Honestly, even I don’t know what this machine was doing, and I was too afraid to ask for fear they’d try to pressure me into trying it too. All I know is that the machine wiggled that man back and forth, making him do a human snake impression. This happened last weekend at the inaugural Indy Health Expo at the state fair grounds.

When I saw the fair advertised on Twitter, I thought the $10 entry fee and $3 parking fee would be well worth the potential blog material. And it’s a tax write-off too! The expo consisted of almost 100 booths where exhibitors displayed their wares and/or services. There were also four “stages” set up at the corners where some exhibitors were scheduled to do presentations during the day.

There was a real range of people there, including chiropractors, yoga practitioners, massage therapists giving back rubs in their booths, martial artists, plastic surgeons who had assistants so impeccably groomed they frightened me, dentists bleaching people’s teeth on site, natural health practitioners, cancer prevention programs, Wii Fit demonstrators, Vitamix people who annihilated a pound of fruits and vegetables with their powerful blender, life coaches, and Mary Kay and Avon ladies giving away catalogs. There were also people selling balloon rides, home baths, insurance, and bedazzled hats and shirts. I don’t know how that fit into the health theme, but I guess it fit into the unofficial “make money off of the visitors” theme.

The first exhibit I saw upon entering was the “Healthy Chocolate” booth, either because of its positioning near the door or because of my innate ability to hone in on any free chocolate samples in my vicinity. The chocolate is “healthy” because it contains acai berries. Interestingly, several of the other exhibitors had bowls of candy set out in their booths and didn’t even bother to pitch it as health food. I suppose they wanted to lure people in with fun-sized Snickers bars before convincing them to get their colons cleansed.

My Farm Fresh Delivery peeps were there too. They gave me a free pear and didn’t mention my colon. I also saw a Nutrilite stand, which reminded me of my recent trip to their Optimal Health Center. I passed by a booth where a woman was selling magnetic jewelry, which was pretty but would probably murder my laptop. At the end of one of the rows there was a hyperbaric chamber, which I was curious about, but fearful to inquire about. I didn’t have a buddy with me to accompany me to the emergency room after any hyperbaric accidents.

Near the end of my loop around the booths, I made eye contact with one of the exhibitors for a second too long and she pulled me into a pitch about Sahaja Yoga Meditation. She told me that I could make energy blossom out of my head like a flower and balance my energy so it shot out my fingers which would allow me to control aspects of my life…or something like that. I just kept nodding politely and then made my getaway as soon as I saw an opening. When I typed the word “Sahaja” into Google, one of the suggested searches was “Sahaja yoga cult,” which makes me glad I got out of there while I could.

I was particularly fascinated by the human dynamics of the exhibition. There were some booths that had mobs of people around them, usually because the exhibitor was giving away something free that had perceived value. This could be a prize awarded through a random drawing at the end of the day (provided you submitted your mailing address) or a coupon for a free service at their location. The other popular booths were giving away free trinkets and schwag, although there was one booth for insurance that had lots of free schwag and no mob around it. There were also some booths that were totally unmanned, and simply had pamphlets and brochures for the company that rented the booth. There were some booths there were manned, but the person working the booth was obviously not into it and was reading a book or just chilling out instead of pitching. Then there were the booths where the worker looked very anxious that no one was approaching them and would try to grab someone to talk to. I was also somewhat disgusted by my own behavior, in which I would scout the booths as I walked up and down the aisles, trying to assess if they had any free stuff worth my time. It was very predatory of me, but I somehow can’t help falling into this behavior whenever I attend exhibitions like this.

On the bright side, the concession stand offered a few healthy food options on top of their regular pizza and nachos. I entered a lot of the free drawings and won nothing, though I am now probably subscribed to a lot of kooky mailing lists. I did get to “spin the wheel” at two booths after entering their drawings and won a free facial at a spa clear across town and a $5 gift card to Ritters, an ice cream store, which I will probably never use.

When I emptied my baggy at the end of the day, I saw that I had gotten free toothpaste, floss, a chip clip, a bottle of acid-reducer tablets, a combo brush/mirror/sewing kit, a notepad, a lens cloth, a band-aid dispenser, a pear, a Paradise Café coupon, and a Kotex sampler packet. I also got leads on a few services I might actually be interested in checking out. However, the price of admission was worth the pure entertainment value of the fair alone, even if I didn’t ride the water snake.

Disclosure: Nutrilite paid for all expenses related to this health assessment.

My Nutrilite health assessment arrived in the mail last week, bound in a snazzy spiral booklet that made me nostalgic for middle school geography reports. (My favorite? Bolivia: A World Within a Country which featured Lake Titicaca. *snicker* Yes, my sense of humor is stuck in middle school too.) The health assessment was offered to everyone who attended the Nutrilite Blogger Event last month. After undergoing a zillion and one tests over the past two years in search of the source of the headache from hell, throwing a bone density test and a body fat analysis into the mix felt like ordering an appetizer.

A few days after receiving the report, I had a one-hour phone consultation with Dr. Duke Johnson, the Medical Director of the Nutrilite Center for Optimal Health, who is a specialist in chronic diseases. He’s also a speaker and author of The Optimal Health Revolution.

The results were divided into four sections: Fitness results, blood analysis, BCoR score, and bone density. The results of these tests determined the contents of a fifth section, titled “Risk factors.” First off, Dr. Duke emphasized that the aim of the report is to help you achieve “optimal health.” This is defined not just by being free of disease, but by eliminating risk of disease. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to meet these standards, and in fact a bodybuilder who uses steroids that has caused a heart attack before the age of 40 wouldn’t qualify. I was glad to learn the assessment was taking a holistic view of health, and I wasn’t going to get a point knocked off for every stretch mark on my belly. The goal of the report is to help identify and correct habits that increase your risk for chronic disease.

Fitness results

The fitness section of the assessment measured my grip strength, flexibility, resting heart rate, body composition, waist-to-hip ratio, and blood pressure. My grip strength and flexibility were scored as average. My resting heart rate was above average and my blood pressure showed no risk for heart disease. (Score two points for the beta blockers!) However, my body composition was, uh, predictably problematic. I felt bad for the guy at the body composition station (a.k.a. the “How fat are you?” station). He was as popular as a tax collector. Using the most lenient standards for a desirable body fat percentage, I’m 12% off. Using a more strict standard, I’m 19% off. So, yeah, I got some work to do there. On the positive side, while I would make a buoyant life preserver, my waist-to-hip ratio was well below the risk area. This is because I’m pear shaped, so I don’t have much abdominal fat, which is the fat that is more metabolically active and a risk indicator of heart disease.

Blood analysis

I have a blood analysis done every six months at the headache clinic I visit. I also had two or three blood panels done the first year of my headache, so I wasn’t surprised when my blood work came back looking fairly stellar. Still, there were two problem areas.

I’m low in Vitamin D, scoring in the “insufficiency” range, and not too far from the “deficiency” range. My allergist made a similar observation last year, at around the same time of year. This is not a surprise because Vitamin D is synthesized by your skin’s exposure to the sun, and Indiana is the home of the long, grey winter. Dr. Duke told me that even if you’re getting the FDA recommended daily allowances of nutrients, your body can often benefit from receiving more than those minimums. The allowances were created during World War II to ensure that the food being shipped to the troops overseas wouldn’t cause any deficiency diseases, like lack of Vitamin C had once caused scurvy in sailors. Of course, you can also get too much of a good thing, so it’s best to find a balance. I’m going to start taking some Vitamin D supplements, since this is the second time it’s been recommended to me.

I’m also going to start taking Vitamin D because it’s supposed to help with the other issue, a higher than usual fasting insulin level. The blood analysis looked at both my glucose and my insulin level after a 12-hour fast. My glucose level scored well within average, but my insulin level was unusually high. There is some debate over the importance of measuring the insulin level, and I’m not an expert on this so I can’t really give you deep insight into the issue, but this site offered some information about the tests. I’m sure some of you will tell me why the insulin test is complete bullshit, and then some of you will comment to tell me why those people are complete morons. Work it out amongst yourselves.

Part of me wonders if the water with lemon juice I drank right before the test could have boosted my score, but when life hands you a lemon, I don’t want to blame the lemon. According to Dr. Duke, a high insulin level can be a sign of growing insulin resistance, which ultimately can lead to type II diabetes. I was rather surprised by my insulin score since I eat fairly well and exercise. I don’t know if this is a medical trait leftover from my years of morbid obesity, or if it’s a result of my current lifestyle. Anyway, my grandmother had type II diabetes, and I’d rather not lose a foot, so I’m going to watch this. I was also surprised to learn that Vitamin D and magnesium have been shown to help lower insulin levels. Dr. Duke’s book also includes a list of 22 ways to decrease insulin resistance. They gave me a free copy of the book at the event, so I’ll have to look that up and report back to you on it.

BCoR score

The BCoR stands for “Body Composition Health Risk Score” and is a formula developed by Nutrilite. It’s an attempt to take a comprehensive look at someone’s health to determine if they are obese and if that obesity is putting them at risk for chronic disease. It is calculated using a person’s body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, and waist-to-hip ratio. I liked that Nutrilite wasn’t focusing on any single one of these obesity indicators, since you can find flaws in any one of them. The BMI can score extremely muscular people as obese, and can score thin people with low muscle mass and high abdominal fat as normal. The BCoR formula is still being tested to see if it is a more accurate predictor of risk, and I’ll be interested to hear their results.

My BCoR score placed me at risk for chronic disease, but if I manage to lose the 40 pounds I gained during the horrible, headache years, I’ll reduce that risk significantly.

Bone density

My bone density was measured by a device that did an ultrasound on my foot. The results were printed in a multi-colored graph which shows that my bone density is within acceptable levels, but is slightly lower than average. I was a bit surprised by this because I’d hoped my bone density was still at the levels it must have been when I was morbidly obese. Bone density can be increased by strength training, so morbidly obese people usually have denser bones than their thin counterparts because they lift more weight simply by moving around. I suppose like everything in your body, if you don’t use it you lose it, so whatever high density I once had is gone. Bone density only drops as you get older, so I should add some strength training to my exercise routine to help increase this.

Risk factors

The final section of the report summarized the results by listing what my risk factors were for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (all of which I’ve mentioned above). They recommended that I reduce these risk factors to increase my optimal health.

Final thoughts

The health assessment was interesting, and I respected the balanced approach taken in interpreting the results. At no point did Dr. Duke try to sell me any Nutrilite products, but with my permission he told me which supplements he’d recommend (like Vitamin D, magnesium, etc.). Those supplements were only recommended on top of a healthy diet and regular exercise.

After visiting Nutrilite and talking to Dr. Duke, I was reminded of the book review I did last year of Toxic Fat by Barry Sears, which talked in-depth about inflammation and the idea that inflammation is what causes most chronic diseases. I had never encountered that concept before, but it’s something Nutrilite and Dr. Duke mentioned several times, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a concept that continues to gain attention in the press.

And, hey, I got a snazzy spiral binder, and all I had to do was give them a vial of my blood!

Today has been a rather BLAH day. I just now finally got up the will to reply to some of my emails that have been sitting in my “Respond To” folder for days. And that is only partly because I got my ass out of the house and drank a tall coffee at the Barnes & Noble cafe (although the barista always lets me know I can have a venti for only 22 more cents because he is an upseller his boss would be proud of). So I wonder, do I feel like this because of my headache? Is there something else wrong with me? Or does everyone have days like these? I don’t know.

My usual techniques for coping with days like these is to exercise or get out of the house. I tried exercising, but my left leg started to hurt after 8 minutes, so I stopped because I want to be in good shape to run my race on Friday. The thought of doing anything physical sounds totally unappealing, but the thought of doing anything sounds totally unappealing, which means I probably really need to do something.

Life is so annoying like this. Plodding on day by day, never getting any easier. *sigh* At least I haven’t binged on anything and I turned down the upselling barista’s suggestion that I try something in their pasty case. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. That’s all I can really wish for.

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Oh, you want me to say something else about this? All right.

After spending most of 2008 in pain, I began to bottom out in September, eventually started yelling at my readers, and went on anti-depressants because life was a meaningless pit of shit with no drain. I also stopped exercising and started eating more, like those chocolate covered nuts from Fresh Market and the Dove ice cream pints with a solid layer of chocolate on top and an entire Papa John’s pizza and a box of breadsticks on Oscar night.

I didn’t mention any of this because 1) Duh, it sucks to talk about and 2) The times I did start to write about it I had to mention my headache and I wasn’t going to do that again, so I never hit “Publish.”

Regardless of your views on obesity and what a healthy weight is, gaining a pound a week for months on end is not a good thing unless you’re recovering from anorexia. I kept weighing in everyday and marked it on my calendar, as depressing as that was, but I was depressed anyway, so who could tell the difference? I would tell myself, “This really needs to stop,” but then my pain would say, “LOOK AT ME!!” and punch me in the face and I’d add another ice cream pint to the bill.

Thankfully, the medications have tuned down the pain level so it does not envelope my whole life anymore. I can drive past the Fresh Market, think of the vanilla chocolate covered crunch bin, and keep on driving without remorse. Which just shows it’s easier to deal with an addiction when you are not facing a trigger 24 hours a day. As a result, I’ve been maintaining my weight for the last few months and haven’t had to buy any new pants since December.

You are free to think what you want about all this. You can say it is proof that people cannot lose weight and keep it off. You can say it shows I am a human being and you like me even more because of it. You can say I got what I deserved for writing a blog and a book about weight loss and how happy I was. You can say you are proud that I am talking about it and you think I’m inspirational because of it. All I think it proves is that my head hurt and I needed the ice cream.

I know I should be horribly devastated by this, that I should be weeping that my weight starts with the number two, that I am such a horrible disappointment to everyone who called me an inspiration and blah, blah, blah, but really? Honestly? I’m fine. It is not the worst thing to happen to me. A chronic headache that would not go away for over a year is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and if someone said I had to gain another 20 pounds to make the headache go away completely I would say, “Hand me the Ho-Ho’s!”

You know all that stuff I said in my blog and my book about how my life had changed, but it wasn’t just because of my weight? The stuff I said about how it was doing things I was proud of and liking myself as a person? You know, all that bullshit thin people say when they’re not fat anymore? Well, what do you know? It’s true! I actually meant it! I am as full of myself as ever, but even more so because there’s more to be full of! I am flying off to Europe on two month’s notice even if I am up two jean sizes. I am running a blog and doing freelance design work on the side and earning book royalties like a real business woman. I am doing other stuff that I am proud of but can’t talk about on the blog because it’s private. Feel free to call me an arrogant narcissist in denial. I’ll call you back collect from Paris!

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah this week, and I tried very hard to avoid the show, but even though I don’t have cable I still saw a dozen ads for it and saw clips of it on of the nightly entertainment news magazines. Kirstie Alley is an American actress who got fat a few years ago, lost a lot of weight as the Jenny Craig spokeswoman, appeared in a bikini on Oprah, and then got fat again. She was on the show talking about all this and all I could think while watching the clips were, “I do not give a shit.” If Kirstie Alley wants to sit at home and eat nothing but Twinkies, more power to her. And if Kirstie Alley wants to set up a home gym in her dining room and pose on the cover of health magazines, more power to her. Neither situation makes her better or worse as a human being, it just means she’s making different life choices, and they’re her choices to make, so could everyone get over it already? It shouldn’t have to be “brave” to tell people that working out sucks and you like chocolate. It just makes you human. It shouldn’t be a story to be discussed on multiple news outlets, not when we could be talking about how cute the Obama’s new dog is.

All that said, Kirstie Alley seemed pissed that she hadn’t been taking care of herself, which brings up this question:

“But PQ, what about your health? Aren’t you concerned about your health?”

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Sorry, give me a minute to – ha, ha, ha! In the past year I’ve had two MRI’s, two CTs, and more blood tests than I can count. My blood pressure has been taken. My pulse has been counted. Literally dozens of medical professionals have examined me and all they can do is rave over how healthy I am. They say, “PastaQueen, you are a paradigm of good health!” and I tell them, “No, I’m not!” and then I go see another doctor and the cycle continues. So please, do not stare at your bedroom ceiling at night worried about my health.

That said, I am not 100% comfortable with my weight gain. I still get called to do book-related interviews from time to time and if I have to meet someone in person I worry if they will think I’m too fat to do a story about my book. No one has said anything to me, but I’m not sure if that’s because their mommas taught them manners or if they just look at the “before” photo like I do and think, “Yeah, she’s lost a lot of weight.” I’m still down 160 pounds, which is an entire person, which is another reason I’m not weeping into a spinach salad right now. It all depends on your perspective

Now that my headache is momentarily contained, I’ve been eating better and I’ve started walking during my lunch breaks. I’m getting back into it and I wouldn’t mind dropping 20 pounds. But…weight loss is not the most important thing in my life. It certainly was the most important thing in my life for the first two years when I was dropping dress sizes every few months. When I told people, “I want to be thin,” what I was really saying was, “I want to lead the life I want to live.” Losing all the weight has made me confident and taught me to believe in myself and has allowed me to live my life in ways that I never could before, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m living my life. That has less to do with being fat or thin than most people think.

I still weigh every day. I’m still mindful of what I eat. I still think, “I need to exercise today” and sometimes I do. But even if I weren’t doing those things, I would still be me and like I said in my book, the fat PastaQueen was a funny, kind, person too. I am still me no matter how inflated or deflated my fat cells are and I’d hope you guys will remember that about yourselves too.

You can judge me as you will, fat or thin or somewhere in between. If I got to change one thing about my body I’d fix my headaches first, give myself normal feet second, and attend to the weight thing third, because it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m so tired of writing about my body, but I’ve written about my weight so much in this place I felt an obligation to put it out there. And hey, how cute is the Obama’s new dog?

A couple years later I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to scoop my gallbladder out with a spoon. The surgeon did it with a scalpel and a tiny camera instead, and I was only 24. Then my knees started to hurt when I climbed up the stairs. By this point I’d also lost track of how many cavities I’d had filled, caused by too much Mountain Dew and too little dental floss.

A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid reflux disease and takes medication for a slight thyroid imbalance. Another friend was just diagnosed with pernicious anemia and has to get shots of B12. We are not old. We are in out late 20′s and early 30′s.

No one told me my body was going to break down so fast. No one warned me that after 21 years I’d start needing repairs. I cannot trade myself in for a newer model. So if you are young and your body is working, enjoy it for me. It won’t be long until you’ll need a fix-up and wish you’d invested in more dental floss as a child.

When I look at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon finisher’s medal that is hanging on my bulletin board, I fondly remember the race, particularly the part where I got to stop running. While I enjoyed the cinnamon crunch bagels and the thrill of accomplishment, I’ve decided not to run the race again this year. I wiffled and waffled for awhile, but I knew if I ran it again it would just be for show since my heart is not in it. Been there, done that, got the medal.

I greatly admire people who take up long distance running, but it is not necessary to run half-marathons to stay in shape, nor is it the best possible way to lose pounds. I actually gained weight when I was training last year. Right now I’d rather focus on maintaining my current weight and perhaps losing another 10-20 pounds, so half-marathon training is not consistent with those goals. I know some people do lose weight when training, but I’m not one of them.

Instead, my personal health goal for this year is to maintain a level of fitness so I could go out and run a 5K at any time. I just hate it when I’m at the office and they say, “Let’s run a 5K after lunch!” and I have to turn them down. At my running speed, that goal would mean being able to run for about 35 minutes constantly, which is doable.

In memory of my past running achievements, here’s a slideshow of me crossing the finish line at the Training Series 10K last year, captured by the official documentarian of my life, my mother. Thanks, Mom!

However, there have been times in the past couple months when I’ve not been grateful to be in possession of my brain considering how badly it has been hurting. It’s made my life suck. Oh, let me count the ways.

The emotional toll

When I started crying alone in the parking lot of the doctor’s office in the rain last April, I knew I was starting to lose it. There was so much snot running down my face that I had to reach into the back seat and grab a white t-shirt to wipe my nose on that I’d been planning to give to Goodwill. Later I cried on the phone to my mom who felt bad that she couldn’t kiss the receiver to make the pain go away. I’ve laid in bed wondering if I’d have a stroke in the middle of the night and die, which would suck, but at least would stop my suffering.

Several people have told me they admire my level-headed, sensible approach to weight-loss. So, the fact that I’ve been blowing snot on t-shirts for the poor should give you a sense of how far gone I’ve been in my worst moments. One day I was so befuzzled after two hours and three different attempts at finding an open lab to do my blood work, that I turned the wrong way down a one way street.

The eating

My headache is like being locked in a room with a TV that is endlessly looping a movie starring Tom Green or Adam Carrola. It’s absolutely awful and I can’t turn off the TV, but I can sometimes tune it out. In the same way, my headache always hurts, but I can sometimes ignore it. I’ve found that the best ways to distract myself are to 1) keep psychotically busy or 2) eat pleasurable things. (Hence, the weight gain in my sidebar this month. That’s seven pounds of pain, baby.)

The intravenous drugs haven’t done shit, but the cookies n’ cream milkshake from Steak N’ Shake sure did make me feel better. I mean that in all seriousness. After I’ve been in pain all day, if I eat a bowl of ice cream or a chocolate bar, I genuinely feel better for those few moments. The agony is drowned out by the other sensations, like turning up the radio to drown out the sound of your neighbors having sex. Last month I was chomping on some chocolate chips, knowing I should stop, but also knowing that as soon as I did the pain would come back. Chronic pain or extra calories? Headache or huge jeans? I really don’t know which is worse.

I started half-seriously thinking about starting a drinking habit instead of binge eating, but I didn’t know how alcohol would react with some of my headache medications, whereas blueberry bagels don’t seem to cause fatal drug interactions.

The laziness

It’s hard enough to get myself to exercise when I’m feeling fine, but when my head feels like it’s imploding, good luck getting me to pull out my weight bench. I record all my exercise on a wall calendar. Flipping back, I can see that my Pilates and weights sessions started to drop off in frequency a week or two after my headache started. After a month, they disappeared completely and I was focused only on completing my training runs for my half-marathon. After I finally ran the race, I barely exercised for three weeks.

Thankfully, I have exercised regularly for the past two weeks. It’s felt really good, getting back into the familiar routine, almost like I have my life back. I believe the exercise makes me feel better too (even though running two miles is never un-painful). Activity is good for the body and lying around wasn’t helping make the pain go away anyway.

Missing out on fun

A couple weeks ago, I could have seen a sneak preview of the Indiana Jones movie for free, but I had to come home to do a drug treatment. Last month the band Stars was in town and I wanted to go see them, but I felt tired from suffering all day and I didn’t want to be stuck in a smoky room that could inflame my headache. Several times I have been out with friends or coworkers and I can’t help thinking, “This would be a lot more fun if my head didn’t hurt.”

The hopelessness

I used to wake up and feel happy driving around town or running errands, but at my worst I was just trudging through as best I could and trying not to go more than two weeks without doing the dishes. I wanted to stay in bed all day or curl up watching TV on the couch. I watched the TV show House and I started cheering on his Vicodin addiction. (I fully support your narcotics habit, you crabby doctor, you!) My attitude to live life to its fullest became Operation: Just Getting By. It was shocking how quickly my life completely unraveled. It sucked the happy right out of life.

While I try to keep a positive attitude, living in constant pain beat me down over time. Some days I felt like fighting and other days I felt like lying belly up on the floor playing dead. I think of Jack Baur from the TV show 24 when he’s been tortured by the Chinese for years. Jack didn’t break, because he’s Jack Baur, damn it! But I was ready to tell the Chinese all our nuclear secrets if they would give me acupuncture.

On the bright side, I feel like I can now empathize with people who suffer from chronic pain and depression better than I ever would have been before. You really don’t know what it’s like until it happens to you.

The money

MRI’s aren’t cheap. When I was watching those episodes of House, he started ordering MRI’s and CT scans and I literally yelled at my TV, “OH MY GOD! Do you know how much that’s going to cost?!?!”

The medical system

Oh, yeah, this has been fun. Filling out lots of form, getting lost in medical facilities, trying to figure out who to see and what type of doctor could help me, hoping this would be the magic test that would diagnose my problem, the long delays between prescribing a test and getting in the schedule to take the test.

Retelling my medical history to several different doctors has been like playing that alphabet car game. You know, the one where the first person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple.” And the next person brings something with the next alphabet letter like, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels.” Then the next person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels and cream cheese.” Except in the medical system it goes, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics and beta blockers,” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics, beta blockers and I’m willing to try crack cocaine if it will help.” It’s gotten to a point where I don’t know who I’ve told what or if I left out a part of the story because unfortunately I did not try things in alphabetical order.

But now I’m feeling better, if not fantastic

So, that’s what was going on behind the blog for the past few months. During April I kept thinking, “Dear God, how am I ever going to get through May?” But as I discovered, being incredibly busy helped because it didn’t leave me time to think about my headache. At the end of May, things started to slow back down to a reasonable pace, which left me plenty of time to think about how I’d gladly bash my head against a wall a couple times if I thought it’d stop the God damn pain. 2007 was a really great year and every day I drove home from work happy and excited, but I’d also think, “You’d better enjoy this feeling because something shitty is bound to happen to you eventually.” And it did.

But, the last two weeks have been okay, partly because the pain has lessened and partly because I’ve stopping hoping that it will go away anytime soon. It’s me and my headache for who knows how long – maybe for the rest of my life. In my research I discovered there are people who’ve had headaches for decades. I might one day be one of them. I will still keep looking into fixing my headache, but I’m sort of tired of dealing with the search for the cure right now. I’m taking a break.

Chilling out the past couple weeks has helped. I didn’t think I was that stressed despite the fact that I was training for a half-marathon, promoting a book, working a full-time job and writing a blog, but looking back and comparing it to how I feel now I’m thinking, “Um, yeah, maybe I was a little bit stressed out.” I was just so used to being stressed that I didn’t realize how bad it was until it let up. Sort of like how now my headache probably isn’t all that less painful than it used to be, I’m just so used to it that I don’t think it is as bad as I did when I first got it. If it were to go away, I would probably be surprised to realize how crappy I feel, just like I was surprised by how much better I felt when I first started eating healthy and exercising.

One of the worse things about this experience has been the feeling that I had no control over my life. I was in pain, gaining weight, not exercising, and unable to work as hard on my promotions as I wanted to – and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was victimized by my central nervous system.

But I haven’t eaten any milkshakes lately. And I’ve been hitting the trail. And I can lift almost as much weight during my strength training as I used to. Things started spinning down into a tailspin for awhile there, but I feel like I’m pulling up on the stick now. We’ll be flying normal again soon, if with a bit of turbulence.

I hope the stewardess will serve painkillers.

(Or I had it before it entered the acidic wasteland known as my stomach.)

I have no idea what dumpling bao is or what makes this one Buddhist style. (There was no meat in it, so if it believes in reincarnation, I can’t be accused of cannibalism.) When they cut a carrot wedge into a star and placed it on top, they had me sold. And pay I did. I’ve kept a budget of my spending habits for over the past year. In 2007 I spent an average of $360 a month at the grocery store. For a single woman in the Midwest, that’s probably a high number. I don’t eat out much, so that represents the majority of my food bill for the year and averages to $11.80 a day. Somebody’s got to pay for a trucker to drive my plums in from Florida, because tropical fruits aren’t going to grow in an Indiana snow storm.

Eating well can be expensive. Last week I was too exhausted between my headache and work schedule to cook anything in the evenings. Instead, I drove to the whole foods store and bought whatever looked good, like sushi or wraps or dumpling bao. It wasn’t cheap, but I figure my health is worth it. I have to budget my life accordingly, so I cut out things that I don’t really need, like cable. And I’m waiting for my TV to completely break before I buy a new one, even if it turns itself back on three times after I turn it off. In return, I get to eat food that is stuffed with carrots, tofu, daikon, shitake mushroom, edamame, green onion, corn, long grain rice, red bell pepper, green cabbage, soy sauce and sesame oil.

I was watching PBS the other weekend (mostly because I have 10 channels to choose from and this one wasn’t playing sports), and I watched a seminar by Suze Orman. If you haven’t heard of her, Suze Orman is an author, TV show host, motivational speaker and kind of scary (but in a good way). She’s fierce. And she’s all about empowering women to learn about money, but in doing so she also empowers them to take control of their lives. As I was watching her seminar, it occurred to me that money, weight, and happiness all bleed together. If one of those things is severely out of whack in your life it can affect everything else. A lot of the techniques she talked about for becoming wealthier and managing your money were really just good tips for becoming happier and managing your life. Money means freedom. As Orman said, many women stay in bad relationships because they don’t have the money to support themselves outside of them. Similarly, it really helps to have money to get yourself out of an unhealthy lifestyle.

A pair of running shoes: $100. YMCA membership: $48 a month. Pilates DVD: $20. A healthy lifestyle? Pretty freakin’ expensive. (And, oh yeah, priceless, though I’ve got some receipts that say otherwise.) Weight loss and weight maintenance isn’t cheap. Sure, I could run outside instead of in a warm gym on a treadmill. And there are probably ways to slash my grocery bill and still keep calories down, but it’s easier to spend the money. I’m glad I have a middle-class income and I can afford to spend it on these things, just like I’m glad I have health insurance that will pay for doctor’s visits if I get sick.

So there you go. Weight-loss secret #1: Have a decent income. Or start a farm. The manual labor will meet your cardio and strength-training requirements for the week and you’ll have plenty of zucchini.

ETA at 12:20pm: Okay, upgrade complete. The comment notification system isn’t working and for some reason comment forms are showing up on old entries that I’ve turned commenting off on. Other than that, I think everything is A-OK. If you run into any problems, please post a comment here with the problem. If the problem is that you can’t leave a comment, e-mail me at halfofme [at] pastaqueen (dot) com. Thanks.

I’ve been hanging out with Mr. Headache for four days now. I’ve dropped some subtle hints that he should go home now (Advil and Tylenol). I’ve dropped some less subtle hints too (a shot and some prescription meds from my doctor), but it still hasn’t gotten the message. So, it’s just me and the pressure in my head until my skull explodes or it finally decides to piss off. Thankfully, my headache has dialed down its intensity from about a 6 to a 2, but it’s still there. My doctor said it might be the flu, a theory I’m rooting for since the flu eventually goes away. My paranoid imagination was fueled by a season four marathon of House this weekend (a medical show where they diagnose rare diseases) and has been trying to convince me that I have a horrible, undiagnosed disease. I’ve also had a book checked out from the library for months called All In My Head about a woman who’s had a headache for fifteen years. And she gained 70 pounds. So, when I’m not imagining scenarios where I have a strange, tropical, illness, I’m imagining scenarios where my life is forever split into two sections: pre-headache and post-headache. All of this while I’m avoiding caffeine and artificial sweeteners, two substances that have always made my life more enjoyable, but might be causing my head pain.

I’m being ridiculous, I know. My headache will eventually go away. It’s probably the flu like my doctor said. I got the runs after I went running yesterday, and I’d never been so happy to get diarrhea in my life. It didn’t literally make me feel better, but it made me feel better about feeling ill because it’s a symptom of the flu, and if I have the flu that means the headache will end some day. The reason I freak out about any symptom of illness is because I value my health more than almost anything in my life. I didn’t used to take good care of my body. It was about ready to break down, but I repaired it from the frame up and I work hard to keep it in good, running condition (and in good running shoes).

I take my health for granted most days because most days it is granted. I wake up and go to work and come home and my good health is just there. But then I suddenly get a headache for four days and my good health isn’t there anymore. I miss it like someone turned off gravity and I can’t find the remote control because it floated behind the ceiling fan. You don’t miss gravity until it’s gone, and I don’t appreciate my health it suddenly vanishes. It’s scary that you can do everything right, take excellent care of your body, and things can still go wrong. You can get headaches for no explainable reason or you could get hit by a car while crossing the street. That’s why I freak out when I’m suddenly not feeling 100%. I want to feel good all the time. It’s greedy, I know, but I don’t want to get sick or have to live in pain or fight disease and illness. I want to be healthy and happy forever. Yet, it’s not something I can completely control. No matter how much I exercise or how many salads I eat or how many multi-vitamins I chomp, I could still get sick. My headache will not go away. It’s not even a horrible headache, just bad enough to be noticeable while letting me wonder through life at 80% power. It’s not fair that I have no control over it.

It’s crazy how quickly my life can go topsy turvy because of a virus invading my body. It starts affecting my whole life. My laundry piles up and my apartment gets cluttered and I don’t floss my teeth every night. When I finally attacked my dirty dishes last night, I got to a bowl on the bottom caked in the remains of oatmeal and accented with black mold. Mold! In my sink! This will not do. Sickness steals my sense of self. It make me feel like someone I’m not. I like being the girl who enjoys running and likes writing in her blog and comes home feeling motivated to get things done. I don’t like being the girl with mold in her sink.

So hopefully my headache will go away and I can go back to being the girl I’ve worked so hard to be. If not, a life addicted to painkillers is starting to look a lot more attractive than it did last week. And how about that medicinal marijuana, eh?