As a serious Douglas Adams fan, I had hoped that 42 years old would be a great time for me. Just cause that would be extra fun, and naturally we all want our lives to go well. Major health challenges put a big crink in those plans. So here’s to hoping for stronger health and more productivity in general now that I’ve moved on to being 43. I’m due for a good year. Aren’t we all? While the world might be going insane out there, I’m planning to get myself together.
Have a great one folks.
I like to picture it in a jar of formaldehyde on a shelf somewhere, but that isn’t where it went. More likely it was incinerated as biologic waste a week ago. Regardless, I don’t have a belly button anymore. The kids and I were brainstorming ideas of how I could explain to people why I don’t have one. One wanted me to say I was an alien. I sort of liked the story that I hatched out of an egg. But the one I like best is that I don’t have a belly button because my mother molded me from clay and Zeus gave me life. Now I’m just waiting for this to somehow come up in conversation.
I’m tired and sore, but doing really well all things considered. My big goal of the week is to get some writing done. I’d love to have a new Flash Fiction Friday piece ready this week. So watch for it to see how I’m doing! I’m tired of talking about my health so I probably won’t for awhile.
Abdominal Wall Reconstruction Day
Sooner than I had expected, but that’s how things go sometimes, don’t they. I thought I had considerably more weight to lose, but my surgeons are thrilled with what I’ve done so far. Trying to organize my life to make sure all my responsibilities are covered while I’m out of commission has kept me busy enough that I haven’t spent too much time obsessing about the actual surgery part, which is probably for the best.
I’m hoping to get some writing time in during recovery, but from experience I know when I don’t feel well, my brain doesn’t flow all that well either. So we’ll see and hope for the best.
Wish me luck!
So the weight loss is going better than expected. I’m down about 15 pounds from May 1st, which puts me on track to be down 25 pounds by mid July. I’m a little worried about muscle loss since I am so limited on what exercises I can do, but I’m putting that into the ‘things I cannot change’ category and trying not to let the stress of it get to me too much. I am walking a lot, and I enjoy that.
For those interested, I use the Sparkpeople app to track my food and exercise. I think you have to go into the full site to get your goals set up to see the recommended calories a day, etc. but after that I recommend the app instead. The full site is crazy ad heavy so it loads super slow and is generally a pain. But it’s all free, so it has that going for it.
Just a couple days ago I hit 190 on the scale, and got very excited that I only have 10 pounds to go! Whoo! Then I thought things through a little further and realized that my reward for losing these last 10 pounds will be getting a horrible surgery that I don’t especially want to have, and in that light it is a whole lot less exciting. The flip side is that I don’t want to stay the way I am either, as both hernias seem to be causing me more pain and discomfort as time goes along. So surgery it is. Dammit.
I know this is the question that’s on everyone’s minds. That’s keeping everyone up at night.
No?
I guess it’s just me then.
Still, I’ll fill you in anyway because I have already said so much here, and it’s going to affect the blog and my making of the things. I’m going to need more surgery. My innards have not been behaving themselves. I’ve herniated through both my colectomy incision site and my iliostomy site. The hernia at the iliostomy site is rather large. Because there are two hernias and one is a biggie, they can’t just repair them like a normal hernia repair. I need an abdominal wall reconstruction.
I’m not going to get into what that all entails in this post, but I may later on. Right now I’m working hard to emotionally come to grips with this new reality. My previous experience with surgery was pretty terrible, and frankly, this sounds like it will be worse.
Right now, I’m in major weight loss mode – much more so than the casual weight loss I was working at before this. Apparently excess weight makes abdominal wall reconstruction much less successful. Over a certain BMI, they won’t do surgery at all. I’ve just crossed down into the acceptable range, but to try to make things go as well as possible, and for this to be as strong a long term success as we can make it, my surgical team (yes, there is a team this time, not just one surgeon) wants me to drop another 20 to 30 pounds in the next 3 months. So that’s my focus right now.
Strangely, the drastic weight loss expectations are not what’s upsetting me. If the weight loss will make things go better, then I will lose the weight. I want things to go better. I want things to go great. I want things to go as well as any abdominal wall reconstruction has ever gone before in the history of abdominal wall reconstructions. Then I want to never need surgery again for anything.
Is that too much to ask?
Just because it’s become sort a running (pun intended) gag to post about C25K and NaNoWriMo in the same post – here we go:
I’ve recovered enough from my cold to breathe well enough to start C25K (Couch to 5K) back up again – but – I’m having other symptoms that make jogging very uncomfortable. I have another doctor appointment to find out more specifically what’s going on, but in the meanwhile I will report that I’m apparently having further complications to my earlier colectomy and illeostomy reversal surgeries. There is very likely another surgery in my future. While I am not technically restricted by my doctors from running, it doesn’t feel good, so I’m going to stick with walking and biking for now. There will more to report on this front soon I’m sure.
Camp NaNoWriMo started at the beginning of April. The difference between the camps and the official November event is that for the camps (in April, and I think July?) you set your own word count goal, or you can set a different type of goal, like for editing or some-such. I’ve been preoccupied with taxes and lots of doctor appointments so I’ve written almost nothing toward the goal of 12,000 words I’ve set for myself. This week is technically spring break for our charter so I hope I can get in extra writing time since the girls will not need me for teaching as much. However, we still have a lot of group events and outside classes that will take up time, so I’m not going to get too excited about how much free time I’ll end up with.
There we are.
As a follow up to my post a few days ago regarding my search for ab exercises that wouldn’t hurt all my abdominal scars – I guess I’m back to looking.
I must have strained or otherwise done something bad because I have found myself in significant abdominal pain for the past several days. All my ab muscles hurt, all over. Otherwise I might have been concerned there was a medical problem. At times on Friday, I was near tears with the pain. Yesterday was a little better, but only a little. Today is much better, and no longer feels like something is seriously wrong – now my abs feel like an overworked sore muscle.
This is a frustrating setback because of how little I was actually doing with my exercises. There really isn’t all that much I can cut back on. Do three reps of the pathetically easy exercises instead of six? Seriously, that’s about all I could handle doing in the first place. Will doing less even be enough to start building up any strength at all?
Grrrr.
Perhaps tomorrow I will hunt up a yoga routine that includes some ab work and try the ab specific exercises again in a few days. Now I’m not only out of shape and wimpy, I’m scared too.
I’m six weeks post-surgery now, so I’m allowed to start exercising and doing things again. So I’ve started up my Couch to 5K running training program. Today, I was looking over my outline as I prepare for NaNoWriMo. Then I realized I had linked these two events together yet again.
http://karabucreations.blogspot.com/2016/03/couch-to-5k-is-my-fitness-nanowrimo.html
http://karabucreations.blogspot.com/2016/06/couch-to-5k-and-nanowrimo-again-and.html
When I wrote those two previous posts, I’d thought it was sort of a humorous coincidence, and I liked the similarity in the determination and self -discipline I needed for both activities. I didn’t mean to forever attach them to each other.
I’d really love to believe this is the last year they will be attached. Not because I don’t love them both. I just hope to stay well enough to not need to restart Couch to 5K from the beginning again. The other times, I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the program due to health restrictions. Now, however – I hope I remain hale and hearty and running well past the end of the program. If anything, maybe I’ll be looking into a program to take me from 5 to 10 K next year. A girl can dream.
I do plan to keep participating in NaNoWriMo ever year because – why not?
While I’ve only had my ileostomy for about six weeks now, so am far from being an expert, it really hasn’t been as bad as I imagined. Originally, the ostomy was presented to me as a worst-case scenario if my surgery went poorly. So when surgical complications piled up and I did need the ileostomy after all, that’s how I saw it. Worst-case. Clearly, there could have been many worse surgical outcomes than this. My intestines could have been beyond saving at all and I may have needed a permanent ostomy. I could have died. That would be worse. All in all, having this bag isn’t all that bad.
Admittedly, the first week home was rough. I was changing the bag just like I was taught in the hospital, but I was getting leaks in the middle of the night. So while moving around was still painful and difficult I’d be up but groggy in the middle of the night trying to put on a new bag and cleaning up all the poop that I leaked out in the bed and the floor on the way to the bathroom. I’ll be honest – there were many tears.
In retrospect I should have called the ostomy nurse when I started having problems, but I had a recheck appointment scheduled later in the week, so I just suffered until then. My advice if you are a new ostomate – don’t just suffer. These nurses who specialize in ostomy care are great. They have solutions. Go get their help.
After my surgical recheck I explained my leaking problems and they got me in to see an ostomy nurse right then. She didn’t have enough of a schedule opening to do a lot of teaching with me, but she looked at my bag (the seal of which was just on the border of leaking right then despite it being a new bag I’d put on the night before) so she could see my problem clearly. She got me a different kind of bag the had a more rigid and curved area where it attaches. I apologize that I don’t have all the terminology and lingo down yet. It might be what I’ve seen referred to as a convex bag? She also wiped on some sort of sticky skin protecting liquid and added an additional sort of jelly barrier ring and sent me home with supplies to do the same. I haven’t had a leak since. Even though it’s been more than four weeks leak-free, I still have some paranoia about it and still sleep on a towel – just in case.
A week later, I got even more refined help with my scheduled ostomy checkup – including a support belt/corset thing that holds the bag tight against me and makes longer walks much more comfortable. Walks have helped me start to regain my strength so this has been wonderful. And I wouldn’t have known about any of these options without those great nurses.
While I certainly won’t miss my ileostomy bag after I have my reversal surgery, after that rough first week home, it hasn’t been bad. Some things have been interesting – seeing how my innards work in a new way.
Somewhat off topic – I have thought to myself, as all these crazy bathroom laws show up around the country, how happy I am to live in California. Sometimes, if a toilet isn’t very big, I have difficulty emptying the bag sitting down and I have to stand up. I wonder what would happen to me if someone saw my feet under a stall pointed the wrong way as I emptied my bag (it’s mainly liquid and sounds that way). There are so many reasons not to judge or make assumptions about others.
I participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for the theoretical person out there who doesn’t know) every year, even when I know I don’t have the time or the energy to win. I just like to play. Mostly, I don’t hit my word goal.
Couch to 5K (or C25K since we all like to use the lingo, right?) is a running program that takes someone from not being a runner, to being able to run a 5K. I completed the program years ago and was so proud of myself. Then I hurt my foot and stopped running. Last year, when I was fed up with feeling crappy all the time I decided to start up again.
Things were much tougher for me then. I was very overweight and out of shape. After the first couple weeks of the program I had difficulty progressing, so I did each week twice before I felt strong enough to move one. I ran super slow. Most people could probably walk at the pace I was ‘running’. But I was still proud of myself.
Then I got lazy, and we went on vacation, and I generally neglected my running. Still, I wanted to do it, so I started over. That time I did better and got really close to finishing the program. . . and then I thought I had the flu, but actually had a perforated colon and got to spend some time in the hospital. It took longer than I expected to gain any strength back, but when I did, I started C25K all over again. My colon responded by acting back up again. Stupid colon.
Now I’m on the week 3 runs – for the fourth time in the past year, even though this time I knew going in that I would not be able to finish the program. That trouble-making colon is coming out in a couple weeks so I won’t be running for a bit as I recover.
So why bother restarting the training? The same reason I can’t not do NaNoWriMo. It makes me feel good. I’m proud of myself when I do it. Even though my efforts and results are not exciting compared to what I see others doing, they are pretty great for me. So after surgery, when my doctor says it’s safe – I’ll be starting my fifth attempt to get through the Couch to 5K program. Hopefully that will be the one I finish.
Oh – and, I’m signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo 2016 in April. I’m ‘karabu’ over there. Camp NaNoWriMo is similar to the November event, except you set your own word goal, and it doesn’t have to be all on one novel; any project is fine. Stop by and say Hi if you’re writing too!
Karabu Creations 