Breakfast: 9am
1 McDonald’s Sausage, Egg & Cheese Bagel
12oz. Orange Juice.
Mid-Morning:Nothing.
Lunch: 11am
1 Banana Visalus Shake
Mid-Afternoon: Nothing.
Evening: 9pm
1 Lg. Caesar Salad
46oz. Iced-Tea (Unsweetened)
State of Being:
So,… today was interesting.
It was my grocery-shopping day and my Mom offered to come and help me, since I was going to the local Save-A-Lot to try and save some $$$, and Save-A-Lot doesn’t have motorized riding-carts, (at least the one in Kent doesn’t.)
This was an amazingly selfless act, considering that Mom has Multiple Sclerosis and is also currently nursing some kind of nerve injury which has severely hampered her left arm. We brought Mason with us, as he was staying with Mom yesterday and today.
I Love you to death, Mom and I still feel like crap about needing the help. Thank you.
Anyway, it’s been a weird week, leading up to today. My portion sizes in meals have been very small this week as I was running out of food. Even my Visalus Shakes, I’ve been mixing with water rather than milk, for about the last week-and-a-half. I finally ran-out completely, as in *nothing-in-the-fridge-nor-any-of-the-cupboards* OUT of food, on Wednesday. Compound this with the fact that I just
COULD-NOT-SLEEP last night and you have a recipe for the disaster that I’m leading up to with the following tale of harrowing adventure...
Yesterday, I was at Mom’s helping to look after Mason while she kept an appointment, and she fed me (slow-cooked chicken straight from Heaven.) But, it apparently wasn’t enough to prevent what happened to me this morning.
About halfway over to Mom’s house, to pick her and Mason up, I started having horrible cramps… and I mean,
EVERYWHERE. Every time I moved, breathed, coughed, anything, at least three different places just seized up and pinched. So, I had to grab something to eat on the road and I swung through a McDonald’s and got the little breakfast that you see listed above in the food-log. And yes,… I did eat the bagel. I didn’t take it off and only eat the meat, eggs and cheese. And yes,… I had orange juice… good ole’ super-high glycemic-index, insulin-triggering orange juice. I also slugged down about 90oz of water. It wasn’t dietary weakness that put the bagel and the juice in my stomach, though. I was legitimately doing everything I could to stop the cramping. So,… yeah… sugar, starch, more sugar, Vitamin C, water, water, water… etc.
As I sat in the McD’s parking lot trying to eat my breakfast, the cramps moved into my chest,… which of course, triggered a panic-attack. Now, I haven’t actually *had* a panic attack in a long while. My medicine keeps it pretty well controlled. But, the origin of my panic-disorder occurred in a time when two different doctors were telling me, several years ago, that I was going to die soon, because my heart couldn’t take the strain brought on by my obesity and my insulin levels. They were literally berating me with it. One of them even tried to scare me into signing up for bariatric surgery
(for which she would receive a substantial kick-back, I’m sure) by telling me that she thought I might die in the
next few days.
Here’s the story on that; When someone is first diagnosed with panic-disorder, it is usually only after they’ve been to the ER about a dozen times *thinking* they were having a heart attack, as the symptoms are remarkably similar, and, for whatever reason, most non-psych doctors apparently don't think to mention,
(even after your several EKGs come-up whistle-clean) that you might be having panic attacks. So, on approximately, my fifth or sixth trip to the ER, and about my tenth completely clean EKG, I was following up with my doctor and she looked at the EKG results and said she was sending me back to the ER to be watched overnight as she was worried that I might not make it another 24 hours. So, my then-fiance Amy and I drove back out to the ER, with tears in her eyes, less than a month away from our wedding, discussing what I wanted done with my remains, in the *very likely* event that we were heading into my last night on Earth.
(as an aside: The ER doctor on call happened to be the same one who’d seen me before and after two more EKGs, he came to speak to me and I explained to him what my doctor had said and why she’d sent me back out there, and he literally rolled his eyes and said, ‘Ok, let’s settle this, once and for all,” and ordered up a full stress-test for my heart, which I had done in the next few weeks by a Cardiovascular specialist. A story in itself that I won’t go into now. The stress-test gave me a “Heart-is-Healthy-As-A-Horse” bill of health, and I stopped going to my regular doctor, and to this day I still refuse to pay my outstanding balance with her practice. I swear on my life that I will die in prison before I give her one more penny.
Moving on…)
In spite of the protein, the carbs and all the water, the cramping really didn’t stop until after we’d gotten back to my apartment with the groceries and I had a couple bananas, then after I’d dropped Mom and Mason off back at Mom’s place, I came home and slept for several hours. Now,… I’m still getting little cramps here and there, but it’s definitely lessened.
The sailing is anything but smooth on this journey, but you know what they say…
See you tomorrow!
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