that everyone is corrupt and/or worthless either). But it seems to me that the system is set-up to have you be damned if you do and damned if you don't.

We say we want change but our system of government is set-up to force centrist policy-making which, more often than not, reinforces the status quo.

I voted for President Obama because he stood on a platform of change but, honestly, I have to say that never ONCE did I think that the system we have in place in this country would actually let him affect much of that change. I'm not surprised that the health-care bill is all-but dead. I never expected it to pass. That's why I haven't been getting all excited this past year about it on this blog. It was dead before it started.

I think it's time to get real in this country. Either you want something to happen, in which case you have to accept that not everyone will agree with the outcome and that's just life (get more votes next time, folks!) or you agree that everything's mostly fine as it is and harmony (or the effort towards it) is more important than results. (Quick pause while I vomit.)

Yes, it is true that you can argue that the current system prevents radical shifts and thus ensures that change, overall, can be incremental. BUT it also discourages big, sensitive issues from being tackled at all - like health care, like social security, like tax reform - all of which have been broached numerous times but always without result.

Although it is a noble goal, it's just not possible to please everyone. We are not kindergardeners playing a "no win/no lose" soccer match. We are grown-ups and the reality of life is that, for change to be enacted, some people are going to end up happy and some people are going to end up pissed off. That's life.

A shout out to my ass

Yes, I said ass. Don't get all hot and bovvered, people. It's just an ass.

But, I had to post something about it because this weekend I had an awesome ass experience.

Now, if you're a woman (which most of my readers are), you'll know that positive posterior moments don't come around too often, especially after about 28, certainly not as you're careening quickly towards 40, and even less likely (with all that age crap taken into account) after you've had a baby within the last 12 months.

BUT. I. HAD. ONE. (A good moment, not a baby. We already knew that.)

I know, absolutelyfreakin amazing.

So, you ask, what has instigated this sudden self-lovin'?

Well, this weekend I went shopping with a girlfriend and found myself in Gap, a store which I don't usually shop in. Why don't I shop there? Well, it's basically a more expensive Old Navy and, since I like Old Navy just fine thankyouverymuch, I usually pass Gap by. But either which way, Old Navy or Gap, I only ever by tops there. Pants and jeans from these two establishments, I have found, tend to be made for tweens with boyish figures and stick-insect legs. To get my thighs to sausage-squeeze into their pant legs, I usually have to suffer the indignity of going up two sizes and, even then, wind-up with four inches of leg and two inches of waist too much. In short (or long, in this case), these places don't make pants for a short and hippy English gal.

But my friend, who just had a baby two months ago (and who looks absolutelyfricken amazing already by the way - gag) wanted to try on her first pair of post-baby jeans and I thought it would be a good mark of friendship to undergo the dreaded jean try-on along with her. (I mean, let's face it, next to buying a swimsuit, trying on jeans has to be the next most depressing activity for the average woman.)

Expecting disappointment galore, I picked out two different pairs of jeans in a size 12. (Even when I was at my most svelte, fitting into anything other than a size 8 or 10 jeans in this country proved to be a stretch.)

And I put them on....

And they were...

TOO BIG!

Gulp. WTF? This never happens this way! Joy of delicious joy, I had to go back for a size smaller!!!!

I put on the size 10s in the shortie length (aka: "Ankle" in Gap) and they fit snug as a bug in a rug - even the length was perfect! I looked in the mirror and I have to say I did not look too shabby at all. Ok, so I'm no Angelina Jolie, but my derrier definitely looked good, my waistband fitted and sitted perfectly (no muffin top!), and there was nothing sausagey at all going on in the thigh department. In fact, after wearing them for an afternoon, I venture to say that I probably could have made it into an 8, if I were so inclined to suffer through an hour or two of stretching time after each wash. (Which, I'm not. I'm past suffering for vanity.)

Of course, I purchased them immediately, despite my vow not to buy too much. Drats, some things you just gotta do for your ego, you know?

On the down side, I should mention that the words "Curvy" did appear in the name of the style AND I wound-up feeling kind of bad for my friend. She didn't have the same positive experience with her jeans as I did and walked away with nothing while I stood in front of the mirror, eyeing my ass with a pleased look on my face. So much for scoring friend points!

Ok, so I couldn't leave it alone entirely

Republicans, I'd like to know how it feels to be the party of obstruction. Really? What else do you stand for? All I can see is: guns, killing doctors who perform legal procedures, religion, torture, oil, and war. Pretty much anything else worthwhile you obstruct. In the past it was an African American's right to vote, social security, medicare, segregation, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act... now, true to form, it's healthcare.

Not that the Democrats in Congress don't deserve a fair share of the blame here either. They dragged their feet putting the bill together, weighing it with all kinds of pork-barrel crap and stupid in-fighting, failing to seize the political capital that President Obama had bought for them (and which has now significantly dwindled, not in small part, because of their ineffectiveness.)

It's a national disgrace to be sure on all sides. The Democrats for behaving like school children fighting over the big bag of candy that was dropped in the middle of the room and the Republicans for sulking in a corner because they couldn't have it all their way. Now, of course, they got Mr. Brown who can be sure to gleefully block anything worthwhile just because the Republicans didn't come up with it in the first place.




And, does it bother anyone else that this Fox News anchor seems to have a self-satisfied smirk on his face? It's almost as if he's elated that the richest country in the world cares less that 15% it's residents do not have basic health care.

Then, as for this young fellow, I'm sure his 15 minutes of fame won't be his last. I expect to see him on an FBI wanted poster sometime in the next 10 years. (The part this article failed to mention was his F grades and the fact that he has consistently been in trouble for yelling racial slurs and talking about the KKK. AWESOME. Yup, put a gun in THIS boy's hand for sure.)

Friday Motivation - Phase II, Week 3

I'm going to keep this one brief because I think that, ultimately, these posts are becoming a bit self-indulgent. However, it's helping me stay motivated to know that I have to check-in on this blog with my progress each week, so here goes...

(And yes, I did miss last week. Oops!)

Current Weight: 148.6lbs
Body Fat: 36%
Weight Lost this week: 1.2lbs
Total weight lost to date: 12.4lbs
Lbs to Goal: 3.6lbs
Fat % to Goal: 6%

Yay for me. Just under 4lbs to go to my pre-baby weight!

I had so much more to blog about this week - the election results in MA and the impact on the President's agenda (specifically healthcare), the kid who brought a gun to school being defended by the NRA, and the crazy weather to name a few. But, ultimately, I don't have time to sit and write about it these days. I thought about just throwing some rushed and random thoughts on this blog but some of the discussions require thoughtful posts.

I have found that, now I'm a mother, it's not that I care less about political or social issues but more that I don't have the brain or emotional space to let myself get embroiled in them.

So, this is all ya get for now...

Yeehaw! It's a Texas Baby Shower

This past weekend I was able to make good use of some US airmiles sitting in my frequent flyer account and head-out to Dallas, Texas, to shower one of my best friends in the whole world, Jenny (aka: Nike, like the shoes) with lots of love before her first child is born next month.

My little Nikester (as I fondly refer to her, since she is 7 years younger than me), used to work with Hubby and I back when we were in Southern California. She was a teenager back then and we were her first real job. Her bubbly, sunny personality won us all over, however, and some of my best memories from my time in the OC were with her in the office, zooming around on our office chairs with wheels, and driving Hubby mad while we sang "The hills are alive, with the sound of muuuuuuuuuuusic!" I don't know quite how that became our "thing to do" but it did and it sealed our fate as great friends forever. Whenever Nike is around, I just can't help but smile. Some people make an indelible mark on your life and you just know that, no matter what happens or how far apart you might be, you can always pick-up where you left off. Jenny is one of those few people for me. My friend, E, of TheGurlyLife, is another.

This was my first shower since becoming a mommy myself and it was fun to be the person imparting tidbits and advice vs. either (a) the clueless one or (b) and most recently, the one on the receiving end of all those "Ohhhh, just you wait and see..." comments.

It was a crazy weekend, not only because of my hell-bent schedule (in Saturday night and out early Monday morning to make it back to my desk for work) but also because Jenny and her husband, Wes, had just (as in, late-Saturday-afternoon-just) moved into their new home - a 3,200 square foot mansion just outside of Fort Worth. (It's true what they say, everything is bigger in Texas!)

Poor thing, 8 months pregnant, the weekend of her baby shower and here she is moving house and home. Unfortunately, it was not of her choosing. They had purchased a newly built home in a new community and it was supposed to be ready last November but, as things tend to, that obviously didn't go according to plan.

I remember that, during my baby shower, the very best gifts I got were the arrival of my mum from England and the surprise arrival of my friend, E, from Southern California. So, it was a great feeling to know that I could pay that forward to my little Nikester and show-up for her.

Incidentally, I think "showing-up" for our friends has become a forgotten art these days, at least in my experience. We Facebook, we email, we text, we may even send a Christmas card (although that all-too-often gets thrown by the wayside in our busy lives), or we'll shop online and ship a gift - we do pretty much anything to pay lip-service to friendship without actually having to give of ourselves. I think that working from home and not having a whole bunch of social contact on a daily basis makes me feel this more acutely than most. But anyway, that's a thought for another day and another post. The point is, I was incredibly happy to be able to be there and she was incredibly happy that I made the effort, which only made me even happier still. So, in short, lots of happiness. Something I needed a shot of, so good timing too.

As for Texas... it's no secret that I'm not a fan. I'm not judging anyone who lives there or moves there or whatever, I'm just saying that it, and the people in it, do not float my boat one little bit. In fact, I would venture to say that it makes my boat sink down, waaaay down, 20,000 leagues under the sea down. It's flat, it's empty, it lacks personality, and the locals are snippy and seem to have chips on their shoulder. This was my 4th visit to the state and I haven't found a reason to like it yet, unless, of course, you count "cheap" as a reason. BUT, Jenny is there and, funnily enough, Hubby's best friend lives just the other side of Dallas, so it seems likely that we are doomed to return later this year for another visit. Maybe I will warm with repeated exposure; like a fungus, it may just grow on me.

I know, sorry... a lot of people like Texas. Don't hate me. I've tried/am trying.

So, now all that's left to do is wait for little Megan to be born. We have about 5 weeks to go and I can't wait to see the first pics of her and her beautiful mama.

Love you, Jen!

Friday Motivation - Phase II, Week 1

Ok, now I'm really upping the pressure on myself.

The pic on the left is me about three months before my wedding in '06, tanned, skinny, hair perfect, and just made-up by my friend, Kim.

I'm posting the pic of me at the best shape of my life right now because I am upping the ante in the weight-loss stakes. Since I have another 10 weeks before I actually go to Jamaica, I'm setting myself new goals

Henceforth, we're embarking upon Friday Motivation PHASE II (cue theme tune to Rocky).

We begin with good news - I have broken the 150lbs barrier... JUST. (I guess that holiday stress and sickness was good for SOMETHING.)

Now it's time to focus a little less on pounds and a little more on strength, tone, and muscle conditioning.

Therefore, my goal before March 20 is not only to lose those remaining 5 pounds but also to shed an additional 7% of my current body fat, getting me to the top-end of what should be healthy for a woman of my age. Or, in real terms, this means I need to lose, and/or transition to muscle, 11.5lbs of body fat. (Gulp.)

Current Weight: 149.8lbs
Weight Lost To Date: 11.2lbs
Current Body Fat %: 37%
Goal Weight: 145lbs
Goal Body Fat %: 30%
Weeks to Goal: 10

Here's to me making 2010 the best shape of my life!

Random thoughts on My Geography of Happiness

Right now I am reading a book by Eric Weiner called The Geography of Happiness. I wasn't too enthusiastic about it when I bought it; it sounded mildly interesting, was 50% off at Borders, and I badly needed something to read in the evenings to help me wind-down. However, I'm about 2/3 of the way through and am so glad I bought it and am reading it right now. It's perfect timing.


In the book, Weiner, who is a correspondent for NPR and a lifelong grouch, trots around the globe trying to find out what makes people happy (or unhappy, in some cases) in different countries and cultures, in an effort to determine whether there are universal conditions for happiness and, if so, where he might be able to find them and, therefore, "be happy."


The book initially appealed to me less from the perspective of really caring about the nature of happiness than because of the travel and culture components. I enjoy reading and learning about other cultures (which, in turn, is one of the reasons I love to travel) and I'm fascinated by how people, culture, and environment feed on and off of one another - also probably a lingering intellectual interest sparked by my degree in Media & Cultural Studies.

It has indeed been stimulating on this front but what has been most thought provoking for me is the way it has me thinking about my own road map for happiness, or, in the spirit of the book, my personal geography of happiness. Not in the sense of whether or not I'm happy but more in the sense of trying to understand what makes me happy and how I differ or identify with the different cultures in the book, especially since many of the countries Weiner visits are in Europe.

I'm not done with the book yet and so I'm saving any conclusions for the last page but here is what has occurred to me so far:

Happiness to me is fleeting and morphous. It's not a destination or a permanent state but a mood, just like sadness, anger, frustration etc... I suppose I could say I would think someone is "happy" based upon whether their general disposition is more happy than sad but I think that's oversimplifying things a tad.

Although we all definitely have our list of things that bring us joy, or make us "happy", I think whether or not those things make us happy greatly depends on many things on any given day - hormones, the weather, the mood of those around us, the news, the time of year, external events or circumstances... For instance, I love to read, it engrosses and stimulates me in a way that no other medium can BUT if I've had a particularly stressful day, reading can actually make me irritated. Similarly, I don't like to drink water as a rule, it makes me feel sick. But, on a really hot day, when I'm physically active, nothing tastes better. These things bring me joy under certain cirumstances and so what happiness is to me is constantly changing.

Yet, happiness should not be confused with joy. Too many people spend their life searching for a constant state of elation and wind up feeling disappointed when it eludes them. Whether it be drug addicts looking for the greater high or consumers trying to buy their way into happiness with the most expensive designer item or coolest gadget, our society encourages us to find "things" to make us happy but leaves us a state of perpetual wanting when the "high" fades. One of the common threads between the happiest countries on earth, Weiner seems to be finding, is contentment through moderation of emotion - highs and lows. The Swiss, for instance, are (based upon data and Weiner's own research) a happy nation but it's not as if they run around in a perpetually happy mood, singing at the tops of their voices and smiling all day. They're just in that nice middle place, perhaps you could say well-balanced.

Balance seems to be the key overall, in fact, although Weiner has not specifically addressed it that way. Balance between home and work life, public and private life, capitalism and socialism, individualism and collectivism, seems to show up in many different ways in the book. As an example, the folks of Iceland consistently score high on the happiness scale, even despite living in a freezing cold country that is pitch black for several months out of the year. One of the reasons they cite for their happiness is the fact that their social safety net gives them the freedom to fail and therefore the freedom to take chances. As an example, many Icelandic people have several different careers throughout the course of their life. Without the concerns we have here in the States like losing health insurance if we quit our job, they lack the fear or dire consequences of trying something new. As a result, there is a thriving spirit of entrepreneurism and artistic talent in Iceland right now - the culture of the starving writer just doesn't exist in their country. All an example of where a more socialist system (than the U.S.) actually promotes greater individualism and risk-taking.

In addition to thinking about the nature of happines, the book has also cued my reticular activator and has started me thinking about when I am happy.

It's been a rough few weeks over here in Randomrantville with things you know and more you don't, and it's tempting to pile one negative event on top of the other, wringing one's hands in despair at the state of life, as well as worrying about all the potential outcomes of the future. But allowing unrelated bad events to build on one another is just like allowing physical pain to build and take over your psyche. Having had two recent surgeries, I know about this and I know you need to get ahead of the pain, take each day as it comes, and not allow yourself to pile-up the bad stuff. The same is true of life in general, I think.

It's funny but when I make a list of the last twelve months and all the events in it, I'd like to bet that my list of happy events at least equals, if not exceeds, my list of unhappy ones. Yet, it's only the bad events that we group together, no matter how unrelated, saying things like we've had "a run of bad luck"; it becomes the story of a period of time in our lives, like, for instance, my last few weeks: Mum breaks hip and has surgery, we cancel our trip, we all get stomach flu for New Year = a bad holiday. But it's very rarely that we line up those positive events and amass them into a narrative. What about if instead I wrote: Bought new car, Daisy's first Christmas, my first time cooking Christmas dinner, saved $3k on vacation and now have something to look forward to in March. These things all happened at the same time as the bad stuff but yet the negative events are the ones that somehow end up defining. I wonder why that is? Misery loves company, I guess.

I don't have a closing thought here, these are just random ramblings right now, spurred by the book.

One idea I am going to put into action, provoked by the book, is journaling things that make me happy every day. In research, people who kept a journal of things that made them happy every day are more likely to report increased levels of overall happiness, than those who do not keep a journal. Since I have two blogs, two twitter accounts, and two Facebook accounts, I don't think a journal, per se, is needed, so what I'm going to do instead is create a list here on this site of things that have made me happy each day. You can see it over there on the right. We'll see if it reveals anything about me, my life, or my levels of happiness.

Anyway, it's late (for me late is 9pm) and I need to go wind-down before bed. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts on happiness!
-----------------------------
1/8/09 - Edited to add: although the book spends all it's time talking specifically about happiness, the book itself is actually called "The Geography of Bliss", if you're looking for it.

Holy Faux Pas!

This morning my boss told me that I had lost weight. Of course, overall, I have. I'm just a few pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight. Granted, my body is not in the tip-top, tight shape it was back then yet, but it's close enough to say that I feel beyond the baby weight at this point. So, the compliment made me feel good.

It's just as well because I needed a savings account of self-esteem for the afternoon when at the pediatrician's, as I was making our co-payment, the twenty-something receptionist asked me "When are you due?"

I laughed because I knew she would be mortified when I told her "I'm not pregnant."

Now, at this point, most people would go beet red, apologize profusely and move on quickly to save face.

You guessed it, that is not what happened in this case.

"Are you serious?" she asked me, in a tone that demonstrated that she thought I was being coy or toying with her or something. "You are pregnant, aren't you?" She then continued to defend her position by saying "I can see your belly!" repeating some words to the effect that she thought I was messing with her.

Had it not have been for the fact that I was feeling pretty good about myself today and actually was thinking that my stomach was getting flatter all of a sudden, I would probably have disappeared into tears or reacted with hurt anger at this point. But I didn't, I kept smiling, convinced that, at some point this poor girl would realize her horrible faux pas and be incredibly embarassed. Yet, she continued.

"Seriously? You're not pregnant?" she asked again and I, smiling (barely at this point) once again affirmed no. Now she started to go all shades of red and began to apologize, which I was kind of glad of because I was beginning to think that I had developed some kind of reverse anorexia and what I thought saw in the mirror that morning was actually 30lbs lighter than what other people were seeing.

The other girls behind the counter were beginning to tune into our conversation now, either incredulous that she was continuing this line of questioning or that I wasn't actually pregnant - it was difficult to determine which but they were definitely eyeing me doubtfully.

Then, the unthinkable happened - the girl grabbed her foot and proceeded to not only put it further in her mouth, but, by the time she was done, had probably swallowed it for dinner. "It must be that dress you're wearing that makes your stomach look big," she said.

WTF!? Seriously? Had this girl somehow skipped every life lesson on women's weight and social etiquette?

(Not that it should have had anything to do with it but I would like to point out that (a) I was standing behind a waist-high counter and (b) I was not wearing a dress. I was wearing a long-line, tailored shirt, a nice shirt (Cabi), over black leggings and a pair of knee-high black boots. The shirt wasn't even form-fitting, so it didn't even show the outline of my figure!)

At this point, I was, understandably, a bit flabberghasted. Less so at the slight and more so at the fact that she was continuing to add insult to injury. I told her I had actually lost 10lbs since the last time I saw her and didn't know what she was talking about but AGAIN she asked me if I was kidding with her!?

Now one of the other girls behind the counter tried to come to her defense. "Even so," she said, in what had to be the world's worst attempt to dig a friend out of a deeply muddy hole, "sometimes, when you lose weight after a baby, you don't lose it evenly from everywhere. It goes faster from some places than others."

I looked at her incredulously and said "I would stop trying to dig her out of a hole if I were you because you basically just said I have a fat stomach."

There was an awkward silence, of course. I was still smiling and things were still jolly but the undertone to my voice was clear - you're crossing a line, bitch! (I venture to say that, for many people, the line would already have been not only crossed, but a distance speck by then.) I finished paying, all the while, the women sort of looking at me oddly, as if to determine whether or not their friends' initial assessment of my condition was an understandable mistake based upon my appearance.

"Now you're all going to watch me walk away to see if I actually do look pregnant," I said, as I tucked my credit card receipt in my wallet and shook my head at them in dismay.

I was honestly so shocked by their comments and behavior that I couldn't regain my sense of indignation and get angry. I'm still actually not angry right now, although I have every right to be. I'm just 100% gobsmacked, quite frankly. I'm not just 100% certain that I do not look pregnant (maybe a little squidgy but certainly not preggers), I'm also in complete disbelief at their insensitivity and cluelessness.

And all this just added to a day that mingled with all the other crappy ones in the past few weeks. It started with losing our childcare to sickness at 7am this morning, meaning Hubby had to take the morning off because I had to go into the office for a meeting, and continued with Daisy having almost non-stop diarrhea.

To top it all off, I had one hour in the early afternoon where my glands, throat, and inner-ears were throbbing like crazy, as if I was coming down with yet another bug. I called my doc and she prescribed an antibiotic for me over the phone (without an examination, something which just bothers me - I don't like to take antibiotics needlessly and I don't appreciate having drugs thrown at me in lieu of actual medical care). I feel better this evening, however, and so I'm going to wait to see how I feel in the morning before I decide to take anything. Hopefully it was the stomach flu thing of last week still working it's way slowly out of my system. Fingers crossed!

And so, we hope for a better day tomorrow, or at least one in which I don't get asked if I'm carrying twins or something.

Skipping the kvetch

I had planned to recap my two weeks vacation from hell but, as I started to write it in my head this past weekend, I realized I was actually quite done with my own misery and very ready to move on.

So, for those of you who are not connected to me on FB, here is the non-emotional, non-kvetchy version, just to get you up-to-speed:

• December 18th - last day of work
• December 19th - Mum rushed to hospital with broken hip
• December 20th - Mum has partial hip replacement surgery. Vacation to Jamaica cancelled.
• December 20th - 23rd - rushing to-and-from the hospital and trying to get everything ready for Xmas, especially since I would now be hosting @ Mum and Dad's house.
• December 23rd - Mum home from hospital
• December 25th - Christmas a success - yay!
• December 26th - 29th - blissful four days of no drama.
• December 30th - Daisy projectile vomits
• December 31st - Daisy projectile vomits in her crib. Plan to skip midnight and go to bed early is skuppered by dogs barking at firecrackers. In bed @ 3am, get 4 hours of sleep. Ouch.
• January 1st - we all wake up sick with a killer stomach flu that leaves us rolling around on the floor in misery. Hubby ends up in Emergency Room with dehydration. Daisy goes to urgent care but is told to ride it out.
• January 2nd - 3rd - nursing poor Daisy slowly back to health to avoid a recurrence of the vomiting cycle. Poor thing is mad and unhappy when awake but sleeps 18 out of 24 hours each day. Hubby and I thoroughly exhausted.

Yay ... and now I'm back to work and very happy to be there. So, let's move on with some positivity.

My favorite things from 2009...

• Events: Daisy being born. Mum and Dad moving out here.
• TV: Modern Family - a comedy show that actually makes me laugh - yay! Vampire Diaries - my Thursday night guilty pleasure.
• Music: Adam Lambert's new CD. I'm playing it endlessly. I don't really care that he kissed some guy on TV, btw, so don't even go there.

What I'm planning to achieve in 2010...

1. That photography class - finally! Oh, and probably a Photoshop class too. I'd like to be taking my friends' family's holiday pics in October/November for some extra cash.
2. Health for my hip - mission one is strengthen and prevent injury. First step: change doctors and medical groups. Get a different perspective. Watch this space.
3. Better health for my finances - sell the Altima, reduce my credit card debt, watch what I spend, go on mini-vacations instead of big ones in '10. Save.
4. Sell more @ work. Move some mountains. Find the fire to reach my potential in my current job.
5. Rebook my vacation to Jamaica and get the hell out of dodge. (This doesn't count against #3 because the money is already spent.)
6. Work in the back yard with Hubby and make it a great play space for Daisy in 2010.
7. Go through every room and every cupboard in the house and throw out unnecessary crap. Organize and declutter.
8. Continue the weight loss process and focus more on strength/muscle-tone. Get bikini abs for #5.
9. Enjoy Daisy. Love my husband. Spend time with my parents. Appreciate the ones I love.

And with that, I bid you a Happy New Year. Hope your 2010 turns out to be everything you hoped it would be when that clock stuck midnight. For me, I was just hoping for a good night's sleep, so it's only up from there!

Weekending

This weekend was a pleasant mix of achievement, domesticity and fun.

On Saturday morning Daisy got her first H1N1 shot. (For those of you who follow my status updates on Facebook, you'll know that this was the "achievement" part of this post.) Then went to swimming lessons and came home so that Mummy could...

...buy a new car!

Or, more specifically, a used SUV - a 2008 Kia Sorrento EX.

If you've known me for a while know, you'll know that is quite a leap. If you haven't, then let me summarize to bring you up to speed: I like to drive (fast); I like fast cars; I like stick shifts; I frown on automatics because it's like driving a go-kart; my previous car (Altima 3.5SE) was my baby and took my breath away when I drove it for the first time; I vowed never to change any of these preferences and purchase an SUV or an automatic just because I had become a mommy.

Shoot, well, so much for that.

In all honesty, I didn't buy this car because I'm a mommy and/or because I have somehow abandoned everything fun and exciting that I was before. I purchased it as part 1 of my New Year's Resolution - get my financial house in order. I'm going to sell my old car private party (it's paid-up) and use the money to pay off credit card debt. So, you can sort of look upon it as refinancing my unsecured credit card debt for a secured loan at a lower APR (4.7%).

This year has, understandably, been a bit of an expensive year. In addition to Daisy and our vacations (which is what I view my credit cards as being for and which I refused to negotiate for my own mental health), I put other large purchases on my card this year - my Gym, Daisy's Viacord service, to name just two. Now, with credit cards playing hanky-panky with your interest rates and no doubt trying to find new ways to gouge money out of you now that the new laws are coming into effect in 2010, I have decided that it's time to do the responsible thing and move my debt elsewhere

Unfortunately, a new Altima 3.5SE did not fit well into those plans, unless I leased, which I consider to be pretty much on-par with renting a house - good money thrown away. Hence, I needed something different. I've been researching for a while and boiled it down to several vehicles that met my space criteria (room for a car seat and two people in the back seat, a large trunk for strollers and groceries), as well as my own personal preferences (sunroof, power seats, an automatically dimming rear mirror, a compass, and an engine that wouldn't leave me poodling away from a light like a granny.) The Sorrento was on that list and so I visited the local Kia dealer last week for a test drive.

Originally I test-drove a brand new LX 4x4 - the last new Sorrento they had in stock. It felt clunky, too high-up, and, quite frankly, a little cheap and plastic inside. Plus it didn't check a lot of my personal boxes re: features. I wasn't impressed. Then the salesman mentioned a loaded 2008 EX that a Priest had just returned. (Yes, I said Priest - my car has been blessed!)

Aparently said Priest had been recently reassigned to the foothills, just above the snow level, but was told by his boss (? who the heck manages Priest relocations?) that it really never snowed there. So, he purchased a 2 wheel drive vehicle new. Then, this past weekend, a foot or so of snow dropped on him and he freaked out. It seems that he wasn't willing to leave his safety on the snow to prayer alone and returned the loaded EX for a 4-wheel drive LX. His loss was my gain because his $26k new vehicle is now mine for just over $19k. Woot!

Ms. Sorrento is black, has leather, heated seats, power seat adjustment, a sunroof, a 6 CD changer with in-wheel controls, towing package, dual climate control... plus lots more that I've probably forgotten. As a 2-wheel drive it's lower and way less clunky than the 4x4 I originally test-drove and, with it's 3.8L engine, it's not too shabby in the acceleration department either - yay, no granny driving for moi! In fact, the more I've driven it this weekend, the more I've come to love it. I have to say that the heated seats came in really handy this wintery weekend: nothing like having a warm ass

So, all in all, not too much of a sacrifice, although one day in the future I WILL purchase another ridiculously fast car with manual transmission again. This is a temporary, if not entirely terrible, compromise.

As you've probably experienced with car purchases yourself, this took up my Saturday afternoon.

Saturday evening we had a Christmas party to attend and, after Daisy was safely in bed, handed the monitor to Mum and Dad to head-out for a few hours of adult merriment. That's the pic of us all dressed up with somewhere to go, at the top of this post. The best part of the party for me (although the party itself was good) was putting on a dress, looking in the mirror, and actually liking what I saw! Ok, so I still have 8lbs to go but, if I say so myself, I did not look too shabby at all. In fact, I'd venture to say that a good 50% of my pre-pregnancy clothes are now fitting me again! This, obviously, put me in a wonderful mood.

With all the excitement of Saturday out of the way, Sunday was our day to chill. I made blueberry muffins for breakfast (which Daisy inhaled), took a quick visit out for some groveries with Daisy and Mum, and then made our favorite rainy-day dish - Winter Pot Roast.

The only bad thing I can say about the whole weekend was that my back and hips were HOWLING at me on Sunday gnith. I'm not exactly sure what the catlyst was here but all I know is that I needed a muscle-relaxer and two painkillers before bed. Unfortunately, this put me into a comatose state until 6am when I woke up with a start to the sound of Daisy kicking the crib bars, realizing I had completely slept-through my supposed gym time. Drats! Such is the price of a great weekend. Today I'll just yoga.

Friday Motivation - Week 12

February '07 - Moi and some good friends at a baby shower. Will my stomach EVER be that flat again????

I'm going to get straight to it because progress has not been stellar this week:

CURRENT WEIGHT: 152.6lbs
WEIGHT LOST THIS WEEK: 0.6lbs
TOTAL WEIGHT LOST TO DATE: 8.6lbs
NUMBER OF WEEKS TO GOAL: 2
LBS TO GOAL: 7.4lbs

So, I'm just over 1/2 way there. Sadly, however, 50% was not the achievement I was looking for.

The only thing I will report is that my body fat percentage (according to my fancy scale) has been decreasing steadily. I started off at almost 41% body fat (I know, isn't that DISGUSTING!?) and this morning the scales reported just over 37%. If my calculations are right, this means that I have lost about 10lbs of fat in as many weeks. Some better news, at least, assuming the fancy scale is worth it's weight in gold (or, in this case, fat.)

Just gotta keep on truckin', I guess.

On trying to get things done...case in point - Christmas Cards

There is so much to do on a regular day or during a regular month, it seems almost impossible to add-in Christmas to the mix during December. In short, I'm having trouble keeping up; I'm sinking quickly under the list of to-dos.

If you have not received your Christmas card from me this year, it's because I haven't sent them yet. Do not fear, you have not somehow horribly offended me and been crossed off my list (at least most of you who read this blog probably haven't) although I would check in with me if you don't get a card by New Year as you may have some apologizing to do! Said cards are on my dining room table and I'm doing a few at a time, here-and-there, where I can guarantee that Daisy will not reach up, grab the box, and start sucking on the edges of the cards with unrestrained glee. (Obviously, if you get a card with a soggy edge, you'll know I got desperate and let her have at it for a while.)

If it was JUST about the cards themselves, it would be an easy task and you would have had them the week after Thanksgiving. But, it's not. It's a multi-step process and without hours and hours of weekend time to spend doing whatever I please any more, the multi-step process is taking place in multi-stages over multi-days.

Sigh...

First, there's the addressing. I go back to my trusty Outlook address book and realize, as usual, that I forgot to update it with all the new addresses of family and friends from the past 12 months plus the addresses of new friends I'm adding to the list whose addresses I do not yet have. So, task #1 is to get in contact with said people and update/obtain addresses.

Then I look again at the list and realize, in horror, that I have forgotten some of the names of my family's kids. I feel absolutely horrible about this, by the way, but in my defense I am 6,000 miles away and they have been pro-creating at a much faster rate than yours truly. And I'm sorry, I just can't do the card without the personalized greeting; it's important to me to send you a card that I have personally written in and I like to demonstrate thought in *remembering* to include your children on the greeting. I remember being a kid in England and getting soooo excited when someone would send a card to my parents and address it to me also. I've never forgotten that and so I refuse to send out a card unless I have all names of everyone in the family on the Dear.... line. Anyway, task two is to somehow (without offending said family or friend and usually through a 3rd party who keeps better track of these things than I do) obtain names of their kids (and sometimes even spouses/partners.)

Task three is to insert the annual picture into the card. Again, I have some things I'm anal about at this time of year and I just won't send a flat card. I have nothing against you sending me a flat card, please understand but I like a card that stands up. The card stands for me and my family and I want it to, well, stand. So, this eliminates those print-and-go things from Target and Walmart that would probably save me oodles of time and effort and money. Not for me; I buy the folding card and insert a 4x6 picture. This is obviously an extra step and, again, never as easy as it sounds. Anyone who has ever tried to put a 4x6 picture in one of those cards knows that 50% of them are not glued right and so it's a fight to the death just to get the picture down in the pocket. Unfortunately, this year, we did not do so well with some of them and poor Hubby's head seems to be either adorned by a green bow or slightly lopped-off at the top. (Sort of like an enforced flat-top - yes back to 90s for Hubby...Ice-Ice-Baby!) Needless to say, if you receive a card like this, please do not make fun of him - he was a good husband, participated in the maddening stuffing process and does not deserve it.

Next comes the return address labels. This is where I really begin to miss England because you can send something in the mail without having to include a return address on it. Usually, through forethought and foreplanning, I have ordered or created said return address labels in advance of the task of Christmas Card sending. However, this year, the season has sort of crept up on me and not a label do I have. So now, task four, which I am in the middle of contemplating options on, is to create and apply address labels. Decision point here is whether to go to Staples and obtain some of those Avery labels and create the darn things myself OR whether to use some kind of online service to get them designed and printed for me. With the DIY approach, the problem is that those labels never print up right (something always goes wrong with the alignment) or the labels peel off during printing and stick to the inner drum of the printer, thus resulting in many hours of me cussing and trying to make whatever said problem is right. The issue with the farm-it-out approach is now time and money - I'm already late for getting these cards out, especially for the ones that go to the UK, and I would probably have to pay a pretty penny to get the labels overnighted to me.

Finally, there are the stamps. I have regular 1st class stamps but I refuse to use them - they have to be holiday stamps, so I have to wait to the end, do a card-count and go buy some (because I won't use any leftovers on bills after Christmas plus I do online bill pay mostly anyway and barely use more than 10 stamps a year). Either way, since I have cards going to different countries, I have to go to the post office to purchase International stamps, which your local Safeway, Raleys, or CVS does not stock. So then it's off to the USPS, at the busiest time of year, to stand in a 60 minute line of idiots who don't know how to pack and ship a box, obtain the stamps. I then usually sit in my car, apply the stamps, get out again and post them... with a HUGE sigh of relief.

At which point (at some moment in the future, who knows when?) I will finally be done and you will be able to receive your Christmas card.

All I can say is, I sure hope you appreciate it, dammit!

Friday Motivation - Week 11: Progress!

Above pic is me and Hubby in July of '07. (Man, I need a tan again!)

Well, this week has been interesting.

Let's get the diet stuff out of the way...

CURRENT WEIGHT: 153.2lbs
WEIGHT LOST THIS WEEK: 0.8lbs
TOTAL WEIGHT LOST TO DATE: 7.8lbs
NUMBER OF WEEKS TO GOAL: 3
LBS TO GOAL: 8.2lbs

I'm definitely noticing a difference in the way my clothes are fitting and am able to get into even more of my pre-pregnancy pants at this point - a huge relief for my pocket-book as well as my ego, lemme tell ya! If I can only get below 150 before my vacation to Jamaica (which is the date of my 3 week goal), I think I would feel a decent level of success, even if I don't make it all the way down to the golden 145.

Finally, after a long and brutal illness, my massage therapist returned to work yesterday and I had my first appointment with her in a long time. It turned out to be a breakthrough appointment.

We discovered that my pubic bone issues were being caused? exacerbated? by a lot of tightness where my adductor muscle connects at the joint. Once we got the adductor to release, the pubic bone pain all-but evaporated! She also managed to get my lower-back pain and tightness to go away - the first time in what seems like FOR-EVER! Of course, I now have upper-back pain (more on that later.) My body is like a toothpaste tube with no opening.

I left her office feeling like a completely new person. All the sense of instability that I had in my hip, pelvis, and pubic area seemed to be gone! Then, I decided to do a short yoga workout (all I had time for) and found that the difference in the quality of my movement was marked. Instead of feeling like my right leg was wading through mud in comparison to the fluidity of my left leg, it felt more like water. I was more balanced, felt stronger, and definitely found that my muscles relaxed and eased into poses faster.

To say that I was elated by this development was a complete and utter understatement. Even though I went to bed with tightness in my upper back, shoulders, and neck, just the fact that it was no longer in my hips and pelvis gave me a huge sense of relief - it was progress!

I woke up this morning feeling lighter and more positive than I have in a long time. This morning I had an osteopath appointment and I drove the 45 minutes there with a renewed sense of optimism that, eventually, if I keep doing what I'm doing, I will be healthy and fit and free of chronic pain once more; that I may be able to ski and hike and chase Daisy around the garden; that I will not be afraid to move in certain ways again; and that I will get to the end of the day without the sense of mental, emotional, and physical fatigue that I currently experience, quietly battling away with the pain and stiffness that currently plagues my life (and trying to pretend that it's really not there.)

I turned the music up in my car, bopped around, and actually started to think about the joys of Christmas for the first time. This sounds sort of cliched and all but I actually realized that the sense of hopelessness I have been feeling about the status of my hip has been impacting my energy level and enthusiasm for the season just about as much as the pain itself.

There's been an element of long-term doom hanging over my head for the last year and a half, a feeling that I was stuck with this pain and resulting limitations for life, and that by the time I'm in my 50s and 60s, I'll be so disabled by the whole thing (plus all the other pains of older age) that I won't be able to enjoy life any more. For me, it's not simply enough to exist in life - I have to live it. I have to go sky-diving and zip lining and ATV'ing and hiking and visit new countries and experience new things; without the feeling that I can go at life with full-on gusto, I'm lost. I realized this morning, in that moment of carefree driving, that I was losing hope that this is how my life would be.

Maybe you think I'm crazy for feeling this way, that I'm over-reacting, but I've been dealing with hip pain for 4 years now and have spent the last 18 months of my life recovering from one surgery or another plus I became a first time mommy - when you put it all together it takes it's toll mentally as well as physically. There are days when I miss who I was before all of this, physically and emotionally, so bad that I want to cry. I look at those pictures of me in 2007 (the ones that keep heading up these Friday blog entries) and I wonder how I was possibly that girl and how quickly (relatively speaking) I got from there to here.

So, yes, it was a big deal when I did that yoga workout yesterday and things felt different.

Now to the upper/middle back, shoulder, and neck pain. Yup, seriously, I know, can I get a break!?

I keep putting out ribs. My osteopath snapped three more back into place today. My neck is also so tight she's amazed that I can move my head from side to side. How do I keep doing this to myself? You think I'd know, but I don't. I do, however, notice when my ribs pop out and it happens quite a lot and without any sort of fanfare. I can be sitting here at my desk, typing away, or I can be sitting with Daisy on the floor playing, and I'll feel a pop around my spine. I used to think it was my spine but it's not, it's ribs moving. But it's always when I'm sitting. The ribs are, of course, causing the shoulder and neck tension and, when unaddressed, result in the tension also going down my back. Clearly, the ribs need to be dealt with.

My osteopath suggested focusing on my lats, traps, and pecs more during my strength training workouts, to give my back and my ribs more muscular support and to help improve my posture. This is not the first time I have heard this in my lifetime and so I'm going take that advice and see what happens. I'm also making a very conscientious effort to sit in a more ergonomically correct position at my desk. I know I have a tendency to slouch and, when you work from home where nobody can see you, there is little motiviation to "sit pretty". Therefore, the only way to remember is to remind myself: I'm putting a little sticky on my computer that says "SIT UP STRAIGHT!"

Hopefully, if we can keep-up the progress with the hips and nip the back/shoulders/neck thing in the bud, I'll be able to sense true pain relief and the first inklings of long term recovery.