Sickness is Never Fun -- Childhood Memories

Illness is making its rounds here. It started with hubby, then WP got. Her symptoms seemed worst and her throat looked blotchy so I took her to the doctor yesterday. Diagnosis: Viral Layringitius with an ulcer on the throat.

Like many homeschoolers when illness strikes we just table school work. We prefer to do school work when everyone is well and can focus and think, which is a good thing because this morning I woke up feeling like crap. I have many of the same symptoms as everyone else: a headache, sore throat, stuffy nose, cough, etc. I, however, unlike everyone else, am limited on what I can take for medications. Many of the typical medications you would take for the cold/flu/respiratory issues I cannot take because of the cpap. I was advised not to take many of those things because they cause interference with the cpap.  I'm pretty much limited to saline nose sprays or other sprays natural sprays like (afflink) xclear and your typical pain medication. I can have cough drops which bring me to my childhood memories.

Here I am sucking on a lemon cough drop with methanol in the middle. It wasn't until I got to the syrup methanol center did the childhood memory come flooding back. That methanol hit me and I remembered my great-grandparents. They are gone now, have been for years.That methanol hitting my senses reminded me how they use to give us, my siblings and I, Hall's cough drops as if it was candy! I'm sure we shouldn't have had them like we did, but I remember being in their car and they being there in the center console and asking for them or them asking us if we wanted one.  I never faked a cough or anything they just freely gave them to us as if they were candy. I could get one, suck on it for a little bit, and then chew it up. -- oh my gosh. How funny is that that sucking on a cough drop today would bring back that memory.

My great-grandparents were good people. I remember them taking us to the park and being at their home. We mostly just visited with them and talking to them. They didn't have toys or things like that at their home. The only things they could offer us was water, prune juice, halls cough drops, and sugar-free gum.  -- I never took them up on the prune juice. In my childhood mind that was gross!

New Habits; Old Habits

Weight loss is something that has been a hit or miss for me. Mostly, a miss -- I tried various diets. I worked with a personal trainer. I got nowhere. Even my trainer was puzzled on why some days things I was doing just the week before was kicking my butt -- like really kicking my butt -- and why the scale wasn't moving. Sure, my diet wasn't "great", but it wasn't bad either.  After almost half a year with her, I quit. We were struggling to make the payments and with no results why was I paying.

I let it go and after several months, maybe a year or more I decided to talk to my doctor. That and I was slowly climbing in weight and becoming more and more unhappy.  Well, I talked to the doctor, told her what was going on: not being able to lose weight, being extremely tired all the time, lack of energy, etc. She gave me a couple of referrals: a family doctor that specializes in obesity and a pulmonologist that specializes in sleep disorders.

The pulmonologist took my info and immediately had me do a sleep study. The results: I have sleep apnea. Guess what if you have sleep apnea you have a hard time losing weight and you suffer from fatigue.  The obesity doctor listened to my story and told me she wanted me to do my best to start cutting carbs and added sugars out of my diet. She also ordered some blood work to be done. Results: Vitamin B deficiency, Vitamin D deficiency, and insulin resistance/high insulin (NOT diabetes my blood sugar is perfect). Guess what if you have those things you have a hard time losing weight and you suffer from fatigue.

So I have 4 confirm diagnoses that all have the same symptoms. All of which is a contributing factor to my weight, besides my own eating habits, and my constant fatigue, lack of energy etc. And those eating habits: Yes, my diet was a bit carb heavy some days, but overall, it wasn't so much food by volume. So cut the carbs, cut the added sugars, drink more water, start sleeping every night with a cpap machine and start taking the vitamin supplements and medicine for the insulin resistance.

All of this with the obesity doctor and sleep doctor started the end of April beginning of May 2017. So about 8 months. I have had ups and downs the last 8 months. Some weeks I have done better -- I was doing really good for a while, but this last couple of months especially since right before Christmas has been the toughest. I have slowly been slipping back into old habits. Late night snacks. Eating more then I should. I have watched the scale slowly creep back up. 

Overall I have lost, but if I continue to let these old habits creep back in I'm not going to see weight loss. I'm upset with myself for allowing my old habits to kick in and I find myself excusing it by saying "Tomorrow will be better!" "I will stick with it tomorrow."

Truth is -- tomorrow will never come. I know it won't.  I need to just grab it by the horns and quit making excuses and quit saying "tomorrow".

It took months to get to this point and I don't want to lose sight of the end goal. I have a long way to go but I need to do this.