Whedon On Romney

Definition

I don't know if it's called sabotage or motivation.  In the last twenty-four hours, I've had two of the biggest, chocolatey-est cupcakes I've every had, as well as a piece of chocolate cakes filled with some sort of pudding or custard.  I didn't need any of those things, but damn, they were good.  They also gave me an upset stomach, but it was kind of worth it.  

I'm not sure if I ate them because I'm all about self-sabotaging my diet or because I'm all about looking for motivation to sweat my balls off at the gym.  Only the scale will be able to properly judge me in the morning.

Until then, I have Project Runway All-Stars tonight.

Doctor

This year was supposed to be all about taking better care of myself.  (And now that I think about it, 2011 was also supposed to be all about that, but it didn't quite happen.)  By "taking better care of myself," I mean making sure I go to see the doctor, taking care of ongoing and lingering issues, taking care of new aches and pains and stuff as they arise.  And I started the year off right, but got quickly derailed.  One of the first things I wanted to take care of was the one tooth that needs a root canal.  I would have done it last year, but I used up all of my benefit.  So my plan was to get a referral at my first cleaning of the year. About a week before that cleaning, another tooth that was going to need addressing sooner or later broke.  Luckily it was a small piece and it didn't hurt.  My dentist said because of the shape it's in, it needed a crown.  He insisted that it didn't need a root canal, but the crown itself would fix the situation.  I listened to him against my better judgement (he said the same thing about the two previous crowns I had and both ultimately needed root canals.... the root canal I mentioned needing above is for one of those teeth.)  And then it turned out his preliminary work upset the tooth so much that I was in massive pain.  So the crown was put on hold until I could get that root canal.  The whole experience was just awful.  My mouth had never been in that much pain for that long before.  And it was enough to put any other doctor visits on hold.

Well, the year is coming to a close and I'm biting the bullet and starting to do what I intended to do all year.  Today I had my teeth cleaned.  I also had an MRI done of the foot that's been bothering me.  I'm fearful that the MRI isn't going to show anything out of the ordinary.  But at least I'm addressing it.  I love that I managed to fall asleep while having this MRI done, as I've done with every other MRI I've ever had done.  I don't know how.  The machine is so loud, but I guess after a few minutes it just becomes white noise and I'm out.  

On the way home from the visits, I stopped and made an appointment to get my eyes checked.  My benefit renewed a year ago and I haven't taken advantage of it.  It's been three years since I had my eyes tested. 

I have a few other things I need to do.  I cancelled an appointment with my urologist a couple months back and haven't rescheduled that yet.  It's another follow up for my kidney stone (which happened two years ago this week!)  I haven't found the urgency in rescheduling because the last few check ups have all come out positive.  I'm sure I'm out of the woods.  I also need to schedule a physical.  I can't remember the last time I had one.  I'm getting older and it's probably not such a good idea to go so long in between.  I've worked so hard to get myself healthy.  I need to take some measures to maintain that now.

Getting old sucks.

This And That

I had a couple ideas of things I wanted to write about while they were still on my mind, but something else just came up and I thought I'd write about that instead.  

My friend Maria, one of my oldest and dearest friends, just posted on Facebook a few minutes ago that today marks the one year anniversary of her being cancer free.  I feel so happy for her right now.  It's terrible that she got the cancer in the first place, but it's so fucking great that she beat it.  

Not that there's ever a good time to be diagnosed with cancer, to me, Maria's diagnosis and battle couldn't have come at a worse time.  Her ordeal was at the same time as my Mom's battle with cancer.  I was so focused on Mom during that period in time that I was unaware of what Maria was going through.  It's understandable.  It wasn't until a few days after Mom's funeral that I found out about Maria.  I was talking to her and she mentioned that she tried to come to Mom's service.  She had, in fact, driven to the funeral home, but she couldn't bring herself to come in with everything she was going through.  Absolutely understandable.  If I was in her place, I don't even think I would have left the house that day.

And this brings up something that I've been feeling lately.  I've just about shaken off all the blahs and blues I've been feeling in regards to the first anniversary of Mom being gone.  It really affected me more than I thought possible.  It brought up all sorts of unresolved feelings and emotions and it really caught me off guard.  The whole month of September I was a miserable bitch.  I'm starting to feel more myself again, but also very different.  Last year after we lost Mom, and when I was starting to come out of the fog I'd been in, I realized that the whole ordeal changed me.  I came out of it feeling a lot stronger.  For the first time in my life, I realized that I actually like myself.  I don't know if it was because I wasn't quite the same as before, or that I was just seeing myself in a new light, but dammit, I really think I'm not that bad a guy.  The whole time Mom was sick, I pretty much cut everyone out of my life.  When I hurt, I want to be left alone.  I process stuff better that way.  As I was feeling better, I really didn't go back to the way things were.  I really didn't take (m)any steps to reestablish contact with people the way I was in touch before.  To be honest, I just didn't care.  As the anniversary of Mom's death approached, I found myself doing the exact same thing.  I backed away (though not nearly as far as last year) to heal myself.  And this may have been the final step in process to becoming the new me.  For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm living my life unapologetically.  I've always lived my life trying to please others first.  I've always done things because others really wanted to do them or really thought I should do them.  I no longer have the time nor the need to live my life that way.  And I don't really give a fuck what anyone thinks about it.  It's a whole new and improved me.  

If anyone told me a year ago something good would have come out of Mom's illness, I would have punched them in the throat.  Shows what I know. :-)

Frustration

I'm trying to work my way through another fit of frustration right now.  I hate when I feel this way, even though I know it will eventually pass.  But right now I'm smack dab in the middle of it.

Some background first.  I used to be a fat boy.  A very fat boy.  A 300 lb fat boy.  And that fat boy spent most of his working life in the world of retail.  It meant long days on my feet.  For years.  And being that big and on my feet for that long meant that I did some real damage to my feet.  By the time I finally got out of retail, the problems started showing up.  I've got neuromas in both feet.  It got so bad in one of my feet that I ended up going through a series of injections to kill the nerve endings in and around the neuroma so that I could walk.  

Anyway, I've been experiencing more pain in my left foot for quite a while now, but it's something that I could live with.  It's been going on for a few years.  Recently, it started to feel worse, so I finally made an appointment with an orthopedist to have this addressed.  His exam turned up no good reason why my foot should hurt.  I had x-rays taken of both feet so that he could look and compare and still saw nothing out of the ordinary.  He gave me three choices as to how to proceed from there.  I could get an orthotic, which he wasn't convinced would do much, I could have an MRI done on my foot to see if that would turn up anything else or I could just live with it.  I decided to do the MRI first, just to rule out any other problem.  I go on Wednesday for that.

But since he said he saw no reason why my foot should hurt, I decided to do something foolish.  I went to the gym and I decided I was going to run.  I don't run because of my feet.  I don't run because of my knees (but my knees have been feeling amazing for a while now, so why not?)  So I ran.  I didn't do much, but I did better than I thought I would do.  I ran for sixteen straight minutes, and then two more stretches of about ten minutes each.  And I felt good.  Really good.  My feet held up.  My knees held up.  It was a good day.  

I missed the gym for the next week because I got sick and then was away for a few days, but earlier this week, I decided to run again.  My only goal was to do better than the last time I ran.  And I did.  I ran for thirty solid minutes before I had to slow down to a walk, and then two more shorter intervals before I was done.  Again, I felt amazing when I was done.  Until the next day.  My feet couldn't take the abuse.  And since then, I've been hurting.  Not to the point that I can't walk or anything like that, but there's constant aching in both feet.  Which sucks, but in a way is good.  I'm having that MRI in a few days and maybe this will show something in the foot that the exam and x-ray didn't.  But I'm so fucking frustrated that I'm not going to be able to run.  I never had an interest in running (or any other physical activity, for that matter) when I was younger.  Now that I'm older and trying to keep in the shape a healthy person is supposed to be in, I keep hitting road blocks. But it's my own damn fault.  If I'd just taken care of myself when I was in my 20s and 30s, I wouldn't be so pissed off in my 40s.  I should be happy that there are plenty of other things my body is still allowing me to do, but I'm focusing on what my body won't.  And that's just making those things more desirable.

I know this frustration will pass soon.  As soon as my feet start feeling better.  But for the moment, I'm working up to a slow rage at myself.

I hadn't planned on taking a break from jotting my inane ramblings here, but it seems to me that I did.  And it's been longer than I thought.  I haven't abandoned this place, I'm just taking some much needed mental health time.  And physical health time, too.  I'll be back shortly, not that anyone but me cares.  :-)