Week 151 Update

It was 05:45, and we were still in Eugene, Oregon when I stepped up on Mr. Scale. He said, “185.0 pounds!”

This has been one of the most emotionally filled weeks of my life. And somehow I have managed to come out on the other side of it, but it hasn’t been easy.

We started out on Saturday with my Mom in the Cardiac Surgery ward of the hospital. She was feeling good, with no symptoms presenting themselves. We spent most of the day in her room visiting with her. When we returned on Sunday, we found that she was having some chest pains. They were not really sharp pains, but they were coming and going throughout the day. Since we knew that she had some serious blockages in her heart blood vessels, these pains were quite distressing.

Originally we were told that they would do the surgery on Saturday, because Mom’s condition was dangerous. But when we arrived the doctor didn’t want to do the surgery on the weekend, because resources were limited and he said that the operation would go better if they waited until Monday. Not only did he put it off until Monday, but he put it off until 16:00 on Monday, very late in the surgery day. (I thought it a bit strange at the time that he was pleading tiredness as a roadblock to doing the surgery on Saturday, and then turn around and schedule her at the end of a surgery day when everyone would be at their most tired anyway.) So, from the moment we arrived at the hospital we felt like we were walking across a lake with an unknown thickness of ice under our feet. She could have had a heart attack at anytime, and that could have been prevented by having the surgery on Saturday. The chest pains just increased that fear. Well, the doctors were thinking the same thing, and they moved her surgery up to early on Monday morning.

Dotti and I arrived before 06:00 on Monday because they said they would taking her to surgery at 06:30 and we wanted to be there with her when they wheeled her in to the operating room. Mom was smiling and in very good spirits. She was ready to face the surgery and recovery, or if all went badly, she was ready to face what comes after this life. Her faith was very evident at that time, and I held on to that vision of her beautiful smile all the time that they were working on her that morning.

Dotti and I ended up in the Cardiac Surgery waiting room before 07:00, and we were the only ones there. We had brought along things to read, and staked out a really nice set of chairs where we could relax and Dotti could grab a nap. We hadn’t been there half an hour before someone came along and turned on a TV not far away, and made reading impossible for me. So, I got up, and walked around the area and found a quiet corner where I could not see or hear any television, and could have some chance of relaxing. Looking around I noticed that there was a computer set up, and naturally I tested it out to see what it had on it. I hit Internet Explorer and it found the Internet. They had it hooked up to high speed access, and I logged onto the DWLZ message board and posted an update about Mom’s condition.

Sometime around 10:00 other family members started to show up, and we took over a Family Waiting Room, where we could all visit without bothering others. Mom’s husband Jim was brought by his son, and they were accompanied by Jim’s sister and brother-in-law. Their daughter and husband came about the same time. A bit later our son LeRoy arrived, playing hooky from college for the day so he could be there for his Grandma. (We offered to write him a note for school, but declined to accept the offer. ) I was very happy that they all came, because it really made the time go by quickly.

After several hours the doctor came in and said that they had done 3 bypasses, and they all went very well. Mom was heading into ICU very soon and we could see her. That was very good news!

When we went in to see her, she looked pasty white, and her eyes were closed. The breathing tube was in the side of her mouth, and her chest was moving, as the machine pumped the air in and back out. There were numerous tubes and IVs connected to her body and monitors that spit out data on her heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, blood oxygen level, and who knows what else. Some of the machines were showing duplicate data and it was comforting to see that in those cases the data matched, indicating that the monitors were actually reading real information out. However, to be honest, I didn’t see all of that stuff at first. All I could see was the face of my mother looking like it was lying in coffin, and it was hard to witness. Especially after seeing her smiling so brightly before surgery. Yet, I have unfortunately seen Dotti coming out of surgery a number of times and, on one occasion especially, she looked a lot like Mom did. So, I did not fret over how bad Mom looked, and instead focused on the fact that the surgery went well and she was going to be okay.

On Tuesday, she was doing so well that they were talking about sending her back to her room after only 24 hours in ICU. However, she had a reaction to one of the medications they gave her, and she was losing track of where she was, and when she was. It was a bit disquieting, but I know that anesthesia is a lot like alcohol, the way it can distort your percept of reality, and I expected her to shake it off. At it turned out, after they made the call to leave her in ICU another day, they changed her medication, and Mom did come back strong in the afternoon. Things were looking up.

Wednesday, Mom went back to her room. She was still looking pretty sad, and it hurt to move much at all. But she was lucid and smiling again. She unfortunately had a nurse, whom I subsequently started to refer to as “Nurse Ratchet,” and that lady was as gentle and concerned about Mom’s condition as a bull rhino would have been. At one point that morning she moved Mom to a chair for a meal, that didn’t arrive, and then back again to her bed. (The meal arrived after she moved back.) During the moves, the nurse was not paying close enough attention and she had Mom’s IV, which was stuck in her neck just under her right ear, pulled tight, by inadvertently trying to stretch the tube beyond its normal length, using Mom’s neck as the pulling point. On the move back to bed she had Mom literally screaming in pain, and I had to step out of the room before I committed assault. Of all the staff at the hospital, fortunately “Nurse Ratchet” was the only one like that. The rest of them were patient and gentle and Mom was looking much better by the afternoon.

Thinking that the greatest danger was over for Mom, Dotti and I were going to make a run up to Portland and get some things done, and retrieve some personal articles that we had forgotten in our mad dash south last Friday. Our plans were that we were going to check out of the hotel, and go home on Thursday afternoon, get our stuff done on Friday, and come back on Saturday morning, when Mom might be checking out of the Hospital. Dotti had a doctor’s appointment that she needed to get to on Friday, and that was one of the primary things we wanted to get done, since she had to wait quite a while to get that appointment.

Well, as we were rolling the hotel cart out to our car, loaded to the top with all the stuff we had from our room, my cell phone went off. I thought it was LeRoy calling to check on Grandma, but the display did not show a name on the phone. So, still trying to guess who it might be, I thought next that it was a wrong number, because I get quite a few of them for some guy who must have a number that is very close to mine. But nothing so benign was awaiting me when I answered. It was Mom’s doctor on the phone, and he was all business. As soon as he identified who I was, he told me that Mom had had a stroke. I just stood there in the parking lot for quite some time, not sure what to do. Dotti went to the hotel counter and told them that not only would we not be checking out, we would be here for an indefinite time. She also canceled her doctor’s appointment because it looked like we would not be able to make it up for it.

LeRoy once again came down, missing some additional school time, and I was very thankful for his support that day. When we got to the hospital room, we actually had a light moment, looking back on it, and that was a bit amazing.

The previous night Mom had been the only one in the hospital room. So, when we walked into the room, and there was a white haired woman with an oxygen mask on, and looking like she was in distress, we assumed it was Mom. The curtain was pulled so that we couldn’t see the other bed. I was already frantic about my Mom (I had let Dotti drive us to the hospital because I was in no condition to do it) and to see her in that condition, where she was looking so much older and so different, I was overwhelmed. I don’t know what the lady was thinking, but she was getting a lot of attention from some complete strangers to her, before we realized our mistake. (We later learned that her name is Ruby, and that she is 92 years old. Since she was having so much trouble at the time, I am not sure how much she remembers of the event, but I know that I will never forget it.)

Shortly it dawned on me that all of the changes that I was seeing, could not have come about from a stroke. And as soon as I was able to mentally step back from my grief, it hit me that this bed was empty the night before, and Mom had been in the bed next to the window. I walked around the curtain and there was my mother, looking just the way that we had left her the night before.

I can’t put into words the emotions that I had at this realization but I was very happy to see Mom looking up at me and smiling. One thing that I was struck with was how young 73 years old can look, when compared with 92 years old. The nurse said that the stroke symptoms had “gone away” and that Mom could now grip with her right hand and she was speaking normally. Once again relief flooded over me, but it was short lived.

They sent Mom off for a Computerized Axial Tomography (CT) scan, and that was something that I understood well, since I used to maintain them years ago. But I was shocked at how fast she got back. They wheeled her away and I am sure she couldn’t have been gone 10 minutes and they had her back again. CAT scanners must be a lot quicker than they were in 1981 when I worked on them.

The neurologist came by, and in the meantime Mom had started having serious trouble. She was losing her ability to talk. She would start a sentence and have it drift off into unintelligent babble at the end. Then she got to where she couldn’t even begin the sentence. She had things to say but couldn’t say them and she was very frustrated. The neurologist said that he had spotted two very small indications of stroke on the CT scan. However, he was a bit confused as to why Mom had gone from normal, to having pronounced stroke symptoms, back to normal, and then returned to having the symptoms again. He tested her reflexes and went through a number of simple tasks for Mom to do. She got up and walked, which was comforting for me to see, but she was having some trouble following what he was saying to her. He told us that it was not uncommon for a patient undergoing open heart surgery to have a stroke, and it was just a wait and see situation. The fact it was a small stroke was encouraging, and that assuming that no additional events occurred, we very well might see a full recovery in time.

I tried to put a pen in her hand to see if she could write down a phone number that she knows very well. She couldn’t write. She had trouble holding the pen, and the whole process didn’t work.

She had two phone calls over the next few hours, and she seemed to understand what was said to her, and she tried to respond. She even got out a few intelligible words in response what was being said to her. In the evening, before we left, she actually got out a couple of short but complete sentences. I went to sleep that night with hope that she would recover in time.

Friday, Dotti and I decided to go ahead and make an up-and-back trip to Portland to get the things we needed. Mom’s condition appeared to be stable, and the day before the doctors hadn’t seemed to think that there was much of a chance of things getting worse during the time that we were away. We weren’t going to check out of the hotel, merely drive the 2 hours up and 2 hours back, with the additional time away for however much time it took to get our stuff done.

We headed over to the hospital to check on Mom before we left and when we arrived the nurse said with a smile, “She is back to normal again!” We walked into the room and there she was, smiling and talking up a storm. I asked her how much she remembered from the day before, and she said, “A lot!” She had understood what was being said to her, but she just couldn’t get out the words. She knew she was talking gibberish, but couldn’t do a thing to fix it. We were so relieved to see her doing so well. It was like the day before hadn’t happened at all. (We have since heard stories very similar to hers from other open heart patients. Apparently it is lot more common than we knew.)

We headed off to Portland/Vancouver with light hearts, and were back at her bedside in the late afternoon or early evening. When we walked into her room she was sitting up at her bedside table and reading the Bible. Now that is the Mom I know so well! She just looked radiant sitting there. She has since been writing in her daily journal again, which she normally does religiously. If we are lucky, she will be leaving the hospital in few days.

Week's Journey Highlights:

My weight loss and exercise journey has not been my primary concern this week, but I did still keep my journal everyday, and as it turned out, I remained on track with my weigh-in coming in right on my target weight. My exercise fell off quite a bit this week, and I hope that I can do better next week.

Eating and Weight – My “Journal Lite” has been getting a workout this week. We have not been eating anything like what I would consider “standard meals.” So, I am writing everything down that I eat in my little notebook and sorting it out in my main journal in the evenings when we get back to the hotel.

Saturday, I weighed-in at 184.5 pounds. Between our visits with Mom we went out to eat a couple of times during the day. By day’s end I had eaten 50.0 points.

Sunday morning my weight had dropped to 184.0, and once again we had two meals at restaurants. Our normal 3 meals-per-day was not working. I ate a total of 49.0 points, and before we headed in to the hospital for Mom’s surgery on Monday, I weighed 184.5. I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal in the hotel room before we left, and then at lunch, after Mom was safely out from under the knife, we walked with LeRoy over to what had been a Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor years ago. It still was very similar in its decorations and its menu offerings. We were telling LeRoy about how we used to go to Farrell’s when we first met. Of course then we were not counting points. Dotti was a lot better than I was on this day, because I had 53 points worth of burger, shake, and ice cream. By the end of the day, I had worked that up to 82.0 points. The next day the scale dropped to 182.0 pounds. Go figure.

It is strange what can happen on a high-stress day. Tuesday, once again my eating was done in a haphazard manner, catching it where I could during the day. I ended up eating some Fritos and a bottle of V-8 at the hospital at lunch, and had a dinner at Sharis in the evening. I finished the day after eating 55.0 points total.

Wednesday morning my weight moved back up to 185.0, after my body finally figured out what to do with that 82 point day on Monday. I didn’t eat a lot, holding my points down to 36.5. I had lunch at Subway, which is always a great way to have a low point meal.

Thursday, emotionally it was a terrible day. I ended up eating 59.5 points for the day, including a lunch at Taco Bell, a place that I hadn’t eaten at in a very long time. (As a side note, it was interesting walking to Taco Bell from the hospital, because the University of Oregon nearly shares the grounds with the hospital, and there were college students everywhere we looked as we walked to Taco Bell, and then back.) Friday my weight was up to 185.5 but I was definitely not having a problem with the scale running away on me. We drove home and then back to Eugene that day, and had a late lunch at Sweet Tomatoes. Once again I only had two real meals that day. After the car snacking and all my other eating was completed, I had eaten 52.5 points for the day. That brought my weigh-in to 185.0 pounds this morning.

Exercise – My exercise was not as good this week as it was last. I have had some trouble getting my walking in.

Sunday Dotti and I took a 2 mile walk around the streets near the hospital. We covered the distance in 36 minutes and averaged 18:00 per mile (3.33 mph). That was good for 3.66 aerobic points.

Monday we took a short walk to a restaurant of only 0.39 miles. We took 9 minutes to do it, and it only earned 0.23 aerobic points.

Tuesday Dotti and I took a 3.1 mile walk, and completed it in 55:44. We averaged 17:58 per mile (3.34 mph) and that earned 6.24 aerobic points.

Wednesday I took a 5 mile (8K) walk, and it took me 1 hour 9 minutes and 1 second to complete. I averaged 13:48 per mile (4.35 mph) and earned 15.73 aerobic points.

That was it for my exercise for the week. I only walked 10.5 miles, and only earned 25.9 aerobic points for the week. That was under my goal of 15 miles and 35 aerobic points. While I certainly had other things on my mind, I could have done better this week.

In spite of that, my numbers for the month of March were pretty good! From March 1 through March 31 I walked a total of 109.7 miles and earned a total of 257.29 aerobic points. That easily surpassed my goals of 60 miles and 140 aerobic points. So, I am very happy with how exercise went for me in the month of March.

Water – For water this week I drank at least 6 cups on every day except Tuesday, when I only drank 4 cups. I averaged 52.57 ounces (6.5 cups) per day. That is on the low end of my minimum range of 6 to 8 cups per day. I am satisfied with that.

Week's Evaluation – Considering what I went through this week, I am very satisfied with how my weight control and exercise journeys went. My weight came in right on target for my weigh-in today, and my average weight for the week was 184.36. I averaged eating 54.93 points, but that was clearly what I needed to eat to hold my weight on track. For exercise I did not meet my goals, and I need to work on improving my numbers in that area. On the other hand, I was very happy with how my exercise for the month went. My average water consumption was within my minimum goal range and I am happy with that. So, though the week was not perfect, it was a success for me.

2 years, 327 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/185.0/185±2/BMI:23.12/WK-151
GRAPHS: Weight Loss/Year 1 Maint./Year 2 Maint./Year 3 Maint.
                Success Story