Hospice: Homeschooling

Hospice is not a fun word. Many without saying more understand what that means. My grandfather was put on hospice last week. 9 days ago.

This has required me to help my grandparents out more and be there for them. ie. move in basically. I'm okay with this, my husband is okay with this, the kids are on board etc. It's not easy and some adjustments have to be made and continue to be made, but we are working our way through that.

Schooling is looking different, somewhat. More independent work, but also a change of scenery. Having to school hear at my grandparents with them on looking is a bit different.

Nothing like having your school on display 24/7?  I'm hoping they will see it's no big deal and even though its different for us school, even in the thick of hospice can still be done.

pray for us.

Home Management

My home management skills are better then what they were when my kids were smaller, but still not what I would like it to be.  I started out using many of flylady's ideas.  I like the idea of the control journal, but let's face it I'm a digital girl! I do much better with having everything on my phone, computer, tablet etc.

I even took on the job as treasurer for my son's scout troop and I use my phone and computer to manage the checking account and other documents associated with being the treasurer. It's nice, for example, I can pull up the information parents need from my phone while at the troop meeting.

Summer 2018

Summer is here and I'm getting ready to send Superstar of for the summer. Not just camp for the week, but for the whole summer and I'm unsure how I feel about it.

He is almost 17 now, man 17. I remember when I started blogging and he was only 7/8. He got a summer job at a BSA camp. He will  leave here this weekend and will be back right before school starts again.

As some of my followers may be aware I homeschooled him from 2nd grade to 8th grade and he went off to the local high school. Sending him to the high school was heart wrenching and still is at time. So him being gone all summer is hard, because I miss him so much as it is; I have grown to like summer because that means him being home, spending time with him, and now he's leaving.

Web-Princess will be here and it will much of the same with her around, although she's learning to drive so my summer will be filled with her doing some driving lessons with me, hubby, and driving instructor. Yay! I think - Superstar got his license last Nov, so this is my second summer in a row with teaching a teen to drive. You would think I had this all figured out, but like with everything over the years even though the kids are close in age they are 2 different people, with 2 different learning styles and I have to approach even  driving different with each of them.

I have also start thinking about what to do in the fall for Web-Princess and school.  Fall will be the start of her Junior Year. Fall will be Superstars Senior Year.

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.

Slow, Steady, Still Hanging on....

Back in May, I started to take my overall health very seriously.  When you are morbidly obese things get difficult and it was time with me being shy of 40 to do something. I felt like it was now or never.

I have tried things in the past but got nowhere. I even worked with a personal trainer for months. That time with the trainer was the most trying and upsetting. Here I was working with and spending money on a personal trainer and I got nowhere. The scale never changed. The inches never came off. -- It was literally nowhere.  I quit the trainer and knew I should talk with my doctor but it would be years until I decided to talk with the doctor.

In May I finally, with my husband's promoting, decided it was time to talk with the doctor. It was me always being tired, waking up in the morning feeling like I never slept. It was me crying to my husband how I'm tired of feeling tired. It was me being extremely restless that caused my husband to start having insomnia. It was his insomnia and my tiredness that lead me to talk to the doctor. At that time, I also decided I will also mention to my doctor my issues with weight loss.

The doctor referred me to two specialists. One for sleeping and the other for weight loss. The sleep doctor decided that I should have a sleep study done and see if I have sleep apnea. It turned out I do indeed have sleep apnea. Symptoms of sleep apnea include things like sleepiness, fatigue, tired, weak muscles, memory issues, depression.   -- part of the obesity is due to not having energy and being tired all the time.  The sleep doctor also told me having sleep apnea can make losing weight difficult. He has known patients that had lost 10 lbs just because they started to use cpap machine. No other changes just the use of the cpap.

The weight doctor was next. She ran blood work. diabetes. nope, but I do have high insulin. This means I have to be on a low carb and no added sugar diet. The blood work also showed that I have a vitamin B12 deficiency. Symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency are things like weakness, tiredness, weak muscles, and depression.  The blood work also showed that I had vitamin D deficiency as well. Symptoms of this also include things like weakness, muscle fatigue.

I had at least 3 conditions that have similar symptoms. It is one vicious circle. I'm I tired because of the sleep apnea or because of the vitamin B or D deficiencies? When you have no energy you don't want to for that walk or work out -- or if you do the workout you tired and your butt is kicked much sooner than it should be. That is one thing my trainer when I had her, would say. I don't know why it's kicking your butt today -- you had done much more before. Meaning I had good days and bad days, but on what we thought was those "bad days" I would be tired real easy.

So here we are 3 almost 4 months later -- I have my cpap. I have been taking my vitamins and trying to maintain the diet the doctor wanted me to do. Diet is not going well, I have good days and bad days. -- It's hard to maintain a diet change, but I'm trying.

Despite the failures I have had I have actually lost some weight and maintain that weight loss. I'm thrilled that we are here at the 3-month mark and I have lost 27 lbs and have maintained that loss. It's a slow loss, but a loss nonetheless.