A Few Of My Favorite Things – Florida Edition

A few days ago I posted a list of my favorite things about Texas and the Houston area that I am glad to be going back to. This is a list of things about Florida I am going to miss when we move (not in any particular order):

1. Publix Grocery Stores – Publix subs, Sweet tea, the deli, the bakery
2. Sebring Diner
3. Sundays on the lake
4. My family – my grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles
5. The Blue Lagoon
6. Being able to get anywhere in town in 20 minutes or less
7. Rosario’s – best veal Parmesan any. where.
8. Highlands Hammock State Park
9. My friends – Andi, Suzi, Maynard, Carri, Maggie, Nick, Kayla, Brian, Michelle
10. Becky at the Cinemark movie theater
11. Thai House
12. My gramma’s house
13. Annette at Today’s Creations
14. Florida Beaches
15. Tampa Bay Bucs games – even though I am NOT a Bucs fan
16. Running into people I know everywhere I go
17. The “Small Town” feeling
18. Taking my son to my old high school
19. Trips to Legoland
20. Yanni’s
21. The group I work with at Edward Jones

A Few Of My Favorite Things – Texas Edition

The following is a list of my favorite things about Texas and the Houston area that I am glad to be going back to, things I have missed (in no particular order):

1. HEB Grocery Stores – Honey Jalapeño Rotisserie Chicken – need I say more?
2. Chuy’s – If you have experienced it, you understand.
3. The Woodlands Waterway
4. Market Street
5. Floating the river
6. Trips to Joanie & John’s house
7. The Austin area
8. Reliant Stadium
9. The Galleria
10. The Water Wall
11. Alamo Draft House
12. Kemah Boardwalk
13. Houston Rodeo
14. iTz
15. Sushi Hana
16. Rocco’s
17. Blue bonnets
18. Blue Bell creamery
19. Chappell Hill Sausage
20. Moody Gardens
21. Fredericksburg
22. Spending time with the James family
23. Barton Springs

2013 Resolutions

Resolutions for 2013

I make resolutions every year, some I keep and some I break. I wonder sometimes if I should make them because of the pressure to complete them. My husband calls them goals, and maybe if I looked at them that way I would achieve more of them.

So my goals for 2013 are as follows:

1. Health – every year, every month, every week I say I am going to eat better, exercise more….and for a short time I do but then I fall right back into the bad eating and laziness of not exercising. It is stupid cause I feel better when I eat better and exercise but it is easier to do and be the other way. Now with having diabetes my health is really a factor. So, my first goal for 2013 is to get healthy, all of us…no excuses, no laziness.

2. Family – Spend more time with my family instead of sitting on the couch on a Saturday or Sunday, I want to take more time to get out and do things with my kids and husband. Which leads me to my next one…

3. Parks – Visit every state park in Florida this year I want to visit every state park in Florida with the kids. Some I have been to but it has been a long time.

4. Faith – this year I will incorporate faith, God and church into our life more. I don’t want to be an occasional church goer anymore, and I want to instill faith in my children.

5. Organization – I say I am going to be better organized and stay less cluttered and 2013 is going to be the year it happens.

6. Friends – I will make more time for my friends this year. I live back in my hometown where a lot of people I grew up with still live yet I don’t take the time to make plans with them. That will change this year.

7. Charity – I will be more giving this year, and teach my kids this as well. I will help random people as well as give to my charities of choice in 2013.

8. Football – I love professional football. I know quite a bit but would like to know more and understand the game better. I’d also like to do fantasy this year, more then just the Perfect Challenge the NFL offers. And I would like to go to both a Miami Dolphin and Houston Texans game when the 2013 season starts.

9. Save – I will save more money this year. I will put myself on a budget, stick to it and put money in savings and away for retirement. I will get my kids to save more. I want to reestablish the envelope system and have them put money in for spend, short term goal, long term goal, save and charity.

10. Complete – this year I will start something and complete it. I will start 30 day challenges and not complete them. I will complete things this year.

Music Monday – Music Obsession

The following songs I am completely addicted to and listen to them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (ok, I think you get it) again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post-Op

Post-op appointment was today. Got good news, pathology came back all upper level margins are clean. This means that the amount of tissue taken from the cervix was enough to remove all of the external cells that were showing cancerous have been removed and there are currently no precancerous cells in the readings either.

Now back to regular checks. Pap smears will be done every three months with the first one at the visit and the next one in January and then again in March. Once there are three normal readings over every three months, then we go to every six months. Once there are three normal readings over every six months, then I can return to yearly checks. If there are any abnormal readings at all, the next step will be partial or full hysterectomy.

So now, I just hope and pray that everything stays clean and normal. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved am I that these are the results I received. All I can say now is please, please; PLEASE keep up with your check-ups and pap smears. It is important.

In case you were wondering…

…this is why I had surgery.

Surgery was scheduled for 9:30 am (EST) Thursday August 23; and it seems so easy. I am told it is pretty routine and common. Common makes it sound so ordinary. And after talking to some people, it is just that, ordinary. I don’t know if knowing that makes me feel any less apprehensive about it all.

I have had surgery before, so I don’t know what the big deal is this time. Maybe it is the amount of time I have had to think about it all. Maybe it is that the other surgeries I had weren’t exactly planned.

When I broke my arm, I knew surgery was needed but the way that the whole event happened it wasn’t exactly scheduled surgery.

My daughter was c-section but that wasn’t exactly planned either. I walked into the doctor’s office on Wednesday April 12, 2006 at 9:15 am to a OB who said, “ready to have this baby? Alright, lets do this then.” And I was in the hospital at 6:00 pm that evening.

My gallbladder surgery was an emergency as well, so no planning there.

This however has been scheduled for over two weeks. Two weeks of pondering. Worrying. Wondering. Googling (which by the way if you have a major medical thing going on Do. Not. Google. It!)

I had my first pap smear in six years (yes you read that right, six years) on June 27. I received the letter that the pap smear had come back abnormal while I was on vacation over July 4th week. I called the doctor as soon as I got back and she scheduled a coloscopy for July 16 and which time a biopsy was decided to be done. There was supposed to be three biopsies done, five were done in total as well as an internal scraping.

Two very agonizing weeks later on July 30, I got the results of the biopsies:  the results read: High-grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesion (HSIL), Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia Moderate to Severe (CIN2/3), or in terms I could understand external cells show cancerous and internal cells show pre-cancerous. The next step was to do a cone biopsy which was scheduled for Thursday August 23.

Yesterday was the surgery, and although I am in pain; the doctor said she got a clean cut and that we will have the results of this biopsy with in a week time. There is still more waiting but I feel good about it all. I trust my doctor and she seems to think that this procedure has taken care of all of it.

I will update once I have the results back. Until then, lets hope and pray for the best.

Six pounds

Six pounds……..

Doesn’t seem like much but that is how much I have lost in 2 weeks time.  In some ways I feel like it is so little of an amount and in other ways it seems like quite a bit in such a short time.

So let’s think about this….what is six pounds?

Well I found a picture on Google of six pounds of fat, and it looks like this:

Gross huh?

What else is six pounds (approximately)?

A brick

A gallon of milk

All of the skin on your body

A Chihuahua

Five loaves of bread

24 Quarter Pounders from McDonalds

A baby deer

Both of a woman’s size C-cup breast

A Yorkie

A lap top computer

Well, when you put it that way, six pounds does seem like a lot……

 

Tuesday Truths – Weight

Has something ever scared you so bad that even with all the fear and knowledge that you have to overcome that moment you still are in a sense of shock?

Has something ever been so clear and obvious to you that you knew it was the truth even with out being told but still were overwhelmed when that one thing was brought straight forward to your attention?

Has something ever been so “in your face” that even though there was no denying it, you still did?

I am guilty of all of the above.  I knew my weight was an issue. I knew my weight was unhealthy. I knew it was there, hell it is all of me. Yet even with me saying I knew these things, and knew changes needed to be made; I denied it to myself when it came down to actually doing something.

Sure, I changed the way I was eating….sort of.  Sure, I was going to the gym….sort of. Sure, I was walking the dog, having “dance parties” in the living room with my kids, walking during work, dancing in the car…sort of.

It all tumbled down and smacked me in the face when I was going through paperwork from when I was in the hospital in February for dizziness and passing out. I went through every test imaginable, saw every type of doctor I think they could send my way, spent five days in the hospital, final diagnosis: Meniere’s disease (which runs in my family).  Not so bad, it is manageable and treatable.  Not one single time did anyone say to me the words “blood sugar” or “diabetes”.  Not one single time was it an issue at all.  Neuro or Cardio perhaps, but all of those tests came back “normal”, “negative”, “with in range”.

Now as stupid as this may sound, it never dawned on me to look at the papers they gave me from the hospital at the time of check out. I did my due diligence, called my primary physician to tell them I had been in the hospital. Spoke to him and he stated since the paperwork they received mentioned the possibility of the Meniere’s disease, he didn’t need to see me and to proceed to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist since Meniere’s is an inner ear thing. Never once did he say to me “blood sugar” or “diabetes”.

So, upon finally looking at the discharge paperwork from hospital, almost two months after discharge, I noticed that it said Hemoglobin A1c test was done and that mine was a 5.9, fasting glucose tests were within ” 108-114″ and above normal. Again, called my primary care physician and was told to see an endocrinologist. So I did just that.

The result was borderline diabetic.

So now I am on a real mission. I know I have talked about losing weight and needing/wanting to but now it is an issue of my health. Plus being heavy like I am feeds into my depression, which is a matter of my health as well.  I know I might get some grief about this because I am supposed to love my body the way I am or love myself for who I am. I don’t. I am not happy with anything about my body. I am not trying to say that losing weight or being thin is for everyone or even trying to push any type of body image or eating disorder. I need to be healthy, and my healthy weight according to my doctor is 135 pounds. So it will take some time to get there but slow and steady wins the race.