Tag: ‘Health’
October 26, 2009 at 4:50 pm
One of the annoying things about having a chronic illness (of which there are about eleventy billion), is that I never know if I’m having a bad day because I am sick or if I’m just having a bad day. I know I had bad days before I got my headache over a year and a half ago. I know there were days when I didn’t want to work out or go to work or be involved with any sentence that included the word “work.” So, I would assume I’d have days like that now even if my head didn’t hurt all the time. Yet, I always blame any foul temperament on the headache.
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 [...]
May 4, 2009 at 8:55 am
By the way, I’ve gained 35 pounds in the past year. Have a nice day, everybody!
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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 [...]
March 25, 2009 at 8:26 am
I was 21 years old when I looked in the mirror in the computer science building’s bathroom and saw the first grey hairs growing out of my scalp. It was that same year that I started to see small grey flecks of dust in my vision when I looked up at a clear blue sky or at a white wall. My eye doctor told me these were floaters, little blobs of protein that develop in the fluid in your eyeball. Near-sighted people like me get them quite frequently.
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 [...]
December 30, 2008 at 8:42 am
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 [...]
June 12, 2008 at 9:00 pm
It’s odd to be sitting in bed writing an entry about how my chronic headache started destroying my life because right now I feel fairly fine. I’ve felt fairly fine for two weeks. I’m still working on the world’s record for longest headache, but it’s dialed down to a level 2 or 3 instead of a 5 or 6. I’m able to go about my life without thinking about my pain ever 5 minutes. When the headache is bad, all the normal thoughts I have during the day get pushed out, like flood waters washing possessions out of my house. The only thing that exists is the pain. It’s nice to have my brain back, at least for now.
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 [...]
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"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
