Week 312 Update Mr. Scale said that I weighed "206.5 pounds" today. I had hopes that this week would have been better than it was, but alas...

We had been gearing up for a lot more hiking this year. On Wednesday of last week Dotti and I were discussing where we were going to go hiking on Thursday, our hiking day. I had a hike planned out and things were looking good, until Dotti fell in the garage in the early morning hours of Thursday. And of course the events of 2002 flashed through my mind.

The year 2002 was life altering for us. Dotti, who had been on smooth sailing for 3.5 years after losing 100 pounds, having no real difficulty at all maintaining her weight loss, had all of that change with a fall she took in the Costco parking lot early that year. It was nearly 6 months later when she had the damaged knee operated on but even today that knee gives her pain. Suddenly exercise was severely limited for her, and then to add fuel to the fire, she quit smoking in May of 2002. The smooth and easy journey suddenly became an out of control struggle day after day, and year after year. From being at goal with no worries, her weight worked its way back up to where she had regained 78 of the 100 pounds that she had originally lost. That fall in 2002 was the start of a lot of pain and trouble for Dotti.

Today, Dotti has lost 45 of those 78 added pounds, and is 67 pounds lighter than she was when she started her journey in 1997. She hasn't had a cigarette in FIVE YEARS! (This month is her anniversary for quitting.) If you multiply the health advantages of being 67 pounds lighter with those for quitting smoking you can see that she has really made some positive steps.

So, here we are, with Dotti on the comeback trail, and suddenly she has another fall. This fall was also done when she was 33 pounds heavier than she was in 2002, which adds more force to the impact. As C3P0 asked, "Will it never end?"

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Dotti took most of this fall on her wrist rather than on her knee. (That probably means that this time she fell farther forward before making contact with the ground, relieving some of the force that would have otherwise been applied to her knee.) At least that is the way it looks from her injuries. While her knee hurts, it has rebounded much more quickly than the injury did in 2002. She is out walking and the knee doesn't feel much worse for the exercise. (In 2002 whenever she tried to exercise, the knee would once again feel as if she had just taken another fall.)

Dotti has 3 broken bones in her wrist (one of the 3 bones has two fractures) and she is now sporting a bright yellow cast. We are hopeful that there will be no surgery required and in 6 to 8 weeks she will have her cast removed and be as good as new.

One of the most positive things about this negative event has been the way Dotti has responded to the challenge. After 5 weeks of not showing a loss on the scale, this week after all she has gone through, Dotti has gotten back to listening to her hypnosis CDs (which she had not done for a long time) every day. She has eaten OP all week long and her weigh-in showed a half pound loss. (I don't know what the cast weighs but this loss includes the weight of that cast thrown in to boot.) Instead of using this as an excuse to wander off program she just turned up the focus and got back on track.

Another thing that I think should be mentioned is that Dotti was not completely focused on her journey for the last few weeks. She has had a lot of distractions and she was not journaling much or paying very close attention. Still, she maintained her weight for 5 straight weeks. Before September of 2005, if she had done that, her weight would have taken a leap upwards.

When Dotti talks about her comeback journey, the first word out of her mouth is: "slow!" But the first word out of my mouth is "sure!" Look at her graphs for her weight since September of 2005, and you can see that it has been very sure. She is moving down to goal. She is not bouncing all over the place, relosing the same pounds over and over again.

So, instead of this fall being something that destroyed her concentration and sent her off program, she has found a new commitment and is moving forward again. Dotti YOU ROCK!!!

For my journey, I don't think things are quite as bad as the weigh-in this morning indicated. Yesterday I had to take ibuprofen twice and I had some popcorn. Yesterday I weighed 205.0 pounds and I think that is probably closer to where I am really at. Still, with averaging under 40 points-per-day for my eating this week, I would have expected a small loss, or at least a maintain. When I weighed in at 203.5 last week, I thought I was on my way to getting back to 200.

I am not sure, but I know I am not way out of line with what I am doing, and I will just have to keep working on bringing things closer to where they must be in order to reach and maintain my goal. Bit by bit the pieces will come together as long as I continue to strive to make that happen.

On Saturday, as I reported last week, we took Dotti in to see the doctor and to get her cast on. The doctor showed us the official report (generated by the radiologist who read the CAT scan that had been run on Dotti's wrist) that stated that Dotti had fractures on these 3 carpal (wrist) bones: Scaphoid (navicular), capitate, and triquetrum. The navicular bone had sustained two chip fractures.

I got to watch the doctor put the cast on, something I had never witnessed before. It turned out to more or less like putting on an Ace bandage. He first wrapped the area of the arm where the cast would go with a soft gauze-like material, and then came the surprise for me. He went over to the sink where he had been wetting two rolls of what turned out to be casting tape. I am not sure of the brand, but one brand I looked up said it is made of 70% polyester, 30% glass fibre and hardening resin. He took one of the rolls and commenced wrapping Dotti's arm with it. It reminded me of how I used to wrap my baseball bats when I was a kid after they were cracked, just so I could get a little more use out of them. (I remember that the gym teacher back in 7th grade was not impressed with what I had done, and wouldn't let me use my favorite bat during class. He was right of course. I snapped that bat right off on an inside pitch, but it was a year later, and I had gotten a lot of mileage out of it in the meantime. Still, someone could have gotten hurt by the flying end of the bat. Fortunately, that didn't happen.)

Round and round the doctor rolled the tape, and it was very much like I would have wrapped up her wrist if it were sprained, using a dry Ace bandage of course. He played out the entire roll and then broke out the second roll, and continued on. The tape ran between her thumb and forefinger and across her palm. It extended up to where she couldn’t move her fingers except for their tips.

I was asking questions like, what is the tape made of? And how long until it sets up? Fortunately he was talkative and he didn't mind the questions. He is a very nice doctor and I have had to see him myself in the past and he really makes you feel comfortable.

Once casting class was over, Dotti had a nice white covering for her right arm, and the doctor said that anything that she could do, she would be okay doing. (The cast should keep her safe.) —I should mention that these orders were modified slightly by the orthopedist, who said "No heavy lifting!"

One thing that we found out was that the tape dried not only quickly but very hard (not terribly surprising in itself) but unfortunately, it could be quite sharp! Dotti cut her fingers a bit during the night on the sharp edges that crossed her palm. We took some scissors to the offending areas of the cast and it was less aggressive after that. The material of the cast also snagged on her pillows and other cloth items and so we wrapped an ace bandage over the cast to protect everything else it might come in contact.

I don't know what it was on Saturday, but I was snacking a lot. After Dotti got her cast we stopped for a McDonalds ice cream cone. It was only 3.0 points and we have always used that as an OP snack. So, when Dotti asked if we could stop for one after she got her cast on, of course we stopped. (After dealing with that she could have asked for anything and it would have been okay with me. ☺) It was a nice small cone, one that really was 3.0 points like it says on the web page. (We have to adjust point values for their cones based upon how big they turn out to really be when we get them.)

So, the cone was not an issue. But when we got back home I was grabbing a banana here, and a cookie there. Any one of them would have been okay by itself, but at the end of the day I had eaten 54.5 points. Fortunately that was the worst day of the week.

Sunday morning my weight had jumped up from 203.5 to 206.5. (So, this morning I weigh exactly the same as I did last Sunday.) I spent a lot of the day finishing up my write up for week 311, which took a long time because there were so many pictures to write about. For eating I did much better, only consuming 35.5 points.

Monday I was still 206.5, but I just don't find myself stressing over the scale. I am a lot more concerned over the number of points I eat or the lack of exercise I get. So, Sunday was a good day for eating, but not so good on exercise. Monday was pretty good for both!

Dotti and I took a walk on Monday to Starbucks. I drank a pretty large cup of coffee but it was just their house blend with some half and half creamer. It totaled only 2.0 points. The walk was for 1 mile, and that put the coffee and walk at pretty close to a balance of calories in and out. We read for a while. (I am currently reading "Robots of Dawn" by Isaac Asimov, for at least the 3rd time.) Then we walked another quarter mile to Subway and had a very OP lunch. (It came to 9.0 points total.) And we then walked the 1.25 miles home for a total of 2.5 miles of walking.

Dotti used her cane, naturally holding it in her left hand, and it helped her right knee a bit. She felt pretty good through the walk and even afterwards, and that is a very good sign! (Her 2002 injury was just the opposite in that regard; every time she would exercise then, the knee would have a major setback in its recovery. )

5 years, 359 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/206.5/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.81/WK- 312

Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs