Week 384 Update

It was 10:26 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "205.0 pounds!" Well, that is a fine slap in the face. But it was not totally unexpected. Between the antibiotics, and pain meds I had forced upon me this week from my dental procedure, it is not surprising at all really. Still, you never like to see a 3-pound leap up in one day, and a gain for the week overall. Nonetheless, it was a good week for my weight control journey.

Looking at the hollow squares on my Weight Commander graph it is quite apparent that today's weight is an aberrant data point, well off the general trend. The solid squares were dropping like a rock when they hit something solid and bounced a bit. Still, if you draw a line that runs through the first solid square on the graph at August 21, through the solid square for today, the direction is the right one.

The Weight Commander Control Panel shows that while today's weight is 3 pounds higher than one year ago, it is lower than my weight 30, 60, or 90 days ago! Even with the artificial jump on the scale today, things still look good.

The Weight Commander Future Graph indicates that a projection of my current trend will lead me to about 192 pounds by mid December. Week after week now I am seeing a consistent downward trend. My weight may not be decreasing extremely fast, but the trend seems to be dependable.

My Excel spreadsheet shows that if my change in weight over the last 14 days were projected out, I would weigh 196.86 in 3 months. The column that is based upon the 14-day average of my weight over the past two weeks, projects that I will be 195.12 pounds in three months. That is about halfway to my goal, and I feel that with the artificial elevation in my weight due to the medical intrusion into my life, has also skewed these numbers higher than they should be. I will keep an eye on them and see if they don't fall back to where they were a month ago. But, even if they don't, I would be content with being 195 in December! I have forgotten what it is like to be in the 190s for an extended period of time. It is certainly better than fighting to get down to 210!

For eating, my excitement this week, after Tuesday night, was when Dotti would blend up some real food for me into a mush that I wouldn't have to chew. I am looking forward to getting off the "baby food" and the Slim Fast, and back to normal eating!

The Dotti's Newsletter is due out today, but it looks like it probably won't be ready until tomorrow. We have had a busy week and yesterday my mom called up to let us know that she just realized she had a week of her time-share coming up this weekend, and wanted to know if we could come and join her for a few days. Just when we were hoping things just might slow down a little bit something else drops in out of nowhere. We won't be able to spend the whole time with her, but we will be able to get over for a few days, so she won't be left all alone at the coast.

After Dotti's accident last week, we would have liked to just take the week to work on getting her back on her feet. But that was not to be. On Monday afternoon, after we had gone in to see our doctor to have him check Dotti out so she could start exercising again, we took Frostbyte in to the vet. The vet would have Frostbyte sleep over on Monday,and then she would declaw and neuter our cat on Tuesday. After that, Frostbyte would spend one more night at the vet's to make sure all was well before we were to pick her up on Wednesday morning. I was scheduled to have my final dental implant installed on Wednesday morning, but even that didn't go exactly as planned.

The doctor's visit on Monday was fairly routine. Dotti's left ankle had started to swell up a couple of days after the accident and her left knee began to hurt as well. Before Dotti went back to the gym, we wanted to make sure that she wouldn't be doing any harm to herself. The doctor decided that she would probably be okay if she took it easy. But if she did anything that was still hurting an hour after her workout, she was doing too much. With that, Dotti decided to keep her appointment with her trainer on Tuesday.

In the afternoon I got a call from my dentist's office. They wanted to move my implant up to Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 PM. I was already dreading this procedure, because this implant had failed once already. I have had way too much time in the dentist's chair the past year or so, and my tolerance for this stuff is wearing thin. Another problem with this change was that it was pushing the start time deep into the day. If there were any complications it could run really late. And I would have a lot less time to recover before I went to bed for the night. I am never at my best in the evening, and prefer facing major challenges in the morning. So, I was not a bit happy about this change. However, the reason for the change was because the expert that is mentoring my Dentist on the sinus lift would be available only that afternoon. Since he was the one who put in the failed implant in the first place, this didn't get me any more excited about the whole thing.

We dropped off Frostbyte Monday afternoon, said our goodbyes. That evening and the next seemed very odd, without Frostbyte under foot all the time. He wouldn't be there in the morning to eagerly greet me when I got up, as he normally does.

Tuesday, Dotti went to the gym and had a workout session with her trainer, but it was too much for her. She worked through the routines but afterwards she was really hurting. She decided that she needed a week off and canceled all her upcoming sessions for Thursday and the upcoming week.

Tuesday morning about 9:00 we got a call from the vet, and she said Frostbyte was all done with his procedures, and he came through it very well. She said he was a great cat and all the people at the clinic really loved him. He is an exceptionally good cat, and very friendly. So, we were not surprised to hear that. We still had to wait until Wednesday to pick him up, but we were happy to hear the news.

When I got to the dentist's office at 4:30 PM I was tired and in no mood for what was about to occur. My dentist asked me if I wanted to postpone it for a while, since I was still dealing with the stress of Dotti's accident and so forth. He could tell that I was not my normal cheerful self. I really wanted to cancel, but I knew I would have to face it later anyway, and if it was done now, I wouldn't have do it later. The clincher was when the dentist said, "I can finish this up in about an hour, if you decide to do it tonight." I looked at my watch and thought, "An hour from now I will be done. I can handle that." So, I agree to proceed.

If I had only known! I would have postponed it for sure, and I might have even canceled for good. Nearly 3 hours later, I had gone through most of another full sinus lift procedure. Other than cutting a hole in the side of my jawbone, I still dealt with drilling a hole in the vertical bottom of the bone, scraping more bone graft material, a new major cut in my gum, that required many stitches and added worry that this new implant might also fail. And all of that came upon me when I was tired physically, and emotionally drained before it even started. When finally saw where this was going I was emotionally crushed. I didn't need this, not now.

All started off normally, with the shots to deaden things, and then the drilling into the bone to create the spot for the metal implant to go. Then things started to go sour. When the drill hole was probed, the bone inside wasn't solid enough. It was soft along the wall where they had cut in originally for the sinus lift procedure. The expert showed up about this time, and he also tested the bone and decided he wanted to see the other side of the wall. That was when I knew I was in for a long night.

More shots, a scalpel, and blood. I was told it was great that the bone area was bleeding so well, because it means that the bone was healthy and alive. I am glad that it gave them such joy, but all I could think was that most surgeons want to control the bleeding, and here they were trying to stimulate more of it.

As the point of nearly 3 hours in the chair approached, the implant has been placed, but it was not the rock solid feeling that I got from the other implants I had. They had gone into solid bone to begin with. This one we have wait and hope that bone grows in around it. Before they closed up the flap of skin they had cut back, they packed in more bone grafting material on top of the old stuff along the hole they had cut before for the sinus lift.

The first sinus lift I had done, on my left side, had actually taken less time than this procedure had. I thought I had felt drained before we started, but I was really down in the dumps when I met Dotti in the waiting room. My dentist was beat as well, and we both tried to put a happy face on it for Dotti. But I was feeling far from happy at that moment. And now the healing still needed to be done.

Wednesday morning, I was ready for something upbeat, and picking up Frostbyte was just what I needed! He was really happy to see us, and of course the feeling was mutual. They gave us two syringes of pain medication for Frostbyte and said to give him one later that day and then the other the following day. We had practice giving him his dewormer that way, and so that was okay with us. (It is funny how you can shove a syringe in a cat's mouth and shove in liquid that apparently is not tasty at all—judging from the reaction‐but rather than spitting it out, the cat swallows it.)

While Frostbyte was not quite his old feisty self, he was far more animated than we expected he to be. He even was batting a toy around with those recently attacked paws of his.

Our last cat was named Princess, and when we took her to the vet, a few weeks later, we got a pre-approved credit card application for Princess Coon in the mail. What a hoot! When Princess came back from being declawed and neutered, she wanted nothing to do with us for days. I literally was fearful that they had botched the anesthesia and given her brain damage; she was that lethargic. But I think the difference was mostly the fact that she had been raised as an outdoor cat for her first 8 weeks, living in a garage with her mother and not seeing any humans at all. She never bonded to us the way Frostbyte has. Frostbyte was around people right away, and he considers us his close friends, from the way he acts. He had a bad time and he was looking for sympathy from his friends. At least that is the way it appeared.

A fine trio we made: Dotti was hurting from her accident and her overdoing it at the gym on Tuesday, Frostbyte was recovering from his surgeries, and I was dealing with aching gums once more. We all consoled each other on Wednesday.

Thursday, Dotti's ribs were hurting all day long, and she was set to cancel a visit with her brother and his family on Friday that she had previously scheduled. Along about 3 AM on Friday morning she wanted to go into the emergency room, because she could hardly breath because of the ribs. Knowing emergency rooms, what they would do is let her sit for hours without treatment and then send her home with a, "Yep you are in pail all right. Come back in if it gets worse."

So, I set out to see if we could make things better first before putting Dotti through that. I got her positioned in bed and had her take short shallow breaths for a bit, and not try to take those painful deep breaths. Some pain meds and TLC were added and before long she was breathing a bit better. She finally was able to fall asleep, and in the morning, she was feeling much better. In fact she was ready to go for the visit with her brother after all. It was like something was popping back in place or something with her ribs, because ever since that night they have been much better.

Frostbyte was the quick healer of the group, and he was pretty much back to normal in just a couple of days, running through the house chasing my laser pointer everywhere. As Dotti improved, so did my attitude, and although I was eating soft food only, things were improving on the front as well. By this morning I only had two stitches left that hadn't come out, and one of them feels like it is about ready to fall out on its own.

Friday, I took my laptop over to Dotti's brother's house and worked on that, as my brother-in-law worked on his computer and the ladies (Dotti, our sister-in-law and our niece) all went out shopping and other fun stuff. The day went by quickly and soon we were on our way back home. I had been drinking Slim Fast for my meals, and that was getting me by, but it surely isn't real food. I am looking forward to when I can get something more substantial into my system.

Overall, the week was a good one. I averaged only 28.36 points-per-day and that is right on program. I was down a pound and a half on Friday from where I was last Saturday's weigh-in and that is about right. The leap up today had to be from the ibuprofen I had to take on Friday for my gum pain. But that too shall soon pass and I can get back on track on the scale as well.

7 years, 131 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/205.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:25.62/WK-384

Starting weight: 239.5       New (returning to my original) Target Weight Range: 183.0 lbs to 187.0 lbs