I am often struck by the hubris of blogging. I use it as a means of keeping a journal and it gives me a static way to sort out my thoughts. It helps in giving perspective and because of the way my brain works also a way to off load some thoughts that get stuck in a loop. Still it is nice to think someone, hopefully a sympathetic soul, might read my posts and relate or in the best case gain a useful insight. The stats part of the blogger site tells me I have had 35 page views of the latest entry. Older posts have been looked at too. The part that tells where the viewers clicked from lists 3 odd sites. One is google images that links to a picture in a an older post. Most are from eastern Europe and Russia for some reason. None are from facebook which is the only place I left a link. Hmm, even the 3 or 4 people that 'liked' my link didn't follow it. Hmm. As I said this is mostly for me anyway.
Changing my eating habits wasn't that difficult at first because I had been so miserable for so long. I started with plain oatmeal to start everyday. In my case each day starts around 1 or 2 PM. I get home from work around 5 AM and usually go right to sleep. Soon I added raisins and a spoon of brown sugar to the daily routine. It was good. The bloated and sick feeling began to fade away. The sleepy dizzy feeling that followed most meals also didn't happen as often mainly because I limited myself to small servings of one thing 2 or 3 times a day. On days when I was able to actually use the CPAP machine for more than 4 hours straight I felt pretty good. I began to have hopeful feelings for the first time in a long time.
When the Dr clued me in to GURD and gave me Pepcid AC she also gave me Gemfibrozil for cholesterol. As I said in earlier posts statins for cholesterol had ruined my life for several years and I am still recovering from that. I did the research and Gemfibrozil works on a whole different principle so I gave it a try.
While my general health was on the upswing because of the bland diet other things began to happen;
I sit all the time. Sit at home in front of the TV or computer, sit behind the wheel at work. Part of my decline of the last year or so had me in a situation where standing for more than a few minutes was painful. My big belly sticks out so far forward I have to lean back when I stand, putting the stress on the muscles in my legs that are not used to doing that job. They become tired and painful very quickly. Not doing any standing or walking has left them weak also the GURD kind of poisons multiple body systems. For several months some kind of trouble in my left hip causes my left leg to feel tingly like it is asleep when I stand. It started getting worse. Sitting was giving me pain in my butt. I finally got a special seat cushion for the mini van that is great, the rest of the days was still a problem. After doing the Sunday paper which involves a couple of hours of hand work assembling the parts of the paper I was having what felt like arthritis in my hands and arms. As other parts of me were working better my ability to move and work was dwindling down. Finally all of my joints were aching when it occurred to me what was going on. Gemfibrozil. The statin drugs not only scrambled my brains but made me weak and I knew where to go for a great seat cushion because this had all happened before. Some people's body's simply function with a higher level of cholesterol at all times. For some reason lowering these levels artificially with medication causes the muscle fibers to disintegrate. I am one of these lucky people. I stopped taking Gemfibrozil and within a few days the constant pain began to subside.
Part of me was in quite deep despair over this latest set back. The journey back to some kind of general good health and well being has taken over 10 years so far and at every step there have been set backs. Being mostly immobile adds to the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Even simple tasks like housekeeping and home maintenance have gone undone for years now.
To make things worse knowing that any plan to rehabilitate myself must include weight loss, healthy food and exercise, I saved up enough money to buy a 2 year membership at 24 hours fitness. Once the pain started to subside I started going. I knew that for this to work long term I needed to take it super slow. Break a sweat on the bike, a few reps on some machines then on the steam room, pool for couple of laps and some Jacuzzi. All easy stuff and I left feeling loose and good. After the 3rd visit the joint and muscle pain came back in force. That was 3 weeks ago.
Dwelling on sad feelings was part of what was so bad about the way the statins muddled my thoughts. I have done enough self help courses and books etc. that I know for a fact that life in the short and long term is made up of the stories you tell yourself. Nothing more. Sad or discouraging facts can be interesting but the stories are what makes up your life and are limited to the past. At any point any of the stories can change. I was reminded just yesterday about the deeper theories of very serious physicists and thinkers that reality it's self can change and conform to perceptions of it.
For my purposes I choose to trudge along because there is simply no value or good story in giving up or being sad all the time. There are bad days but overall I keep trying to move forward.
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