|
*** Weigh-in for WEEK 357 ***
03/15/2008
|
| Week Completed: | ___357___ |
| Weigh-In Weight: | 204.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.50 |
| Average Weight for week: | 203.14 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 0 |
| Miles Walked in 2008: | 33.91 |
| Week’s Average Points/Day: | 39.07 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | +1.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 35.5 |
| Made GOAL: 9/22/2001 † | |
* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01
† Goal is 200 pounds.
|
Week’s Data
|
Day |
Date |
Weight |
Points |
Water |
Miles
Walked |
| Saturday |
03/08/2008
|
203.0
|
49.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Sunday |
03/09/2008
|
202.5
|
26.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Monday |
03/10/2008
|
202.0
|
26.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Tuesday |
03/11/2008
|
202.5
|
47.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Wednesday |
03/12/2008
|
202.0
|
49.0
|
9 cups (72 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Thursday |
03/13/2008
|
205.0
|
44.0
|
10 cups (80 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Friday |
03/14/2008
|
204.0
|
32.5
|
9 cups (72 oz)
|
0.00
|
Week 357 Update
Wow! How can one think of weight loss at a time like this? Only a really deeply rooted habit would drag me to the keyboard to write an update at a time like this.
It was 04:01 when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "Man, what have you been eating?" I replied, "Ibuprofen, and other venomous potions." "Tough luck old boy, but your weight is 204.0 pounds!"
This has been a tough week for me. Between pain meds, antibiotics, and pain, I have been living in a dizzying world of sleep, wakeful hours, cloudy thoughts and vain wishes that I could clear this valley and climb into the clear air on the other side. But even so, hope burns strong and in a few days perhaps life will take a turn for the better.
Last Saturday I weighed in at 203.0. But I was feeling pretty good, because that was before Tuesday. I ate 49.0 points, a bit high on the points but not outrageous.
Sunday was the day of the ritual that I used to enjoy but since they moved the date around I have begun to dislike it very much: moving the clocks forward for Daylight Saving Time. It is one of the stupider ideas that Ben Franklin can be tied to, because it would be so easy to avoid and still reap most of the benefits. Move the clocks forward 30 minutes (or an hour if you must) and just leave them there all year round. It is debatable that it saves any energy at all, but if it does, then you would get most or all of the savings anyway. And you would avoid the things that the switch can do to people's lives.
I can remember when we first moved to Vancouver and I was just getting settled into the new job. My company had a contract with Intel to do a PM on their implanters, and those occurred once very 3 months and always were scheduled on Sundays.
Note: A PM was a preventive maintenance procedure, where we tore the ion implanter machine apart (If you would like learn more than you ever could want to know about implanters please visit the site of a on old coworker and friend at http://www.casetechnology.com/implant.html) and cleaned out all the toxic buildup on the parts. It was a tough long job, and required us to take the machine apart, do some serious scrubbing, and then put it back together. It normally took around 12 hours and we didn't go home until we got it pumping down towards a high vacuum state. That last part meant making sure there were no leaks in the system that we had introduced.
Since it was a 12-hour job and we didn't want to work too late into the evening, it was an early day, beginning at 6:00 AM. Being fairly new still, and having a bit of a drive coming in from Vancouver, I didn't want to be late, so I arrived at 5:30. And I sat there. And I sat there. And it finally dawned on me what had happened. Daylight savings time had ended that morning and I had arrived at 4:30 AM. That turned out to be a very long day for me. I wonder how many times you can multiply that inconvenience out over the general population each time the clocks are needlessly adjusted this way? Quite a few I would imagine.
And of course each time they change the timing as they recently did, it only makes things worse. Sorry if I appear to be whining. 
Dotti and I have accumulated a lot of clocks over the years, including one made out of slice of redwood that we got when Dotti worked at Special Services on base at NAS Lemoore, California, and our 25th anniversary clock. We have some Tweety clocks, and a battery operated "100 day clock" that I bought for her in 1982 in El Paso, Texas. There is a clock that I took apart and mounted a picture of Dotti and I (the same one that Dotti used on the banner for DWLZ that I used my self timer to take when we were first married and living on Midway Island) on the face before reassembling, and several others. These clocks are all analog and have to have the hands moved around to the correct time. Then we have a number of digital clocks, including one that projects up onto the ceiling in our bedroom and the microwave and stove clocks in the kitchen. We have watches and of course both cars have clocks in them. The walk through memory lane is nice as I pick up the memories of our life. I am very lucky man to have found such a wonderful girl to spend my life with.
Of course I always miss a clock or watch, but at least the computers all set themselves as soon as they hook up to the Internet. And life goes on.
I weighed 202.5 pounds on Sunday and I ate low in points, only having 26.0 of them. I had resolved at this point to try and do better on my journey and tried hold a steady course. That was a bit lower than I normally expect to eat but after my higher point day on Saturday, it was a good new start.
Monday I was down a half pound, and weighed 202.0 pounds. I once again only ate 26.0 points and all seemed on track. However, the stress was setting in. The big day was tomorrow and I was starting to feel the pressure.
If would like to read all about my procedure you can Click Here. Please be aware that I have some graphic descriptions of the procedure and if you don't like to read about surgery and other fun medical things you would do well to not visit my dental implant page. But if you are curious about what kinds of crazy things people will do to their bodies in order to eat easier, you might find it interesting.
As I pointed out in my procedure write up, my dentist called in the late afternoon with some instructions for me to get ready for the next day. Dotti and I had to make a run to the pharmacy to get a prescription for me, so I could start on the antibiotics a day early, and nail any infection before it got started. Also, he wanted me to take 800mg of ibuprofen that night, and then repeat the antibiotics and ibuprofen in the morning before going to the dental office.
We got ready to go and hopped into the car and headed off to the drug store. It turned out to be a bit more interesting than we had planned. Unfortunately, my prescription had been called into my pharmacy chain, but the store it was 5 miles away from our normal store. It was on the same road however. Anyway, we had a 10 mile-extra drive to make but it was time in the car with my lovely Dotti and that is a good thing.
Since we were out anyway, we headed to a department store and walked around for awhile for some relaxation and a bit of exercise. Finally, we drove home and then settled in to rest up for the next day's "festivities." I took my Amoxicillin and my ibuprofen and set in to wait.
Tuesday, I weighed 202.5 pounds with the low points and the ibuprofen fighting with each other trying to decide which one was going to control the scale. The ibuprofen had a slight edge.
A good friend had sent me a puzzler that went along the lines of this:
A contestant on a game show has to pick the door behind which a car is located out of 3 possible doors. Say he picks door #1. Now the host selects one of the two doors that were not picked by the contestant, showing there was no car there. Given the chance, should the contestant switch to the remaining curtain that he did not pick or hold on to the curtain he has. (By should he switch, it is meant, which curtain, if any, has a better chance of being the winning curtain.)
Well, I had put up a valiant effort to defend the wrong choice but with my friend's help the light went on and it all became clear to me. So, I created a little page to discuss the problem and I called it the Three Door Problem and if you like that sort of thing have a fling at it.
The morning quickly waned. I had taken my meds for the morning and Dotti drove me down to the dentist's office. What happened next is documented at Mastication Miracle Part 2, and it once again left me tired, but I was feeling a lot better when I left the office at around 4 PM than I had on the day I had my first implants done. I went with Dotti to the pharmacy to pick up some new prescriptions and even walked around the store a bit with her. We had to return to the dentists office because a suture came undone and I had to get some more shots so new sutures could be put in to make sure it didn't happen again. But it was a quick visit and we were soon on our way.
I had some Cream of Wheat, with some peanut butter mixed in, and McDonalds chocolate shake, taken with a spoon, not a straw. All told, I had 47.0 points on Tuesday.
I was now on a regimen of 2 different antibiotics, Ibuprofen and prescription pain meds, with a requirement to take Sudafed for at least 3 days to keep my sinuses clear. As I usually do when timing is important to taking my meds I made up a chart on a 3x5 card and wrote all the meds I might take across the top, and then wrote down the times each time I took any med and put a number in the right column for that med. That way I never forget when I have taken something or when I should (or can) take some more. These meds tend to make me so groggy I would never trust my memory alone to track this stuff.
Wednesday, even after taking a lot of ibuprofen, I was down to 202.0 pounds. I was drinking Slim Fast cans like they were going out of style because they were easy to get down with my sore gums, tasted very good, and carried a lot of food nutrients. Dotti fixed me some potatoes, asparagus, and tamales for lunch, and even though each item looked like baby food after she was through with them, they tasted great! I ended up eating 49.0 points for the day.
I found that with the meds I couldn't sit at the keyboard for long. I got up and worked a few minutes and soon I felt dizzy and ready for bed again. It was a viscous cycle, and was only going to get worse before it got better.
I felt worse on Thursday, and I woke up weighing 205.0 pounds. My fingers were swollen and life was not feeling good at all. I couldn't concentrate and found that frustrating. I was up and down, napping and waking, and finally just camped out in front of the TV and watched some old movies. It is a waste of time but I could do no more. I ate 44.0 points for the day.
Friday, I was still about the same, but I had really cut back on the ibuprofen on Thursday (I was still taking some, but not as much) because of the swelling, and my fingers were back to normal. My weight dropped to 204.0 pounds even though I got up at 2 AM to weigh. My sleep schedule was all on its head. I was up for a couple of hours and then I was back in bed. I felt terrible. It was clear that although I had felt much better at the end of the procedure on Tuesday than I had when I had gotten the 7 implants placed, I was feeling much worse this time at this point in the recovery. I was just biding my time, waiting for it all to be over.
I was able to hold my points down to 32.0 on Friday, and since I tend to eat more when I am hurting more, that was a sign that there might be a light at the end of this tunnel.
My journey has always been there in the back of my mind, and I could have eaten a lot more this week if it weren't. But my primary focus, at least since Tuesday, has been just trying to get by from day to day. I wanted to get a write up done on the procedure I had gong through, but time after time I sat down only to have to get up in frustration, unable to proceed. My head was foggy, and I often just had to return to bed and go to sleep again. I feel like I am trying to crawl out of a deep hole and it isn't easy.
Since the numbers are so contaimated with meds and surgical swelling, looking at the Weight Commander Graph this week is prehaps a study in futility, but here it is nonetheless.
After a string of solid squares ran along in a straight line, off they went in an upwards scramble. However, since I know where the increase came from, I can safely ignore that rise for now. Once I am off the meds, if such a rise continues, then damage control will be in order, but for now I will carry on.
The future graph naturally shows me on the incline, but surprisingly, it shows me at a maximum of 213 pounds in 90 days, whereas last week showed me at 215 pounds! So, in spite of the meds I have taken this week, the future graph is less gloomy than last week's graph. Hopefully, next week and I can make it more cheerful still.
On this upcoming Tuesday I am scheduled to have my stitches removed, and I am looking forward to that. They are the one main source of pain I have left, and when they are gone my life will improve I am sure. Also, I will be able to get my dentures back in soon after that I hope and will be able to eat some real food again. Also on Tuesday my first set of antibiotics will run out with the second set ending on Wednesday. That will be very nice too. I hope to then set into a more normal routine.
If there are no further complications I believe all the really hard stuff is over. I have all 9 implants in place. Now we wait for them to heal, which should take about 3 months. Then I can finally start to reap the harvest from what has been sowed already. My hope is that most people will never be forced to appreciate their teeth as much as I will. You just don't know what you have until you lose it.
There are things ahead that probably won't be fun to go through, as they shape the gums and set the teeth in place, but my hope is that I won't have another recovery period like this one for quite some time.
6 years, 309 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/204.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.50/WK- 357
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs
BACK TO WEEK THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-SIX On To WEEK THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT
|
