Beautiful Behaviors - June 2017

It's my birthday today!

This is a special birthday for me because six months ago, on New Year's Day, fifteen days after my ovary and ovarian tumor had been removed by surgery which left me with a three inch long gash in my abdomen and seventeen days after my diabetes diagnosis, I made a resolution that I would get my health in order before my birthday. My goals were straightforward: lose enough abdominal fat to reduce my insulin resistance and improve my blood glucose control, by losing enough weight to stop being obese. At that time I weighed 253 lbs, down from a max of about 280 when my tumor was discovered in October (I lost over 25 lbs unintentionally in one month while waiting for surgery, due to undiagnosed diabetes. Not a diet I recommend.)

At that time, I was seriously unwell. I had been living for a year with an undiagnosed tumor which was pressing on my internal organs, pumping my body full of hormones, and generally making me feel terrible. I kept complaining and not getting help, as I got weaker and could do less. I went to my private doctor; I went to the emergency room and was sent home. The last month before my surgery, I ate an entire basket of leftover Halloween candy while the pounds melted off me and I kept telling everyone I hurt, my whole body hurts, and I feel like I don't have any energy. In retrospect this was because elevated blood glucose was cooking my insides, yet insulin resistance from stress hormones were preventing any glucose from being broken down to be used as fuel for my body. I was literally starving myself while eating everything in sight. There were days when I didn't feel up to sitting up in bed to eat or taking a shower. In the end, the ovary torsed seriously enough that I was literally begging for pain medication while writhing in pain. My blood pressure shot up, and my lips turned white. I was so dehydrated that they couldn't get a vein to give me pain medication. I remember praying out loud for someone to help me. Even then, the ER doctor tried to tell me that the ultrasound showed there was nothing seriously wrong. It was the act of a second compassionate doctor that got me admitted and seen by someone competent even though the ER doctor didn't feel it was a true emergency. "If I don't have a torsion why am I in so much pain?" I asked the gynecologist after I was admitted."It's a torsion," the gynecologist replied, "Ultrasound is not diagnostic of torsion." Which, I would later discover, is something you can learn by just reading the Wikipedia article about ovarian torsion.

Two days later I was stable enough for surgery, and my ovary, dead from lack of blood flow, was removed, along with a giant benign tumor. And at the same time, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I would later discover that I had a blood glucose reading of 272 back in October at my first doctor's visit, but no one thought this was worth mentioning to me at the time.

God bless competent healthcare professionals! I met some wonderful ones and some lousy ones. The lousy ones made me think it would be easier to just die and not bother anybody. The compassionate ones who cared for me during my surgery gave me hope that I might get the help I needed to keep living.

So on New Year's I was recovering from abdominal surgery and facing an entire new lifestyle. My A1c was 11, my weight was in the morbidly obese category, and I was completely sedentary, unable to do the slightest exercise - walking to my car made me exhausted. I vowed that by my birthday in June I would be no longer obese, have an A1c under 7, and be fit enough to do the things I wanted to do.

And I made it! With a few days to spare! The line between overweight and obese is 197 for someone 5'8" and I now weigh 195.8. My A1c is in the perfectly normal range. I can do 20 real push-ups, which is something I wasn't fit enough to do before even when I was skinny in high school. I can walk the 2 mile river walk with my husband again. Yesterday I bought size 14 shorts, down from 28!

How I got from point A to point B - one day at a time, starting with lifting water bottles, then graduating to real weights. Starting with high stepping in place and slow cycling, then gradually upping the intensity. Now my weekly strength routine is abs / arms / legs / abs / arms / legs / rest, and I do at a minimum 15 minutes a day of high intensity intervals on my bike, while my ideal is 45 minutes a day of activity intense enough that my hair is wet with sweat afterwards. I log everything that goes into my mouth, and test my glucose several times a day to see how I am reacting to different foods and exercises. Some days I just want to take a break, but with diabetes no day is truly a rest day - if I do less exercise it is reflected the next day in higher blood glucose readings. I will have to exercise hard, every day, for the rest of my life, if I want to keep my glucose in good control without medication. And with diabetes no day is a cheat day either - my blood sugar does not give a flip that it's my birthday, if I eat cake it will go up just the same as any other day.

But despite all that, I am so much stronger and healthier than I was this time last year. My new goal is normal weight by Christmas - 33 lbs. We'll see how it goes.

Praying today for all of my friends here at MFP, that you will all have health and strength and beauty in your lives in the year to come, and strength of spirit to deal with the inevitable setbacks and hardships in your paths.