Well, I am losing weight VERY slowly, but at least it is coming off! I am very glad to be quite a bit below 300! Although I’d really like to lose weight faster so that my health can get even better, I am happy that I am already feeling much healthier. My pseudotumor has really stopped acting up. I’m getting far fewer headaches and the worst trouble with my eyes has greatly decreased. I still get wavy vision and cloudiness in my eyes, but not nearly as often. I saw the doctor about two months back and they said that the most recent scans showed that the inflammation in my eyes is WAY down. That’s fantastic! I still sometimes get a lot of pressure in my head and spine (and once in a while have been getting weird nerve flares down my body), but overall the frequency has decreased. For a while I literally had a headache like 95% of the time. Now I am really trying to allow myself to stop worrying about my health and focus on my classes.
I suppose it seems that coming back after being sick and getting better should be easy. However, I’ve found that it is REALLY hard. After losing study habits and getting behind in so many classes over the long period of my illness, I developed a kind of anxiety and mental block to studying properly. Seriously, I am amazed at how my great study habits and other student skills got swept away. However, I am really trying hard to come back even while my health still has a ways to improve. Last term, I broke a 3.0 GPA for the first time since I’ve been sick (with the exception of my summer Biochem classes that I took one at a time). So, that’s something. Hopefully, this term I can get myself up to at least a 3.4.
So, almost 60 pounds down and another 110 to go! Hopefully, it will come a little faster from here on out. However, even if it takes a year or two to reach truly great and lasting health, then I am OK with that too. Bye for now!
I had a very unusual experience yesterday. As I was quite busy with school work, I ended up getting only about 4 to 4-1/2 hours of sleep the night before last (well below my usual self-enforced 8-9 hour sleeping schedule that usually still makes me want an afternoon nap). However, all during the day yesterday, I felt wonderful! I had been holding onto a migraine for about 5 days, and it finally went away yesterday after a slim night of sleep. It seems strange, does it not?
Yesterday, I actually finished up all my homework for the week, came home and cleaned my entire kitchen (even scrubbing the floors although I haven’t done that for almost a year), took my fiancee out for a fun early dinner (with two $5 off coupons I found bringing our total to only $6), spent some additional quality time with my guy, and then finished off the day with a 50 minute cardio workout burning about 500 calories. Yesterday was like the ideal day! Not only wasn’t I tired during the day or during my workout, I wasn’t even tired last night at my regular bedtime!
So, I decided last night that I should give this less sleeping thing a try. I mean, I certainly have heard of people causing themselves to “oversleep” and make themselves more tired. Besides that, during my time in China, I learned from some Japanese students that they believe in sleeping in multiples of 3 hours (3, 6, 9, or 12). Then, I found out that a lot of research shows that one sleep cycle is about 1-1/2 hours, and that you feel the most rested when you are waking up at the end of each of these cycles. This would correspond with me sleeping for about 4-1/2 hours (getting 3 sleep cycles). In addition, I found some statistics online comparing the length of lives of people based on their average numbers of sleep. Apparently, the people in the category that sleep 6-7 hours per night had a 15% higher rate of living than those that sleep 8 hours or more (during the six years of the study).
Although I’m not positive of how well this will work, I have definitely decided to try decreasing my sleeping time. Since I would like to try and follow all three of the previous guidelines, I believe I will first try sleeping 6 hours per night (although I will allow for about 6 hours 15 minutes when I get to bed since I may not fall asleep right away). From there, I will consider further modification based on how well I feel with this level of sleep.
Last night, I slept right around 6 hours. I didn’t feel quite as alert when I woke up today as I did yesterday (it took a few minutes to get out of bed). However, I am currently here writing this article, and I am feeling pretty good! I will continue to experiment with myself and the best sleeping times. I may try 5 hours and 45 minutes or 6 hours and 15 minutes as not everyone has the exact 1-1/2 hour sleep cycle. I really think that finding the end of my sleep cycles will help me to wake up feeling alert and energized. Wish me luck!
Admittedly, it has been quite a while since I’ve blogged. However, I have a very good reason. I’ve been busy getting engaged! I also took some heavy biochemistry summer classes (A- & B)….but it is a lot more fun to think about being engaged. 
Anyhow, my approximate wedding date will be in December 2010. I hate to put a wedding so close to another big holiday, but it is the only chance my fiancee and I will have since we are both students. He’s even busy with school and working as a research assistant during the summer, so we can’t get away then. Of course, regardless of the date of the wedding, I’m very happy to be getting married. I’m thrilled to have found such a great guy.
Now, what effect has this had on my weight, you may ask. I’m still down from the last time I blogged. My weight right now is 301 pounds. So, I haven’t lost nearly as much as I would have liked, but I haven’t gained all my weight back, either. I’m actually pretty happy that my body has adapted to hanging around its new weight. Certainly, being busy with school, family visits over the summer, and making time for my fiancee has been difficult and taken a lot of time.
I’ve mostly countered gaining weight by continuing my aim of cooking at home. I have made a limit for myself of eating out no more than twice per week. That is a huge step for me. It means I am cooking a LOT! It is a big change, but simply doing that has really helped keep the weight off. I went most of this summer without much exercise since I was out of town and then came back to find the school gym closed. The only thing that kept my weight off was home cooking. Assuming your cooking isn’t dripping in grease or other high calorie flavorings, you can practically eat twice the bulk of food that you cook at home compared to fast food and still be consuming fewer calories.
The school gym did reopen on the 8th, however, and I finally got back to it yesterday. It felt good to be back in the gym and burning off more calories. Between my cooking at home that puts me at a maintenance level of calories and going back to the gym, I am very confident that I will once again start losing weight. I expect a slow and steady decline in my weight. In addition, even though I haven’t lost that much weight the last few months, the quality of my health has greatly improved.
With the exercise I was doing up until the summer and the change in eating (I assume mostly due to cooking at home and working to avoid salt in every form), I got a surprising analysis that my pseudotumor issue will not require any form of surgery! According to the field of vision tests and new MRIs, the pressure on my eyes (and danger of going blind) has actually decreased enough that they feel safe in not having me do the optic nerve sheath fenestration procedure. That was a HUGE relief! My grandma cried after the doctors told us that.
Beyond my improvement in health, I also got the good news that my scholarship funding has been extended for this next year. After a year being sick from autoimmune issues and the next year plagued with this psuedotumor disorder, I really needed an extra year to finish up my degree. As my family doesn’t have the money to pay for my education, I have always relied on the scholarships I’ve received. The Ford Family Foundation was kind enough to review my medical issues and award me an extra year of funding. I am so thankful to the Ford Family Foundation for their support. I have worked so hard to stay in school throughout my ailments, but being so sick can have a horrible result on your grades and ability to finish classes. I am so glad that they were willing to support me through this and help me to finish my Bachelor’s Degree.
So, right now my life is going pretty well. My body adapted to the pseudotumor medicine, which is great. Between the medicine and watching my sodium intake, I generally feel pretty healthy. Once in a while I have a day where the pressure builds up for unknown reasons (possibly excess vitamin A or sudden weather changes, etc.) or I forget to take a dose of my medicine, and that really sucks. However, for the majority, I am feeling sooooo much better. I really believe that every pound I lose will continue to improve my health and my life.
I am really looking forward to this next year. I am looking forward to losing weight, improving my health, hitting my tough science classes hard, and marrying the man that I love. I am very excited that my life has finally taken such a great turn. I intend to take full advantage of this year and all the life I can live now that I am getting better! Hopefully, I won’t take so long to write next time. See you!
So far, I have managed to get through two of my four midterm exams. I am doing much better this term. I owe a lot of thanks to the medicine the doctor put me on for my pseudotumor. It really has helped to reduce the vision problems I’ve had from the pressure I feel on my eyes, as well as helping to reduce the number and duration of the headaches I was having. I’m still getting headaches and vision issues fairly often, but not nearly as bad as before. Now, I can actually study longer than 20 minutes without being in misery.
I’m very glad to be done with my first two exams. I’m taking today off, but my studying regime for my exams at the end of next week starts back in full force tomorrow. Of course, after that it will only be another two weeks until the next exam. There’s never really a break for college students when you mix science and social studies classes (the midterm exam schedules tend to be a bit different, and in my case I have an exam most weeks). Anyways, that’s all for now. I just wanted to confirm that I am still working on improving my nutrition and exercise regime to continue to lose weight.
I saw the doctor yesterday morning and got the official results of my tests. According to him, my spinal pressure is actually over twice what is should be. Also, although my MRI didn’t show any unexpected abnormalities, it did show a great deal of pressure on my brain and my optic nerves. Apparently, having so much pressure on the optic nerves can cause them to swell in their sockets, pushing against the bone. This, in turn, can cause extreme visual problems potentially even resulting in blindness over time.
The procedure I had read about online for this condition is something called a “shunt” which is supposed to help relieve the overall pressure (something like a cathetor in your spine, I think). However, the doctor recommended a different procedure that might help, and he is currently trying to get an appointment for me to go to OHSU for a procedure assessment. In this procedure, they cut slices in the optic nerve. That way, excess fluid leaks out so the pressure is reduced ( the leaking fluid apparently gets absorbed by the blood stream). The doctor said it was a relatively simple procedure. However, I do wonder how they access my optic nerve (moving my eye to the side?). Also, anytime you talk about cutting near the eyes, it doesn’t seem so simple to me.
So, I’m a little freaked out right now. Obviously, it is crucial to try and do everything I can to avoid needing this procedure. However, the doctor seemed pretty certain I would need it. The main things I can do are take the diamox medicine (which removes sodium from the brain tissues to reduce pressure), lose weight (which I have been doing, but doesn’t seem to be enough, unfortunately), and reducing the salt in my diet. Now, I’ve been losing weight by monitoring primarily my calories but also paying attention to sugar and fat, especially. I’ve been losing weight fairly well by this routine. However, now I am going to have to totally change my way of eating for a nutrient I hadn’t considered before: salt. I was actually crying and had a little breakdown yesterday because of this (actually, three seperate crying breakdowns). It may not seem important to some, but having to totally redo my eating habits after I had finally changed them enough to lose weight is very devastating for me. Also, all of this health stuff just makes all my other goals such as improving my organizational skills, studying, exercising, etc. that much harder to accomplish. So, I’m really sad and bummed right now. However, I’m not falling into depression, which is good. I still have my family to support me. Speaking of which, here is a cute picture that I love that helps to cheer me up. We took this over spring break when my grandparents first met my boyfriend.
So, obviously, I’ve had a really bad time with my health issue. However, on a more positive note, I weighed myself the other day and was 298.9. SO, it seems I am finally under 300 pounds! Of course, I’m happy, but I’m a bit worried about the declining amount of exercise I’ve been getting as I’ve been feeling sicker. I think whenever I don’t feel horrible, I need to really push myself to workout to make up for the times when I feel too sick. I am thrilled, though, even though my weight loss is going pretty slow. Being under 300 pounds is something that hasn’t happened since I was studying abroad, so it really is great.
So, for several months, I have been having a lot of vision problems and headaches. At first, I thought the headaches and vision stuff was just left over from all the autoimmune problems I was having last year (which in part is why I can’t accurately determine when I developed this pseudotumor problem). However, my vision got so bad, I began to think I had a genuine problem (also that my house might be haunted because my vision issues involved the walls, curtains, etc. seeming to move and roll around). Back in January, I scheduled a vision appointment. The tests showed something a little odd, so they recommended that I see a neurologist. Unfortunately, no appointment was available until mid March (the Monday of finals week, no less).
When I finally got to see the neurologist, he said there was about a 95% chance I’m suffering from a pseudotumor. So, he immediately started me on a medicine called Diamox. The instructions were to take three pills per day. Unfortunately, by Tuesday afternoon (my 5th dose), I was feeling really sick from all the side effects. I later found out that an allergy to sulfa runs in my family, and sulfa is in this medicine. Unfortunately, the doctor says there is no alternate medicine, there is just this one to treat pseudotumors. As this was finals week, I ended up bombing the exams set for Wednesday, as I was disgustingly sick. Of course, I stopped taking the medicine Wednesday, but it didn’t wear off until Wednesday night. Upon contacting the doctor, they said to start with one per day and work up until I’m comfortable. I found that if I am sure to eat very well before taking my pill, I have fewer side effects. I’ve worked up to two per day, although I still don’t think I can handle three per day.
Now, doing poorly in my classes from my health issues is bad enough, but I figured I would just focus on getting better and not worry about this one (although, considering my massive problems finishing all the readings due to headaches and vision issues, not to mention the final week medicine problems, my overall grades ended up not being that bad). So, I waited for my authorization to come through for both a brain MRI and a spinal tap (otherwise known as a lumbar puncture). One week passed and I hadn’t heard anything. So, the Monday after my original appointment, I called my insurance company to see why it hadn’t been approved yet. What did they tell me? They hadn’t received a request from the doctor yet. What? Every other doctor I’ve seen sends these requests within the first day or two of seeing them! Come to find out, this particular NEUROLOGY office sends all their requests to a committee for approval before sending them to the insurance company (and can therefore take up to two weeks). What? I thought the insurance company was supposed to be the one that took forever approving things!
Anyhow, I finally got the go to schedule my appointments early last week. I was able to get in for my brain MRI Thursday of last week, but I couldn’t get in for my lumbar puncture until today. So, as of right now, I am forced to lie down flat until tomorrow morning with considerable pain and stiffness in my back. Every time I have to use the restroom or change positions, it hurts pretty bad (the numbness from the shots they gave have worn off). It’s strange because it is such a small puncture, but it goes pretty deep into the spine, I think. Anyhow, I am seriously hoping I won’t be too sore to sit through my classes tomorrow.
I called my doctor after my procedure this morning and asked if I needed to schedule a follow up, or if he would advise me over the phone. The receptionist said “oh, it looks like you have an appointment set up for June”. JUNE? I am not waiting another two months. Especially since the doctor doing the lumbar puncture said my spinal fluid pressure was abnormally high (something like 32 when it should be about 20, and that’s with me taking this medicine to reduce pressure). So, I tell the receptionist this. She takes a message for me to send back to the doctor’s nurse. Finally, tonight, they called me back and said they can squeeze me in tomorrow morning at 8:50 am. Ugh. I hate to get up so early, and I’m sure I’m going to be sore and stiff, but I absolutely need to see the doctor to get a proper course of treatment.
Now, what’s the most demoralizing part of this story for me? The most common cause of a pseudotumor is weight gain (or being overweight). Fantastic. So, this is partially related to my autoimmune problems last year, as that is what caused me to gain so much freaking weight. Not to mention, I found that the other cause of pseudotumor includes certain medications, especially antibiotics. What was I on nearly the whole time I was abroad that brought on all my original autoimmune problems? Antibiotics! So, it seems pretty clear to me that this isn’t just extreme bad luck, but is related to my horrible health ever since I studied abroad (although studying abroad is great, I just got horribly unlucky with the antibiotic part of it). I’m not sure if I prefer it all being related or not. Either way, it is horribly depressing, and I am trying to do everything I can not to sink into depression and despair from all of this.
The most positive and helpful thing that has gotten me through this has been my family. That includes both my lifelong family as well as my boyfriend (we are at almost 3 months together now). My family and boyfriend have both been extremely supportive. Today, my boyfriend has been next to me all day, getting me food and waiting on me. He is the greatest, sweetest guy, and I love him so much. I don’t know how I would get through all this without him and the rest of my family.
Ok, so it has been quite a while since I posted. I have been extremely busy with my classes, my health, and my boyfriend. Amazingly, I’ve managed to do pretty well with continuing my workouts. Currently, I am up to about my 42nd workout. I started volunteering with the local humane society (mostly walking the dogs, which adds to my activity level). It’s really cool to spend time with the lonely animals.
Besides my workout, I have recently started keeping much better track of my daily caloric intake. Although I was moderately keeping an eye on it before, I believe I will have greater results now that I am carefully tracking my food intake. Eventually, I may link my food journal here, but I am not currently sure how to do that. Also, I have taken up the practice of “calorie cycling”. I decided to do this since I have read many great things about it (of course, the theory behind it is reasonable) and, more importantly, have read nothing bad mentioned about it.
The only bad thing I can think of is that I have now officially had a cold for two weeks (and it is the 4th cold I’ve had in the last 2-1/2 months). Fortunately, I’ve minimized the number of classes and workouts I have missed. However, I hate feeling horrible in the mornings, and that is what has been happening every day for the last two weeks. I am seriously hoping this cold finally goes away soon. After all, finals are only a week away, and I have 4 of them to deal with (not to mention this week is full of final homework, projects, and lab experiments that give me hardly any time to study for my finals).
One great thing is that my boyfriend and I are getting along very well. I am very pleased at how our relationship is progressing. Hopefully, things will keep going well.
Another great thing is that I am down to 307 pounds. I’m not losing weight quite as fast as I’d like, but I am definitely losing, which is great! Hopefully, by calorie cycling, I’ll continue to lose pretty regularly, without hitting any major plateaus.
So, I am up to my 23rd workout. Actually, I missed several days due to having 4 midterms this week. However, I managed to get through all of them and still fit in several workouts. Now, the more exciting news is that I have a boyfriend! We have been dating for around a week and a half now, and we are both having a great time. We are both interested in marriage and having a family someday. Also, our educational and career goals are very similar (we both are working towards having a much higher education and good jobs someday). Overall, I think that just the facts that he is a good, devoted, hard-working boy makes the chances of this relationship being long term very high. Besides that, though, I am definitely starting to appreciate his presence (although he does have a few annoying habits and bad joking skills). Hopefully, I will continue to report on our relationship and how things are progressing.