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Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Sinking Spells

08 Jun

I have (mostly) broken the Mountain Dew habit.  I might have one every few days, but it is no longer the first thing I have in the morning or my afternoon pick-me-up.  I do occasionally have one for a treat or if we’re out and it’s easier than getting coffee somewhere, but it’s nowhere near the 3 can a day habit (I know…so disgusting!) I had just a month or two ago.

I’m even avoiding coffee some days.  I can go for about 48 hours without having caffeine before I start getting a headache and feeling the effects of withdrawal.  Considering I used to go no more than 8-10 hours without caffeine, I’d say that’s a pretty positive step in the right direction.

I do, however, have a new problem.  Right around 3:00 in the afternoon, just when I’m ready to get prepared for class, I get soooooo sleepy.  Simply holding my eyes open takes some incredible effort.  This is what my mom always used to call a sinking spell, and all I can say is that it’s incredibly irritating.  I don’t know how to deal with this, other than by drinking coffee or soda and getting a nice shot of caffeine.  I guess I could take a nap, but that’s not an option most days.

How do you deal with afternoon sleepies?

 
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Posted in Health, Me Stuff

 

Completely and Utterly

02 Jun

Exhausted.  I am sitting here at the computer, nearly unable to stay upright.  It is past 11:00.  I have prepared for class tomorrow.  Gotten caught up on Facebook.  Caught up on my blog reader.  Read my Twitter feed.  Watched the first few minutes of last night’s Glee on Hulu since I missed them.  Read tomorrow’s edition of the Sanford Herald.  I am so tired and all I want to do is lay down.  But when I do, my brain will inevitably go into overdrive, reminding me of this thing or that problem or that bill that I haven’t paid and I will be absolutely unable to sleep.  It doesn’t help that my husband (who falls asleep even before his head hits the pillow) is already in bed and that I can hear him snoring from the opposite end of the house.  It makes me want to stab things in my ears.

There are things I could do…Kelly and I have a list a mile long of things we want to do for SocialSanford.  My book has been languishing for weeks while my computer was broken/in the shop and I want to work on it.  The leadership team at my church has been discussing a book that I’d like to read but haven’t yet.  Unfortunately, all of these things require me to be somewhat more coherent than I am right now.

I’ve been like this for days now.  I go through bouts of insomnia, but this one has seemed worse for some reason.  It is times like this when I really miss health insurance.  Being able to go to the doctor and simply say that I need some help with sleeping and coming home with a prescription for Ambien which will guarantee that I not only fall asleep, but that I can stay asleep.  Maybe someday soon…

In the meantime, my eyes are burning and watering, my head hurts, and I want to cause harm to my poor ears just so I don’t have to hear the snoring.  When you see me with my bloodshot eyes, trying to mainline coffee in an effort to keep myself going during the day, take pity on the poor mama of three who can’t sleep.  I’m just trying to survive until my body decides that the need for sleep will stop the locomotive in my brain.  Until then, I’m going to be slow, easily confused, and generally incoherent…even moreso than usual.  I hope you understand.

 
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Posted in Health, Me Stuff

 

Coffee Talk

13 May

Let’s see how long my computer stays up…it keeps rebooting itself so I’ve had it turned off for a few days in hopes that it would magically fix itself!  I’ve had laptop access since my husband has been in a training class for a part time job, but it doesn’t have PhotoShop or any of my other special programs so it’s not ideal when I need to do anything other than use the internet.

So…coffee.  I am trying desperately to break my Mountain Dew addiction.  The amount of sugar in one can is some ridiculously high number…I think my husband said 14 teaspoons.  He may be off a little bit (one search I did said 11.5 teaspoons) but I know it’s high.  And it’s not real sugar.  It’s high fructose corn syrup which I increasingly believe is really, really bad stuff.  Plus people say it causes kidney stones and it’s making it harder for me to lose weight.

But the caffeine!  I need it.  Popping open that can of Mountain Dew is the only thing that gets me through some days.  I use it like an alcoholic uses booze…when the going gets tough, that caffeine and sugar high is only moments away.  But again, the kidney stones, the HFCS, the fatness.  Yuck.

This morning I found myself using my cute little Senseo to make a cup of coffee, a habit I’m trying to get into so I can break the other one.  I added my white chocolate mocha creamer and sugar (Yes, I know…I’ll work on that after I break the Mtn. Dew addiction.  It’s still nowhere near the amount of sugar as in a soda.) and found myself thinking about our honeymoon.  That was the first time I ever enjoyed coffee.  We were at Sandals Inn in Jamaica and I ordered coffee with my breakfast because I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before (Get your mind out of the gutter!  Our flight in was late!) and really needed to get woken up.  To this day, that is the best coffee I have ever tasted.  It came from the Blue Mountains in Jamaica and was absolutely delicious.  So this morning, I got the bright idea to see if I could find some on the internet.  Maybe for a Father’s Day surprise, since my husband loved it, too.  We can’t afford a second honeymoon or even 1 night away, so I thought it would be an inexpensive way to have a mini vacation every morning.

Haha.  Hahahahahahahahaha!  A quick search told me that it was ridiculously expensive and hard to find.  For the price of a pound of this coffee, I could get several pounds of meat.  And by several, I mean 10+.  Of the most expensive steak in the grocery store.  Really.  When I haven’t had a really good steak in nearly 2 years because it’s an irresponsible waste of money, this seems like a monumentally bad idea.  So much for that idea.  It would almost be cheaper to fly to Jamaica, pay for a night at a hotel just to get coffee, and fly home.  And that would be much more fun, in my opinion.

Back to square one.  At least I have my white chocolate mocha creamer.  And my caramel macchiato creamer, which is delicious in french vanilla flavored coffee.  I’ll have to make do with those splurges for now.  But someday…someday I will go back to Jamaica.  With my husband.  And we’ll drink coffee.  And talk about something other than our children and lack of money while we drink it.  Right now, in this moment, that sounds like the best thing ever.

Hooray!  My computer stayed up!  Do I dare attempt some photo editing?

 
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Posted in Family, Food/Recipes, Health, Me Stuff

 

Don’t Stop Believing

20 Apr

Remember all my talk last spring about Couch to 5K?  And then it got too hot to run outside, so I kind of quit.  I tried again in the fall, but couldn’t get my schedule sorted out and kind of dropped out again.  And then I hurt my back, then I hurt it again and again…with all of that, it’s been at least 6 months since I ran.  I’ve been in too much pain and had too little energy.

But one day last week I woke up and my pain levels were maybe a 2, instead of the 7 (or 8…or 9) they had been for months.  I know people will roll their eyes, but it was literally like I was healed over night.  It still hurts at the end of a long day or if I am in certain positions for too long, but the excruciating, exhausting pain is gone.  I am doing stuff with the kids again, I am working on cleaning up the 3 months of mess that nobody else in this house has bothered to touch, and I feel like there’s a possibility of this going away completely.  If you’ve been reading the past few months, you know this last point is huge.

I have been toying with the idea of going out and running for a few days.  I was a little scared, but I was ready to make some effort toward losing the weight I’ve put on while I was in too much pain to care.  So this afternoon I suited up, got my husband to drive me over to Kiwanis Greenway (just in case I passed out or fell or randomly got shot) and RAN.  I just did W1D1 of C25K, but I finished it and had such a runner’s high afterwards.

My cool down song was, appropriately, the Glee cast version of Don’t Stop Believing.

 
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Posted in Couch to 5K, Health, On My iPod

 

It’s the little things in life.

24 Mar

Specifically, little white oval shaped things that you swallow with a chaser of water. (This one’s going to have Bible verses and lots of God talk, so if that turns you off, feel free to skip it!)

The back pain had sent me to levels of desperation.  Nothing seemed to help…ice, heat, anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxers, bedrest, activity…none of them have brought me to a point where I can live normally.  And I was praying.  A LOT. I was starting to wonder what God’s plan was in all of this, what He was trying to teach me by not allowing me to get better.  Then on Sunday, the message at church was exactly what I needed to hear.  Keep praying. (If you’re interested in the scripture, it was Luke 18:1-5 and Luke 11:5-10.)  Somehow God always makes sure I hear the messages I need to hear.  So I kept praying.

Then on Sunday night, I remembered a saying about God…that He helps those who help themselves.  So maybe what I needed was to find someone to take a look at my back and come up with a treatment plan.  Monday morning, I dragged myself out of bed.  Barely able to walk, I went over to Helping Hands to see if they could help.  They gave me some places to call, but said they wouldn’t have anyone there who could treat me without charge until April 1.  OK, I can afford an office visit.  But if anyone wanted to do x-rays or tests, that was going to be something I would have to decline.  I know how the system works…if you refuse tests, many times you can’t get treatment.  So then I’d be out the office visit fee and still in the same place I started.  Several people told me to go to the ER.  I know they are required to treat you, but that still comes with a very large bill later on.  I wasn’t willing to do that.  I still owe the chiropractor money that I can’t pay yet and though he helped, I simply can’t afford the ongoing treatment required to keep things in the places they are supposed to be.  Plus this pain is different than when I threw it out earlier this year…it’s more of a muscle/nerve pain rather than a pain from being misaligned.

I called my mom and asked her advice.  As it turned out, I was due for my annual visit to the ob/gyn the next day (which is covered by Medicaid as family planning services) and my mom urged me to talk to her about it.  Long story short, she was more than happy to help, wrote a prescription for a steroid to clear up the inflammation, and I was out only the cost of the prescriptions.  God bless her.

I need to remember not to work myself up over things if it seems like it’s not happening fast enough.  I need to remember that worrying about things is like telling God that I don’t trust him to take care of me.  (And yes, I borrowed that from somewhere but I don’t know where or who or what the exact quote is.  If you do, please leave a comment so I can give credit where it’s due.)  God was there when I reached the point where I just couldn’t deal any more.  Monday I spent most of the day crying.  I had a tension headache by the end of the day that rivaled my back for intensity of pain.  But the very next day, I was able to see someone who could help.  The appointment had been scheduled at least 6 weeks in advance and I truly believe that was God’s doing.  Just when I thought I couldn’t deal any more, He made sure I was taken care of and could see an end in sight.  It was all in His plan, in His time.

The steroids haven’t kicked in yet, but my positive attitude is back and  I’ve been taught the “trust in God” lesson once again.  Hopefully I won’t forget it this time.

 
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Posted in Faith/Religion, Health

 
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