Big Fat Delicious

Thyroidectomy went well - should have done this 4 years ago

2011-09-16T13:22:00.003-05:00

I went in on the 13th to have my thyroidectomy. Dr M scheduled 3 hours for the operation, but it actually took 4 1/2 hours because my thyroid was larger than we thought it was. It was almost wrapped around my wind pipe and esophagus, so required more time to find it and get it all removed. So much for it being nothing to worry about when you first told me it was enlarged 4 years ago, right, Dr W? According to Dr M (my wonderful surgeon), my thyroid should have come out when it was first diagnosed as being enlarged.
At the time, I asked for a referral to an endocrinologist to have my thyroid checked, but Dr W refused. Her take on it was that I was using my thyroid as an excuse for being fat (even though my TSH, T3, and T4 results came back normal), so there was no need to see an endocrinologist. Silly me, I listened to her, until I talked to my dad and he told me that my grandfather (his dad) had had an enlarged thyroid that was cancerous. When they went to remove his, it was so large that they couldn't get it all - if they had, he wouldn't have been able to talk or swallow because they would have had to cut the nerves on either side of his neck that controlled those functions in order to remove all of his thyroid.
When I got home from that vacation, I found an endocrinologist myself, and then told Dr W she would give me a referral to her or I would find another doctor that would - that with a family history of thyroid problems (my mother also had problems with her thyroid), I didn't think it was anything to mess around with. I got my referral, got an ultrasound, it was enlarged all right. Dr A (wonderful endo) referred me to Dr M, we discussed surgery, decided to wait 6 months and see if my thyroid was still growing or staying the same.
Had the 2nd ultrasound in July and it showed that my thyroid was getting bigger, so we decided it needed to come out as soon as possible. Scheduled the surgery, had it done, and I can't believe the difference it makes already.
Don't let anyone kid you, an enlarged thyroid makes swallowing difficult. I didn't realize how difficult it was until my thyroid was gone and I got to eat an actual meal in the hospital - I was on a liquid diet for supper and breakfast after surgery, had a chicken breast and rice pilaf for lunch and swallowing it was so easy. Taking my pills is easy, they don't get stuck anymore and I don't have to eat something to push them down and/or drink a huge glass of water on top of that.
I am so glad I had this done, but damn, I wish I'd had it done 4 years ago when I was first told that my thyroid was enlarged. The surgery might not have taken as long, and I wouldn't have had 4 years of difficulty swallowing food and pills.
Dr A started me on Levoxyl, she said no generics, has to be brand name. The reason for brand name only is that the FDA is happy with generics having a 25% difference in the amount of hormone between batches, while the brand names don't have any difference in the amount of hormone between batches (much better quality control, according to her). And when you're trying to regulate your TSH, T3, and T4, you want to be sure your dosage is the same every time you refill your prescription. You have a much better chance of that with name brand than with generic (and if my insurance wouldn't cover the name brand, it's only about $200 a year for the dosage I need). Luckily, TriCare will cover the name brand and the co-pay isn't high at all ($6 for 2 months' supply).
I have an appointment in 6 weeks to have TSH, T3, and T4 checked to see if the dosage needs to be adjusted. Dr A said if it does, she'll adjust, check in another 6 weeks, then if no more adjustments, check again in 3 months, then in 6 months, and then once a year unless I have problems (or unless I lose or gain a substantial amount of weight - dosage is based on weight, didn't know that until she told me).
Just got the call from pathology - no cancer!!! So even though it was a multi-nodular goiter, it wasn't cancerous - just enlarged. Thank Maude I don't have to worry about that.
So, my advice to anyone who is told their thyroid is enlarged but it's nothing to worry about - if it's your general practitioner telling you that, get a referral to an endocrinologist, get a second opinion. It's nothing to fuck around with, I can testify to that.

Eat to Live - Another "lifestyle" change?

2011-08-04T14:10:00.002-05:00

So I had an appointment with the surgeon today to schedule my thyroidectomy (it's gotten larger, ultrasound in July said it's bigger than it was on ultrasound in December). Not a problem, I figured it was going to have to come out, I'm prepared for that (surgery is scheduled for Sept 13).
What I wasn't prepared for was the surgeon telling me that there's a program at the hospital that I might be interested in, she and several of the staff are following it and are really pleased with the results. It's based on the book,Eat to Live, by Dr Joel Fuhrman. From what I read of the reviews on Amazon, it seems like another diet to me, disguised as a "lifestyle" change. It claims to be able to cure type 2 diabetes, help fat people lose lots of weight in a short amount of time (and maintain that weight loss), and cure the other diseases that are correlated with being fat. Sound too good to be true? Yeah, color me skeptical. I've heard it all before, done it all before, and none of it has worked for very long. Now I'm not averse to trying something that might help with the fibromyalgia and the digestive issues I have, but a "lifestyle" change that tells me I have to limit the amount of meat I eat, increase the amount of fruits and vegetables I eat, and eat more beans/legumes/whole grains when eating those fruits/vegetables/whole grains means I'm going to be spending the majority of my time in the bathroom - sorry, it ain't happening. Yeah, that kind of "lifestyle" change will help me lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time because I'll be shitting my brains out and dehydrating myself with diarrhea (those digestive issues I have from the VBG). Not exactly healthy, in my book.
When I explained that to Dr M (the surgeon), she said I should try modifying it to what I can eat without issues and see how I feel in 6 weeks. Ok, so for 6 weeks, I'm going to basically eat very little meat, very little/no dairy, no fruits/veggies/grains (digestive issues), and beans/legumes/rice. Sorry, that's not much different than how I eat now, except that I do occasionally eat veggies and deal with the issues they cause (oh, and I eat more meat than she thinks I should; sorry, not giving up my pork/chicken/shrimp/fish/steak/roast).
What is it with doctors that they think they have all the answers and have to dispense them, even when their patients aren't asking the questions? I didn't ask her for a "lifestyle" intervention, or a way to lose weight, or a way to lessen my pain from fibromyalgia or arthritis. All I want her to do is take out my enlarged thyroid. Once that's done, I'll probably never need to see her again - I'll go back to my endo for any follow-up care I need, like thyroid hormone replacement therapy. If she's following this and it's working for her, for whatever reasons, fine. But please, she doesn't need to be proselytizing to her patients about it unless they ask her advice on weight loss or how to improve their lives with diet (she even wrote the name of the book and author on her card, gave it to me, and told me I could find the book at Barnes & Noble if I wanted to look through it before I bought it!).

No

2011-07-30T15:34:00.002-05:00

I'm not a poet, but this is inspired by this.

NO

Yes, I'm fat....
But no, you will not shame me.
No, you will not make me hide
nor will you take away my pride of self.
Yes, you can cat-call me but I will not
allow you to make me run away. I will walk
tall and proud through life no matter what
you do. My NO shows that my life
has meaning, shows that I deserve respect,
shows that I deserve the dignity
that all humankind deserves. My NO
demands that respect and dignity, and I will have it.
My NO is adamant!

Pop the Pig game

2011-07-22T19:50:00.003-05:00

Ok, granted I don't watch much television, but my husband does, and I hear the commercials. There's been a really annoying one on lately for Pop the Pig, a game where you roll the dice, feed a pig hamburgers, and see who makes him so fat that he pops.
Talk about brainwashing kids into thinking that eating too much is what makes one fat! This game is a good way to do that, and one that parents will buy without even thinking about the connotations of what it's saying. Well, some of them won't think about it, some of them have already bought into the stereotype that fat people got that way by stuffing their faces - and I quote:

Good Game to fight obesity
By Diana Diets from Miami, FL on 3/24/2011
Pros:
Can Withstand Use, Easy To Play, Entertaining, Fun, Interactive, Nice Layout
Best Uses:
Children, Family
Describe Yourself:
Parent
Was this a gift?:
No
Bottom Line:
Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
Comments about Goliath 1011325 Pop the Pig Game:
Great game to fight obesity. Basically if you eat too many hamburgers you will get fat

This reviewer gave the game 5 stars. From her name, I would venture to say she's bought the Fantasy of Being Thin, lock, stock, and barrel, and is probably a fat-phobe to boot. Not someone I would want as a friend, and not someone from whom I would take game recommendations.
As for the game itself, I give it -5 stars, wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy (not even MeMeMe Roth), and if this is the kind of game we can expect from Goliath, I don't think I'll be giving them any of my money on any of their games.

Altering big men's tees to fit fat women

2011-07-05T14:53:00.005-05:00

I finally figured out how to alter all those big men's tee shirts I've bought. I have to buy a 5X to get them to fit my rack of doom and to fit around my hips, but then the shoulders are waaaaaaay too wide - the shoulder seam comes halfway down my upper arm and the sleeve then hits me below my elbow - not a good look, even in a tee shirt.
I took one that I didn't care about ruining, and removed the sleeves (I just cut them off very close to the seam and then trimmed the seam off the shirt). See the picture below for what the deconstructed tee looks like:

The first thing I did was measure how wide I needed the shoulder to be, from my neck to the edge of my shoulder. On me, that's approximately 5 1/2 inches. I added 1/2 inch for seam allowance, and cut from the shoulder down to where I thought the sleeve opening should end, curving it slightly to point A (where the dotted line is on the diagram of the tee). This left about 3" of the original sleeve opening that isn't needed. With the tee turned inside out, I made a very narrow dart starting at point B and ending at point A (1/2" wide at point A).
I then took the sleeve, laid it out flat and smooth (just like I cut it off the shirt, didn't open up the underarm seam, you want that left sewn up). I then cut a curved line along the seam line of the sleeve (the dotted line on the sleeve). This makes the tee sleeve just like a blouse sleeve. I then put a small notch at point C on the sleeve, to match with the shoulder seam on the tee.
It's a good idea to mark which sleeve came off which side of the tee so you know which side to sew it back to when you're done making your alteration cuts. I did this by putting a small safety pin in one shoulder of the tee and its matching sleeve (the other shoulder had no pin and neither did the sleeve, making them a pair).
By matching the notch on the sleeve top with the shoulder seam on the tee, and the underarm seam of the sleeve with the narrow dart you made in the armhole of the tee, you can then finish pinning the sleeve into the tee, easing any fullness at the top (shoulder area or cap) of the sleeve and then sewing it in place. I left the tee inside out, the sleeve was right side out, and put the sleeve inside the shirt to pin and sew it - setting a sleeve "in-the-round" is easier this way and you can put the sleeve on the bottom/tee on top which makes it easier to "ease-in" any fullness you may have in the cap of the sleeve.
This isn't a project for a novice seamstress, but I think anyone who has made a lot of blouses/tees/tops could handle this project. My first attempt involved some ripping out of seams and resewing them, but it worked, and the tee looked good when I finished it, and best of all, it fit much better (and that narrow dart under the arm doesn't show when I'm wearing the shirt either).
ETA : Sorry, I'm not much of an artist, that's the best I could come up with for what I did and how I did it.....LOL! I also don't like how the crew necks fit me, they're too tight and I'm always yanking at them, so I altered them too. I took my scissors and snipped the crew neck banding from the edge to the top-stitching (made those snips every 3/4"). I then turned the crew neck under completely, pinned it in place, and top-stitched it down with thread that matched the tee shirt. After the top-stitching was complete, I trimmed off the excess crew neck fabric close to the top-stitching. Voila! A larger neck opening that isn't tight and still looks neat and clean.

Dear Abby shows her fat-phobia - again.

2011-05-31T14:40:00.002-05:00

Dear Abby has done it again. A lady wrote in to share how she and her husband keep from screaming at each other when they have an argument - they go to the refrigerator and split a candy bar (they keep a supply there just for that). They both like chocolate, and by the time they have finished sharing the candy bar, they can speak rationally and calmly to each other. Sounds pretty sensible to me. Half of one candy bar isn't much, doesn't take that long to eat, but gives them something to do together that they like and gives them time to cool down and become rational again.
What does Abby have to say?

Ingenious. The two of you have discovered yet another reason why chocolate is good for the heart. I hope as time goes by you'll sustain a high level of compatibility because otherwise you're going to weigh a ton.

This is wrong on so many levels. Abby, you're assuming that people get fat from eating an occasional candy bar. You're assuming that this couple is going to be arguing several times a day, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year, every year of their lives and eating candy bars every time they have an argument and that's going to make them fat. Fuck you, Abby, and your fat-phobic ASSumptions. Educate yourself about being fat, what really causes it - and it's not always eating tons of candy/"junk" food and sitting on one's ass all day long - and until then, STFU. You don't know what you're talking about, you have no empathy for fat people and what their lives entail, what they have to deal with on a daily basis from fat-phobic asshats like you, and you don't really care. If you cared, you'd take the time to educate yourself and you'd have more compassion for fat people. I really don't see that happening.

MN and same sex marriage

2011-05-13T16:57:00.002-05:00

I got an email from my local MN state senator today updating me on what's going on in the MN legislature. Below is one of the most important issues in that update:

MARRIAGE AMENDMENT: The Senate passed a bill that will allow Minnesota citizens, not courts or the Legislature, to define marriage. The proposed constitutional amendment asks voters to define marriage as solely between one man and one woman in Minnesota. Placement on the 2012 ballot allows a year of public discussion in communities statewide in order to be prepared to vote in next year’s general election, rather than allowing a small number of politicians or activist judges to decide the definition of marriage. The House will take up the proposed legislation next week. If passed in the House, it will be placed on the 2012 ballot.

So it looks like in 2012, the citizens of MN will get to decide if the definition of marriage will remain as being between one man and one woman, or if the definition of marriage will be expanded to include all genders.
I'm hoping the citizens of MN will be able to rise above their passions and biases to vote against limiting marriage to one man and one woman, and vote to allow all adults to marry whomever they love, no matter their gender or their partner's gender.

The place to go for shoes in central MN - The Boot Shack

2011-05-06T10:53:00.003-05:00

DH needed new shoes for work and we had to be in St Cloud anyway the other day, so we stopped in one of the shoe stores in the mall on Division Street (Schuler's Shoes). They didn't have any boots that would work for DH, but they recommended we try The Boot Shack. So over to The Boot Shack we went.
This is a very small place, but it's crammed to the gills with boots - mostly cowboy boots, but they do have an awesome selection of work boots too. That's not the most impressive thing about this place, though. Not only do they measure your foot when you're sitting down, they also measure your foot when you're standing up and putting your weight on it. Why do they do this? Because for some people, the length of their foot changes when they put weight on it, and so does the height of their arch. They're very good at explaining why they measure your foot the way they do, and how shoes should support your feet, etc. The upshot of all this is that DH has been wearing the wrong size/width shoe for years, which is why his feet, knees, and back hurt when he's working, and why his shoes don't last very long (he can wear out 2 pairs of New Balance tennies in 6 months and those things are expensive). He ended up trying on about 4 pairs of boots in 4 different sizes to find the ones that felt the best - putting both boots on, walking around in them, taking them off, trying the next pair, till he found the pair that felt the best. DH spent over an hour getting his feet measured and trying on boots to find the right ones (we've never spent that much time finding shoes for him before, not even at the shoe store the VA sends him to for his shoes because he has type 2 diabetes and is entitled to 2 pairs a year). His boots ended up costing us $180, but if they last and his feet don't hurt at the end of a 12-hour day spent on concrete floors, they will be well-worth the money we spent on them. We also got him a pair of New Balance sneakers in the correct size, so hopefully, those will last longer than his last pair did.
I just called The Boot Shack today to see if they have women's sneakers and they do, all the way up to a size 13, in widths from AAA to 4E (they carry men's boots/sneakers in sizes up to 18, in the same widths, and they're even having a pair custom-made for a man who needs a size 19, now that's service). So we'll be going back in the next couple of weeks - I want to get my feet measured to see what size I really wear and see if I can find a pair or two of shoes that will keep my feet/knees from hurting when I walk, and maybe, just maybe, stop the supination of my feet (my right foot especially tends to roll to the outside and wears the heel off on all my shoes). I've never been to a shoe store that measures feet as well as this one does, or spends as much time finding shoes that fit your feet and will work for what you need them to work for.
The service at The Boot Shack is outstanding - if you're in Central Minnesota, I highly recommend them:
The Boot Shack
2221 Roosevelt Rd
St Cloud MN
And, no I'm not getting anything from them for this post, I just think they're a great place to go for shoes/boots (I saw other people being waited on while we were there and they got the same amount of attention that we did, it was totes awesome!).

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there (NOT)

2011-05-02T11:11:00.003-05:00

Yeah, we're rethinking our business with State Farm Insurance. I've been with them for almost 10 years now, and DH has been with them even longer. We insure 2 cars, a truck, a minivan, and our house with them, to the tune of almost $3,000 a year. I had one claim with my mobile home, about 8 years ago, and one claim with one of my minivans about 7 years ago (and they fucked me over with that one). DH and I have had several auto glass claims with them (he drives to work on a state highway and in the spring/summer/fall ends up following tractors/combines that kick up mud/rocks, you get cracked windshields). We've had one claim with them on the house insurance when wind blew away one of those metal pole/tarp sheds and a power surge that same weekend took out DH's computer. No problems with those claims (other than the one with my minivan 7 years ago).
This time, DH was driving to work early in the morning on the state highway and a semi crossed the centerline. DH saw him swerve and he swerved to keep from getting hit. Well, the semi took off the driver's side mirror on the 2002 Buick LeSabre Limited we just bought (it gets better gas mileage than his truck). Luckily, that's all it did, didn't put him in the ditch, or anything else. Truckdriver probably didn't even know he hit anyone, so of course he didn't stop. It was 4:30 a.m. when this happened, so it was dark, both vehicles were doing at least 55 mph, there were 8 or 9 cars behind the semi, and another semi behind them. DH couldn't see what the trucking company was that owned the semi was because of the darkness and oncoming headlights from the cars.
When we report this to the insurance company, what's their first question? Why didn't you follow the semi so you could at least get the name of the trucking company and a license plate number? DH was supposed to turn around after being hit by a semi (that would shake me up, let me tell you), catch up to that line of traffic, pass a semi, a line of 8 or 9 cars, get a license plate number, and then pass the semi so he could see what the trucking company was that owned the semi? And how many laws would he have had to break in order to do this? Well, let's see now. He'd have had to have driven over the speed limit to catch them all, he'd have had to broken the speed limit to pass everyone so he could get up to the semi that hit him, and then he would have had to be able to write down a license plate number and trucking company name while driving, so that's distracted driving, at the least. Perfectly reasonable request on the part of the insurance company, don't you think? Yeah, right. To top it all off, if he had done all that, he'd have been late to work, which he's only been once in the 4 years he's worked there (and that was when he put the truck in the ditch when he hit a patch of ice, he was late, but still made it to work when he got pulled out of the ditch).
So we took the car in to get an estimate to have it fixed. Have to have the mirror replaced, the chrome weather strip by the window has to be replaced, and both doors on the driver's side have to be painted where the mirror bounced off them and scratched the paint. Body shop gave us an estimate of $1,686 and some odd cents. But because it was a hit and run and our insurance can't collect off the semi's insurance, they have to send an adjuster out to look at the car and give us his estimate (and now comes the part where State Farm screws over the insured customer). The mirror is adjustable from the inside (aren't they all nowadays) and it's heated. They don't make after-market mirrors for this car. So the new one costs $680. The adjuster says he found a used one for $135. So he's cut $545 off the body shop's estimate. But he added in $50 for replacing the driver's side window that's chipped (I can't see the chip, but the adjuster says it's there), replace that with a used window. I asked him if they were going to give me a guarantee on the used mirror that's as good as the guarantee I'd get on the new mirror. He said "What do you mean?" I said "A new mirror has a life-time guarantee, if anything goes wrong with it, they replace it at no cost to us. When you buy used parts, you don't know how long they're going to last. If this used mirror quits working in 6 months, are you going to replace it at no cost to us? Since you're the ones refusing to pay for a new mirror? Are you going to give us, in writing, a life-time guarantee on this used mirror?" He handed me the estimate and left without giving me an answer.
So those commercials that say "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there", I'm sorry, if I had neighbors like State Farm, I'd be moving. And when DH gets home from work and finds out what the adjuster had to say and what State Farm is willing to pay, I'm betting that I'll be online looking for another insurance company and State Farm will be losing our business. Hope they're happy that saving $545 may cost them $3,000 worth of business every year. Not to mention the bad publicity they're going to get from me blogging about their less-than-stellar attitude (chase down the semi that hit you, indeed).

Much as I hate to - kudos to Wal-Mart

2011-04-14T14:08:00.002-05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, Wal-Mart has some shitty policies and it's not the greatest place to support, but I have to give them kudos for bringing back the Just My Size high cut stretch satin panties that they used to carry. I can finally buy them again in all the awesome colors that I used to get and can't get by ordering from Just My Size online (see my post here where I bitched about getting six pair of panties, 3 black, 3 beige, and was basically told tough shit when I complained).
And they're selling them in a 3-pack instead of a 2-pack, the cost has gone from $7.98 for 2 pair (that was 2 years ago, at least) to $11.97 for 3 pair - but I don't have to pay shipping and I get to pick and choose what colors I want instead of taking whatever colors JMS decides to ship to me when I order (and 2 pair from them cost $9.98 the last time I ordered). Oh, and I just checked their website, and guess what?! JMS is no longer carrying those panties at all. I guess since Wal-Mart has decided to carry those particular panties again, JMS is too good to carry them now. That's fine with me, JMS doesn't want my money, much as it pains me to give it to Wal-Mart, I will since they're willing to carry what I want, in a size that fits me, in the colors/prints I want.

Some thoughts on fat identity

2011-03-25T17:58:00.002-05:00

I've been mostly reading the intarwebs brouhaha over the girl who's a size 6 and had her pic posted on Fuck Yeah Chubby Girls. Personally, I don't think she's chubby, fat, or anything in-between. I think she's a thin to average-sized young girl with just a bit of belly pooch. I think it's awesome that she's learned to love herself/her body in spite of the messages our society sends girls/women about how they should look/dress/act/etc. But I can totally understand where she's coming from.
Now, before y'all start flaming me - understand where I'm coming from as a DEATHFATZ woman who, when I look back at pictures of me as a kid/teenager, wasn't really fat back then but sure as hell thought I was because that's all I heard. Sure, I never wore single digit sizes in my life (well, maybe as a baby and a toddler), and I don't remember ever wearing a size that wasn't classified as "Chubby" in girls' sizes or ever getting to wear any of the clothes like my peers wore when I was teen (I had to shop in the womens' sections of the stores to find anything over size 14/16 to fit me). But I wasn't fat like I'm fat now. If I had tried to join FA back in the 70s, at my then size of 14/16, I'd probably have been laughed right out the door. I didn't have trouble finding clothes to fit, I didn't have to worry about fitting in seats, I didn't have to worry about being mooed at or having things thrown at me for riding my bike in public or roller skating or anything else I did. Thin privilege - I had it and didn't know it because I had been told all my life that I was fat because I didn't wear single-digit sizes and wasn't petite (hard to be petite when you're 5' 9" at 15 years old).
Then life happened and things happened and diets/diet drugs/WLS happened, and I got fat, fatter, fattest. I learned to deal with it, developed a fuck-you attitude in spite of the hurt I felt at the judgmental behavior of asshats/douchecanoes who called me names, didn't want to hire me, didn't want to date me, didn't want to be my friend, didn't want to (insert whatever activity) simply because I was fat. I decided that if people were going to judge me on looks alone, then I didn't need them in my life and they could eat shit and bark at the moon (to steal a phrase from my husband).
Then I found FA and what an eye-opener that was. But ya know what? There were some people in FA that thought I didn't belong in FA at all because I had had WLS years before I even fucking knew what FA was. Even though that WLS failed and I ended up fatter than I was before the surgery, even though I'm adamantly against WLS. They still thought I didn't belong. Guess what? I'm a bitch and I don't get run out of places I want to be all that easily. There were also some people who were very supportive, and I just figured, "Ya know what, fuck the ones who think I don't belong. They don't know me yet, they may not like me once they get to know me, and that's okay. They can do their thing, I'll do my thing, and we'll ignore each other. If they don't ignore me, then I'll tell them to fuck off, no skin off my nose if it pisses them off." I started my own blog, did my own little thing, commented here and there, and life went on. I've made a place for myself in FA, in spite of the ones who thought I didn't belong, and life went on.
The other thing I was thinking about on this topic was how my now ex-daughter-in-law always used to say she was fat. Now, when I first met Tina, she was not fat by any means (not at 5' 11" and 135 lbs). And I told her so, forcefully, many times. She used to really piss me off when she would piss and moan about how fat she was and how she needed to lose 10 or 20 lbs (her nickname among my son's friends was Stick Stickley). What I didn't know at the time was that she had been called fat as a kid by her parents, sisters, and brothers. Now, I haven't seen pictures of her when she was a kid/teenager, so I don't know if she was actually fat or not, but I know what it's like to be called fat when you aren't really fat, but are just taller/bigger than other kids your age. The funny thing is, she could benefit from FA because she's actually fat now - she has MS and lupus and one of the side effects of her drug regimen is weight gain. She's really upset about it, and has been talking about getting a lapband so she can lose weight. I don't know how many times I've told her that when weight gain is a side effect of the drugs you're taking, no diet or WLS is going to make you lose weight and keep it off forever (not that diets and WLS work for permanent weight loss anyway, but still....). I told her that if she gets a lapband, what she's going to lose isn't fat, but will be muscle mass, and with MS that's not a loss she can afford. I've preached FA, lived FA, even my husband has told her that she shouldn't care what other people think, that her opinion of herself is the only one that matters, but she's still fixated on what everyone else thinks of her. Which is understandable when you stop to think about how girls/women are bombarded on a daily basis with the demand that they be perfect in every way - and just when a few women look like they might actually have a chance at attaining that "perfection", the goalposts are moved. When the images we are given to live up to are airbrushed and photo-shopped to a fare-thee-well, is it any wonder that women have a hard time loving themselves/their bodies? When everything is sold to us in order to "help" us attain that "perfection" - from clothing to make-up to soap to diets to exercise. Personally, I've never been much into perfection - it's too much work. I'm satisfied with working toward things that make me happy, and striving for perfection isn't it. My house doesn't have to be spotless, but it does have to be clean. My clothes don't have to be the most fashionable, but they do have to fit and be colors/styles I like. I don't have to be athletic, but I do want to be as healthy as I can be - so I eat as well as I can afford within my gastrointestinal limitations and I do what exercise I can with my mobility issues. I don't do any of this to satisfy anyone but myself. I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations but my own.
Remember the movie, Looker, starring Susan Dey? How they were looking for perfect women, doing computer images of them, and then using those computer images to make television commercials? Are the airbrushed/photo-shopped pictures in magazines that much different? I'm really surprised that, with the level of technology we have today, that Looker hasn't come to pass and real, actual women haven't been done away with entirely.
As for that teenager that submitted her picture/comment to FYCG, the censure doesn't belong to her, it belongs to the moderator who allowed it to be posted. If it wasn't appropriate for the site, then the moderator should have told the teenager so and steered her to other sites that would have been more "appropriate". But to be nasty to a teenager who has finally learned to love her body in spite of society's messages to the contrary, no matter what her size, well, I'm sorry, but that's not very nice, and certainly not very admirable. She wasn't being malicious, she wasn't trying to rub her thin privilege in our faces - hell, I'm betting she didn't even know what thin privilege is (well, she probably knows now, she's probably gotten an education out of all of this, and not in a good way, sorry to say). It's one thing to flame trolls and to tell them off and boot them from FA spaces, but she wasn't trolling. She was celebrating learning to love her body, and that's something we should all be celebrating, no matter what size we are.

I got my Nook - the first book I bought? I Beat The Odds by Michael Oher

2011-03-05T22:49:00.002-06:00

I've been wanting a Nook or a Kindle for a long time now, and after doing some research, I settled on getting a Nook. I got the Nook because I can add a memory card to it and expand the number of books it will hold (and if I have more memory cards, that means even more books). My main reasons for wanting an e-book reader are that I just don't have the room for all the physical books I'd like to read, and when we travel, I can't carry enough books to read with me. The Nook solves both of those problems. Since I also have the Nook reader on my computer, and my computer has a 750GB hard drive, I can store thousands of books on it and transfer them to the Nook, take the Nook with me, and I have a portable library (and it doesn't take up nearly as much room as bookshelves full of books do).
The only drawback I have is that you don't get a physical manual with the Nook, it's loaded on the Nook itself. Not very conducive to learning how to use your Nook when you're trying to read the manual on the Nook and operate it at the same time. I solved that problem by going to Barnes and Noble and downloading the manual to my computer so I can bring up the manual on my pc and read it while I'm figuring out what I need to do on the Nook. Works for me.
I've heard some people say that the Nook doesn't turn the pages fast enough for them, but I haven't had a problem with that. And the charge lasts through a couple days of steady reading. What I really like is that the USB cable that came with it has an adapter that can be plugged into a wall outlet for charging (plug the USB cable into the Nook and into the adapter and plug the adapter into a wall outlet and voila! you're charging your Nook). The covers for the Nook on Barnes & Noble seem a little spendy to me ($29.95 is the cheapest one, and I haven't seen one I like yet). I think I've figured out a way to make my own cover for it, padded and out of fabric I like, so I'm going to do that.
One thing I found out is that any books you have in your library on the Nook have to be downloaded in order to read them. I had downloaded the Nook e-books off my computer on to the Nook, and had only downloaded one to read. When I was done with it, I wanted to read another one, and couldn't. This was because I was at my son's house, didn't have access to the internet, and couldn't download anything without internet access. So I had to wait until I got home and could access our internet connection to download another book (I downloaded all 6 books I had on there so that I can read any one of them or all of them without having to download them one after another).
Anyway, DH and I had seen the movie, The Blind Side, and I had seen on B&N where Michael Oher had written a book about his experiences and how he got out of the ghetto. I was curious to see how faithful the movie was to his real life, so I bought the e-book. Now, I know that movies take poetic license with the truth in order to make things more dramatic/interesting for the audience, but that movie did a real disservice to Mr Oher. It made him out to be a lot dumber than he really is, and that he didn't know much about football when he started playing it. He wasn't dumb, he just didn't have many teachers who cared enough to teach him the study skills he needed to succeed, nor did they really care if they taught him at all (he did have a couple of teachers who cared, but out of all the teachers he had before he got to high school, that wasn't near enough to help him). And he had studied football for years, from the time he was 7 years old, because he knew that sports and education was the only way he was going to get out of the ghetto and be able to make something of himself. He worked hard to find people who could help him do the things he needed to do, and for a kid who didn't have any positive role models in his family, that's impressive (he was one of 12 kids, had 5 older brothers, 3 younger brothers and 3 younger sisters).
I read this book in one sitting, and if you've seen the movie about Michael Oher, I highly recommend that you read his book. You'll come away with a whole new perspective on him. I know I did.

Just My Size - Less than satisfactory ordering experience

2011-02-09T12:29:00.005-06:00

Ok, I realize that Just My Size doesn't have much choice over whether stores decide to carry their merchandise or not. Wal-Mart used to carry the JMS high-cut, spandex/satin panties, which I loved and bought the hell out of. They carried them in a myriad of colors and prints and I owned a wide variety of them. Well, Wal-Mart, in their infinite wisdom, no longer carries those panties, and neither does any other store. The only place I can find them is online. Not a problem, I thought, I do a lot of online shopping. I figured if I ordered more than one package of two pairs, I would get a variety of colors.
WRONG!!! First of all, I ordered 3 packages - that's 6 pairs of panties. Did they ship them in one parcel? Nope. I get the first package, it's one package, of 2 pair, one black, one beige. Two days later, I get the second shipment, it's 2 packages - 2 pair each, each package consisting of one black, one beige. I ordered 6 pair, hoping I'd at least get a variety of colors - I'm sorry, but black and beige is not a variety. WTF is up with that, JMS? Is that all you're making now in the spandex/satin high-cut panties? Black and beige? What happened to the red, brown, blue, pink, leopard print, pink/blue geometric print, white on white pattern, black on black pattern, brown geometric print? What happened to the diversity of colors you used to have? Did you decide that fat women over a certain size are no longer entitled to a variety of colors/prints/patterns in their panties? Am I going to have to make my own panties now, in order to get what I want, in the colors I want, like I have to make my own bras in order to get one that fits and is in the colors/fabric/style I want? Can you really afford to offend customers this way? Because let me tell you, you've offended the hell out of me, pissed me off, and lost a customer.
I'll be taking one of my old pair of JMS panties apart and using it for a pattern and making my own panties from now on and you can kiss my fat ass's business good-bye.
ETA: This is what I wrote to JMS on their Contact Us form:

I ordered 6 pair of the JMS satin stretch hi-cut panties, hoping I would get assorted colors, as advertised on your website. I was very disappointed when my order arrived to find that I got 3 pkgs containing 1 pr black/1 pr beige panties each. Is this something which is going to happen every time I order panties from you? If it is, I'll not order any more panties from you, I'll take an old pair of my JMS stretch satin hi-cut panties apart and use them for a pattern and make my own from now on. I used to be able to buy these panties in red, pink, brown, blue, black on black pattern, white on white pattern, brown leopard print, brown geometric print, blue/pink geometric print, black, white, and beige. I also used to be able to find them in stores, now the only place I can find them is online at your website, and you don't give me an option to pick the colors I want. I love the way these panties fit, they're the only ones I'll wear, and I would love to have a wider selection of colors.

ETA: This is the response I got from JMS Customer Service -

Dear Customer,
Thank you for inquiring about our assorted colors in packaging. We are
unable to list the colors of this item because these may vary depending
on how the manufacturer randomly packages these.
Please let us know if we can assist you further.
Sincerely,
Deborah

A totally inadequate response, if you ask me. So yeah, I won't be ordering from them again. I'll be taking an old pair of my stretch satin panties apart and using them as a pattern and making my own panties from now on (I figure the lycra spandex swimsuit fabric will work just as well if I can't find stretch satin fabric).
They don't care to address my concerns, I don't care to give them any more of my money, for anything.
ETA AGAIN -
I just contacted JMS Customer Service again, for all the good it will do.
I told them that their response was less than satisfactory and

In other words, you have no intentions of trying to remedy this situation at all. Your customers are stuck with whatever you decide to send out because you won't contact your manufacturer to ask them to supply more colors/prints/patterns. Thank you for letting me know how much my business matters to you - not much at all, apparently. Since you aren't willing to do anything to remedy this situation, you obviously don't need my business.

This is especially upsetting with all the brouhaha they've had in the news with how they're updating their image, going with better colors/prints/fabrics/etc for their clothing line. I guess that only matters if it's clothing that whole world can see. If the whole world doesn't see your panties, it doesn't matter that they're boring and blah, you don't need to have colors/prints/patterns that you like, you can put up with black/beige/white and be damned glad that they even deign to carry them in sizes to fit your fat ass. Well fuck that shit. If you aren't going to give me the panties I want (in the colors/prints/patterns that I want), that you used to carry, then I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my money on any of your clothing line, I don't give a fucking rat's ass how goddamned cute/fashionable/affordable it is. Fuck me over in one area, and you've lost me as a customer in every area - I'm a curmudgeonly bitch like that.

Lynn Stainless Steel Cookware has AWESOME customer service

2011-01-10T13:01:00.002-06:00

This is just so awesome, I had to blog about it. DH has a set of Lynn Stainless Steel cookware (pots & pans) that he had when we got married (the Saturn series 300F, to be specific). I don't know how long he's had them, but they're really nice pans, easy to clean, and they cook foods well.
The reason I'm writing about them is because the handle on the lid to our 5 quart dutch oven broke one day when I was draining pasta and the lid fell off into the sink. I super-glued it back together, and that lasted for about a month. Last night, it came apart.
Today, I called the company to see if I could get a replacement knob or lid, or did I need to purchase a whole new dutch oven. The awesome part? I can get just the knob I need for the lid and they'll send it to me for FREE!!! Now that is customer service, something I thought had gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Need help for lady opening affordable Women's Plus Clothing/Lingerie store

2010-12-11T20:03:00.002-06:00

Okay ladies, we need some help here. Anita needs ideas for clothing for her store - colors, prints, styles, sizes, measurements, what you would like to see in a store when you go shopping for every-day clothing, lingerie, and evening wear.
I listed my likes/needs and I'm opening up the comments for you to list yours. Have fun and let Anita know what you want.............

Anita said...

I am opening an affordable Woman’s Plus Size Clothing and Lingerie store
I would like to find out more about the products in Plus Sizes XL to 6X or higher? The plus size clothing in my city only goes as high as 6X for some items but not all and the bras are not wide enough in the band width...
and nothing sexy for the evenings... ;)
I know this might sound strange but can take full measurements so I can know what sizes I should order... especially the for the bras and panties pants and sexy night wear ;)
I really need to know sizes, it's very important... Because I want us ladies to have the perfect fit for once in our clothes and feel good about how we look too... please this would really help me. I will keep an eye on this page for a few days. Just so you know I am serious about my store. Here is my info I know right now... I am 260LBs I kinda fit in 3X-4X jeans 46 - 48. I have a very hard time finding clothes that fit so I really want to do this right... I need actual measurements, so I get clothes custom made... And if you have any suggestions on what you would like to see in styles and colors that would really help me out too...

Thank you so very much for reading my post, I look forward to reading yours too.

Anita - Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner. I had to go out of town on Friday and just got home.

Sizing is difficult, since even 2 women who are the same height and weight will wear different sizes. I'm 5' 7" (I've shrunk again) and 376 lbs - I wear a 26/28/30 in pants, depending on who made them and I need a 32" inseam with a 12" rise, panties I wear a size 13 in the Just My Size high cut stretch satin (the only ones I like), bras I wear a 52H (if I can find one in that size that has support). As far as tops go, I can't wear any blouses that are made out of woven fabric and are button-front, the arms are always too tight and the shoulders are too wide, the armholes are weird too. So I usually buy stretchy cotton or polyester knit tops, with scoop necks, v-necks, sweetheart necklines, or round necks and short sleeves (I don't care much for 3/4 sleeves, and long sleeves get in my way). I like my tops longer, so on me, that's a back length of about 32", then they hit at mid-hip.

As for colors - that's also very individual and personal. I happen to like jewel tones - turquoise, purple, burgundy, jade, teal, royal blue, and then black, charcoal grey, olive green, and all the shades of denim blue for pants/slacks (the pants I wear are Roaman's bootcut leggings, the ones with pockets, gotta have pockets in my pants).

I like small floral prints, geometric prints, abstract prints, paisley prints in all of the colors mentioned for tops.

I don't do dresses or skirts, so I can't help you there.

Sleepwear is another story. I'm also not into the sexy stuff. I like the t-shirt knit nightgowns in waltz length, short sleeves or sleeveless (all year 'round), and the nylon gowns made the same way are also nice. Same colors/prints as for the tops are good, I'm not picky about my jammies.

Chenille, terry cloth, or velour robes are nice, and the length can be knee or longer, depending on time of year and weight of fabric. I like solid colors for the robes, again in the jewel tones (turquoise, teal, purple, royal blue, burgundy, red, jade).

My measurements are: bust - 62"
waist - 58"
hips - 62"
inseam - 32"
bra - 52H

Hope this is helpful to you, and if you keep checking back for the next couple of days or so, I'm sure some of my readers will have more ideas for you.

It pays to be proactive with your health

2010-11-30T17:42:00.002-06:00

Ok, I made my ex-doctor (before I fired her) give me a referral to an endocrinologist (one that I picked out), and it's a damned good thing I did. Even though all my thyroid hormone levels are normal, my thyroid is enlarged enough that, with the family history of thyroid cancer, the endo thinks it's a good idea to have my thyroid removed.
Dr A and I had a long talk about my weight, and she really understands, a lot better than Dr W ever did. Dr A agrees with Dr W that calories in/out works, but only for some people. Dr A said that genetics can interfere with that, and if there are a lot of fat people in your family, you can end up being fat and there isn't much you can do about it other than eat healthfully and exercise, which isn't going to make you lose weight, but will help you stay healthy. When I told her that all the women in our family, both sides, start out average-sized, then get fat when they have kids and get fatter as they age, but live to their mid/late-80s, she said that I shouldn't worry so much about my weight, but worry more about whether my other numbers are good and if my heart and lungs are functioning the way they should. Which was rather refreshing to hear, ya know? And that was the first doctor's office I've ever been to that actually had gowns that fit me and chairs that didn't dig into my hips/thighs when I sat in them. It was a totally awesome experience.
There isn't any way to shrink my thyroid and it will only keep getting bigger, which can cause a lot of problems farther down the road. She scheduled me for another thyroid ultrasound, which I had done yesterday. They called with the results today, and if it weren't for the fact that I have a consultation with a surgeon next week about removing my thyroid, they would want to do a biopsy of the mass they found at the back of my thyroid. It's not a nodule, they aren't sure what it is, but since the thyroid is coming out, no biopsy is necessary. Thank you Dr W for blowing off my concerns about my thyroid.....NOT. And thank you, Dr A, for taking me seriously and checking things out further.
I also saw Dr J today, he's my orthopedic doc that takes care of my arthritis. He couldn't believe that Dr W wouldn't prescribe anything stronger than relafen for my knee. So he gave me a prescription for Celebrex to see how that works for me. He did say that I'm looking at having my knee replaced some time in the near future. He told me that it would be 3 days in the hospital, then maybe a week in a nursing home. I told him I thought I could probably come home from the hospital, after all, we have a handicapped toilet and shower, I have a walker already, and I can sleep in my recliner until I can do the stairs to the bedroom in the basement. And there are no other stairs in the house that I would have to do right away, and no steps into the house. Best of all, my weight isn't even a concern for him as far as doing the surgery (is he an awesome doctor or what).
I also have an appointment next week with the gynecologist to check out the bleeding. Now that's been going on for 2 1/2 years, and started back when I was taking Cymbalta and relafen (and vaginal bleeding is a side effect of those two drugs interacting with each other). Even though I quit taking the Cymbalta 4 months ago, the bleeding didn't stop (it's been an on-and-off thing all this time and Dr W has never followed up on it since I first mentioned it to her, other than having me see the gynecologist 2 1/2 years ago for an endometrial biopsy, which came back negative). So, even though that biopsy was negative, and bleeding is a side effect of the 2 drugs I was taking, she's just sure I have endometrial cancer and need another biopsy done. Yeah, having one of those done is just so easy with a stenotic cervix (it hurts, let me tell you). But I'm having it done, just in case something has changed. And if the gyno recommends a hysterectomy, I'm demanding that it all come out, ovaries too, since ovarian cancer killed my mother and several other relatives on her side of the family. I'm not going to piss around with it, if he wants to take out part of it, it all comes out. I'm done taking advice that I don't think is good for me.

Letter to my ex-doctor

2010-11-24T16:36:00.003-06:00

I've had time to think since I walked out on my doctor on the 10th, and I composed a letter to her today. I'll be sending it to her on Friday. I don't expect a response from her, but I want her to know why I won't be coming back to see her anymore. The letter follows:

Re: Office visit Nov 10, 2010

Dr W,

I've had some time to think since I saw you on November 10th, and there are some things I think you need to hear. Since you don't seem to listen to me when I'm talking to you in person, maybe you'll listen to what I have to say when I'm putting it down in black and white and you can't interrupt me with your preconceived lipophobic ideas.

First of all, I have been fat for over 30 years of my life, and every doctor I've ever seen has told me that, like I'm stupid and can't tell that I'm fat.

Second – I've dieted and lost weight, that's not the hard part. The hard part is maintaining that weight loss, and that's where medical science, doctors, diets, drugs, and surgery have failed me (note: I'm not the one who failed here, I tried, it was the methods used that failed, not I that failed). In the end, all those methods of weight loss did nothing for me but make me fatter and worsen my health and well-being in the long run.

Third – You tell me that it's just a matter of eating less and moving more. Fine. I want to know how I'm supposed to exercise when I'm in excruciating pain after standing for less than 5 minutes or walking for less than 1 minute when you refuse to prescribe anything for pain that's stronger than relafen (which doesn't even begin to touch the pain I have).

Fourth – You say I probably have fibromyalgia, but you aren't willing to do anything to try and treat it. I asked for a referral to a rheumatologist, and you told me there was a 6-month wait, and I got no referral and I'm still in pain. You haven't suggested a pain clinic or anything but weight loss.

Fifth – You said you would send me to an in-patient weight loss clinic. You act like I don't have a life, that I can just up and leave my husband, my house, and my pets for a couple of months. My husband has type 2 diabetes and I'm the one who plans the meals and the grocery list to control his diabetes. I give him his insulin shots and I'm the one who knows how much he needs of each insulin. I also do the budget and pay all the bills for the household – my husband doesn't have a clue how to do any of that. I balance the checkbook online. If I'm gone for a month or more, there is no one to do any of that for him, but you seem to think that's fine, as long as I lose weight. No thank you, I'm not up for another failed diet attempt, been there done that too many times.

Sixth – Did you even realize the congnitive dissonance in your statement that you know that weight loss surgery doesn't work for everyone but you think that putting me on another diet will work? What part of “I had a VBG, lost weight, and gained back more than I lost”, which is definitely a plan with calorie deficit in mind, do you not understand? Why do you think that another diet will work when weight loss surgery didn't? Do you just keep pushing “calories in/out, eat less/move more” because you don't have any other ideas? Look up the study that Stunkard and McLaren-Hume did back in 1959 about the efficacy of weight loss diets. Look up the studies done by Kramer, et al, Stalonas, et al, and Graham, et al. Every one of those studies shows that diets don't work for at least 95% of people in the long term. The Stunkard study has been around for more than 50 years, probably longer than you've been alive, and you're still recommending something that doesn't work, along with most of the other doctors out there. Talk about insanity. If you don't have a solution that works better than a diet, then I suggest you don't push diets and focus more on what can be done to improve your patients' health. Are they eating a wide variety of foods, do they move their bodies in ways that they enjoy, are their numbers good? If the answers to all those questions are yes, then they don't need to lose weight, and you need to look for the real cause of whatever problem they're presenting to you instead of blaming it on their fat.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result every time. Sorry, I've stopped the insanity of dieting. Every time I've dieted, no matter what method I've used, it's failed. Why should I keep trying the same thing over and over again, when I have more than enough experience to know that, in the long run, it won't work? Have you ever had to diet to lose weight? And I'm not talking 5 or 10 pounds here, I'm talking 50 pounds or more. If you haven't had to lose that much weight and try to keep it off forever, you don't know what you're talking about when you say it's calories in/calories out, eat less/exercise more. I don't care that you're a doctor and went to medical school, you haven't lived it so you don't know what it's like to be called a liar and told that your experiences don't matter or aren't real.

When this is what one hears from doctors one's entire life, is it any wonder that one gets fed up and says “No more, I've had enough!” and walks out? This is why I hadn't been to a doctor for so many years when I first came to see you, and it's why I won't be back to see you again. I'm tired of being discounted and told that if I would just lose weight, all my problems would magically disappear.
Been there done that, and guess what? I was still in pain.

Sincerely,

M W

ETA: I added some information about studies to item 6 in the letter, and changed it from probably won't be back to see her to won't be back to see her before I printed and sent the letter to my ex-doctor.

My doctor sucks and is no longer my doctor

2010-11-10T12:18:00.004-06:00

Well, I made an appointment to see Dr W today and ended up walking out before it was over. I went to see her because I've been having vaginal bleeding, off and on, for the last 2 1/2 years. I saw the clinic's gynecologist 2 1/2 years ago when the bleeding first started, after the dildo cam couldn't find anything. The gynecologist didn't find anything either when he did the endometrial biopsy.
I've been taking Relafen for arthritis pain, and Cymbalta for depression/fibromyalgia for almost 3 years, and last week I googled drug interactions for those 2 particular drugs. Guess what one of the side effects is? Vaginal bleeding. Now, I quit taking the Cymbalta about 4 months ago because of the side effects it has on one's sex drive (and most antidepressants will kill your sex drive, so you get to choose between being depressed and having sex, or not being depressed and not feeling like having sex - some choice). But the vaginal bleeding, off and on, didn't stop. So I googled Relafen and side effects from it, and vaginal bleeding is one of them (granted, it's not a common side effect, but it does happen).
So I go in and tell my doctor all this, and what does she say? "I don't think the relafen is causing the bleeding, I think you need to see the gynecologist for another endometrial biopsy to rule out endometrial cancer." I ask her about the fact that the gyno said my cervix was stenotic, and she said that's not a factor, that I could still be bleeding from my uterus (all this without doing an exam). I told her that I had stopped taking the relafen, and hadn't been taking any NSAIDs that acted as blood thinners because of the bleeding, and would she prescribe something else for the arthritis pain. That I was tired of being in pain all the time and the relafen just wasn't working all that well. She said she wouldn't prescribe narcotics - I wasn't fucking asking for narcotics, I was asking for something that worked better than relafen or ibuprofen and she wouldn't even consider anything else. She said maybe it was time to see the orthopaedist again and see what he had to say about my knee if the cortisone shots and Syn-Visc shots weren't working, maybe he needs to scope my knee. WTFE, I'll make an appointment with him and see what he'll prescribe for the pain, he may be more reasonable than she is (he usually is pretty good, and doesn't seem to be fat-phobic).
So I asked her about the fibromyalgia pain too. I told her my body felt like one big bruise and that it hurt for the cat to walk across my legs, and that shouldn't hurt (granted, Marty is a 15 lb cat, but still). That I was tired of being in pain all the time. By this time, I was in tears, because she was basically ignoring anything I had to say, like I didn't know my own body, and didn't know what I was talking about. She said that I could get mad at her, but my weight was causing a lot of my pain and if I would just lose weight, the pain would go away. I asked her what more I was supposed to do - diets hadn't worked, phen-fen hadn't worked, and the WLS hadn't worked. I want to know since when has it been that being fat caused fibromyalgia and arthritis? If being fat causes those diseases, then why do thin people get them?
She said she'd send me to an in-patient program to lose weight, and I lost it. I said "I've had it, I'm done with this." I got up and walked out and I'm not going back to see her ever again. I'm done being blown off and treated like a child who doesn't know shit from shinola. She doesn't seem to give a shit that I'm in pain all the damned time, all she sees is a fat woman who refuses to diet and get thin to suit her idea of "healthy" (BTW, my blood pressure was 124/67 this morning and my weight was the same as it has been for the last 3 years). So fuck her and the horse she rode in on and the fleas that rode in on it. I'm looking for a new doctor and she can take her "healthist" attitude and shove it up her ass.

ETA: For the privilege of being treated like a child and having my concerns blown off, and being told that if I'd just lose weight my pain would go away, my insurance is being charged $135.00 (and we wonder why health care is so expensive.....)

That's it, I'm fucking done with this shit.

2010-10-17T11:24:00.004-05:00

Edited to add: If anyone on the Illinois side of the family is reading this, don't take it out on my son. He has nothing to do with this, my opinions are not his opinions, and he has no say over what I publish on my blog. And really, family, get over yourselves already. You've got your knickers all in a knot over what I post on my blog because you think everyone in Pana is reading my blog and they'll know all the family dirty laundry. Do you really think our family is all that interesting? Only if you're in love with soap operas. As for all the shit that went down when I was a kid, I'm sorry, but it was known among the people who knew Mom how she treated me. How do I know this? When I was an adult, I don't know how many people came up to me and told me it was a shame that my mother abused me (these were people who babysat us kids, were neighbors, etc). So anything I've posted on here about Mom is old news. Get over it already.

I tried to call my aunt today because I was told she was mad at me, about the shit that went down with my niece. Well, she only has my niece's side of the story and I wanted to tell her my side of the story.
I hadn't said anything to her about any of this bullshit because she was in the hospital recuperating from the accident and I figured she didn't need to deal with family drama on top of everything else. But no, my niece had to stir a turd and go tell my aunt her side of the story and make me out to be the big bad bitch, saying I told everyone in the town where they live all the family dirty laundry. Supposedly all of this was posted on Facebook (my niece unfriended me, BTW).
My niece was the first one to post anything on Facebook, in a passive aggressive way, about me duping her (because I'm not devastated by my mother's death). All I said on Facebook was that she was talking about me, that she didn't really want to go there on Facebook, and if she did, I would air the dirty laundry there. That if she wanted to cut me out of her life, to go ahead and do it, that I had lived without her in my life for 17 years, I could live without her in my life for the rest of my life. That anyone who knew my mother (her precious grandmother) knew how she was and wouldn't be surprised by anything I had to say. Or words to that effect. But I did not air any dirty laundry on Facebook at that time.
So I called my aunt today to talk to her about all this shit. All I got to hear from her was how disappointed she was in me, that they had to live in that town. When I told her Traci started the shit on Facebook, she hung up on me. This is the aunt that stuck up for me against my mother, says she loves me, but won't listen to my side of the story. I guess I'm supposed to forget 40 years of abuse like it never happened, let my niece take over abusing me where my mother left off, and not say a word about it. Well fuck that shit. I worked too goddamned hard to get away from that kind of abuse and find my self-esteem and I'll be damned if I'm going back to it.
I cut my mother out of my life because of her abuse of me, and NONE of my family gave enough of a shit about me to call me or look for me or write to me, not even my aunt, when I left Illinois 17 years ago. If I want contact with my aunt, I have to call her, even though she's had my phone number for years (every time my phone number changes, I call her with the new number). In 17 years, I can count on the fingers of ONE fucking hand, with fingers left over, how many times she's called me. As for the rest of the family, they've never called me (well, Traci called to tell me Mom had died, BFD). They called a couple of times to let me know how Dad was doing after the accident, now I hear nothing from them about how he's doing because they're all pissed off at me over what I said to Traci (my niece). I'm sorry, if the truth about my mother hurts, TOUGH SHIT, BITCHES! I had to live through that shit for 40 fucking years, none of them have the right to tell me I can't talk about it on my blog or anywhere else, for that matter; none of them lived through it, none of them know what it was like. It just happens to be common knowledge in that town that my mother was a bitch and abused me when I was a kid - if they want to hide their heads in the sand about it and think it's forgotten, well, sorry, everybody else might have forgotten it, but it's something I'll never forget and I don't think it's something I'll ever get over, no matter how hard I try (and believe me, if 10 years of therapy couldn't do it, I don't think anything can).
So you know what, family? You can all SHUT THE FUCK UP! You don't really give a shit about me, you never have and you aren't going to convince me otherwise. The only person in the family in Illinois that I care about now is my dad, the rest of you can do whatever you want. I have my family up here and they're all I need now. I thought I needed you guys in my life, but I don't need more abuse and more bullshit. If you can't face facts, and want to think everything has always been fine and dandy, then go for it. But I know what the truth is, I've faced it, and I'm trying to deal with it, and most of the time, I deal with it just fine - until I run into people who deny the reality of my existence. Well, get over it. It was real, it happened, and I'm going to continue to talk about it.
You think these things need to be hidden and kept quiet so that no one knows, because it shames you. You should be ashamed, you let it happen and didn't do a damned thing to stop it. For years I thought I deserved the abuse, that there was something wrong with me, that I wasn't good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough, whatever enough. That if I could just change, the abuse would stop. Yeah, right. It wasn't something wrong with me, it was something wrong with the person who was abusing me.
The more people speak out about abuse, the more people who are being abused will know that it's not something they deserve to have happen to them. Then maybe people who are being abused will find the strength somewhere to leave their abusers, get help, and find a way to make a joyful life for themselves. You seem to think I'm blogging about this to make your lives hell, but really, I think about your lives just about as much as you think about mine - in other words - not at all.
And you know, it just hit me, I think y'all just might be a bit jealous. I left Illinois 17 years ago and made a life for myself and basically told Mom to fuck off. You all stayed there and kept kissing her ass so she wouldn't treat you the way she treated me. That's really a sorry way to have to live your life. And when she was dying, and you knew she was dying, you kept right on kissing her ass. You all kept asking her if you should call me and let me know that she was dying and she said "What for?" Even though you all thought I should be there, or at least be told, NONE of you had the balls to go against her and call me until she was dead. WTF could she have done to you if you had called me against her wishes? You didn't have to tell her you had called. Did you really think I would have come down there? And if I came down there, did you really think I would have made a scene? Come on, you can give me more credit than that. I might be a bitch, but I'm not that big a bitch. If I had come down there and she had said she didn't want to see me, or had said anything nasty to me, I would have said "Sorry you feel that way" and walked out. I tried twice to make up with her, and she wasn't having any part of it, so why would this time have been any different? And why would I have made things hard on Dad? Making a scene with her would have made things hard on him and I have no reason to do that to him. Which is why I was civil to everyone at the memorial service. Yeah, it would have looked real good if I had gone around singing "Ding dong, the witch is dead" wouldn't it? You all said it was so great to have me back in the family, but you want me back in the family on your terms, which means I have to toe the line just like I did when Mom was alive. Sorry, I quit toeing that line 17 years ago, and I'm not going to start toeing it again just to be part of a family that never really wanted me in the first place.

All I ever wanted.....

2010-09-23T22:08:00.002-05:00

Ya know, all I ever wanted was to fit in. To be accepted and loved for who I was, to be viewed as a worthwhile person, in spite of my flaws. And I do have flaws, boy, do I have flaws. I wish I didn't, but some of those flaws are not my fault, they're the result of things that were done to me as a child, and later on as a teenager and an adult. It's water under the bridge and can't be changed. I don't know if I'll ever be able to completely let go of the anger and pain - it seems that every time I have, something happens to bring it all back again (and maybe I hadn't let it go, maybe I'd just buried it).
But, I've never felt like I've fit in anywhere, and I've always felt like the odd man out in any setting I've ever been in. There's a saying that family has to take you in when no one else will. That's true, in a way. It may not be the family you're born into, it may be the family you've built for yourself through friendships and marriage (and sometimes, that family is closer than the family you were born into).
I'm going to consider myself lucky that I have my dad back in my life, I've had my aunt in my life for quite a few years now, and I'm getting to know my cousin again. I think they accept me for who I am and love me anyway (at least I hope they do, I know I love them, a lot). And I'm certainly lucky to have my husband. He loves me just the way I am and accepts me, flaws and all, and I love him, flaws and all. I have my son in my life and I love him and his wife, too. I have grandkids in my life and I love them and they love me. So I guess I've finally found that place where I fit in and am loved and accepted by the ones who really matter to me. It's not completely the family I was born into, it's partly my birth family and partly the family I've made for myself, but it's mine and it's where I fit, finally.

Taking charge of my health - in spite of my doctor

2010-09-01T12:41:00.002-05:00

Got home from vacation last week - went to see my dad in Illinois and caught up on family news. Also found out more about our family health history, and what I learned didn't make me happy with my doctor.
Now, Dr W knows that my paternal grandfather had thyroid cancer and my mother had hypothyroid problems. She knows my thyroid is enlarged and I have several nodules. What tests has she ordered to check my thyroid function? TSH and that's it - she thinks that's the only one that's necessary, even with the family history she has and the results of the thyroid ultrasound scan. I've been trying to get Dr W to do further testing of my thyroid, but she says it's not needed right now, my TSH levels aren't high enough (at 3.5, I think she said). So I decided, fuck her, I'm going to find an endocrinologist and get this checked out on my own. Well, guess what - can't do that. Have to have a referral from Dr W. So I called and set up the appointment with her for next week to tell her I want a referral to this certain endocrinologist (who is taking new patients and takes TriCare and Medicare, thank Maude, I love my Google-fu). She's going to have order a pre-T3, pre-T4, and another TSH. Then she's going to have to fax the results of those, my demographics, any progress notes, and my thyroid scan to the endo. I have a feeling Dr W is not going to be happy about that, but I don't really give a rat's ass. It's my health she's pissing around with, and I don't want to end up like my grandfather - 85 years old, with thyroid cancer so advanced that it can't all be removed because if they took it all, he wouldn't be able to talk or swallow. He was told afterward that even with chemo, he only had 3 - 5 months to live (he fooled them, he stuck around for another 5 years).
So, I also found out that my maternal grandmother had to have B-12 injections, as did one of her sons and my mother (yeah, that's good news for me, what with having had WLS....NOT). Lovely news, that. Luckily for me, I've been taking sublingual B-12 for the last 6 months or so, hoping it would help with fibromyalgia symptoms, so hopefully that will help.
Then, I was reading on the Yahoo support group for WLS survivors that some of us are ending up with MS after 10 to 15 years or so. Just what I needed to hear, especially since my neurologist had brought that possibility up last year when I had the MRI done for my migraines - she found a couple of lesions that could mean MS and wanted to do another MRI in a year to see if there was any progression. Well, it's been more than a year, I think (I've slept at least a couple of times since then, and my memory just isn't the greatest when it comes to what happened when anymore). Since I have to see her next month after I have the EMG to see why the carpal tunnel surgery didn't solve the problem of the numbness in my right hand, I'll ask her about it then.
I keep telling myself that I don't have it as bad as other survivors of WLS, that I don't have as many of the debilitating complications as they have - but I tell you what, if I had had any idea of how fucked up our family medical history is and what the real complications of WLS are (the ones that they don't tell you about when they're getting you to sign on the dotted line for having the damned surgery), I would have told my nurse practitioner to stick it in her ass. That I'd stay fat and suffer with fucked up knees and fight to get them replaced when necessary instead of having to deal with all the shit I'm having to deal with now.

Roaman's latest catalog has 2 pages of FAIL!

2010-08-13T20:19:00.004-05:00

I got Roaman's latest catalog in the mail today, the one that expires 10/1/10. There is a section in it for plus+ size living presented by Brylane Home. Now that's all well and good. There's a lot of good stuff in there - chairs that will support up to 500 lbs, wider hangers for clothing, fanny packs that fit up 72" waists - you get the idea. I don't have a problem with any of that. It's a good idea, and I can deal with that and might even order some of the stuff one of these days, if I have a need for any of it. What chaps my ass though, are the two pages devoted to kitchen items from Biggest Loser (yeah, the TV program that hates fat people and wants to do away with us). WTF is up with that, Roaman's! I mean, really. You're marketing plus-size clothing to fat women and you have the unmitigated gall to throw in diet apparatus from Biggest Loser in your clothing catalog? Ya know, as much as I like your denim boot cut leggings, I can get them at Woman Within, in the same colors and same sizes, for the same fucking price, and not have to deal with looking at shit merchandise from Biggest Loser, a show that hates fat people and wants to make us disappear, and treats us like shit.
I'm seriously considering not buying from you anymore.

ETA: I went to Roaman's website and found their Contact Us form. I contacted them all right. Below is a copy of what I had to say to them on their contact form:

I received a catalog from you, expiration date of 10/1/10, with a section of plus size living presented by Brylane Home. I don't have a problem with that. The problem I have is with the 2 pages of products that are The Biggest Loser (TM) branded items.
I don't watch that show because of the way they treat fat people - the disrespect, the unsafe dietary practices, and the over-exercising that they recommend for weight loss, all of which are unsustainable in the long run and can do damage to one's body, not to mention to one's mental and emotional health. This is a program that hates fat people, wants us to disappear, and you're putting their products in your catalog of clothing for fat women (and yes, I identify as a fat woman, I'm not "plus size" or any other euphemism, I'm fat, it's a descriptive word, not a pejorative word). That is so many kinds of wrong, I can't even begin to list them all.
I buy all of my boot cut leggings from you because I like the quality, the fit, and the price. But, since you are going to have The Biggest Loser (TM) merchandise in your catalog, I'll have to find those leggings elsewhere. I refuse to patronize a retailer who has so little regard for its target demographic.

I'll update this if I hear anything back from Roaman's.

Fat & Happy = Enjoy Being Fat?

2010-07-19T23:01:00.002-05:00

I'm having a discussion, so to speak, with a person on Facebook about WLS. She thinks getting a lap-band is safe as long you've done all the research and follow all the surgeon's directions for "lifestyle" changes.
Personally, I don't think any WLS is safe, no matter how much research you've done, no matter how well you follow the surgeon's directions for lifestyle changes. I said that until they come up with a way to make fat people thin that has no negative side effects and doesn't kill people, I would stay fat, healthy, and happy and continue to live my life in spite of everyone who tells me that I can't do that until I get thin.
Then she comes back and says that knives kill - am I going to stop using knives? I told her: Analogy FAIL! Knives also have other fundamental uses that don't kill when used properly. WLS surgery, even when used "properly" still kills people, and doesn't work as it's intended to work - make fat people thin. Bottom line - if you're willing to risk death on maybe getting thin, then I'm not going to tell you that you can't do it (your body/your choice), but like I said, don't come crying to me when the surgery fails you and the surgeon blames you for the failure (and believe me, it will happen, it has happened too many times in the past and will continue to happen too many times in the future as long as people keep buying into the fantasy that they can't have a life until they get thin). You can talk until you're blue in the face and you'll never convince me that WLS of any kind is a good idea - been there done that, got the t-shirt/hat/keychain/poster, thank you very much.
Then she says: Okay. You'll stay fat. That's fine. Some people don't enjoy being fat. Besides, a lot of surgeries kill people. I'm sure WLS doesn't kill anymore people than the average surgery does.
*headdesk*
My response:"How many other surgeries have a 2% mortality rate within the first month after surgery? How many other surgeries have a 20% mortality rate 5 - 10 years after surgery? None that I know of that are elective (and WLS is elective, it's not a surgery that's immediately necessary to save a life) and done on otherwise healthy people (and in spite of what has been said, most people who have WLS are, for the most part, healthy, they're just fat and their doctors refuse to look beyond the fat for any other cause of any problems those fat people may be having)."
I never said I enjoy being fat - I said that until there's a way to make fat people thin that has no bad side effects and doesn't kill fat people, I'll stay fat, healthy, and happy (what, I should be miserable until I can get thin? Yeah, right, ain't happening). I'll continue to live my life in spite of everyone who tells me I should give up and hide until I meet some arbitrary ideal aesthetic. Nope, I'm going to keep on being fat at the world and if the world doesn't like it, tough cookies. If more fat people had my attitude, there would be a lot less overt fat bigotry in the world because the bigots would be afraid to open their mouths.
Now, maybe being fat, healthy, happy, and living my life being fat at the world might mean to some that I do enjoy being fat. Maybe it really means that I have farther to travel on the road to size acceptance than I thought. Maybe it means I'm making the best of my life as it is, with the body I have (even though it's not the body I'd like to have). I don't know.................

Please sign the petition to stop fat hatred on Facebook

2010-07-13T10:18:00.002-05:00

If you haven't seen the petition to stop fat hatred on Facebook on another blog, it's on the sidebar here. Please sign it and help us get Facebook to put a stop to all the groups promoting hate speech against fat women (and men, but they're mainly going after women).
Atchka, of Fierce, Freethinking Fatties, started this campaign. One group has disappeared from FB, but there are over 300 more, and some of those groups have over 100,000 members. That's a lot of hate, folks, and it carries over into the real world. We've all had to deal with the haters in our lives, and I agree with Atchka - it's time to draw a line in the sand and say "This is unacceptable and intolerable and we're not going to take it anymore."
FFF also has some great ideas on Guerrilla Activism (and if you check out that link, you'll find a couple of other posts that have some good ideas, too).

Dear Abby misses it again - as usual when it comes to fat

2010-07-10T10:26:00.002-05:00

I just had to take Dear Abby to task today over advice she gave to a woman who wrote asking what to tell a patient who asked if she was "happy with the way I have let myself go." Letter-writer had been dealing with her mother's cancer over the period of 2 years and her mother had recently died. LW works in a medical office, and sees patients as often as every 3 months or as seldom as once a year.
Naturally, dealing with the stress of her mother's illness and death, her weight has fluctuated in that time. She asked Abby how to deal with the comments about her weight.
Abby's advice?

I see no reason why, if someone is so insensitive as to mention your weight, you shouldn't let the person have the truth with both barrels. If that doesn't shame him or her into an apology, nothing will. However, because you prefer to conceal it, try this response: "You know, I gained this weight the old-fashioned way -- one bite at a time, and that's the way it'll have to come off."

No, no, and hell, no!!! My response to Abby follows (yeah, I wrote her a letter):

Dear Abby,
This is about Impatient with My Patients In Rhode Island from July 10, 2010, who gained weight when her mother was sick and dying/died of cancer. Your answer - that she should tell people who commented on her weight gain that the weight would come off just like it came on - one bite at a time - is less than stellar. Since when is it anyone's business whether Impatient is happy with her weight or not? Your answer perpetuates the myth that others have the right to comment on anyone's body, which is definitely not so (her body, her business).
How she gained the weight is no one's business, and whether she intends to lose it or not is no one's business. A much better reply would have been for her to say "Why do you want to know?" accompanied by a cold stare. That puts the onus back on the asker, and usually makes them feel like a fool for asking a question that is none of their business (which they rightly should feel).
You're also assuming that Impatient gained the weight by overeating, which may not necessarily be so. If she was under a great deal of stress dealing with her mother's illness and death, that can wreak havoc with one's metabolism, which can cause fluctuations in weight without a change in eating habits (so you perpetuated a stereotype, thanks a lot....NOT).
You really need to educate yourself about Health At Every Size and Fat/Size Acceptance if you're going to give advice to fat people. Perpetuating stereotypes and body-shaming is not the way to help fat people deal with a fat-phobic world (and even those who are not-so-fat but have put on few pounds for whatever reason).
Sincerely,
Fat and Proud in MN

Need to vent - extended family sucks!

2010-06-25T00:59:00.003-05:00

Right now, I don't care if DH's ex-family reads this or not. I'm so pissed off at most of them that I could spit nails.

Some background info - One of DH's stepsons (K) is married, but legally separated from his wife (J). They have 2 girls (aged 10 and 11 years). K and J were in the process of getting a divorce, K had a girlfriend, J has a boyfriend, so both of them were moving on with their lives.

K got sick, ended up in the hospital, and it's serious. He's been diagnosed with ADEM, which is a brain infection (acute disseminated encephalomyelitis). Treatment for it is either steroids (he can't take those, he's allergic) or blood transfusions and plasma infusions. The doctors have said his recovery could take 2 to 5 years and they don't expect him to make a full recovery (so the divorce is on hold for now).

Right now, he's in the nursing home attached to our local hospital. He can't walk on his own (one side of his body is very weak), and he can't communicate other than to say yes, no, what, really, and fuck you. And those aren't always said in the appropriate circumstances. He can't even write his name or anything else right now.

So why does this whole situation have me so pissed off? His wife is doing everything she can to make sure that he's taken care of properly, and is signing over all rights for his medical power of attorney to his oldest brother (B), so that the rest of the family can't say that she's taking advantage of K's vulnerability. What's the rest of the family doing? Well, for people who didn't do much visiting with K when he was well, they're really concerned about him now, but not so concerned that any of them are willing to step up to the plate and take care of his bills or offer to take him in and take care of him (other than the 2 oldest brothers). All they can do is bitch about how they don't trust his wife to handle the money from the up-coming benefit (that her friends are setting up) for K, and if she has access to that account, some of them refuse to contribute. This is in spite of the fact that, even though they are legally separated, she has to carry him on her health insurance at her place of employment. Which means she has to pay premiums and co-pays out of her paycheck. She's signed K up for SSDI, but the nursing home will take all of that. But evidently K's family don't think that J is entitled to take any money donated at the benefit to cover co-pays on K's medical bills.

All this backstabbing and bitching is going on on Facebook, and since DH and I have friended most of them (well, all but his ex-wife, K's mom, I was friends with her on FB and she unfriended me, now all of a sudden, since K is in the nursing home in our town and we can go see him more often than anyone else, she wants to be friends again), this shit shows up on my wall every fucking day. I keep telling myself, stay out of it, you aren't related to any of them, you don't owe any of them anything.

The thing is, J and I get along, K and DH get along, and whatever happened in their marriage is between them, none of my business (yeah, J and I talked about their problems, and I told her "do what's best for you and the girls and don't worry about what anyone else thinks, they don't have to live your life, you do").

I told K's twin sister in a FB message (she tried to drag me into the fighting) that none of them should care who is doing what for K, as long as it gets done, and it's in K's best interest. But I don't think any of them are really thinking about K at all. If they were, they wouldn't be posting this shit on Facebook for him to see, and he will see it when he gets better. They aren't taking into consideration how he's going to feel when he reads the shit they've said about his wife, especially after all she's been doing for him, nor are they thinking about how he's going feel about seeing the pictures they've taken of him while he's sick and they've posted on FB. All they're thinking about is how this affects them, they don't care how it's affecting J or K or their daughters.

But DH and I will be there for J, K, and the girls - the rest of the family can go fuck themselves for all I care. And I thought my family had problems..............

I like this doctor (humor)

2010-06-10T18:08:00.001-05:00

His practice has no room for new patients! (Gee, I wonder why that would be? vesta44)

Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Heart only good for so many beats, and that it... Don't waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speed up heart not make live longer; that like say you can extend life of car by driving faster. Want live longer? Take nap.
Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does cow eat? Hay and corn. What are these? Vegetables. So, steak nothing more than efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And pork chop can give 100% recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.
Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine. That means they take water out of fruity bit; get even more of goodness that way. Beer also made out of grain. Bottoms up!
Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: If you have body and you have fat, ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, ratio is two to one, etc.
Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Cannot think of single one, sorry.. My philosophy: No Pain....Good!
Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU NOT LISTENING!!! ...... Foods fried in vegetable oil. How getting more vegetables be bad for you?
Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You should only do sit-ups if want bigger stomach.
Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: You crazy? HELLO ... Cocoa beans! Vegetable!!! Cocoa beans best feel-good food around!
Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming good for figure, explain whales to me.
Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' is shape!
Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.
AND.....
For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies:
1. The Japanese eat very little fat
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans..
2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans..
3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans..
4 The Italians drink a lot of red wine
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans...
5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats
And suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans..
CONCLUSION.....
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Maxine has done it again.......

2010-06-10T17:31:00.004-05:00

Senior health care solution--according to Maxine

So you're a senior citizen and the government says no health care for you, what do you do?

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives (no one says you have to kill them, wounding is preferable). Of Course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head, and all the health care you need! New teeth, no problem. Need glasses, great. New hip, knees, kidney, lungs, heart? All covered.

And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you that you are too old for health care. Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.

IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT?!

My aunt sent me this quite a while ago, and I just got around to posting it.

Size-Acceptance Study - Call for participants

2010-06-08T15:59:00.002-05:00

This is a request I received and I'm posting it for anyone who is interested in participating.

Hi, my name is Michaela A. Null, and I am a doctoral student in Sociology at
Purdue University. I am doing a study about the embodiment of size-accepting fat
women, with attention to the ways in which gender, race, sexual orientation, and
body size intersect.

I am currently looking for individuals who are interested in volunteering to
participate in my study. If you are interested in volunteering to participate in
an interview, I ask that take an electronic informational survey, which will
take approximately 5 minutes. Please go here and complete the informational survey. After all survey data has been collected, participants will be selected for interviews, which will be conducted in-person, by phone, or via internet chat, and will last between an hour and an hour and a half.

Participation is voluntary and participants must be at least 18 years old.

This project has been approved by my university’s Institutional Review Board,
which protects human subjects of research. I will provide confidentiality to all
volunteers and participants will be referred to by a pseudonym in all research
documents.

If you have any questions regarding this study, you can contact me at
mnull@purdue.edu. For more information on me, you can access my university
profile here [http://www.cla.purdue.edu/sociology/directory/?p=Michaela_Null].
You can also contact Professor Eugene Jackson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
at Purdue University, at jacksone@purdue.edu.

Sincerely,

Michaela A. Null, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, Purdue University

Fat Cat going blind

2010-06-03T15:37:00.002-05:00

Took Fat Cat to the vet today to have his vision checked. He hasn't been coming downstairs at night to sleep with us like he usually does, and he's been wandering around the house, making this pitiful meowing sound. Then he sits and stares off into space. He's also not jumping on the furniture like he used to, and he's been spending most of his time under my computer desk, between my feet.

We also think he's losing his hearing, since he doesn't come when he's called either (not that he always came when he was called before). The vet had his assistant bang a couple of metal food dishes together and Fat Cat didn't even flinch or turn toward her at the sound. And when he was put down on the floor in the exam room, he didn't want to move from where he was set down. When he finally did move, he walked slower than normal and almost walked into the walls and the cabinet (his whiskers stopped him in time to keep him from bumping his nose).

So it looks like we won't be re-arranging furniture or moving the cat dishes or the litter box from now on. Fat Cat can navigate the house right now because nothing has changed in it since he started losing his sight (and I think this has been happening gradually for about 6 months or so, now that I look back his actions over that time).

In the time since we've had Marty, Fat Cat has gone from 14 lbs to 11 lbs, so he's not such a Fat Cat anymore (I've been calling him our not-so-Fat-Cat). We've started feeding him canned cat food since he doesn't seem to be getting enough calories from the weight and hairball control Iams we've been feeding both the cats. The vet said that at Fat Cat's age (he's 10 or 11 years old), it's not unusual for an in-bred cat to lose hearing and eyesight. He did say that we should keep an eye on him to see if he has any unusual head twitches, or starts walking in circles (like he's being pulled to one side instead of walking in a straight line). I guess those are either signs of a stroke or brain damage (which he doesn't have right now, thank maude).

He's still eating pretty good, and drinking plenty of water, and using the litter box, so that's all good. And he still likes catnip, and was just playing with the catnip twitter bird that I got for him and Marty with our Pounce treat points (hey, if I'm buying them treats anyway, and the points will get them a free toy, why not?).

Gullibility - I can't believe he believed my husband.

2010-05-25T18:34:00.002-05:00

My husband was talking to one of his co-workers about his knee replacement the other day. Co-worker wanted to know how knee replacements were done. DH told him they cut the knee apart, shave part of the bone off and screw in replacement parts to the top bone and bottom bone in the leg. Co-worker wanted to know how that was working for DH. DH said fine, except that they ran out of screws when it came time to screw in the part for the top bone, so they had to duct-tape it in. C-W asked if the duct tape hurt, DH said no, it was special duct tape, made just for that eventuality. C-W wanted to know if they were going to cut his knee back open and put screws back in when they got more. DH said hell no, one surgery was plenty for him, and the duct tape was working just fine.
DH came home and told me this story and I was rolling in the floor, laughing so hard. I can't believe someone would actually believe that (but I can believe that my husband is such a bullshitter that he would say something like that)! To top it all off, DH came home from work Sunday and said that the co-worker had asked him again how the duct tape was holding up on his knee. I'm trying to decide if he really believes DH or if he's pulling DH's leg now.

Swimsuit review: Junonia

2010-04-29T11:58:00.002-05:00

I ordered a new swimsuit from Junonia, and being the first time I ordered from them, I ordered a 4X. It fit fine everywhere except the bust (it squished the rack of doom something awful). So I called to return it and make sure it was available in a 6X in the color I wanted (turquoise, this one). Well, they only had the turquoise one in black in a 6X, so I ended up ordering this one instead. It was $20 more, and I had to pay return shipping on the one I returned to exchange, but it was so worth it.
I returned the turquoise one last week, and the black and hot pink one came today. I can tell you right now that I'll never order another swimsuit from anyone else ever again. When it comes to swimsuits, Junonia has all of my business forever, or as long as they're making swimsuits in my size. This is the first time I've ever had a swimsuit that the bra part of it actually fit the rack of doom and gave it support. The suit is easy to get in and out of, and it actually looks pretty good on me (I think I look good in it, which is saying something for me, I don't usually think that about swimsuits). The only thing that could be improved is that it's just a bit long in the torso for me, but I'm willing to deal with that for the way the rest of the suit fits so well.
I hated to spend that amount of money on a swimsuit, but now that I have the suit and have tried it on and compared it to every other less expensive swimsuit I've ever owned, it's well worth the $109.95 plus shipping that I paid for it (DH thinks so too, he likes the way I look in it).
If you're looking for a swimsuit, and have a rack of doom and are fat to boot, Junonia is the place to go. I can't recommend them enough (and no, I'm not getting anything from them for saying this).

Carpal tunnel surgery results

2010-04-18T22:13:00.002-05:00

Well, I had my carpal tunnel surgery on February 5th, stitches came out 10 days later, and my hand is still numb. Doctor says it could take as long as 6 months for the numbness to go away, and I could still end up with some numbness all the time. I've never seen carpal tunnel surgery done where mine was done on my hand. I have an incision that's 1.5" long and starts at the heel of my hand, just above my wrist, and runs into the palm of my hand (I always thought it was done more in the wrist than in the hand). My hand is still sore on either side of the incision whenever I put any pressure on it, and when I was making some of the new curtains for the living room this weekend, it felt like it was burning under the incision (I think from the pressure of using the iron to press the hems/casings on the curtains).
I only did 4 panels, I still have 12 more to go. My hand is going to be killing me if I don't take it easy. I think what I may have to do is plan on pressing and sewing 2 panels a day, and doing them every other day in order to give my hand a chance to rest. It's not the sewing that bothered me so much, it was the ironing that did me in, putting enough pressure on the iron to get the wrinkles out of the fabric and making sure the hems and casings were pressed in crisply.
I did see the neurologist last week, and she wants to do another EMG in September to see how that nerve is healing (and she wants to check the ulnar nerve in my left arm, I told her I had damage to it from 15 years ago that nothing had ever been done about). So yay, I get to have two EMGs done in September.
I'm going to do what she said, and keep wearing my wrist brace at night and when I'm driving long distances (more than 30 miles or so). The doctor who did the surgery said I didn't need to wear it anymore, but he's an orthopedist, not a neurologist, so I'm going to go by what the neurologist says.

Muve Gruve to help fight "obesity"

2010-04-15T14:44:00.003-05:00

This doesn't surprise me at all, but I think it's probably going to be a waste of $835,000. And I'm sorry, but that name is just too cutesy (barf!).

Muve, a company created by Dr. James Levine of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, is moving ahead with more research funded by a $835,000 federal grant.
The goal? Strengthen the company's battle against the U.S. obesity epidemic. More that 72 million U.S. adults are considered obese.
"People who are overweight and obese need real support, real solutions," said Muve COO Jim Meyer, who wrote the application for the grant with Dr. Levine about 1 1/2 years ago. "We try to make it simple and to make meaningful. This research will help with that."

I can give you some hints on the real support and real solutions we fat people need, and none of them are tied to weight loss (but they are tied to improvement in health). How about making access to fresh/frozen fruits and veggies easier/cheaper for everyone? How about making safe places for everyone to get out and play/walk/bike? How about making sure everyone has enough income and time to prepare meals from scratch instead of having to rely on processed foods? Oh, those won't make fat people thinner, they'll just make them healthier, and healthier isn't the real goal here, is it?

The Gruve is a small iPod-like electronic device worn by people to track their daily calorie burn using activity sensors backed up by Dr. Levine's research. Going through the Muve process, individuals set a daily calorie usage goal to hit a targeted weight loss and health standard.

Yep, here we go again with the calories in/out bullshit = weightloss = health. EPIC FAIL, people, need I say more?

The first phases of the research will focus on the Gruve's performance as an anti-obesity tool, Meyer said. The later phases will explore additional versions of Gruve, possibly targeted at different age groups.

How long is this research going to last and how long is the follow-up going to be on the people who use this contraption to lose weight? What do you want to bet it's not going to be near long enough to find out that people who lost weight using this also started gaining weight back even though they kept using it the way they were instructed?

"We are thinking about doing a product for adolescents that we're loosely calling a Gruve Jr.," Meyer said. "And on other end of the spectrum, we want to research the possibility of a Gruve Sr."

I don't even want to think what the branding on these will look like.

Levine and others formed Muve in 2007 to create the Gruve using a system developed at Mayo Clinic based on the theory that small but steady movement can combat weight loss caused by the modern sedentary lifestyle.
Mayo Clinic and Dr. Levine have a financial interest in technology licensed to Muve. Mayo also holds an equity position in the company.

Follow the money, folks, they want in on the billions of dollars spent on weight loss products and WLS just isn't cutting it anymore (pun fully intended).

While Muve does sell to directly to consumers through its Web site, the majority of its sales are done now through corporate programs, with companies buying or partially funding the purchase of Gruves for employees.

Gee, think they want to get insurance companies to pay for these things too? Another way to get more money for something that doesn't really work long-term.

Overall, Meyer says that he believes the society's position on obesity is reaching the point that it was at with smoking 20 years, 25 years ago.
"People are started to get that obesity is hurting everybody."

Um, no, my fat isn't hurting my kids or my grandkids or the next-door neighbor or the guy sitting next to me at the bar like second-hand smoke does, thank you very much. My fat isn't causing disease (it can be correlated, but that is NOT causation).
I'm sorry, but fat is not the next "health war" that needs to be fought. If you want to fight a health war, fight for affordable access to health care for everyone.

The role of fat in brain evolution

2010-03-29T11:37:00.004-05:00

This was in a post on one of the diabetes lists I belong to, and I'm thinking this book might be a very interesting read.

I ran across this book today on Dr. Michael Eades blog, "Survival of the Fattest." Here's a description from the publishers...

"How did humans evolve larger and more sophisticated brains?

In general, evolution depends on a special combination of circumstances: part genetics, part time, and part environment. In the case of human brain evolution, the main environmental influence was adaptation to a ‘shore-based’ diet, which provided the world’s richest source of nutrition, as well as a sedentary lifestyle that promoted fat deposition. Such a diet included shellfish, fish, marsh plants, frogs, bird’s eggs, etc. Humans and, and more importantly, hominid babies started to get fat, a crucial distinction that led to the development of larger brains and to the evolution of modern humans. A larger brain is expensive to maintain and this increasing demand for energy results in, succinctly, survival of the fattest."

So if we hadn't acquired sufficient fat, who knows what we humans might have become? This is a far cry from what we usually hear!

It's an expensive book to buy, but if you are interested, you might find it in your library...

http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Fattest-Human-Brain-Evolution/dp/9812561919?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269844605&sr=1-1

So what will this mean for all those fat babies that everyone thinks need to be put on diets and shouldn't be fat? Seems to me that babies need that fat to help their brains grow and develop and depriving them of their fat stores is going to stunt their brain growth and development. I don't think that is something this country needs - generations of children with smaller and less capable brains simply because some people think fat isn't aesthetically pleasing. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face - that's a case of epic fail right there, people.

How Weight-Loss Surgery Reverses Type 2 Diabetes: New Study Offers Explanation

2010-03-25T20:09:00.002-05:00

This article is another in a long line of articles that is giving (false) hope to type 2 diabetics that there will be a way to put their diabetes into remission.
I belong to a couple of diabetes lists, and this link appeared on one of them, with a few comments from members of the list saying "Yeah good news if only I could find someone who would do it & ins to cover it over the age of 65." and similar things. No concerns about future complications from that kind of surgery; in fact, one person had the comment: "If you are healthy enough to survive a hysterectomy, then a bariatric surgeon would probably do the surgery for you. The risk of dying during the bariatric surgery is the same as that for a hysterectomy. The insurance is a another story. If you qualify for disability Social Security then all it takes is a phone to call to Medicare and within 2 weeks you would be qualified. Unlike other insurance companies Medicare views obesity as an illness and treatable by surgery." That doesn't take into account the risk of dying in the first week after bariatric surgery, or the first month, let alone what any of the other complications of bariatric surgery are and how they can be much worse than any of the complications of type 2 diabetes.
How scary is it that Medicare would qualify someone over the age of 65 for bariatric surgery in 2 weeks? Doesn't sound to me like Medicare would be doing the necessary psychological evaluation, and bariatric surgeons are notorious for not caring about the psychological health of their patients, as long as those patients are healthy enough to make it out of surgery (and their insurance will pay for that surgery).

So, back to the article -

"Bariatric surgery currently is considered to be the most effective long-term treatment for human obesity and often leads to marked improvements in diabetes," said the study's lead author Peter Havel, a professor with joint appointments in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Department of Nutrition.

If bariatric surgery is the most effective long-term treatment for obesity there is, we are in a heap of shit, people, because it ain't that effective. Most "obese" people don't lose enough weight to become "overweight", let alone thin. A good percentage of those who lose weight end up regaining most or all of what they lost, and those who don't regain end up with complications that are so much worse than any of the so-called ill effects of "obesity" that they would much rather have stayed fat than have had the surgery.

"This study confirms our clinical observations that metabolic regulation -- specifically homeostasis of glucose -- occurs quickly after gastric bypass surgery," said Mohamed Ali, an associate professor of gastrointestinal surgery and a specialist in bariatric surgery at UC Davis Health System. "It's clear from the outcome that something physiologic is at work with controlling diabetes that is not related to weight loss.

And instead of trying to find out what the physiologic cause is, let's just go with modifying a functioning digestive system, because that has to be where the problem is. After all, when we mutilated a functioning digestive system, we managed to accidently put type 2 diabetes into remission for a short period of time, so maybe, if we fuck with it some more, we can extend that period of time (yeah, right, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, folks).

In severe cases of obesity -- usually when the patient is 80 to 100 or more pounds overweight -- bariatric surgery is used to alter or reconstruct the stomach and/or the intestinal tract. In such cases, obesity is not just a weight issue but also a life-threatening health problem that often leads to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and sleep apnea.

Yeah, how many thin people have type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and sleep apnea? Why did they get it? Can't blame it on fat in their cases, so why is fat blamed when fat people get the same diseases as thin people? Logic FAIL, researchers.

Havel and colleagues set out to test a hypothesis that certain bariatric surgical procedures were successful in improving type 2 diabetes, at least in part, because the procedures increased the flux of unabsorbed nutrients to the far end of the small intestine and, in doing so, triggered increased secretion of two hormones. Those hormones -- glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and peptide-YY (PYY) -- are known to have a role in controlling food intake and improving insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity, thereby helping to stabilize blood sugar levels.
To test the hypothesis, the researchers carried out a surgical procedure known as ileal interposition in a line of rats that were predisposed to obesity and type 2 diabetes. The rat model, developed in Havel's laboratory, was known as the UC Davis Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (UCD-T2DM) Rat. The pathology of type 2 diabetes in these animals is more similar to type 2 diabetes in humans than other existing rodent models of the disease.

So they used rats predisposed to develop type 2 diabetes (gee, just like some people are genetically predisposed to develop type 2 diabetes). Whoever would have thought of that? (/sarcasm)

They found that the rats receiving the ileal interposition surgery developed type 2 diabetes 120 days later than did the rats in the control group. Furthermore, by the time the rats were one year old, 78 percent of the control group rats were diabetic while only 38 percent of the rats that had received the ileal interposition procedure had developed diabetes.
Havel said the delay in onset of diabetes in the rats would be similar to delaying the age of onset of diabetes by approximately 10 years in a person, which would be expected to significantly decrease the amount of time for diabetic complications to develop, and to reduce the health care costs associated with treating this costly and prevalent disease.

And do they know what the possible side effects of this surgery in humans could be? Are those side effects worth the 10-year delay in the onset of type 2 diabetes (will it be cheaper to treat the side effects or the diabetes for that 10 years)? No one knows, and I'd venture to say that no one has even considered those questions.

Bananas out the wazoo!

2010-02-28T10:45:00.003-06:00

Our step-daughter-in-law's brother got half a pallet of bananas (that's 24 boxes) that were going to be thrown away (the bananas were still green) and he gave her a box of them (she gave us half the box, that's 20 lbs of bananas).
I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with all those bananas, since one gets tired of eating banana bread all the time. So I put 4 peeled bananas in a quart zipper freezer bag, mashed the bananas, zipped it closed, and dated the bag. Did that until I ran out of bananas, and put them all in the freezer. Now, when I want banana bread/cake/muffins/etc, all I have to do is pull a bag of mashed bananas out of the freezer, let them thaw, cut a corner off the bag, and squeeze them into the mixing bowl when they go into the recipe.
That was much easier than mashing the bananas in a bowl and then trying to transfer them to a freezer bag, and the bags take up less room in the freezer than small containers would. And I don't have to wash the bags when I'm done, I can throw them away.
What chaps my hide about these bananas? Whatever store ordered them and the company that shipped them - well, if the store ordered 50 boxes of bananas, they come 48 boxes to a pallet, so the company ships 2 pallets, which is 96 boxes. The store doesn't need 96 boxes, they only need 50, so those other 46 boxes get thrown away (unless there's a truck driver or two or three who are willing to take them). Which is how the step-DIL's brother got the pallet, he split it with another truck driver rather than see them get thrown away (and they both went around finding people who were willing to buy boxes or half-boxes of bananas for less than what they would have paid for them at a store). That part I don't have a problem with, but what if there wasn't anyone who was willing to take them? That's a lot of bananas that would have gone to waste, and that happens with all kinds of other produce. Now why can't those overages be donated to food shelves so that they aren't wasted, and people who can't normally afford to buy fresh fruits and veggies would have an opportunity to get some at no cost? I would think that could also be a tax deduction for the store also, donating to a food shelf.............certainly makes more sense than throwing it away.

Spam phone calls are so much fun!

2010-02-05T20:02:00.002-06:00

We got a phone call today, caller was asking for DH by name (first name). I handed the phone to him, and he talked for about 10 seconds and then said "You'll have to talk to my wife, she handles all the money matters in our household." and handed the phone to me. The guy on the phone didn't identify himself, asked me if I was Mrs. DH, and when I said yes, said that DH was due a tax refund of $6,038 and...... That was all the further he got because I told him it was a scam and I hung up on him.
Now, what had given me the idea that it was a scam? Other than the fact that we had already done our taxes for the year and knew we didn't have a refund coming? Well, for one thing, this same voice had called on Tuesday, caller ID had said UNKNOWN NAME/UNKNOWN NUMBER, when he asked for DH, DH wasn't available and I said so, he asked when would be a good time to call back, I said in an hour, and he never called back. Number two, first call today from same voice, was unknown name, but phone number had an area code of 000 (which doesn't exist), when I answered, I could hear lots of people talking in the background but couldn't understand the caller. When I asked who they were calling, they hung up on me. In less than 5 minutes, got another call, which was the one asking for DH and talking about the tax refund (and this time, name and number were blocked). The voice on this second call today was the same as the voice on the call Tuesday.
I really doubt that whoever/whatever will be calling back, since sie is now aware that we are aware sie are a scam and we aren't falling for it. I think the reason sie hung up on me the first time today is because sie forgot to block the number when sie called.
I would say that this is one of those things that falls under "if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably a rip-off." I wonder how long this one has been going around, and how many people have bought into it?

Friday Kitteh Blogging

2010-02-04T20:49:00.005-06:00

Marty likes to sleep on the back of the chair.

FatKat and Marty have learned to share sleeping space (most of the time).

Marty likes a pillow when he sleeps.

Yummy Home-made Chicken Pot Pie

2010-01-31T20:23:00.004-06:00

DH likes pot pies but they're just too expensive at the store anymore (for what you get), so we came up with our own recipe for home-made pot pie.

Ingredients:
2 - 9" pie crusts
1 - 12 oz bag mixed veggies
2 - 12.5 oz cans chunk chicken
1 - 10.5 oz can cream of chicken soup

I put one pie crust on the bottom of a 9" glass pie pan, put the mixed veggies in it, drained the juice off the canned chicken and put the chicken on top of the veggies, then put the cream of chicken soup on top of that and spread it all out so it was even and level with the top of the pie pan. Then I put the other pie crust on top and crimped it all around. Baked it for an hour at 400 degrees. YUMMY!!!!!
It makes 4 servings, so we have it for dinner one night and lunch the next day.

Our next experiment is going to be a beef pot pie, using left-over roast and cream of mushroom soup with the mixed veggies.
The nice thing is that it doesn't take long to make, and it's not expensive either. I got the pie crusts at Wal-Mart, 2 pkgs for $2 (that's 4 pie crusts), the mixed veggies are $1.25 a bag, the soup is $ .79, and the canned chicken was $2.12 a can. So for $7.28, I got 2 meals for the 2 of us (and if you use left-overs from other meals, the potpies are even cheaper to make).

Filing taxes this year sucks!!! Thank you, Mr President!

2010-01-29T17:32:00.003-06:00

Thank you, Mr President, for your useless rebates last year. You gave us that money last year, and this year, you're taking it away it from us. We can really fucking afford that, you clueless politician.
We usually itemize our taxes, but this year, because of trying to get a loan modification on our mortgage, we didn't have enough mortgage interest to have enough deductions to itemize. So those two $250 rebates we got were deducted from the $800 making work pay credit. Every year we've gotten money back on our federal taxes, but not this year. This year, we have to pay in, and the main reason we have to pay in is because of that damned "making work pay" credit and those fucking $250 rebates from last year. Yeah, it really paid for DH to work last year, didn't it? It sure as fuck didn't pay us for him to work, but it paid the government for him to work. Instead of us getting a tax refund, not only do they get our rebates from last year back, but they also get more money from us.
That sure as shit isn't doing anything to help the middle class, I can tell you that right fucking now (can you tell I'm just a little bit pissed off about this?). I mean, FFS, we're not affluent, by any means. It took DH's job, his Navy retirement, AND my SSDI for us to make less than $60K last year (and DH pays taxes on his Navy retirement too).
We're better off than a lot of other people who make the same amount of money as we do, since we don't have any kids to support and we do have good health care through the VA and TriCare/Medicare (not to mention the fact that DH has a job and hasn't gotten laid off or let go, thank Maude). But if we have to pay in, I can imagine what's happening to other people this year when they go to have their taxes done, and the rude surprise they're going to get when they find out they have to deduct those rebates, and I really feel for them.
I'm beginning to be damned glad I didn't vote for Obama (I'll let you guess who was my write-in candidate, and I think she would be doing a hell of a lot better job than Obama right about now). I'm tired of being lied to, ignored, and thrown under the bus when it comes to campaign promises made and not kept. I thought Obama was going to be different, but I should have known better. First and foremost, he's a politician, and worst of all, he's a Chicago politician (and that's the worst thing you can call a politician, IMO). I used to live in Illinois, and I don't know many people there who have a good opinion of Chicago politicians (unless they're trying to curry favor with them, of course). I should have remembered that politicians will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, and make whatever promises they think it will take to get them elected, and once they're elected, it's "Hooray for me, and fuck you, I don't need you now, but I'll keep stringing you along, just in case." It's not even a choice between the lesser of two evils any more, both parties are out to fuck us all over (unless we have a lobbyist with beau-coup bucks to pay them to do things for us instead of to us). Cynical? Me? Whatever gave you that idea?

Fattened by pills

2010-01-24T09:28:00.003-06:00

This is not something you will see trumpeted from every newspaper in the land. In fact, I'm surprised it got printed at all. You wonder why I'm so amazed that this article got printed?
Here are a few excerpts:

As Americans struggle to keep New Year’s weight-loss resolutions, experts’ alarms about obesity ring in our heads. We obsess about portion control, flock to the gym, and can’t get enough of The Biggest Loser. As schools, congressional subcommittees, and even first lady Michelle Obama -- who’s made the issue a top priority -- take on the problem, the focus turns to the usual suspects: fast food, oversize servings, and sedentary lifestyle. For some battling weight problems, those factors are indeed critical. But overlooked in all this is one of the primary causes of America’s obesity epidemic: The elephant in the living room is the skyrocketing use of psychiatric drugs.

How many of us who have had to deal with some kind of mental illness know all about that "elephant in the living room"?

Many of these, which are used to treat emotional problems including depression and anxiety, cause weight gain -- often of the rapid and massive sort -- as one of their “side effects,” that brilliant marketing term for what are simply negative effects of a drug.

What do you want to bet that studies have never been done to determine how many fat people are taking those drugs? What do you want to bet that the reason those studies have never been done is because pharmaceutical companies don't want anyone to know how many people went from average-size to "overweight" or "overweight" to "obese" because of those psychiatric drugs? After all, if those numbers were known, pharma just might have to figure out how to come up with drugs without those nasty "side effects" of weight gain (not to mention that they then couldn't push their weight loss drugs, with all their nasty "side effects", on fat people).

It is striking that the weight of many Americans has ballooned just as the prescribing of psychiatric drugs has surged. The Obesity Society categorizes nearly two-thirds of adult Americans as overweight, the average weight of an adult having increased since 1960 by 25 pounds, and between 1996 and 2006 alone, prescriptions of psychiatric drugs for US adults increased 73 percent.

Coincindence? I think not.

The courageous Alaskan attorney James Gottstein in 2006 exposed drug company Eli Lilly’s concealment of its knowledge about the effects of its drug Zyprexa3 (approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder but also prescribed for other conditions) on weight gain, and subsequent reports have revealed such effects of a whole range of psychiatric drugs. But nearly all researchers and journalists who focus on obesity fail to mention the drug link.

Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that if they mentioned the link, they wouldn't be able to blame fat people anymore for being fat? The fact that we're fat wouldn't be because we're lazy, stupid, couch potatoes, who stuff our faces all day long - it would be a nasty side effect of drugs prescribed by our doctors, and not our fault at all.

It’s hard not to wonder why this happens. Could drug companies be that much more powerful than fast-food chains, or does it take the former much longer to come up with drugs lacking unwanted effects than for McDonald’s to produce healthier foods in smaller portions? Is it perhaps clinicians’ fear of not knowing what to do other than prescribe these drugs? If so, then it’s time to broaden their training so they know more about the wide array of other courses of action that can help many who suffer from emotional problems, such as exercise, meditation, changes in vitamin/mineral intake, participating in the arts, volunteer work, and developing or maintaining close friendships. Whatever the reasons, the result is that not enough people know that many of these emotionally troubled patients now will have added burdens.

No shit, Sherlock. Not only do we have other people making fun of us because we're fat, but the media - with their scare-mongering and photos of headless fatties don't help. Neither do the doctors who have prescribed these medications, and should know the side effects, but still manage to blame us for being fat, and tell us it's just a matter of eat less/move more (fuck you very much, doc, I'm tired of hearing that bullshit).

What’s worse is that the connection between psychiatric drugs and obesity involves children, too. Over the past two decades the number of obese adolescents has tripled, while the 10 years after 1996 saw prescriptions of psychiatric drugs for US children rise 50 percent. And a new federal study shows that poor children are more likely than other kids to be put on drugs marketed as antipsychotics, one of the greatest culprits for causing major weight gain as well as lifelong metabolic problems. Add the humiliation to which kids subject overweight peers, and the potential psychological damage is frightening.

I don't even know what to say to this, other than it's fucked up.

Another disturbing link could be on the way. The fifth edition of the major psychiatric diagnostic manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), is expected to be released in 2013. One proposal under consideration: listing obesity as a mental illness. That would be a mistake, since obesity can be caused by metabolic and other physical problems that are often undiagnosed. And because obesity can also result from psychiatric drugs, calling it a mental illness would create a vicious cycle: Someone is troubled, put them on drugs, they become obese, therefore diagnose them as mentally ill, give them more drugs.

All I can say to this is that if they manage to list obesity as a mental illness, we are in for a world of hurt. That way lies madness - a Catch-22 with no solution.

Bathroom remodel advice for the fat

2010-01-14T11:13:00.003-06:00

We recently finished our bathroom remodel. Had the bathtub taken out and a 5' shower stall installed (if you're my size, make sure it's deeper than 30"). A 30" depth on the shower is not quite enough if you're using a shower curtain and not shower doors, as the curtain tends to move around a lot and ends up clinging to you. We solved the problem by using clips to hold the curtain to the wall at the shower head end of the shower and magnets attached to the bottom of the curtain and the raised outside edge of the shower to keep it from moving around. This allows enough room to shower without getting wrapped up in the shower curtain and pulling it down (and getting water all over the floor).
We also had new linoleum installed on the floor, and replaced the toilet with the higher, handicapped toilet (my knees are thanking me).
The walls were originally light blue with white trim, but the paint job left something to be desired (the ceiling was white, but the blue from the walls showed thru on the edges, looked crappy). We repainted the ceiling white, 2 coats to cover up the blue from the last paint job, repainted the walls almost the same light blue, and did the door and all the trim work in a blue 2 shades darker than the walls. Then I made new curtains for the window that have those 2 shades of blue and 2 or 3 other shades of blue in them. We got dark blue rugs, and put a clear glass heart dish with blue stones and seashells on the gold towel stand by the shower. Then we have a small wire basket with small red and pink roses and more seashells in it sitting on the toilet tank.
Every time we go in there, we both say how good it looks and how much we like it now. The shower is so much easier to use than the bathtub was - the bathtub was one of those deep ones, and the side was knee-high on it, so it was difficult to get in and out of. Since neither of us take baths, but always take showers, and we don't have kids to worry about, we decided a shower stall was the way to go. And I love it. It has a seat at the far end, and we got one of those removable shower heads with the 5' hose on it, so we can sit and shower if we want to.
It's funny too, because even though we didn't add any room to the bathroom, taking out the tub and putting in the shower makes the bathroom look bigger, for some reason (and our bathroom isn't really that small to begin with, it's 8' X 10').

I want a BB gun on my minivan

2010-01-07T10:27:00.003-06:00

Yeah, I'm an aggressive bitch. Ever since DH has been off work, recuperating from his knee surgery, I've been driving him around when he gets antsy and just can't handle being in the house anymore (and that happens a lot at night).
I've realized that I really hate cars/trucks/vans that have those damned fog lights that are the size of headlights and aren't yellow like fog lights are supposed to be. When they have them lit at night (and they always do, headlights and fog lights), it can be blinding, even if you look at the right side of the road to avoid the lights.
Do these asshats not realize that in foggy conditions those white fog lights aren't going to do them one fucking bit of good? Driving with those white fog lights lit will be the same as driving with your bright lights on, and that's not something that is recommended to be done when it's foggy out (been there, tried that, and almost gone in the ditch).
So a BB gun mounted on the front of my minivan, with a joystick controller inside, would be awesome. Then when those asshats drive at me, I can shoot out their fog lights. Face it, people, if you're that blind at night that you need your bright headlights and white fog lights to see where you're going, you have no business on the road.
Well, it's not gonna happen, but I can dream, and I've gotten it out of my system for now...................til the next time I have to drive at night and get blinded by some asshole who thinks his vehicle needs to light up the road like a klieg light.

Fashion Bug find

2010-01-07T10:00:00.002-06:00

DH took me shopping at Fashion Bug the other day, and lo and behold, I finally found my pants that I've been looking for forever. They actually have my knit pants with the slash pockets, elastic waist, and straight legs, and best of all, they come in a long length. I'm going to have to let the hem down, because even the long length, which is supposed to have a 31 1/2" inseam, is just a bit too short (but they have a 3/4" hem, so if I take out the hem and put in a minimal hem, they should be long enough). The color selection is awesome too - navy, black, brown, 2 shades of gray, baby blue, lilac, dark purple, olive green, and khaki. And the best part is the cost - only $14.99 a pair. The knit is heavier than the knit on the pants I found at ShopKo, and ShopKo only carries black, navy, and gray (at a cost of $16.99 each).
Then we hit up Catherine's, and I checked out the clearance racks (honestly, who can afford $48 for a printed t-shirt with a few sequins scattered on it?). I found 3 tops I liked that will go with pants I already have (originally, the 3 would have cost me $144) and I only paid $57.97 for them (50% off the marked down price). That was still more than I really wanted to pay, but DH liked the tops, and said if I liked them, go ahead and get them, so I did.
Now I can go through my closet and throw out all the old pants that have holes in them that I've been wearing anyway, and get rid of the tops that have stains on them. And the nice thing about Fashion Bug? There's one in Alexandria, and that's only 25 miles from us (and there's another one in St Cloud, which is only 45 miles away, and Catherine's is there too).
Now, if I could just find a place that sells bras in my size nearby so I can go in and try them on before I buy them. I ordered one from Roaman's, but it didn't fit. I sent it back, using the return label they sent, and they deducted the cost of the return label from my refund. I don't think I'll be doing that again. Ever since Goddess quit making the bra I liked, I haven't been able to find one that fits and is comfortable. I haven't been successful at finding fabric and the notions I need to make bras to fit me either. The elastic for straps and the fittings for adjusting those straps, well, let's just say they aren't made to support a rack of doom. I have enough problems with straps digging into my shoulders when they're an inch wide, I don't need my shoulders sliced up by 1/2" wide or narrower straps. And yeah, I know the straps aren't supposed to support the rack of doom, but in order to get the bra itself to support them, it has to be so tight I either can't hook it, or if I can hook it, I can't breathe when it's hooked. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Pink glove dance - really cool

2009-12-27T10:53:00.001-06:00

DH's knee replacement

2009-12-24T11:51:00.002-06:00

DH had his left knee replaced on the 14th of December. He got to come home on the 17th after his physical therapy that morning (I got to be his physical therapy coach on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so I would know how to help him do his exercises at home).
He did really well at the hospital, but once we got home, the swelling and bruising in his leg got worse. This was despite the exercising and icing we did as recommended by the therapists at the hospital. He had physical therapy one day at the VA and they recommended that he go back to his surgeon to see about the swelling, that that should be checked out.
We saw the surgeon yesterday, and he ordered a sonogram to check for blood clots, and to see if the blood thinner he ordered was causing bleeding. No blood clots, no extra bleeding, but he did say to discontinue the blood thinner, start the low-dose aspirin, elevate, and ice for 20 minutes out of every hour until the swelling goes down (and keep wearing the compression socks). So we're doing that, and it seems to be helping some. Staples come out on the 28th (that's DH's birthday, good present for him).
He is walking really well, using the walker when we go out because, of course, it's Minnesota and winter is finally hitting us with a vengeance. He uses the cane around the house since our house just isn't walker-friendly (the bathroom door just isn't wide enough to get the walker through unless you go through sideways). And the stairs to our bedroom in the basement don't seem to bother him much either, so that's good.
The only time he seems to have a lot of pain is when he's doing his exercises, or after Marty has jumped on his leg (and he seems to want to do that when DH is laying down in bed, trying to go to sleep). At least he has pain pills to take before we start his exercises.
DH keeps apologizing to me because I have to haul everything in from the van, and help with his leg - getting the compression sock on, doing the exercises, getting in and out of the bathtub, etc. I also have to shovel the sidewalk to the driveway (thank Maude we have someone who plows the driveway for us, and another person who comes down and snowblows the city sidewalk that runs along one side of our property - the city doesn't cut you any slack when one person is disabled and the other is laid up, you still have to clear the sidewalk or they will, and they'll charge you an arm and a leg for doing it). Side note - I shoveled the short walk from the door to the drive today and when I came in, I had some snow on my shoes. Knocked it off on the mat by the door, and Marty had to check it out. Then he ate the snow.....LOL
Silly cat. I told DH that doing all that stuff is part of being married, that when he's laid up, I take care of him and do what needs to be done because I know he would do the same for me (and he's going to do that when I have my carpal tunnel surgery, so no biggie).

New Minivan (to me, anyway)

2009-12-04T10:09:00.002-06:00

We went with the 2008 Kia Sedona minivan. It had the best remaining warranty (and we were able to upgrade that warranty so that we now have 5 years/58K miles).

I'm having to learn how not to drive with a lead foot - the Sedona has so much more acceleration and pick-up than any other vehicle I've ever driven, it's just too easy to hit the gas pedal from a complete stop and be doing 40 mph before you know it (and that's in town). It gets up to highway/freeway speeds faster than my Grand Caravan and Windstar ever did, so the cruise control will definitely get used a lot.

The only drawback to buying the Kia is that the seatbelt fit way too tightly and I needed an extender. Kia doesn't offer extenders, at all. Something about seat belt extenders haven't been tested for safety so Kia won't be responsible if the extender fails in an accident. Right, so the seat belt doesn't fit me, I can't buckle it, I'm in an accident - does that mean I can sue Kia because they refuse to put seat belts in their vehicles that will fit fat people? Not to mention that in MN, they passed the law where you can be stopped and ticketed just for not wearing your seat belt. So I've been cheating and driving with the seat belt buckled before I ever get in the seat and then I sit on it (looks like it's buckled and the harness is behind my back to anyone outside the vehicle). Just a stop-gap measure until I could go online and do a search for an extender that will fit the Kia (the ones I had for the Windstar wouldn't work). I finally found one on eBay (final cost with shipping was $38.98) that was 15" long, which is perfect, puts the shoulder harness right where it should be (between my breasts) so the damned thing doesn't decapitate me. Ordered it Monday afternoon and it got here in today's mail. Doesn't match the interior color of the Kia, but I don't care, safety is more important than a color-match, IMO.

I'll know in a couple of weeks how it does on gas mileage (in cold weather anyway). Vehicles always get better gas mileage in warm weather than they do in cold weather, so I know the mileage will get better when spring and summer get here (and it's finally getting really cold here in MN, it's actually 15 degrees F and snowing today, yuck).

Shopping for a new minivan

2009-11-28T11:20:00.003-06:00

It's getting to be time to get rid of the Windstar, she's starting to nickel and dime us with repairs (and being a 2001 with 152K miles, is not worth a whole lot and probably won't last much longer anyway). The main problems are ones that are difficult to diagnose - both warning brake lights on the dash come on for no reason at random times, the back windows may or may not open (and if you get them open, they may not close), the number lock keypad doesn't work, the keyless beeper doesn't always unlock the doors, and 7 times out of 10, when you start the van, the windshield wipers cycle. Most of this has been a problem ever since we bought the van, and the dealer hasn't been able to diagnose what is causing it, so they can't fix it (and I'm not throwing any more money at diagnostic attempts when it's costing $80 an hour, and is going to cost the same to fix it, plus whatever the needed parts may cost).
So DH and I have been out looking at minivans. Now, the Windstar was a good one, other than the electrical problems (and so was my Grand Caravan, till it had electrical problems). So far, most of the minivans we've looked at - Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Kia, Honda, Toyota, Dodge - are all about the same. They're all easy to get in and out of, they all get about the same gas mileage (anywhere from 16/18 mpg city to 23/25 mpg hwy and I'm not going to quibble over a couple of miles difference), and all of them have pretty comfortable seating. All of the newer ones (anything 2007 and after) have front and rear heat/air. The only ones I've seen that have the Stow'N'Go seating tho, are the Kia Sedona and the Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth minivans (and I really like the idea of the Stow'N'Go).
One drawback is that I will need to get seatbelt extenders with whichever one we decide to go with. Seems they've decided to shorten seatbelts. The seatbelt in my '97 Grand Caravan fit with room to spare, but in the 2008 I drove yesterday, it was tight (yeah, it fastened, but I had no room to move, and if I was ever in an accident, the damned thing would probably decapitate me). The Kia was the same way. But seatbelt extenders are usually free, and that's a small thing.
I think we've narrowed our choices down to the Kia Sedona or the Dodge Grand Caravan. I've driven both of them (DH won't drive them, he calls minivans "chickmobiles", and only drives his 4WD F150). The Kia, well, just let me say that I would definitely need to use the cruise control on the highway at all times. It accelerates quite well (yeah, it does....lol) and would get away from me if I wasn't careful. Of course, the Dodge was the same way, so that doesn't really go in to making the decision on which one we buy.
We're looking at how many miles are on each one, how much warranty is left on each one, the best price on each one, and what we can get on trade-in for the Windstar from each dealer. A lot will also depend on which one our bank will finance for us, too.
So, what does this have to do with FA/SA? Being a fat person, especially a fat person with arthritis who finds it next to impossible to get in and out of cars, I thought it would be informative for other people with similar difficulties to know what I've learned in my minivan shopping.
Granted, I prefer Dodges, I've had a lot of them in my car-owning history and they've always been good vehicles (and my dad likes them too, and that's a big influence on me). My son just bought a Kia Optima and recommended that I look at their minivans (he loves the Optima), so that's why I looked at the Sedona (yeah, I do tend to listen to my son when it comes to vehicles, he's not steered me wrong on the ones I've bought that he recommended). As always, YMMV, but if you're looking for a minivan that will fit someone up to 350 pounds and 5' 8" tall, the 2007 and newer Dodge and Kia minivans do it admirably (with the addition of a seatbelt extender).

We got a Wii, and the bowling is a blast!!!!!!

2009-11-21T10:19:00.002-06:00

I spent 6 hours yesterday hooking it up and trying to get it to work on our TV, which is not easy when you don't have the original remote (DH went on a cleaning rampage and threw out all the universal remotes that had quit working and the original remote for the TV was in that lot). I finally found the website for help, I suggest not using the url they put in the manual but shortening it to support.nintendo.com (they said to use support.nintendo.com/inputselects.html and that doesn't exist when you type it in). So anyway, I ended up having to run the Wii through the VCR and then we have to put a movie in, play a few seconds of it, stop the movie, and then we can play the Wii. Pain in the ass, but my son said he'll fix that the next time he comes up here (probably at Christmas).
DH came home from work, we ate dinner, and he wanted to try it out (we bought the WiiSports). So we bowled 5 games before he decided it was time to quit and get ready for bed (he has to work today and tomorrow). Now, my son and his wife can sit down and bowl, but I found out that doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for DH either, so both of us were taking turns standing between the recliner and the loveseat, in front of the TV, bowling (he said not to tell anyone, but I beat him 2 of the 3 games and it was my first time ever bowling with the Wii, he had bowled with my son and DIL on theirs). Don't let anyone tell you that bowling on the Wii isn't exercise. If you're standing up to do it, and you take at least one step forward when you release the ball (like I do), it's exercise. I wasn't breathing hard or anything like that, and I was having a lot of fun, but I was sweating and the house wasn't that warm. Today, my back is sore, and my bad knee is giving me fits, but that's not going to keep me from bowling again tonight when DH gets home from work and we're done with dinner.
I don't know if we'll ever play any of the other games that are on the disc (though DH did say he thought I might beat him at tennis, so we may end up trying that). Even if we don't play any of the other games, it's worth it just for the fun we have with the bowling. And DH saw another Wii game that he'd like to have - it's the one where you're shooting chickens, comes with a gun (there's a deer-hunting one as well). I agreed with him that the chicken one looked like fun, so that might be next on our list of things to get for entertainment at home............

Loan modification, finally!!! And a warning....

2009-11-20T12:27:00.006-06:00

We've only been trying since August of 2008 to get a loan modification on the mortgage on DH's house. DH has an ARM, that was supposed to be set at 9% when he refinanced in 2006 (3 months before we got married). When he went to sign the papers, they had upped the rate to 10.55%. He didn't want to sign, but didn't have much choice, as he had credit card companies that were hounding him and threatening to garnish wages, etc (credit cards he didn't know he had, his ex-wife got them in his name, ran them up, and when she left, he was stuck holding the bag). So he signed. The rate was fixed for 2 years with an option to refinance.
Well, y'all know what happened to the housing market in 2008. His house, that had been appraised at 125K (and I have no fucking clue how they came up with that appraisal for a one bedroom, 1 bathroom house with no central heat/air), was no longer worth that (tax appraisal was 66.5K). Mortgage company kept calling and asking if we were ready for the rate to reset and our payments to go up, and if we didn't want that, they were willing to lock us in for 5 years at our current rate and payment (the payment was almost $1200 a month, including escrow for taxes and insurance). We told them no way were we willing to lock in at the current rate, but if they were willing to lower it, we would talk. Nope, they didn't want to talk. And that continued.
Then we got a call from someone who said he could help us negotiate a loan modification. We talked, and eventually, he couldn't help us, because we were "under water" on the mortgage (owed more than the house was worth). But, he knew of a company who could help us (and that should have been a huge warning flag). He said he was going with a company called Green Credit Solutions, who had lawyers working on loan modifications for people who weren't able to get their lenders to work with them. A couple of his family members were also signing up, and so were a lot of his other customers. Cost was $3,495 and if GCS wasn't able to get a loan mod for you, you got $2,945 of it back (yeah, right). So we came up with the money, filled out the paperwork, sent all of the documentation they required, and thought we were on our way to a loan modification.
Well, between August of 2008, when we first started talking with Sean and GCS,and July of 2009 when we quit hearing from GCS, we had 8 different negotiators who had worked on our loan modification. Now they did apply for at least one loan modification that I know of, because our lender told us we had been denied. Something about DH made too much money (but that was because they were counting my income, and they weren't supposed to, since I'm not on the mortgage, and I wasn't going to be on the new one either). At that point, one of the negotiators said he wasn't supposed to tell us this, but that if we quit making payments on the house, our lender might be more willing to negotiate a loan modification. Up until then, DH had had the payments on the mortgage taken out of the checking account automatically every month. So, in November of 2008, he decided that he would stop the automatic withdrawal and we went to the bank and did that, went home and called the lender, told them the AWD had been stopped. In December, the lender tried to do an AWD, it was refused, and I had sent them a check. The bank also refused to cash our check because they thought we had stopped all payments to the lender, not just the AWD. So when the check bounced (and I caught it right away, because I balance our checkbook online every week), I called the bank to see why they had refused payment on the check. Bank said oops, our mistake, tell the lender to send the check back through and we will pay it.
So I called the lender, explained what had happened, and was told the check would be sent back through. Problem solved, right? Guess again.
So January comes around. I send in the mortgage payment check, with a note in the memo line that it's the payment for Jan 09. Then the calls start coming about when are we going to make January's payment. I told them we made it. That they needed to send back through the check I wrote for December's payment and gave them the check number. They said they couldn't do that, that we needed to send them another check for December's payment. I said, fine, send me back the check I wrote for December and I'll send you another check. Can't do that, they said, we take an electronic image and destroy the check. So send me some kind of assurance that you aren't going to resubmit that check for payment. Can't do that, they said. Then piss up a rope for your payment, I said. I'm not sending you another check so you can have two checks for the same month's payment and be able to cash both of them, and I'm not paying for a stop payment on the one, when you charged us a bounced check fee for the AWD not being paid when you knew we had stopped that.
February rolls around, I send them a check for the mortgage. Check clears the bank, and they try to do an AWD. And they charge us a bounce fee for the AWD failing. I call and chew ass. Then I fax them a letter stating that the AWD has been stopped, with copies of paperwork from the bank.
Lender calls every day, 3 to 4 times a day, either wanting to know if we're going to make the missed payment (which is in the savings account), or if we want to lock in at our current rate and payment for the next 5 years. It gets to the point where I know all the phone numbers they use, and when those numbers show up on caller id, I don't even bother to answer the phone. DH won't talk to them at all, he gets too mad (like I don't....lol).
Finally, we decide that GCS isn't going to do us any good, and we stop making mortgage payments on the house (they go into the savings account). When the lender calls, we tell them "Either give us a decent loan modification or take the house, we don't care. We don't have any kids, so we don't have to worry about schools or anything like that. We're not so invested in this house that we have to stay here, we can move, and we will." They piss and moan and delay and belly-ache and say there's nothing they can do. They've had an online appraisal of the house done and that comes out at 80K. I start laughing. They want to know what is so funny. I tell them there is no central heat/air in the house, that there is one wall furnace in the hallway to heat the whole downstairs, there are 2 electric baseboard heaters for the upstairs, and there's no heat at all in the basement. The valuation for taxes has gone down to 60K, and they'd be lucky to get 45K for the house, if they could sell it at all (there are houses in this town that have been for sale for more than a year and they're all better than this one). The only thing this house has going for it is its location (across the street from the lake/park, closest neighbor is across the street, and one across the American Legion parking lot). We told them it would take them 6 months to get us out of the house (so they would have lost a year's worth of house payments (14K), then the house would sit empty for who knows how long while they had to pay property taxes on it and lose more house payments, and then take a loss if and when they finally sold it).
So we got a phone call a couple of weeks ago, telling us we had been approved for a loan modification. Our rate went from 10.55% to 3.375% and is locked in for 5 years. Our mortgage payment went from $1157.28 a month to $620.69. We got the papers to go over (and sign) on the 11th. They had to be back by 20th (luckily they sent them next-day UPS and included a return label for us to use and there is a UPS pick-up box here in town). They recommended that we have a lawyer go over them with us, so we did. We signed them, got them notarized, and sent them back with the certified check for the escrow deposit (and I wrote down the UPS tracking number, and checked on it, they got the paperwork back yesterday).
So it pays to be a bitch sometimes, and believe me, I was a bitch with DH's lender. I just wish I could find the assholes who ran the scam called GCS. They would not even want to meet Helga, let alone PsychoBitch from Hell. I guess we'll just have to chalk that money up to experience, and let it go, but damn, that burns my hide, especially since I did research them and they seemed to be a legitimate company. Now, doing more research on them since their website has disappeared and their phone lines are disconnected, I find out they've fucked over a lot of people. DH and I are lucky, in that we didn't lose the house, and we managed to get the loan modification on our own, but there are a lot of people out there who relied on GCS who weren't so lucky. All we lost was $3,495 - they lost that and their homes.

Carpal tunnel surgery upcoming

2009-11-20T11:56:00.002-06:00

Well, I finally got the results from the EMG test done on my right arm. I do have carpal tunnel, the nerve is pinched in my wrist and the neuroligist recommends surgery to fix it before any damage is done to the nerve. At least the numbness is just in my hand now, and isn't in my arm, shoulder, neck, and head anymore. I am wearing a wrist brace at night, and it seems to help some, but the numbness in my hand doesn't ever go completely away. Unfortunately, I can't have the surgery done right away as DH is scheduled on Dec 14th for a complete knee replacement (his left knee is bone-on-bone and he's in a lot of pain that ibuprofen and extra strength tylenol combined don't even touch). So I'll probably get that done in February, after DH is mostly healed, but before he goes back to work (so he can take care of me, since I'm right-handed and won't be able to use that hand much for a couple of weeks).
His doctor at the VA says that, at 53 (almost 54), he's really too young for a knee replacement, but the orthopedic surgeon we saw yesterday said that since the cortisone shots and SynVisc shots didn't work, and pain meds don't help, that replacement is the only thing left to do in order to lessen the pain. Evidently, replacement doesn't always totally get rid of the pain, but most of the time, it does. DH is willing to go for it, he says anything is better than what he's dealing with right now.
The surgery isn't going to be done at the VA, they aren't doing any new surgeries because they are so far behind, so we had to find a civilian hospital to do it. Luckily, there's one in Alexandria (only 25 miles away) and the surgeon who will be doing the knee replacement trained at the VA in Minneapolis (small world....lol).
Looks like DH will be off work for about 8 weeks. He has some pre-surgery exercises to do to strengthen the muscles around the knee, and then he'll probably have to go to the VA at St Cloud a couple of times a week for physical therapy after the replacement. We have a meeting about knee replacements to attend next week, an informational type thing, where they tell us what to expect in more detail, and what medications he needs to stop taking and how long before the surgery he needs to stop taking them.
We may end up paying for a couple of his visits to the surgeon, since the VA says they're only paying for one visit before surgery, the surgery itself, and one visit afterward. According to the scheduling nurse, after the surgery, there will be a visit to remove the staples (two weeks post-op), then a visit 4 weeks post-op, and another one 12 weeks post-op (and another one after a year has passed). I don't think the VA is going to want to pay for those last 3 visits, but I don't see how a PA or an ortho doc at the VA is going to be able to do the follow-up when they aren't ones who did the surgery. But, like DH says, if we have to pay for the visits, so be it, we'll find the money somewhere (probably will come out of the money we're saving on the house payment since we finally got the loan modification on the house, which is a whole 'nother post).

Hooray for expanded mobility!!!

2009-11-05T10:35:00.004-06:00

I finally got my Rollator walker last week. This means that I can now shop in places that don't have electric carts (like some malls, and most stores). It also means that when DH wants to go to the local toy shows, pancake breakfasts, and Pioneer Power shows, we can actually go because I'll have the walker to lean on (and when my back cramps and I can't walk anymore, it has a seat so I can sit until the cramping goes away). I won't have to worry about standing in lines forever anymore (and let me tell you, the pancake breakfasts around here have some of the longest lines I've ever seen).
This is a picture of it:

I ordered it from amazon.com, it was originally priced at $595, I got it for $163.62 (and didn't have to pay any shipping and handling, got it 4 days after I ordered it). It has a weight capacity of 400 lbs, so it's well worth the money (and was mostly assembled, just had to install the handles with the brakes, the basket, and the back rest).
I know I'm probably going to get looks from people when they see me using it, since I'm a fat woman - "Oh noes, she's fat and using a walker, what a lazy fat fatty mcfatterson she is." (same shit when I use the electric carts at WallyWorld). But ya know what, I don't care. They don't live with the pain I have, they don't know anything about it (and I don't talk about it much in the meatworld), and if this is going to widen my horizons and let me get out more and do more with DH, then I'm all for it.
Hell, I can actually go shopping with him at Menard's now, since Menard's doesn't have those electric carts, and the one wheelchair they have sure as hell doesn't fit my fat ass (it might fit my D-I-L, who is 5' 10" and 150 lbs). I'll be able to spend more time shopping in individual stores because I'll have a place to sit when my back starts hurting because I've been standing for too long - which may not be a good idea, more time to shop means more time to spend money......
We even have a bike/walking trail that runs past our house that DH and I will finally be able to use in the summer time now (can't use it in the winter time, it's a snowmobile trail then, and those snowmobiles zoom by, even here in town).
I am so looking forward to finally being able to get out and about more than I have been. This Rollator walker is going to open up my life so much, I can't even think of all the ways it's going to help.

Exposed to the flu and pneumonia and I'm still not sick

2009-10-30T13:50:00.003-05:00

It's been a lovely ten days or so around here, I must say. DH has been sick with the flu since last Wednesday (the 21st). He was supposed to work Fri/Sat/Sun (23/24/25) but ended up going to Urgent Care at the VA on the 24th because he was coughing so much he was dizzy (not to mention not hungry, headache so bad his hair hurt, fever and chills, etc). They diagnosed flu, said we were doing all we could with the tussinDM, tylenol, orange juice/fluids, and rest, and gave him an excuse so he didn't have to go in to work (and his work was very understanding about it).
We figured since he had Mon/Tues off, he should have gotten enough rest and be able to go back to work as scheduled for Wed/Thurs. No such luck. He was still coughing up his lungs (dry, hacking cough), still fever and chills, and still not eating much of anything. But he got up and went to work. Two co-workers saw him, both said he looked like death warmed over, and since he was coughing, he didn't need to be there passing it on to the rest of them (or coughing on the soy milk they make and package). Boss wasn't due to come in until 8 a.m., but Chad (used to be a supervisor) said go home, I'll tell the boss, and you call him at 8. So home comes DH, calls the boss at 8, boss says no problem, we've got the floater to cover for you.
Back to the VA and Urgent Care we go. Now they tell us, after a chest x-ray, that his flu has become pneumonia. Oh goody. Well, at least we know what it is, and they can prescribe drugs to help him get over it. So we come home with cough syrup with codeine in it, an antibiotic (not penicillin, DH is allergic to that), and prednisone.
DH has been sleeping in the recliner in the living room because he couldn't lay flat without coughing, but last night, he actually got to sleep in bed for the first time in 8 days, so I think he's feeling better. He's not coughing as much, and his appetite is starting to come back. Today, he's playing games on Pogo instead of checking the backs of his eyelids for holes while watching TV.
It's funny, because when we were at the VA on Saturday, the PA we saw told me to stay in a different room from DH and to keep washing my hands all the time so I wouldn't catch his flu, that this was about the time I should be coming down with it. Well, I've been in the same room with him the whole time, taking care of him, making sure he takes his pills, giving him his insulin shots like I do every day, getting him something to drink when he's thirsty, giving him his cough medicine, and I still haven't gotten it. So far, the worst thing I've had is my sinuses draining (and I have that every fall when it gets rainy and damp).

Totally sick of the health care debate

2009-10-27T13:09:00.003-05:00

I've been staying out of the health care debate, for the most part. I've experienced most of the situations that everyone is talking about - no insurance at all, being on Medicaid, having insurance through work but not being able to afford to use it, and now I have Medicare and Tricare (Medicare because I'm over 55 and disabled, and Tricare because my husband is retired from the Navy).

What pisses me off about the whole health care debate is the part where all the powers-that-be think that making fat people pay more for their health insurance is going to cut costs. Fat people aren't any more costly to the system than thin people or so-called average-sized people.
You want to know the people who cost the system the most? People who drink and drive, repeatedly, and don't stop to think about how many people they could injure or kill. People who participate in sports and get injured (don't tell me that torn ACLs, torn muscles, broken bones etc aren't expensive to fix), people who get old (yeah, the longer you live, the better your chances of having things like heart attacks, strokes, broken bones, etc), people who have unprotected sex (yeah, those STDs aren't cheap to treat, and unexpected pregnancies - well, let's see now, an abortion isn't cheap - if you can get one, and if you can't, it sure as hell isn't cheap to raise a kid), people who are addicted to drugs (it's not cheap to get treatment for them, if that's even an option - most of the time, officials would rather just jail them, not a cheap option either).
All of these people that cost health care dollars are thin, average, fat, and every size in-between. But it's too difficult to figure out how to get decent health care for everyone without bankrupting the country, isn't it, unless you have a scapegoat. And who makes a better scapegoat than fat people? After all, they went after smokers and were successful in banning them from public spaces, and have even been successful in banning them from some private spaces (some cities/states have banned smoking in cars if you have kids in them, some have banned smoking in open-air parks, some apartment buildings won't rent to smokers). They've even been successful in upping the taxes on cigarettes to an outrageous amount (I can remember going to the store back when I was 8 years old and getting a pack of smokes for my aunt and paying less than 50 cents for them). Being a former smoker, I'm not going to get into the right/wrong of it all (I quit smoking when cigarettes went up to $1.50 a pack, and I only smoked a carton a month. I didn't quit because it was bad for me, I quit because I had better places to spend the money than on something that usually just burned up in an ashtray when I got busy and forgot I was smoking).
Now they're talking about fat taxes on soda/sugar-sweetened drinks and junk food in order to end their made-up "obesity epi-panic". I think the only thing holding them back from implementing that tax right now is the fact that a lot of not-fat people would be outraged at having to pay a fat tax on soda and junk food, when it so obviously is not making them fat.
I wouldn't have a problem with this so-called "fat tax" if they would guarantee that every dollar of it collected went to pay for health care for those who can't afford to pay for it themselves and don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. But I would say the chances of that happening are slim and none, and slim just left town.
The thing is, I'm such an obstinate bitch, a fat tax wouldn't stop me from eating junk food. Are they going to put a fat tax on potatoes and cooking oil (home-made french fries)? How about a fat tax on sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, eggs, milk, vanilla, etc (can we say ingredients for cakes/cookies)? Hell, I could have my own little black market going in home-made junk food, fat tax-free.....ROFLMAO!!!!

Extreme weight loss show in the works for 2011 (by the asshat who did "Biggest Loser")

2009-10-24T13:11:00.006-05:00

This has to one of the most obscene articles about a new TV show I've seen lately (and is another reason I don't watch much TV).

If you think you've already seen the biggest losers, just wait.

ABC is teaming with "Biggest Loser" executive producer J.D. Roth for a new show, tentatively titled "Obese," on which extremely overweight individuals shed hundreds of pounds over the course of a year.

Yeah, way to go, ABC, othering fat people with that title for a show about them. You really care about fat peoples' health too, don't you. It's just so safe for someone to lose hundreds of pounds in a year (since most doctors will tell you when you're dieting not to lose more than 1 - 2 pound a week, which doesn't come anywhere near 100 pounds in a year, let alone hundreds of pounds).
But it's not about health, is it? It's about making those ugly fat people go away (by making them thin) and who cares how much harm is done to them in the meantime? Because everyone knows that fat people can't have a happy, fulfilling life unless/until they get thin.

"We want to witness the most important year of a human being's life, and that's the one where they get their life back," Roth said. "We can help somebody lose 50 percent of their body fat, and you'll get to see that entire 365-day journey in one hour."

Excuse me!?!?! I happen to be DEATHFATZ (almost 400 lbs) and I never lost my life to begin with. I've always had my life, always been able to do the things I needed to do, and most of the things I wanted to do (and the things I couldn't do, well, I figured out how to adapt to not being able to do them, or how to work around it). Hell, I even fell in love and got married while being fat.
So this bullshit of not being able to have a life just because a person is fat, is just that - BULLSHIT!!!!!!

"This is a unique story that hasn't been told yet," said Roth, who will serve as the ABC show's executive producer. "There's something great and transformative when you take the game element out of it and just focus on one man or woman over the course of a year and there's no prize at the end. The finish is their entry into the life they've always wanted."

This is a story that hasn't been told yet? More bullshit. It's told every day on those cable shows when they tell the stories about the half-ton woman/man who just had to have WLS in order to keep on living (and ends up dying). It's told every day by people on "Biggest Loser". It's told every day by people who join Weight Watchers (or whatever other diet-of-the-day) and lose weight (only to gain it back again).
What isn't told every day is what happens to all those people who lose fucktons of weight in very short periods of time. No one hears about the complications, side effects, and weight regain. No one hears about the loss of self-esteem when weight is regained, because for most fat people, loss of massive amounts of weight is not permanent (and anyone who says that anyone can lose massive amounts of weight and keep it off permanently, well, I'm sorry, but, they're lying at worst, mythinformed at best).

New kitteh

2009-10-09T14:07:00.004-05:00

We went to the Humane Society in Alexandria on Wednesday and picked up a new kitteh to be a companion for Fat Cat. His name is Marty (not that he answers to it, mind you) and he's somewhere between 2 and 3 years old. He's mostly white, except for 2 oval black spots on top of his head, between his ears, black oblongs on his right front and back legs, and his tail is black.
He and Fat Cat are still getting to know one another, with a hiss every now and then when they pass each other too closely, or a pawslap now and then. But no caterwauling catfights yet, though Fat Cat has chased Marty through the house a few times (this is good for Fat Cat, I haven't seen him move this much in a long time....lol). Marty has checked out all of the cat toys we have, and even Fat Cat has played with them more than he has in a long time, so I think getting another cat is good for him (he's been walking through house, meowing and looking for Slick, so I know he misses him, after all, they had been together for 10 years).
Marty is a very vocal, affectionate cat now that he's getting used to us, and he comes down to sleep with us after we've gone to bed. The first night, he slept on my hip (and here I thought my fibro was doing pretty good till I had a cat walking on me). Last night, he slept with DH and didn't want to move to let him up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night (DH had to slide out of bed around the cat, good thing we have a king-size bed now).
I went to do some grocery shopping today, and when I got home, I could hear Marty meowing, but I couldn't find him. I finally narrowed it down to the area around the washer/dryer, but couldn't figure out if he was in the crawl space under the house where the washer/dryer are (a cat can get in there from our basement bedroom if he's determined) or if he was actually behind the washer/dryer (the stairs to the second floor go up right beside the area where the w/d are, so there's a shelf creating a triangular space from the top of the dryer to the wall and then just open space we can't use underneath that shelf because it's right next to the dryer and the rest of the staircase, down to the floor, is solid wall). Yeah, he was behind the dryer/under the shelf next to the dryer and I couldn't get to him to get him out and he didn't have any room to jump out. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, just pull the dryer out, and let the cat out. But this space is really tight (leave it to a cat to find a tight place that's difficult to get him out of), and there's less than half an inch of space between the washer and dryer, no space between the washer and the wall, and no space between the dryer and the shelf. Lucky me. I finally figured out that if I opened the dryer door, I could lift up the dryer enough to pull it forward over the aluminum strip between the two different linoleums on the floor. I got the dryer far enough forward that Marty, with sufficient coaxing from me, finally decided he could jump out of there. Knowing cats as well as I do, this probably will not be the only time he does this, so I think DH is going to have to put up a shelf that rests on the back of the dryer so we can keep him out of there (and probably one for the washer too, just in case). And it's not like those shelves won't get used, so it's kinda like killing 2 birds with one cat-proofing stone.
Here are some pics I took of Marty with my cell phone:

A sad day yesterday

2009-09-30T10:14:00.004-05:00

We had to take Slick to the vet yesterday to find out why he was peeing everywhere but the litterbox (this is not usual for him) and why he was drinking so much water (the cats have a 2 quart self-waterer and it would have to be filled every day/day and a half here lately).
When I called the vet, the receptionist said to bring him in to be checked, it sounded like diabetes to her (she had had a diabetic cat). When I told DH that, he said that if Slick was diabetic (at 11 years old), we would probably have him euthanized. NOT something we really wanted to do, but this is a cat that fights oral medications and will run and hide from you when he knows you're going to give them to him (and he's nearly impossible to find, too, even in our small house). Not to mention that we're gone on the weekends when DH isn't working so no one would be here to give him his shots (we don't have anyone who can/will come in and take care of the cats while we're gone, we just leave plenty of food and water and a spare clean litter box for them, it all lasts the 2 1/2 days we're usually gone).
So we took Slick in to the vet, she checked him over, drew his blood, and everything was good except his blood sugar. That was 594, and just like humans, cats should have a blood sugar of 71 to 150. Slick was his usual affectionate self, but he was so passive, laying there on the exam table while the vet explained what would have to be done to get his blood sugar under control (diet, medication, more testing, maybe oral meds later on, different food than what Fat Cat eats). DH said we knew about all of that, since he had type 2 diabetes and we had to go through all of that for him. He told her that with us being gone on weekends, the expense, the fact that Slick won't eat any food but the kind he eats now (DH has tried to change their food in the past, doesn't work, they pick out the new food pieces and leave them, and just eat the old ones when you mix the two together), trying to feed two cats separately when they're used to eating whenever they want to (and have been for the last 10 years), and then fighting to get meds in Slick, it's just not fair to the cat, he doesn't understand that we're doing it for his health, he just knows that we're holding him down and sticking him (or giving him oral meds) and limiting his food and when he can eat.
So DH made the decision to euthanize Slick (and then he had to leave, he couldn't stand to stay and have Slick looking at him with those big green eyes of his). I took care of all the paperwork and wrote the check, but I couldn't stay to be with him as he passed either, I was crying as I filled out everything as it was. I don't know how DH even managed to make the decision, Slick was the cat who greeted him at the door every night when he got home from work, was the cat who laid on his computer desk begging to be petted when DH was playing games on the computer, was the cat who drank his diet Coke, lemonade, or whatever else he happened to be drinking, and was the cat that DH would look at and go "What?" and Slick would make this tiny, almost noiseless meow back at him (and do that as many times as DH would say "What?"). Slick and Fat Cat are what got DH through the times when his ex-wife left him.
We spent a lot of time last night talking about Slick, the good times with him, and how he could be a pain in the ass, and I imagine we'll be talking about him for quite a while, until the pain of losing him finally lessens.

DH and Slick

Slick RIP

Another found gem

2009-09-29T21:56:00.003-05:00

This was originally titled "The 230 Pound Psalm", but I think a more appropriate title for it is:

THE DIETER'S LAMENT
Author Unknown

Strict is my diet, I must not want.
It maketh me to lie down hungry at night.
It leadeth me past Baskin Robbins, it trieth my will power.
It leadeth me in the path of starvation for my figure's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the aisles of the pastry department,
I will buy no sweets, for they are fattening.
The cakes and the pies, they tempt me,
My day's quota runneth over.
Surely calories and weight charts
shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in fear of the scales forever.

Been there done that, it sucks, and I refuse to do it ever again.

Amazing what you find when you go thru stuff that's been packed away for years

2009-09-29T16:25:00.002-05:00

I found this poem today when I was going through a bunch of my old crafting books, trying to decide what I want to keep and what I want to get rid of. It's very apropos for FA.

CONCLUSION
By: Maggie Coffin

I am what I am
My bulk does not open doors
It should not close them

My size is my only difference
Why cannot others see that
My beauty comes from within and without
Just like everyone else

I breathe, love, laugh, and feel pain
The same as others
Do people think my stature protects me
From ordinary feelings

My sense of self-worth should not
Depend on my dress size

I accept myself - gladly - proudly!

If others cannot
It is THEIR problem

I had forgotten I had this, and I've had it so long that the paper I typed it on (yes, it's typed on a typewriter, not done from a computer and printed) is yellowed with age.

Another example of hidden rising prices

2009-09-13T11:50:00.002-05:00

This may seem like a small thing, but add up enough of these small things and it's no wonder people can't afford groceries and household supplies anymore.
I noticed when I changed the toilet tissue roll the other day (opened a new package of tissue to do it) that the roll seemed narrower. I thought I was imagining it until I compared the old, empty roll to the new, full roll. The old roll measured 4 1/2" wide and the new one measures 4 1/8" wide. That's 3/8" that the manufacturer has cut off the roll while not lowering the price (so you're paying the same price for less toilet tissue). Just like cereal producers have created smaller boxes of cereal and kept the same price (10 oz where it used to be 12, or 12 when it was 14, etc).
I've been noticing this a lot at the grocery store lately. A lot of items are getting downsized in quantity but not in price (and a lot of the time, the packaging isn't getting downsized to reflect the lesser quantity inside). You don't realize until you open the new package and see how little is really inside that you've bought a downsized product at the old price (and compare the new box to the old box and see that the quantity has changed while the size of the box and the price hasn't).
I consider this a most dishonest way of increasing prices for products. Manufacturers know consumers watch prices closely, and complain about rising prices, so in order to sneak in a price increase, they think, "Let's not actually raise the price where they can see that it's gone up, we'll just put less product in the same size box, charge them the same amount, and we'll get our price increase without them noticing it quite it as soon. And by the time they do notice it, they'll be so used to paying that same price for less product that they'll keep on doing it." When all the manufacturers do it, comparison shopping for the best price doesn't do much good (but I still do it as much as possible, because every penny, nickel, dime, and quarter I save on groceries can be saved for other things we want or need).

Saw both doctors today

2009-09-11T20:00:00.002-05:00

Saw Dr W today for my yearly check-up. Cholesterol is good, BP is good, thyroid is normal, everything checked out ok with her. I do have to go in for a mammogram next week (I hate those), and a colonoscopy on the 24th (not looking forward to that either, but once that's done, I'm good for 10 years). It had been quite a while since I'd had a tetanus shot, so I got the Tdap shot (they've had some cases of whooping cough in our area this past winter).
I also saw Dr D today. Since I'm doing well on the minimal dosage of Topamax, she's not going to up it. She also ordered an EMG to see why I have the numbness in my arm (ruling out carpal tunnel), and is sending me to physical therapy for the pain in my neck when I have to drive long distances (or when I spend too much time sitting at the computer). I get to go back and see her again in a couple of months, and I guess we'll be doing another brain MRI next summer (something about keeping an eye on the lesions in my brain, making sure they don't get larger or I don't get more of them, and something else about MS not being much of a possibility after menopause, whatever that means). She also asked me if the Topamax was affecting my appetite in any way. I told her that in the 6 weeks I'd been taking it, I'd lost 6 lbs, and didn't seem to be hungry for snacks between meals like I was before. She said that was good, that Topamax seems to curb a desire for greasy foods (haven't noticed that, I don't usually eat greasy foods anyway, don't agree with me since I had my gallbladder out), and that some people have a problem with how carbonated beverages taste (I noticed that at first, but don't seem to have a problem with it now). She thinks it's a good idea if I keep losing weight, and that's not a battle I'm going to fight with her.
Losing weight is not why I'm taking the Topamax, I'm taking it to keep from getting migraines, and let me tell you, if I miss a dose a couple of days in a row, I'll get a migraine (thank Maude she also gave me a prescription for fiorinal, that will get rid of one if I do get it). If I lose weight, well, so be it; if I don't, that's ok too.
I'm done worrying about my weight, and after looking at the pictures of the women on my dad's side of the family (and these are pictures of my grandmother and her sisters and other female relatives, born between 1900 and 1920), I'm doomed to be fat. Considering when these women were born, and what the life expectancy was back then (and how tall women usually were), these women were exceptionally tall, fat, and long-lived (most were over 5' 5", weighed over 200 lbs, and lived well into their mid-70s-80s). So I don't think I have to worry about my fat killing me any time soon (in fact, that fat is probably what will help me survive any heart attack, stroke, or cancer I may happen to get).

Finally heard from neurologist (and other news)

2009-09-04T19:58:00.003-05:00

Well, I finally heard from my neurologist about the numbness in my head/neck/shoulder (which has now spread to my arm and hand). When did she call me back? Friday morning (the 28th, when I called her on the 24th) as I was on my way to Faribault to pick up my son and daughter-in-law so we could go to Illinois to my mother's memorial service. So anyway, Dr D doesn't think it was a mini-stroke or side effects from the Topamax, she thinks it's probably a pinched nerve (and since I was driving on the freeway - well, I had pulled off to the shoulder to talk to her on my cell phone), I told her we would have to talk about it at our appointment on the 11th of September, since I was on my way out of state. At least a pinched nerve is better than a stroke, I guess, but I don't know what the hell they're going to do to get rid of the pinched nerve (or how they're going to find where it is).
I had the ultrasound on my carotid arteries and my thyroid. Carotid arteries are clear, no plaque, so my cholesterol is good (when I told my family members in Illinois that, they all wanted to know how I managed it, told them I didn't have a clue, just lucky, I guess). My thyroid is enlarged and has nodules, but Dr W doesn't seem worried about it, she says my TSH level is normal. I wonder what she'll have to say when I tell her my paternal grandfather had thyroid cancer and my mother had thyroid problems. I think maybe I need to ask her to do some more testing, maybe on the T3-T4 conversion, the TRH, and antibodies. With a family history of thyroid problems, it's not something I want to mess around with.
I found out what my mother passed away from. She had had ovarian cancer several years ago, and the tumors came back with a vengeance. Eventually, she had to have her bladder removed. And the last time the tumors came back, they strangled her small intestine and she couldn't eat or drink anything (this started back in April, from what I understand). In early July, the surgeon went in and closed off her stomach and put in a drain (anything that she drank went into her stomach and out the drain). He called everyone in and told them that there was nothing else that could be done for her. My aunt asked him if, basically, my mother was going to starve to death. He said yes. She hung on until August 20th, and my aunt said it was not an easy time for her at all.
I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to see her before she died, but I'm not sure if it would have done any good for me to have been there. She was a very stubborn woman (and that's one way in which I take after her). All I can say is that I hope she's in a better place now.
The memorial service was nice, and I got to see quite a few family members I haven't seen in more years than I care to think about. DH got to meet my dad (and they like each other, which is great), and he met my brother and likes him too. He also got to meet my aunt and the rest of the family (and he likes them all). He's even said that we'll be going back to visit, maybe this year before the snow flies. If not, definitely next spring, which makes me very happy (I finally feel like I fit into the family, which I never have before). And it's not that expensive for gas to get there, it cost us less than $175 for gas there and back (and that was almost 1400 miles in my 2001 Windstar).
A lot has been going on, it seems like I just get one dilemma solved and something else happens. I know life can be interesting, but I'm about ready for some dull and boring for a while.

Update on carotid/thyroid ultrasound

2009-08-26T17:08:00.002-05:00

I had the ultrasounds on my carotid arteries and thyroid today. The good news is that my carotid arteries are clear and I have a good, strong heartbeat (I knew that), so my cholesterol must be pretty good, no plaque in my arteries at all. Bad news is that my thyroid is enlarged, more so on the right side than the left (and I knew that too, since when I try to sleep on my right side, it feels like something is trying to block my airway and makes it hard to breathe unless I tip my head back). I also have a nodule on the left side. Don't have a clue what that means, and don't know when I'll find out. Dr W should have the results of the ultrasounds back by 3 pm tomorrow afternoon, but if she doesn't call that afternoon or Friday morning, I won't know anything until Monday (Mike and I have to go to Illinois for my mother's memorial service on Saturday, she died last Thursday morning). I swear, it never rains but what it freaking pours.
And I'm beginning to think I'm a piss-poor example of fat acceptance because I'm thinking this thyroid problem could be a blessing in disguise. If it's not serious, don't do anything about it until I've lost about 100 lbs or so, just because I'm so damned sick and tired of not being able to find bras to fit, not being able to find cute clothes at reasonable prices (yeah, I know, it's a vanity thing, but I'm sick of not being able to find what I want in a size to fit me, everything I like is just one or two sizes too small). If I could lose that much weight, maybe I wouldn't be in so much pain all the time either (and that alone would be worth it). It's not that I give a rat's ass what other people think of me and my fat, because I don't. If they don't like looking at my fat ass, don't look. And I know my body isn't going to look all that great naked if I do lose a lot of weight, I'll have all that loose skin hanging off me (I'll remind me of the saggy baggy elephant.....lol). And none of that matters. What will matter is how I will feel physically. Will my knees hurt less, will my back hurt less, will I be able to walk more, will I be able to do more things with my husband than I can do now? Will I have to worry about having another stroke (and I know it's probably not my being fat that caused it, but I still wonder, those voices are still there telling me that if I wasn't so freaking fat, this wouldn't have happened). None of this was going through my head until I had this mini-stroke and now I'm second-guessing myself and blaming myself for not trying harder to take better care of myself, even though I don't know what more I could have done, since I know dieting and WLS don't work for long-term, permanent, safe weight loss (and thyroid problems probably don't either). Shit, with everything that's going on, I'm feeling like a real dipshit right now.

I hate waiting for the doctor's office to call back.

2009-08-24T15:39:00.004-05:00

Man, I really hate waiting for the doctor's office to call back when I have a question about side effects of a medication I'm taking. One of the side effects of Topamax is tingling and numbness in arms and legs. Of course, I'm weird enough that the tingling and numbness I have is not in my arms or legs, it's in the back of my head, on the right side, and runs down the right side of my neck, front and back, all the way to my collarbone and out to my shoulder (the right side of my face and part of my lower lip is numb too). All I want to know is if this is a usual thing, and will it eventually go away. Dr W's office hasn't called me back yet (and it's been an hour since I called them) and Dr D's office hasn't called back either and I called them 6 hours ago.
I tried calling the emergency room to talk to a nurse there and they just transferred me to my doctor's office. Fat lot of good that did me. If this is something serious, I want to know if I need to stop taking the Topamax, or do I need to take something else and if I do, what is the something else I need to take and are they going to call in the prescription for me?
I've been taking the Topamax for a month now, and the numbness just showed up on Saturday (I noticed it when DH and I were at his ex-SIL's house and I brushed my hair after riding in the truck with the windows down, was just a bit wind-blown). So when we got home, I looked up side effects of all the medications I'm taking, and only Topamax has numbness listed as one of them. I just hope it's nothing serious, it didn't sound like it from the websites I checked, but I'm not sure I trust them.

Update at 5:30 PM - Well, the nurse from Dr W's office called back, and Dr W is on call tomorrow and I need to make an appointment to see her, she thinks I might have had a small stroke and she wants to check me over to make sure I haven't. From what I can see, the tests look like they can take a long time and I don't have time to mess with that shit this week. I have places to go and people to see and things to do this weekend that can't be delayed.

Talk about getting Xmas shopping done early!

2009-08-17T20:21:00.002-05:00

DH had the day off today and he decided it was time to go Xmas shopping (he called the kids a couple of months ago and asked what they and their kids wanted for Xmas this year). So, since we had their lists in hand, and the money in the bank, a-shopping we did go. And most of it is now done. We have 2 granddaughters to buy for (if their mother ever decides to call and let us know what they want want, if not, they get gift cards), and I still need to get something for my son for his birthday and for Xmas. Other than that, we're done. It's all bagged up and on the top shelf in the bathroom, so it's ready to be wrapped whenever I get around to it (probably sometime after Thanksgiving). I don't even have to buy wrapping paper, tags, or cards this year because we bought plenty after Xmas last year when it was all on sale. I love having it all done early.
We did get the dog neutered for Jon and Tina for Xmas, but we're also getting them each a small gift to open when they come up so they won't feel left out when everyone else is opening gifts. I'll probably get Jon a book from the Science Fiction Book Club, he and I like some of the same kinds of books in sci-fi/fantasy (and I got Tina a dolphin figurine for her birthday and one for Xmas, too).
Our cellphone contract was up this month, so DH and I were looking at new phones today (neither of us really liked the ones we got last year when we renewed our contract, well, we liked them when we got them, but the liking sure didn't last long). I got a Nokia camera phone and he got a Sony Ericsson camera phone. I have to see if I can find memory cards for them and car chargers, but they were both pretty easy to set up. And T-Mobile was really nice about giving us our ringtones back. They only let you have your ringtones if you've purchased them in the last year, and ours were purchased on Aug 15, 2008 (but they sent them to us free of charge anyway, the service rep at T-Mobile thought it was pretty cool that DH's ringtone is "Summer of 69" by Bryan Adams and mine is "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica; he said you can't get much farther apart, musically, than that). So DH's phone is black and red, and mine is silver and teal (or silver and red, or silver and brown, depending on what color cover I want to use). Now I can get pictures of Jon's dog (and take the memory card out and put the pics on my computer with my memory card reader, finally).

Doctor visit today

2009-08-06T20:09:00.002-05:00

Well, I don't know what's up with my body, but Dr W wants to do some tests. When I saw her today to follow up on the migraine headaches, and to tell her how things are working out with the relafen and Cymbalta, I told her that I'm freezing my ass off in the house (DH likes to keep it around 65 to 70 degrees in the summer). I used to be able to handle those temps just fine (and the cold in the winter never bothered me at all), but now I'm putting on a sweater during the day, and adding a blanket to my side of the bed at night. I'm constantly shivering and getting gossebumps from chills, so Dr W wants to check my thyroid and my cholesterol (she's going to do a fasting blood sugar too). That's scheduled for the first part of September (she's going to be gone for a couple of weeks) and then I have a physical, pap, and mammogram scheduled for the next week, along with a follow-up with Dr D (the neurologist).
I will say that the relafen and Cymbalta have helped a bunch with my sleeping. I can actually sleep at night and not have my back cramp up, even when I sleep on the beds in motels (and those beds are harder on my back than our bed at home). I can actually get out of bed in the morning and walk upright like a normal person instead of bent over like I'm some ancient crone. Of course, it's not helping much with the back cramps when I'm walking or standing (although my knees haven't been bothering me quite as much, it is easier to get up from chairs now than it has been).
I have to take my log of blood pressure numbers in when I go in for my physical because my blood pressure today was 170/100 (taken with a regular BP cuff on my left forearm instead of a larger cuff on my right upper arm, which could have made the difference, along with the white coat hypertension). When I got home and took it with my wrist cuff, it was 132/73, quite a huge difference. It's hardly ever that high at home (I think maybe 3 or 4 times in the last 4 months). I've been keeping track of the days I check my BP, the time, and what it was, so I'll print that out and take it in when I go in for my physical.
I haven't had a full-fledged migraine since I started taking the Topamax, so I'm hoping it's working. I did wake up the other morning with a sorta kinda maybe migraine behind my left eye (where they always start), so I took a fiorinal and it went away without getting any worse, which is something new for me. I hope the Topamax keeps working, I could get used to not having migraines.

Results from neurologist

2009-07-23T13:29:00.002-05:00

Well, I got to see the neurologist today and found out why my doctor referred me to her. The MRI found some small lesions on my brain and my doctor wanted to rule out MS (which I don't have, thank Maude). So, for the migraine headaches, I get to take topamax every day, and if I still get a migraine, then I get to take fiorinal to get rid of it. Have to go back in 2 months and see how I'm doing with the meds (and I have to keep a diary of when I get a headache, day and time, and what I was doing when I got it, and so on and so forth). I'm hoping that the meds keep me from having them, they aren't any fun at all (nausea and sensitivity to light and sound make them worse). Dr D said the topamax might make me lose a couple of pounds, but not to worry about it unless I lost a lot of weight suddenly (all she wanted to know about my weight was if it was staying the same).

The Cymbalta and relafen aren't doing much for the back pain, but they seem to be helping with the fibro (I actually sleep better at night and feel like doing more during the day). The rooster comb shots haven't done much for my arthritic knees, they still hurt most of the time, just not as bad (until I try to walk across the yard or any other uneven ground). I see my PCP next week, so we'll see what she says then.

Jon and Tina are bringing the dog up this weekend so DH and I can take him to the vet to be neutered. Where they live, it would cost them $450 to have it done, our vet only charges $175 to $190 (depending on how much Max weighs). So DH and I are having that done for them for their Christmas present.
We took our cats to the vet for their yearly shots, and they've both lost a little bit of weight (FatCat went from 17 lbs to 14.7, and Slick went from 16 lbs to 14.2, so it's not like they're skin and bones). Both of them are really healthy, well, other than Slick liking to gorge himself, barf it up, and then go eat some more. I swear that cat must be bulimic or something (DH calls him Puker half the time).

The last time Jon and Tina came up, we all went to the drive-in theater (we saw Land of the Lost and The Taking of Pelham 123). I should have known that LotL was a comedy when I saw that Ben Stiller was in it (I don't much care for him), but it was pretty good. And TtoP123 was a lot better than I expected it to be. John Travolta makes a very good villain, and did an excellent job in this movie. DH even liked it, and he wasn't sure he would. I haven't seen the original, nor have I read the book, so I don't have a clue if anything was different this time around, but I liked the movie. We're going to the drive-in this weekend to see that new Ice Age movie, Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Don't remember what's playing with it. If Jon and Tina come up on Saturday, they'll go with us. Tina had never been to a drive-in and really likes it....lol She can't get over the fact that you get to see two movies for $5 per person (so it's $20 for the 4 of us, and we take a cooler with our own soda and ice). The only thing we buy at the drive-in is a tub of popcorn to split.

I bought one of those Topsy-Turvy planter things and planted a couple of tomato plants. Wasn't sure we would even get any tomatoes this year since the directions said you had to have a week of 50 degree nights before you could put them outside. We don't have anywhere inside to hang the darn thing, so they didn't get planted and hung outside until the middle of June. They aren't growing down like they show in the commercial, the plants are growing up around the planter, with just some of it hanging down. We do have 5 tomatoes so far, and a lot more blossoms, so I'm hoping we get enough tomatoes that I can put some of them up for goulash and chili this winter.

And I found out the hard way that steam is nothing to be careless around. I was frying some boneless, skinless chicken breasts for dinner the other night and put the lid on the frying pan to finish steaming them. When I took the lid off to check them, damned lid tilted and the steam burned my arm, on the inside just below my elbow. Ran cold water over it right away, but I burned it pretty good, it's blistered. So I've been keeping Neosporin + pain first aid cream on it and covering with a bandage so I don't rip the blisters open. At least it's quit hurting now (the ice pack that evening helped too).

We got to watch the parade for Sinclair Lewis Days from our driveway again this year. They changed the parade route so that they wouldn't have to close the main highway through town, and it comes right past our house. We also got to watch the fireworks from our front yard, they set them off over the lake, just about a block and a half from where we live. And on Wednesday nights during the summer, they have concerts in the bandshell across the street from our house, so that's pretty cool too. They also have the craft show/sale in the park across the street from our house, so I don't have to drive and worry about parking if I want to go to it. They have some pretty neat stuff, usually about 30 or 40 vendors, and a lot of them come back every year.

Physical therapy is a bust

2009-07-02T19:28:00.002-05:00

Well, I gave it my best shot, but physical therapy just isn't doing much for my back. The two exercises I was given to do just made the back pain worse, and both of them were very hard on my knees. I am keeping up with the walking in the pool for exercise, however, because that doesn't make my back hurt worse afterward, and it's easy on my knees (and the hot tub helps a lot with that too).
I went back to see my doctor and told her the physical therapy didn't help. So now we're trying Cymbalta and Relafen for a month to see how that works for the pain (and there are other options she's willing to try if these don't work). She also said that there's a back and neck place in St Cloud that she can refer me to, maybe they would have some ideas on how to strengthen my back muscles without making my knees scream at me. I told her that I was considering buying one of those wheeled walkers with a seat. That way, I could go for walks and when my back cramps up, I have a place to sit until it quits hurting and then I can walk some more. She said to see if Medicare would pay for it, and if they will, she'll write me a prescription for it. She also asked if I had ever been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I think because the Cymbalta is one of the drugs they give to people with fibro to help with the pain. I told her I hadn't had a formal diagnosis, and she said that fibro was difficult to diagnose, but that could be something to look into also.
Seems like now that she's seen I'm willing to make an effort to follow her directions/suggestions, she's more willing to come up with more ideas on how to manage my back pain. I can get on board with that. I also think it helps that I let them weigh me today (and I wanted to see where I was at too), and I haven't gained any weight since February. I'm maintaining, which is fine with me. Maude knows I don't want to gain any more weight, but I don't think I will as long as I continue to eat the way I have been eating - eat what I want, when I want, take my time, and stop when I'm nearly full (if I eat until I'm full, then in about half an hour, I'm uncomfortably full).

2 fat-phobic moments this weekend

2009-06-28T20:02:00.003-05:00

We went to my son's this weekend - I missed my grandson's 13th birthday, so we went down there to take him shopping for it, a couple of weeks late.
Most of the time, when we go down there and stay at the motel, I go swimming in the motel pool and use the hot tub. Until this past weekend, I've never had anyone make any nasty comments about my size. This time, though, some guy was in there with his wife and their young son (I think the kid was probably about 5 years old). The kid was cute, wearing goggles, throwing a weighted toy on the bottom of the pool and jumping in to pick it up. His parents were sitting in lounge chairs, mom was reading a book, and dad was drinking beer (out of glass bottles) and eating Cheetos. I had been alternating pool and hot tub for about 3 hours, and finally got out of the pool to sit in one of the chairs for a while and talk to my daughter-in-law and DH for a while, and the two grandsons (Mykel and Austin) played in the pool. When I got up to go sit in the hot tub for a bit, the little kid's dad said to his wife "If you ever get that fat, I'll kill you." I didn't hear him say it, he was behind me and the kids were noisy, but Tina heard him and it pissed her off, big time. My son had just called her and asked her to meet him at our room so he could change into his swim trunks, so when Tina went out to meet him, she stopped at the desk to ask if beverages in glass containers were allowed in the pool area. When they said no, she told them there was a man in there drinking beer in glass bottles. So the desk clerk went in and told him to finish the beer in the bottle, throw it away and he couldn't drink anything out of a glass container in there. Keep in mind that DH and my grandsons were still in the pool area, and Tina and Jon came back after the desk clerk had told the guy no glass bottles in the pool area. So when we all finally get ready to leave, who gets dirty looks from the SOB? DH, and he doesn't know what he's done to deserve it (neither do I, because I don't find out about any of this until we get back to our room). So then Tina tells us what he said about me, what she did, and that that was why DH got the dirty look, SOB thought DH had ratted him out (which makes no sense to me, DH had never left the pool area at all, Tina had been in and out several times, going to have a cigarette). I told her she should have told me what he said, that I would have had several choice responses for him. She wanted to know what I would have said and I told her I'd have told him: "If you'd kill your wife just because she got fat, then I feel sorry for her having to be married to a shallow asshat like you. She certainly deserves better than that." I also would have told him that my body was not public property and he had no right to comment on it at all, that he didn't know me from Adam and his opinion wasn't worth the breath it took to speak it.
When DH and I were getting ready to check out this morning, we were walking down the hall with all of our stuff (I was carrying my purse, my soft-sided cooler with a couple of sodas in it, the camera bag, and the bag that had all of our swimming gear in it, DH was carrying the other cooler that had his soda in it and our bag with our clothes in it), we passed that SOB in the hallway and got dirty looks from him again. WTF is it with people who have said nasty things about others, and done shit they knew they shouldn't have done (it's posted by the door into the pool area "NO GLASS CONTAINERS ALLOWED") that they have to blame someone else when they get caught? Fucker is lucky that I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about me, whether I'm fully dressed, or just in a swimsuit. It wasn't worth my time and effort to tell him he's an idiot, he's probably been told that more times than he can remember. And I hate to tell him, he can be nasty all he wants, I'm still going to use the pool and the hot tub and I'm still going to wear my swimsuit, and I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm not there to impress them, I'm there to have a good time with DH and the rest of my family.
That was incident number two. Incident number one was when we went out to dinner on Friday night. Jon wanted to eat at the China Buffet, so that was where we went. We were picking out what we wanted to eat, and another family was trying to decide what they wanted to eat. One of the kids was a cute little girl, about 5 or 6, and her mom told her "Tell me what you want, and I'll put it on the plate for you." The little girl said she wanted some of the sweet & sour chicken and her mom told her no, that would make her fat, she needed to eat the meat/veggies/mushrooms instead. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "If you don't want her eating certain things, then fix her plate for her and don't tell her she can pick out what she wants to eat. Telling her she can pick out what she wants to eat, then telling her she can't have it because it's going to make her fat sure as shit isn't doing her any favors. Good way to give her a disordered relationship with food."
I normally don't run into this kind of shit very often, maybe once a year or so, but twice in one weekend, that was just too much.
But we did have a good visit, went rummage-saling with Tina and the boys on Saturday morning while Jon was at his motorcycle license classes. Mykel found an almost-complete set of golf clubs with bag for $1, and Tina found some books for Jon and some clothes for the "reds" (her 3 red-headed nieces). Austin didn't find anything he wanted, but he'll read the books when Jon is done with them. DH found a couple of kissing angels to add to his small collection, and I didn't find anything I wanted (I usually look for Noritake painted china plates, but those are kinda rare at rummage sales).
It was hilarious watching Mykel hit the golf ball (and the tennis balls) with his new clubs. Max (the pit bull) was out of his kennel, and he was chasing the balls. Mykel and Austin would hit the balls, then run and try to get them before Max could (they weren't successful). Max would get the ball, run off with it, they would chase him, he would get tired of running from them, flop down in the shade, they would try to sneak up on him, he would wait until they were close enough to touch him, and off he would go again. I'm not sure who had more fun - the dog, the boys, or us adults watching them. And Max is not easily fooled. Austin grabbed Max's soccer ball from the kennel and threw it, hollering "go get it, Max", thinking Max would drop the golf ball or the tennis ball. Nope, Max knew they weren't hitting the soccer ball with the golf clubs...........he wasn't having any part of that at all.
All in all, it was a good weekend, in spite of the fat-phobia.

"Excess" body weight predicts low self-esteem in kids (no shit, Sherlock).

2009-06-18T10:54:00.003-05:00

This should be a no-brainer, people. And it's not the body weight itself that causes the low self-esteem, it's the bullying and all the media bullshit that tells anyone who is fat that they are less than human, just because they don't look like the "ideal" (which "ideal" is impossible to attain for anyone).

Chief analyst Julie Bernier says a lot of attention has been paid to being overweight and obese as precursors to developing physical health problems such as Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular problems.
But this report takes a rare look at body weight vis-a-vis self-esteem in childhood. Previous studies have found that low self-esteem as a youngster can predict poor mental health in adulthood.

Yeah, we all know how being fat leads to developing physical health problems....FUCKING NOT ALWAYS, ASSHATS. Generalizations do not fit everyone in the whole wide world, and very seldom even fit a small percentage of the world's population.
As for low self-esteem as a youngster leading to mental health problems as an adult? All I have to say on that is - "YA THINK?"

"Up to now in the literature, there has been a lot of emphasis on the fact that body weight problems could lead to a lot of chronic disease ... and now, it's a complement to see that it even puts you more at risk for low self-esteem, which in turn would put you at risk for mental health problems."

Body weight problems could lead to a lot of chronic disease. Could being the operative word here, researchers/doctors. What part of correlation is not causation do you not understand?

Kids at the ages of 10 and 11 completed a four-item scale that assessed their overall self-esteem, rating statements such as "In general, I like the way I am" and "Overall I have a lot to be proud of."
They were surveyed twice more, two years and four years later. Assessments about whether someone was overweight or obese were derived from height and weight measurements reported by the person most knowledgeable about the child, such as a parent or guardian.
Researchers who studied the data found that children who were obese in the beginning had almost twice the odds of reporting low self-esteem four years later, compared with normal weight children.
Bernier explained that it's been known for some time that there's a relationship between body weight and self-esteem.

This doesn't surprise me one little bit. What with all the media hype about being fat and how bad it is for everyone, and all the bullying of fat kids by other kids, their parents, their teachers, their doctors, etc, is it any wonder that fat kids have less self-esteem than kids who aren't fat? Even if fat kids have loving parents who don't expect them to be thin, the rest of society sure as hell isn't going to leave them alone, and parents can't always over-ride everything kids hear outside of their homes.
And in all of this research, not one mention is made about bullying fat kids having any bearing on their self-esteem, nor is there any mention of how the media's portrayal of fat has any bearing on it. Lots of talk about how much time they spend in front of the TV/computer, their parents' education, kids' school performance, kids' amount/quality of physical activity, etc influences a kid's self-esteem, but bullying, not a mention of that at all (evidently, bullying is a very small part of what influences one's self-esteem, and not an important one at that).
According to this study, gender also has a bearing on a child's self-esteem (boys are less likely to have issues than girls - gee, I wonder why that is?). And physical activity - well, if they participate in physical activity 5 to 7 times a week, kids have better self-esteem than if they don't participate (but nothing is said about why kids may not want to participate in physical activity more often - could it go right back to the bullying factor?).
And all they can recommend is a "healthy" diet and exercise to either keep kids from getting fat, or make fat kids thin. Yeah, that just works so well - how many failures of that shit have we seen in the last 5 to 10 years? More than I want to count, and more than should have been implemented (since they haven't worked for adults for more years than I've been alive, why the fuck do they think this shit will work for kids?).
Why the hell can't kids be kids and enjoy their childhood, no matter what size body they have?

Yummy tuna bake tonight

2009-06-15T21:09:00.003-05:00

I was subscribed to a recipe club for a while, and then got tired of sorting all the cards every month, so I dropped it. But, DH decided that since we have the cards, we should try some of the recipes. So tonight I made the Tuna Bake, and it was yummy! AND it only has 67 grams of carbs for the whole pan, so it was good for DH's blood sugar too.

Ingredients:
1 - 12 oz can tuna (I used 2 - 12 oz cans)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
3 eggs
2 cups cottage cheese
2 slices bread, cut in 1/2" cubes (I used Wonder Light Wheat).
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 - 16 oz bag frozen broccoli cuts, thawed and well drained

Place broccoli in bottom of 8" X 12" baking dish (I use a glass one), top with tuna and bread cubes. In medium bowl, mix eggs, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, and pepper. Spread cheese/egg mixture over tuna mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown and puffed.

This made dinner for the two of us tonight, DH's lunch for work tomorrow, and lunch for me tomorrow.

I'm thinking I might try this with boiled, shredded chicken instead of the tuna, and maybe use the frozen broccoli/cauliflower blend instead of just broccoli the next time I make it. DH really liked it, and said the chicken version sounded just as good to him (and the carb count should be just about the same). I have some frozen stir-fry veggies in the freezer that might be good too. This looks like a recipe with which you can get as creative as you want (toast the bread before cubing it, maybe, or use garlic bread).

Weekend fluff and PT update #2

2009-06-13T16:11:00.007-05:00

Thursday I had PT again. Same thing, ultrasound heat, and laying on my back with the box under my knees, with a massage of those back muscles after the heat. Brian did give me one exercise to do at home, but I have to find a box to put under my knees when I'm laying on my back in order to do it (have to move my feet so that my toes touch, toeing in, then move them so that my heels touch, toeing out). He also said that the heating pad is out for now because it's surface heat, not deep heat, and surface heat isn't going to help the muscles and might even make it worse. So it's ice packs for my back for now. He did say that the hot tub and the pool-walking is a very good idea, and that 3 days a week of that should help a lot.
So, when I got home, I called the AmericInn here in town, and they do have open swimming sessions, there are ladies that come in very early in the morning for water aerobics. It's $4 per swimming session, but they have a punch card with 25 sessions for less than $45. That's the way I'm going to go, that way, if DH wants to go with me on his days off, he can (otherwise, the punch card will last me a couple of months if I go 3 times a week). I figure if I do PT on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can do the pool-walking on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (and if DH and I go somewhere for the weekend, I can do the pool thing at whatever motel we happen to be staying at).
Today, DH and I went rummage-saling. I'm looking for a glass-doored curio cabinet for my DiL for her birthday/Christmas gift. She needs something that she can put all of her dolphin figurines in that the dog can't knock over. We also need another DVD rack for movies, and I can't find one like the one we currently have. I may have to look online to see what I can find there. And yes, DH and I are starting our Christmas shopping already (get it a little at a time and we don't have to come up with a lot of money all at once, which is good, when you're buying for 3 kids and their spouses, and 11 grandkids).
We also went to Long Prairie today to see the Veteran's Memorial there. While it's not as impressive as the one in Rochester, it's still a very moving tribute to the servicemen and women who have given their lives for our freedom. These are some of the pictures we took today:

I didn't get a good picture of the top of the painted wall above, but on the very top of it is a copper cut-out of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, with an actual American flag flying. I'll have to go back and see if I can get a better picture of it.
The memorial was dedicated in 2002. DH wants me to do a search and see if I can find a comprehensive listing of veterans' memorials in Minnesota so that we can go see them all this summer (I have a feeling that there might be so many that it will take us a couple of summers to see them all).

Physical therapy update

2009-06-09T17:04:00.002-05:00

I had physical therapy again today, and I was wrong, they do have more than one physical therapist (at least 3, I think). The one I saw today, well, I hope he's the one I see from now on. He asked if the one I saw on Friday had felt the muscles in my back, or if he had done a couple of other things, and when I said no, we had just done one exercise to stretch my back muscles, he didn't look too impressed.
I told him how much pain I was in when I got home from that day, and that I was in even more pain the next day, and that I didn't do the exercise again until last night and that I was in so much pain this morning that I was crying (and that I took 800 mg of ibuprofen and 500 mg of tylenol).
So, he had me lay on my stomach, and he did one of those ultra-sound things that sends deep heat to the muscles (he said the muscles on the right side of my back were knotted so tight, he was surprised I could walk at all, and the ones on the left weren't much looser). So we did that for 15 minutes (and did that ever feel good). Then I laid on my back, he put a big block under my knees, and then tilted the table so that my head was lower than my hips (15 minutes of that). I could actually lay there, flat on my back, and it didn't hurt. And, wonder of wonders, when I got up, I could actually stand up straight and walk without much pain at all (my knees didn't even hurt as much!). I walked probably 150 feet from the elevator to my van and my back didn't cramp up at all! That is so unusual for me, I was just totally amazed. He said we'd be doing the same thing again on Thursday, and once we get the muscles loosened up the way they should be, then we'll worry about what exercises to do to strengthen the muscles (sounds like the way to go, to me). He also said that when my back really hurts, that cold packs might help (so I'll have to try that and see if it works, we have ice packs in the freezer that I can wrap in a hand towel).
All in all, this was a much better session than the first one, so I'm going to keep going, as long as I have Brian (the guy I saw today) for a physical therapist.

Physical therapy yesterday

2009-06-06T10:50:00.002-05:00

I think this physical therapy is going to turn into a giant pain in my back, which is not going to help me one damned bit since that's what I'm trying to get rid of. I went yesterday afternoon, spent 30 minutes talking with the physical therapist about what's wrong with my back and what I need to do to make it better.
First thing he says is that sitting and bending over aggravate it (even though when my back is hurting, that's what relieves the pain), and that I should never bend over to do anything. Ok, that means I can't get the pots and pans out of the bottom cupboard - put them on higher shelves. I can't clean the catbox - put the cat box on a platform at waist height so I don't have to bend over and scoop it from the floor (yeah, Fat Cat is not going to jump up there to use it, this is that cat that is so lazy, he lays down to eat and drink). I can't do laundry - get a front-loading washer and put the washer and dryer on pedestals so I don't have to bend over to put the clothes in/take them out. Don't bend over the sink to do dishes - open up the cabinet door and put one foot on the rail inside, stand up straight with my belly right up to the sink (duh, I already do that). Don't sit in my recliner, use a wooden kitchen chair for the computer and watching tv, sit like a queen in that hard wooden chair (yeah, so my hips can hurt instead of my back). Go to the swimming pool 3 to 4 times a week and walk in the water (that I can do, once I find out what the motel charges and what days I can go).
All of these changes would be really nice to be able to make, but I want to know where the fuck am I supposed to find the room to store everything (at waist level) in my kitchen and on the back porch that I need for cooking and eating? Even if Fat Cat would jump up on a platform to use the litter box, where the fuck am I supposed to put that platform so that it doesn't get in the way of the shelf it currently sits in front of because we don't have any other place for it (the shelf or the cat box)? We just bought a new washer (top-loading), we can't afford to go out and buy another one (front-loading), plus pedestals for both the washer and the dryer just so I don't have to bend over to do laundry.
Another recommendation he made is to not sit for more than 1/2 an hour at a time, get up and move, even it's just walking from the computer (or my recliner) to the kitchen and back (I already do that, if I sit for too long in any chair, hard or soft, my hips hurt and I walk like I'm 100 years old).
Oh yeah, and my weight isn't the cause of my back problems, but it's not helping them any (duh, no shit sherlock). And if I could just lose 100 lbs or so, that might help. And if I would just quit eating so much, and move a bit more, I should be able to do that (and this in spite of telling him diets haven't worked in the past for me, not permanently, and that having my stomach stapled didn't work either). Then, on top of all of that, he has the nerve to suggest that maybe WLS would help, if I had it redone, or had a different type (yeah, I'm so not going there again, EVER!!!!). I told him that had been suggested and that I told those doctors they had their one chance to kill me and I would be a fool to give them another. So it's back to calories in/calories out (yeah, I eat the same foods DH does to control his blood sugar, I eat less than DH does, and I'm not losing weight, so I just need to eat even less, that's really going to work). Then, we were talking about something else, and he says something about doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result every time, and I said the definition of irrationality was doing the same thing countless times, and expecting different results. He totally agreed with that, but still thinks calories in/out makes sense.
The one exercise he gave me to do is supposed to stretch my back muscles. It's laying on my back, with my knees bent and my feet as close to my ass as I can get them (yeah, arthritic knees that hurt all the time bend real well for that). Then I put one ankle on the other knee, and try to line up the knee of that leg with the center of my chest and hold it for 5 minutes (worked real well, I'm supposed to be able to feel the muscle in the back of my thigh pulling, kind of hard to do when laying on my back makes my thighs go numb). I couldn't do it by myself, so he held my leg in place for the 5 minutes, then we switched legs and another 5 minutes of the same thing. So there I am, laying on this padded table, on my back, and it hurts and my thighs are numb, and I'm trying to feel the stretch in those muscles. I can't feel anything, and when we're done (did this once with each leg, I have to do this 2 or 3 times a day at home) I get up and my back is screaming at me and my knees are yelling, and I'm going "Yeah, this is going to work, the pain I've been having is because my back is telling me there's something wrong, so what does this pain mean?"
I got home, and took 800 mg of ibuprofen and 500 mg of tylenol (which didn't do much for the pain), sat at the computer for a few minutes, then went to start cooking dinner. By the time I had dinner in the oven (an hour later), I was in so much pain, I could hardly move (knees and back). Now my pain, on a normal day, is usually at around 7 or 8 on my scale of 1 to 10 (which is probably a 15 for anyone else). Yesterday, after physical therapy, it was a 10 and I was crying from it (and I don't cry from pain very damned often). I have to go back next Tuesday and Thursday, and I'm hoping things go better, that doing this exercise at home is going to help (but if I keep ending up in that kind of pain, I don't know.....). He wants to start working on my abdominal muscles too, and I don't know how well that's going to work, what with having had an incisional hernia repaired with mylar mesh (and I think the hernia is back).
I think I'm going to do some online research on exercises for strengthening back muscles, and see if it's the same stuff he wants me to do. I do know that I'm not going to be able to eliminate all the bending over I have to do, we can't afford it and we just don't have the storage room in this small house to put everything at waist level or higher.

The miracle weight loss that isn't (DUH!!!!!)

2009-06-04T12:31:00.002-05:00

This isn't something you'll be seeing shouted from every media source, and I'm shocked to see that it was on MSNBC (and I wouldn't have known it was there if it hadn't been posted in its entirety on Yahoo group OSSG-gone_wrong).

Eileen Wells was smiling as she was wheeled into surgery. She was too excited to feel nervous. At 38, she was about to get “a new lease on life,” she says, echoing jargon in weight loss surgery ads. She had seen the before and after pictures in celebrity tabloids, watched the TV infomercials, listened to the patient testimonials and researched online. She was ready to begin her own transformation. At 5 foot 3 and 290 pounds, she was sick of being fat. Her joints ached. Her feet hurt. A stroll through the mall near her home in Greenwood Lake, New York, was enough to leave her sweat-slick and gasping for air. She was anxious to say good-bye to sleep apnea and dieting, ready to take control. And so in March 2005, Wells underwent a laparoscopic gastric bypass. She was grinning right up until the anesthesia knocked her out.

From the menu of weight loss (bariatric) operations, Wells had chosen the Roux-en-Y bypass, the most popular option in the United States. The surgery sectioned off her stomach to a thumb-sized sac — sharply limiting the amount of food Wells could eat — then connected it to a deeper portion of her small intestine, to limit absorption of the calories she did consume. (An increasingly popular alternative, gastric banding, cinches in the stomach to restrict its capacity.) The rearrangement required Wells to radically overhaul her eating habits. She learned to eat tiny, frequent meals, cutting her food into pencil eraser–sized bites. On her doctor’s orders, to replace nutrients no longer absorbed by her digestive tract, she faithfully swallowed a multivitamin, calcium and B12 supplements and two protein shakes daily. Soon she resembled the women in those weight loss infomercials: Fifteen months post-op, Wells had lost an amazing 160 pounds — more than half her body weight — bringing her down to a trim 130.

But although Wells looked like a satisfied customer, she didn’t feel like one. Seven months after surgery she had developed an agonizing ulcer on the new inner seam between her stomach and intestine, which required a second operation. Not long afterward, Wells recalls eating a bite of tuna steak her husband, Ron, had prepared and doubling over in pain; an ambulance rushed her into surgery yet again, this time for an intestinal hernia — her bowel had snagged on a slit in her abdominal wall. A fourth procedure followed to ease the pain of the abdominal scarring from her previous surgeries. Meanwhile, Wells’s gastrointestinal pain had become so severe that she could barely eat. One day while shoe shopping, she realized she couldn’t flex her right foot. Within weeks her limbs began to tingle, her energy evaporated and her weight plummeted. She stopped menstruating. By late 2006, Wells had shrunk to 105 pounds.
“I feel like I’m dying,” she told Ron. Months of doctors’ visits revealed that Wells had beriberi, a disorder caused by extreme thiamine deficiency. Rarely seen outside 19th-century Asia, it’s present enough among those in the weight loss–surgery world that doctors call it bariatric beriberi.

This is just one story of many, and don't you believe the hype that Wells is just one of a very small percentage that have this happen to them. If the membership rolls at OSSG are any indication, it would be fair to say that your odds of developing similar (or more, or worse) complications are probably 50/50 no matter how closely you follow your surgeon's/doctor's directions, and that's just within the first year (and the longer out from your surgery you are, the more complications you're going to have and the more severe those complications are going to be, mainly because doctors refuse to accept that they don't know all there is to know about this surgery, and if you have problems, they're "all in your head"). Once you've had this surgery, your surgeon doesn't want to see you anymore because your complications are bad for his business of pushing this surgery on as many people as he can because anything is better than being fat (and yes, even though it's not recommended for anyone with a BMI under 40, surgeons are still doing this surgery on people with BMIs lower than that). Doesn't matter if you don't have any of the co-morbidities that are supposedly a requirement for having this surgery, along with a BMI over 40. If you don't have one of those (high blood pressure, CVD, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc), the surgeon will come up with one for you. And that psychological exam you have to pass? They'll fudge that for you too (if you aren't smart enough to be able to tell them what they want to hear, even as depressed as I was, on 40 mg of Prozac twice a day, I managed that).
So go read the whole article, it's very enlightening and should scare the hell out of anyone who thinks WLS is the magic miracle cure for TEHDEATHFATZ.

Migraine MRI update

2009-06-02T13:56:00.002-05:00

Ok, I don't know if I should worry or not. My doctor's nurse called me yesterday and said they had the results of my MRI. Doctor said there were some small abnormalities (I always knew my brain wasn't "normal") and that she doesn't think that's causing the headaches. But, she wants me to see a neurologist (there's one that comes up from the Twin Cities, once a month, I think). Thing is, I can't get in to see her until July 23rd. So I have almost 2 months to sit here and obsess about what's wrong with me and if it's nothing to worry about, like the nurse said, then why do I have to see a neurologist? I think I must be a mushroom because all she does is keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit.
I'm beginning to think my doctor isn't as good as I first thought she was. This migraine thing isn't the only reason. When I went to get the 3rd set of shots for my knees, the ortho doc asked me how I was doing and when I told him pretty good, other than a migraine, he wanted to know what I was being given for them. When I told him "Nothing, we're waiting on the results of the MRI I had done," he asked if I wanted him to prescribe something for me. Told him no, I would wait and see what the MRI showed and see what my PCP wanted to do from there (which seems like nothing, as fucking usual, send me to another doctor and let that one deal with it, just like she did with my arthritic knees). She won't give me any pain meds for my knees, nothing for my headaches (take Excedrin Migraine, that works, she says), physical therapy for my back (who haven't yet called to set up any appointments). Yeah, she's doing a really good job of taking care of my health (lose weight and everything will be fine, she says, been there done that didn't work I say, try again, she says). She wants to put me on blood pressure meds, in spite of the fact that, at home, my blood pressure is fine, it's only high when her nurse takes it and pumps the cuff up so high I'm in serious pain from it and then I get pissed off because she won't listen to me (but stress doesn't raise your blood pressure, oh no it doesn't, according to her).
At least now that I've seen the ortho doctor for my knees, I don't need any more referrals from my doctor to be able to see him again. If I have any problems, I can just call and make an appointment directly with him. He said these rooster comb shots take about 6 weeks after the last one to see the full effect of them, so hopefully, by the end of this month, first part of July, I should be seeing some improvement (I hope so, I want to go back to riding my recumbent exercise bike).

First Do No Harm is back up and running

2009-06-01T17:56:00.002-05:00

Ok, I was asked to help out with FDNH almost a year ago, but hadn't been able to get all the information I needed to get busy with it, and time got away from me. I now have most of what I need to know to get started with publishing the stories readers have sent to First Do No Harm. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get to this, but I will be reading all the emails, getting back to everyone who sent in their story, and working with you all to get your stories out there. I plan on doing a post every day this month, until I can get caught up with the backlog, so if you've sent something in and you don't see it right away, be assured that it will get posted.
If anyone has new "tales from the medical dark side", send them in and I will post them as soon as I have finished posting all the ones I currently have in line.
Thanks, everyone, for reading, and continuing to let us know what's going on with the medical establishment.

Letter to Woman Within

2009-06-01T13:45:00.002-05:00

I used the "Contact Us" form at Woman Within today. I'm so damned fed up with their lack of options as far as pants are concerned. They finally started carrying the pants I like again (polyester/rayon/spandex, straight leg, diagonal slash pockets), and they have them in 5 colors - charcoal gray, brown, dark navy, black, and true olive. While the price is a little more than I really want to pay ($24.99 each, but I'd pay it if they had them in a 32" inseam), I would have ordered 1 pair of each color. What stopped me? The inseam, of course. They only come in a 30" inseam, which hits me right above my ankles (yeah, I'm not interested in wearing high-water pants, thank you very much). And it pisses me off because they carry the same damned pants in wide leg and boot cut in petite, average, and tall, same colors/same fabric, but guess what? No fucking pockets in them.
So this is the letter I wrote in their "contact us" form:

I would like to order some pants from your catalog, item #25-17777-842, but you only carry them with a 30" inseam and I need a 32" inseam. I would order the 25-33835-842 pants, but they don't have pockets, neither do the 25-55058-842 pants, even though the inseams are long enough in both of those. Why can't you carry pants with pockets (slash pockets, not those useless sideseam pockets) in all 3 leg styles and in petite, average, AND tall? I happen to be a fat woman with long legs who wants pockets (the diagonal slash pockets) in my pants, and would love to be able to choose from straight, boot-cut, and wide leg styles, and not be stuck with pants that either have no pockets at all, or have hems that hit above my ankles if they do have pockets.
I buy most of my clothing at Woman Within, but you are really making me reconsider that. I had purchased 4 pairs of the pants like I'm describing (32" inseam, straight leg, diagonal slash pockets, polyester/rayon/spandex) several years ago, and then you quit carrying them. Now you have them back, but they just don't have a long enough inseam.
You seem to have plenty of options in pants styles and lengths if you like the sideseam pockets, but I don't like them, every time I sit down, whatever is in my pocket falls out. Rather makes the pocket useless, don't you think?
I guess I'll have to go back to making all my clothes and you can do without the money I would otherwise be spending with you.

We'll see what kind of response I get from them, but I'm betting it's going to be a form letter saying they're sorry, but they just can't carry everything everyone wants or some such bullshit (can you tell I've written complaining letters to clothing catalog companies before and what kind of response I've gotten?).

Veteran's Memorial in Rochester MN

2009-05-31T20:44:00.006-05:00

We just got home from visiting the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial in Rochester MN. I've not been able to see the one in Washington DC, but I can tell you that this memorial in Rochester is very moving.
My son, DIL, and grandson (Austin, who's 15) went with us, and my son had planned on staying in the van while we went to look at it. When we got there, he decided to get out and look at it too. My grandson took one of our digital cameras (we have 2 and I took them both along) and took pictures for me while I was taking pictures (he's good, let me tell you). He stopped and read all the little sections that listed each war the United States has been in, starting with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Gulf War (which still isn't over).
There is a wall which is inscribed with the names of servicemen/women who have perished of injuries sustained in service who lived within a 50-mile radius of Rochester MN. The names are inscribed on both sides of the wall, and will be added to as names are received.
The outside of the 4, curved, graduated-height walls have scenes engraved from all the wars, and the insides of those walls have short descriptions of all the wars (some with maps) the US has been in, with additional things like information on the national anthem, Gettysburg Address, and other historical information. All branches of the service are represented, with engravings of the seals for each of the academies. Flags from all six branches of the service fly, along with the POW/MIA flag, the MN state flag, and the US flag.
There are pavers in the sidewalks that have the name, branch of service, and date of enlistment or war served in on them (DH wants to get one for his father, who was in the Navy for 20 years, and one for himself [he was in the Navy for 20 years too]). There are seats spaced through the memorial, and each seat has something of significance engraved on it (one that I remember had several locations in Viet Nam listed, I'm assuming those were places where American soldiers saw action, as some of the locations sounded familiar).
All in all, it was a very moving, and sobering, experience. You can view the memorial's website here and here are a few of the pictures I took (the ones my grandson took on the other camera will have to wait until I get a card-reader to take the pictures off the memory card):

You can see how reflective the wall is, that's my reflection there when I was taking a picture of it.

I managed to get a picture of Austin as he was taking a picture...........

Orlistat and liver damage?

2009-05-28T21:56:00.002-05:00

Is this another instance of rushing a drug into production before finding out if it has dangerous side effects? Probably, after all, we have past examples of the same thing happening with phen-fen and Vioxx, just to name two.
And everyone "knows" that it's much better to suffer with any/all side effects/complications of anything that will make fat people thin because being fat is a fate worse than death, right? Right? Sorry, I'd rather be fat and as healthy as I can be with the problems I have (yeah, I know, hindsight is 20/20 and if I knew 11 years ago what I know now about WLS, I never would have done that either) than take whatever pill the doctors/pharmaceutical companies are pushing today to make me thin, simply because those pharmaceutical companies don't actually give a rat's ass if I have quality of life as long as they get my dollars for every so-called "cure" they have for being fat (and as successful as they've been in the past, I really don't think they're going to come up with anything better any time soon). After all, if their pills cause damage to your body in any way, they can sell you more pills to take care of that too, and make even more money off you. No thank you.
But of course, according to them, liver damage isn't caused by taking Alli/Xenical. After all, if fat people didn't take these drugs, they'd end up with liver damage anyway simply because being fat causes liver damage (in their opinion, and you know what they say about opinions). I want to see the studies showing that fat people who haven't taken orlistat in any form end up with liver damage in the same or greater numbers than fat people who have taken orlistat. Somehow, I don't think there's a study out there that shows that (I wonder why that is? Hmmmmm...........).
So, for my money, if a diet or a pill promises results that sound too good to be true, those results are probably unattainable by the majority of fat people, and should be taken with the whole of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Memorial Day Thank-You

2009-05-25T09:51:00.002-05:00

Thanking all of our Armed Forces members, past and present, those living and those deceased.

Friday Fluff

2009-05-22T14:35:00.002-05:00

Okay, I have to admit, I like Ray Stevens, and have been listening to his comedic songs for more years than I care to remember.
Mississippi Squirrel Revival is one that DH and I laugh about every time we hear it (and we have it on a comedy CD of Ray Stevens that I keep in the van, and DH has a copy of it in his truck).
Enjoy (and thanks to my Aunt Jackie for sending me the link to this).

MRI successful

2009-05-22T13:30:00.002-05:00

Okay, I had my MRI yesterday for my migraines. I'm not sure what the dimensions on the open upright MRI are, but you can see pictures of it here. From shoulder to shoulder, I'm about 22" wide, and my hips take up 22" when I'm seated, and in order to fit my shoulders in that space, I had to raise my arms straight out in front of me and cross them. Not much could be done to make my hips narrower, and it was a tight squeeze getting me in there when I was seated. But once I was in there, and tilted back a bit, and they lowered the seat, I was fine (well, other than the fact that raised, crossed arms pushed the rack of doom up around my neck). I had to take a lot of short, shallow breaths while I was in there, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle, once I got used to it. Yeah, I was still squished, but it wasn't painful like it is when you sit in one of those doctor's office chairs with the arms and the seat is too narrow (maybe the fact that it had solid sides and was squishing me evenly on the fat and not hitting my bones had something to do with that). Most of the scans only lasted 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 minutes and I could move my feet and hands between scans if I had to (and I found out that if my foot moved, even though my head was still perfectly still, it showed up as head movement, they had to redo one scan when my leg spasmed once). They told me I did very well.
My doctor should have the results by Monday, so I should know some time next week what they found out. DH went with me, and when I came out, the first thing he asked me was if they had confirmed that I have a brain (he's such an ass sometimes....LOL).
All in all, it was a pretty good experience, and I have to say that their waiting room is awesome. My ass actually fit in their chairs with room to spare (and all of their seating was like that), and the chairs were comfortable and easy to get out of even with arthritic knees. So, if I ever have to have another MRI, that is definitely the place I want to be referred to. The staff are friendly and really accommodating (and the one who started my IV, she was good, I never felt a thing when she put the needle in and then flushed it).
So, for anyone who has been told that they won't fit in an MRI, that's not necessarily the truth. CDI has locations in Washington state, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, and Florida. I don't know if all of the locations have the open upright MRI, but if you need an MRI and don't fit in the regular sized machines, it's certainly worth checking out (and in Minneapolis locations, they also have the open-sided MRI that can handle people up to 500 lbs, and they do sedated MRIs if need be).

Y'all have said it better than I ever could

2009-05-20T22:36:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged much lately, even though I've been reading all the blogs I follow and commenting once in a while. Everything that I would have blogged about has been covered by most of you and y'all have done quite well, so anything I would have said would have been along the lines of "What she said!"
I'm getting an MRI done tomorrow (Thursday, 21st) for my migraine headaches (finally), but my doctor won't order an MRI for my lower back pain. She says they only do those in the case of a pinched nerve that needs surgery, but that's not what my knee doctor told me (no way do I want to have surgery on my back). She seems to think it's muscle spasms (even though flexeril doesn't even begin to touch the pain I have in my lower back when I have to stand for more than 5 minutes). She poked along my spine, from my neck to below my waist, and while it didn't hurt until she got to the middle of my back, when she poked my spine from about 3" above my waist to 4" below my waist, I almost cried because it hurt so bad. I told her I can't sleep on my back because I end up in so much pain, I have trouble getting out of bed. I can't sleep on my right side for the same reason, so 95% of the time I'm stuck sleeping on my left side (and at that, I still only sleep for about 4 hours and then I have to get up for a half hour or so and sit in my chair, then go back to bed and hope I can get another couple hours of sleep). If I stand for more than 5 minutes, the pain hits me and if I don't sit down right away (or, if I'm walking, don't find something to lean on, like a shopping cart), then my legs get numb and I get weird shooting pains in my buttocks (yeah, probably TMI, there), then I practically collapse when I can sit down. Funny thing about it all, though, is that once I'm sitting down (or leaning, bent over at my waist), the pain goes away almost immediately. That doesn't sound like any muscle spasms I've ever had before (like the charley horses I get in my calves or my feet). So she's referring me to physical therapy for exercises to strengthen my back muscles. I'm hoping that will work to fix this back pain, but I'm just not sure how much it will help, if it's not a muscle problem to begin with. And then if it doesn't work, I've wasted my co-pays and the insurance companies' money on something that didn't work (but if it's not a pinched nerve, then I'd waste that money on an MRI, maybe). I don't know, I guess I'll go to physical therapy and see what happens.
I did go in for the cortisone shots in my knees, but the doctor I saw for that said that he thought the rooster comb shots might be a better way to go, since the cortisone shots only worked for a couple of months when I got them last year (the rooster comb shots are supposed to last for a year). It's a series of 3 shots, I got one last Tuesday, one this Tuesday, and the last one will be next Tuesday. DH is getting them for his knee too, but his doctor isn't so sure they'll help him much, his knee is bone on bone, no cartilage left there at all. If the shots don't work for him, he's looking at a knee replacement. One of the doctors he saw said DH is too young for that at 53, that the replacement will wear out and have to be done again. But the doc he saw today said that knee replacements last about 25 years now, so DH would be almost 80 before he'd need it replaced a second time, and he doesn't see a problem with doing it now if these shots don't work (don't you just love how doctors see eye-to-eye on treatment options? And these are doctors that work for our government, at the Veteran's Administration Medical Centers, tell me again how government running health care is going to be really good for us).
So that's what's been going on with us the last couple of weeks, and one of the reasons I haven't blogged about anything lately. Right now, I'm feeling too old, too fat, too tired, and in too much pain to really give a shit about much of anything. Hopefully, that will improve soon. It can't last forever, can it?

Dead and Gone

2009-05-09T17:28:00.002-05:00

This is so not fair. I finally got my copy of Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris and it just left too many loose ends. I certainly hope there are going to more books about Sookie and her life with the vamps/two-natured/witches/etc. I want to know what Niall meant when he told her "the vamp loves you" (which vamp?) and I want to know how she helps her nephew with his mind-reading talent. I also want to know if Dermot was really killed or did he get away and is he going to come after Sookie and Jason? See what I mean, too many loose ends, I have to know what happens next. I've never gotten this involved with a book series before, but I have to say that this one is addictive in the extreme (to tell you how addictive, I read D&G in less than 3 hours and couldn't put it down even to get another soda when mine was gone).
I had thought I would want to watch True Blood on HBO because it's based on the novels, but now, I'm not so sure. I've seen movies made from books I've read and the movie is never the same as the movie I saw in my head when I was reading the book. Too much gets left out, too much gets changed, and it's just not the same.

Fat kids more likely to suffer lower body injuries

2009-05-09T11:32:00.002-05:00

Okay, now this is just too fucking much, people. All these researchers sit around and bitch that our kids are fat, lazy couch potatoes who do nothing but stuff their faces with junk food. But get this:

The study analyzed the weight and injuries of kids who visited a children's hospital's emergency department over a three-year period. Sprains, such as to the ankle or leg, were the most common lower body injuries, and sent more than 23,000 children to the emergency department at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center between 2005 and early 2008.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I've never seen a kid who got a sprained ankle, or a broken bone, by sitting on hir ass all day on the couch, in front of the TV/computer/video games. So, which is it, asshats? Fat kids are couch potatoes, or they're out doing these things that cause them to have sprains and broken bones in their legs? Personally, I was a fat kid, and I sprained my shoulder giving my brother (2 years younger than me) a piggy-back ride, I fell out of a treehouse when I was 6, I sprained my ankle that same summer (when I was 6) when I jumped out of a swing, and I got scrapes and bruises when I fell off a pile of wooden apple crates. I don't know how many times I wrecked my bike as a kid and ended up with scrapes, bruises, and sprains.

Pomerantz noted that obesity is likely to also lengthen a child's recovery time from an injury, as the added weight and stress to the body can cause more damage.

Um, no, that's not always the case. In fact (yes, I know, anecdotal, but this is probably true for more fat kids than these assholes think), when I broke my ankle the day before school started (in 8th grade, and I walked from the rink to the car on that broken ankle and didn't get taken to the ER until the next day for x-rays, Mom didn't believe me when I told her I broke it until she saw how swelled it was the next day), I got a walking cast two weeks after the first cast was put on. I walked from our junior high to the doctor's office 3 blocks away for my appointments, and I walked around the school all day long, up and down stairs, carrying all my books. The cast came off after 8 weeks, and I was back at the roller rink, skating 3 to 4 hours at a time, 3 to 4 times a week.
Hell, I slipped on the ice getting out of a car and broke my other ankle when I was a sophomore in high school. It was broken so badly that they thought they were going to have to put pins in it (they couldn't because there was an open wound where I had scraped my ankle on some gravel in the ice). They ended up letting it heal, saying they would have to see how well it healed before deciding to pin or not to pin. It healed well enough that I had a walking cast 3 weeks after breaking it, and the cast came off for good in 9 weeks. There again, I was back rollerskating as soon as the cast came off. And they ended up not pinning it, it healed well enough on its own.

Exercise and diet, she said, remain the best ways to combat the growing obesity epidemic in the world. "Parents of an obese child who want the child to exercise but [are] afraid of the child getting injured should work with a specialist to get a tailored diet and exercise regimen to help them lose weight," Pomerantz said.

Yes, exercise and diet work just so well to keep kids from getting fat, or, if they're already fat, to get them thin.............FUCKING NOT!!!! And how many parents can afford to pay a specialist for a specialized diet and exercise routine? Especially with the economy the way it is right now, most parents are probably lucky to have jobs and be able to afford those luxuries of food, clothing, and shelter, let alone necessities of diet and exercise for their fat kids. Give me a fucking break from the moronic researchers who think fat is a bad thing (not to mention a break from the doctors and pharmaceutical companies who think they have to "cure" us of being fat).

C R A P may explain rising health care costs?

2009-05-04T09:09:00.002-05:00

This is just my take on this informative article at Junkfood Science. But could it actually be the nocebo effect that has millions of people thinking they are sick, running to the doctor, and demanding that doctors test and test and test to find/rule out every disease/risk of disease that's reported by mainstream media and that is raising the cost of health care across the board for everyone?

A financial publication isn’t a place you might expect to find an insightful article on health, but Financial Times proved the exception. Last weekend, Stuart Blackman explored how seemingly helpful educational health messages can be bad for our health. In fact, they can lead us to believe we are unhealthy and to actually feel quite unwell.

I've known people who, the minute they hear about a new disease/condition, start looking to see how many of the symptoms for that disease/condition they have. Then they run right out to their doctor and demand to be tested for it and then medicated for it, whether they actually have said disease/condition or not. They used to be called hypochondriacs.

His article, “Why health warnings can be bad,” began by describing the nocebo effect. That’s the powerful phenomenon of developing the most extraordinary physical symptoms when we believe or fear that something is bad for us. It’s the negative stepsister of the placebo effect and the full significance of both isn’t understood by many people. The nocebo effect is behind the confirmation for most food fears, for example. People who’ve been taught to believe certain foods are bad for them actually feel sick, experiencing such things as headaches, chest pain, nausea and indigestion, rashes, cough, congestion, weakness and fatigue, and even paralysis when they believe they’ve eaten them. It’s the stepsister of the placebo effect, at work when we feel healthier after eating foods or taking dietary supplements we believe are healthy.

How much of the blame here really lies with the patients and how much of it can be laid at the feet of the medical and pharmaceutical companies? After all, if researchers weren't out looking for more ways to use more drugs on more people to make more money, I would venture to say that most of the people who are diagnosed with this, that, or the other disease (in order to cover the doctor's ass in this litigious society of ours) would do perfectly fine without those drugs.

As Arthur Barsky, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said, when “you induce negative expectations – whether it’s through a pill, a health warning or advertising by a drug company – you set in motion the same process of symptom reattribution, which then amplifies the symptom, which further solidifies the reattribution.”
According to John Adams, professor emeritus at University College London and Britain’s leading risk expert and author of Risk, a major contributor to our negative expectations is the popular trend among health professionals and health agencies to issue precautionary advice concerning health risks, even when there is no evidence for any credible risk to people’s health. He labeled it a “syndrome” he calls C.R.A.P.

Yeah, living is risky all right, everything we do on a daily basis has some element of risk to it. Hell, just getting in and out of the shower can cause severe injury and/or death if you slip and fall just right. You risk injury/death every day when you leave your house, get in your car, and drive to work/school. You risk injury/death every time you play sports, exercise, take the stairs, take the elevator, or even eat a meal (choking on a piece of food can be deadly if no one around you notices or knows how to do the Heimlich maneuver). Life is a risk, from the cradle to the grave, and none of us get out of it alive or in perfect health.
You really should go give this article a read. I'm not saying that there are people who don't have things like chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia/severe back pain/etc that they deal with on a daily basis and don't go away after a couple of days or a week. Those things do exist and do need diagnosing and treatment, and not blame. But because of this cover your ass mentality and unrealistic expectations of perfect health that everyone is supposed to have, medical costs are rising and it's not the created "obesity epipanic" that is causing those increases, but all of the media hype about all of the so-called "dangerous" foods/additives/diseases that are going to kill us if we don't do something about them soonest. Doesn't matter that we're living longer lives, and are able to do more in our "golden years" than ever before, or that more people are living to see those "golden years". In addition to all of that, no one must ever get sick from anything, never have any kind of physical problem with their bodies, and must maintain for the rest of their lives the optimum level of health that the ideal 18 year-old has. Talk about unrealistic expectations, especially in the face of researchers finding all kinds of genetic markers for diseases we may never get, but are at risk of getting (even if it's a snowball's chance in hell) and must be medicated for, just in case. Add to all of that the lowering of diagnostic standards for things like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and you have a health care system running roughshod over you, demanding that you treat these diseases, even when you don't have any symptoms, demanding that you make lifestyle changes that may or may not do any good, demanding that you take medications that may or may not do any good (and whose side effects could be worse than the disease you're trying to treat that you might not even really have) and that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Are we there yet? If not, I think we're pretty damned close.

Stillwater Sightseeing

2009-05-03T19:35:00.018-05:00

We just got back this afternoon from a weekend spent in Stillwater MN. We went down there to take DH's step-daughter and family out for dinner, and they brought the kids back to the motel so they could go swimming with us (kids are 7, 12, 13, and 14). Wore them out, they had so much fun in the pool. That was Friday night. Saturday, DH took me sightseeing (he used to work at the Wal-Mart there) around downtown Stillwater. Got to see all of the antique shops, checked out the riverboats on the St Croix River, saw the trolley car that does tours of the downtown area, and made plans to go back and take that tour, and check out the dinner cruise on one of the riverboats. We also went by the Minnesota Zephyr and got a picture of it. It's really too bad that the Zephyr won't be running its trips anymore, I would have liked to have gone on one of those. We also saw where the caves are that house a brewery, DH has been there and said it was a really neat place (they also have tours, we may go back for one of those too).
One of the smaller riverboats.
Another of the riverboats on the St Croix River.
The largest of the 3 riverboats, this one has the dinner cruise.
Downtown Stillwater.
More downtown Stillwater.
Neat mural on the side of one the buildings in downtown Stillwater.
The old sawmill, has a couple of shops on the bottom floor, didn't go inside to see the rest.
The Minnesota Zephyr engine at one end of the train (there's an engine at each end).
A couple of the bigger boats in drydock by the Zephyr on the St Croix River.
St Croix River and part of the lift bridge to Wisconsin.
A much better picture of the lift bridge.
A small pavilion down on the St Croix River, they have the fireworks there on the 4th of July (or did, the last time DH was there).
St Croix River

WLS complications decline?

2009-04-30T19:34:00.002-05:00

This article leaves a lot to be desired when talking about complications from WLS. From everything I've seen on the support groups for WLS survivors, it's not that complications aren't happening as often or aren't as horrendous as they've always been - a lot of surgeons are telling patients that their symptoms of those complications either aren't due to the WLS or are "all in your head".

The findings from a study by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are based on an analysis of more than 9,500 patients under age 65 who had obesity surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, at 652 hospitals between 2001 and 2002 and between 2005 and 2006.

So, are the complications actually declining or is it just that doctors' reporting of those complications is declining? Honestly, I think it's the latter case. If complications aren't declining (and possibly even increasing in frequency, severity, and variety), then if/when fat people, who have been told that this is life-saving for them, hear about these complications and their severity, maybe they have second thoughts and decide not to have the surgery. Hit doctors in their pocketbooks and they have a very strong motive to quit reporting every complication that every patient has, and if they do report the complications, they have even more motive to make light of the effects of those complications on patients' quality of life.

The researchers found that the complication rate among obesity surgery patients dropped from 24 percent to about 15 percent. Contributing to that decrease were declines in post-surgical infection rates (58 percent lower), abdominal hernias, staple leakage, respiratory failure and pneumonia (29 percent to 50 percent lower).
There was little change in rates of other complications such as ulcers, dumping (involuntary vomiting or defecation), hemorrhage, wound re-opening, deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke, the researchers noted.

Yeah, the complications listed above? Those are just a small fraction of all the possible complications you can end up with from WLS, not to mention that if you have one of the complications, chances are you'll have several of them. So what about the incidences of all the complications they didn't list? What do you want to bet that they haven't declined any?
I don't care how much experience a doctor has doing WLS, there's still no guarantee that it's going to work perfectly or forever or without complications for every patient he has (case in point is mine and my best friend, Pat's, we had the same surgeon, the same surgery. She died from hers, mine didn't work and I'm worse off now than if I'd never had it done, and our surgeon is at the U of MN and teaches other doctors how to do this surgery. Yeah, no guarantees, people, none at fucking all).
It doesn't matter that WLS is now less invasive because of laparascopic procedures. Fucking with a working digestive system to make it less efficient and absorb less of the nutrients you eat is going to fuck with your health. If not immediately, then 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20 years down the road. And in the meantime, your quality of life sucks because you're dealing with life-altering, health-stealing complications.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't care what studies they're quoting, this is propaganda designed to keep fat people (and not even the "morbidly obese" fat people, they're doing this on smaller and smaller fatties all the time) coming in and giving their money (or their insurance company's money) to surgeons to butcher them, all in the name of "health" that isn't even a moral imperative.

Miscellaneous thoughts

2009-04-24T12:51:00.003-05:00

I hadn't realized it had been quite a while since I last posted anything (blame it on DH bringing a cold home from his work and passing it on to me). I've been feeling under the weather, and that's what I get for congratulating myself that I hadn't gotten any colds/flu all winter long. So of course, now that winter is over, I have to have the cold from hell that is just kicking my ass and making me dopey as all get-out with medication.
I'm trying the no-shampoo route with my hair. It's so oily that I need to wash it every other day or it looks like I've dumped a bucket of cooking oil on it, no shampoo I've ever tried has ever worked to keep it clean, shiny, and grease-free for more than a day and a half. Today, I did the 1 tsp of baking soda in a cup of water to wash my hair (and I'm thinking I'm going to add a rinse of cider vinegar later on, I used to do that all the time and my hair looked pretty good).
I've been reading all the brouhaha about United Airlines' policy of charging fat people for two seats. Makes me damned glad I don't intend on going anywhere that I'll have to fly in order to get there in time. DH was in the Navy for 20 years, and had to be flown to a different ship a couple of times, when his assignments were changed, and he said even back then he didn't fit in the seats very well (he was 5' 10" and 210 lbs). He's been out of the Navy for 15 years (this July), so that's been anywhere from 20 to 30 years ago (so the airlines have had inadequate seating in their planes forever, seems to me). We have a ship's reunion to go to in 2010, and had thought about flying from MN to VA for that, but now, with all this bullshit going on with the airlines, I think we're going to rent a minivan and drive it instead. That will allow us time to sightsee along the way, and even stop to visit family and friends. We also won't have to worry about what we can and can't carry on the plane (try getting a letter from his doctor for anything, let alone his insulin and syringes), and we won't have to worry about luggage getting lost or damaged. Not to mention that minivan seats are a lot more comfortable than airline seats, you can stop at rest areas to use a roomy bathroom, and get out and walk around if you get tired of sitting and driving.
I've also been reading all the bullshit the media is putting out about how fat people are causing global warming (and this is the media that hypes all the nutcases who don't think global warming is even happening). So, yeah, MSM, you can't have it both ways. Either global warming is a fact, and everyone on this earth is contributing to it, or it isn't happening at all. Please make up your minds, will you? All those numbers those asshats put in their LETTER (not a study) were mostly guesses and estimates pulled out of their asses. There might have been a very small basis of fact behind those numbers, but they then exaggerated the hell out of everything to prove their hypothesis. All they did was convince me that they don't know what they're talking about and that I'm better off ignoring anything that has their names on it, since it probably won't be honest or factual.
Not much else is going on, at least not anything worth writing about. I haven't even felt good enough to read any more books (and if you want to know what I had been reading, take a gander at my library blog, linked in the sidebar over there somewhere).

Sunday Fluff - VocaPeople

2009-04-12T10:43:00.003-05:00

My aunt sent me this video (it was a forward that has been sent around the intarwebz quite a bit, I'd say, just from all the addresses on the email she sent me). According to the background information, there are no musical instruments used, just their voices. Lots of talent here, I'd say. So enjoy :)

If you can't get the video to play, you can see it here.

Fat NHS staff to practice what they preach - get thin. ROFLMAO!

2009-04-06T10:09:00.004-05:00

This cracks me up. No, really, it cracks me up.
Approximately 700,000 staff of the NHS (in the UK) are thought to be "overweight" or "obese", out of 1.2 million employed. Gee, that's about, what, 58%? I'd say that pretty much reflects the rest of the population, wouldn't you?

Overweight and obese midwives, health visitors and nurses will be encouraged to enrol in programmes to help them lose excess pounds.

And I'll bet those 700,000 fat employees (if they enroll and follow directions assiduously) will be just about as successful at losing and maintaining that weight loss as the rest of the fat population has been. Oh yeah, bitch that I am, I'm so looking forward to the doctors of these fat NHS employees reaming them new assholes for not being successful at weight loss maintenance, just like they ream the fat public who aren't successful. Let them get a taste of the medicine they dish out to the fat public and see how long it takes them to come up with excuses for why it doesn't work for them but should work for the rest of us.

"In addition, the credibility of health messages is also supported by the behaviour of health professionals, for example in the reduction and current low levels of smoking among doctors.
"Over the next year, we will develop bespoke programmes to support achieving and maintaining a healthy weight for key frontline staff who advise and interact with children and families on obesity, such as maternity staff, midwives, health visitors and school nurses."

Dudes, smoking and stopping smoking is a whole 'nother ball of wax from losing weight and keeping it off. Smoking is not something that will kill you if never do it ever again, but I can guarantee you that if you never eat another bite of food, your life is going to be very fucking short (and that's only if you can keep from eating, and the only ones I've seen who are successful with that are people with EDs and the enforced starvation of WLS patients).
Oh, and good luck with developing those programs to support achieving and maintaining a "healthy" weight for those staff. You've been just so successful at developing those same programs for the fat public and they just work so wonderfully well, dontchaknow? ROFLMAO!!!! I can hardly wait (what do y'all want to bet that when their success rates for fat employees aren't any better than their success rates for the fat public, this quietly gets dropped and we never hear another word about it?).

Cats are weird

2009-04-05T16:32:00.002-05:00

FAT CAT (aka Scruffy)
I was vacuuming the loveseat today to get all the cat hair off it (Fat Cat lays on it a lot and he sheds like crazy, even when we brush him a couple of times a week). Vacuuming the loveseat was not an easy job either, Fat Cat decided he wanted to play with the hose to the vacuum cleaner (that cat isn't afraid of anything, I swear). So I thought while I was vacuuming up loose cat hair, I'd vacuum him too (thinking he'd run away and I could finish the love seat). No such luck, he loved it! Stupid cat. Took me half an hour to vacuum that damned loveseat because I had to do it around the cat. Every time I put him down on the floor and started the vacuum back up, he was right back up there, rubbing on the hose and the brush, trying to play with it, chasing it, and trying to chew on it. He moved more while I was vacuuming him/the loveseat than he normally does (unless he's playing with the stuffed mouse that squeaks when he bats it). This is the cat that is so lazy he has to lay down to eat his cat food, and lays down to drink water. If you put a plate of canned cat food down for him, he lays down and eats all the food on one side of the plate and then looks at you like "aren't you going to turn the plate for me so I can eat the food on the other side?"
I didn't have to worry about Slick, he runs and hides when I start the vacuum cleaner. He doesn't like it at all.

Same Sex Marriage now legal in Iowa - hip hip hooray!!!!

2009-04-03T15:12:00.003-05:00

This is about damned time. Now it needs to spread to the other 47 states who haven't yet legalized same sex marriage. I just hope that Iowa's legislators don't cave to the religious wingnut pressure to put it to a vote to amend the Iowa State Constitution.

Neuropathy, gastric bypass linked

2009-04-02T19:59:00.004-05:00

This should give people another reason not to have WLS.

Sami Harik did not think it was an accident that he was seeing neurological problems in patients who had had gastric bypass surgery.
Harik, chair of the department of neurology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, got some flak when he told a patient who'd had the weight-reduction procedure that her neurological symptoms were being caused by a vitamin deficiency brought on by the surgery. The patient reported what Harik said to her surgeon, and the surgeon sent Harik a “frosty letter,” challenging Harik to produce data.

This does not surprise me at all. From everything I've learned on the OSSG-gone_wrong group, most WLS surgeons refuse to acknowledge that any complications patients get are from the surgery (and if they do acknowledge complications, they say those complications aren't nearly as bad as what can happen to a patient if said patient stays fat). They want proof, but a lot of them don't do any follow-up for more than 6 months or a year with any of their patients (and if you have problems, they'll refuse to treat you).

Now, Harik and colleagues in the neurology department, including lead investigator Dr. Katalin Juhasz-Pocsine, have published a study based on patients who've been treated by the department for the last 10 years. The results, reported in the May 22 issue of the medical journal “Neurology”: Of the 150 patients who'd had the Roux-en-Y bypass surgery before being treated at UAMS' Neurology Clinic, the symptoms in 26 patients could be directly linked to the surgery.

26 out of 150 patients - that's 17% with neurological complications from WLS. That is not a number that is part of the "informed consent", and that's not a risk I would be willing to take (my VBG just shrank the size of my stomach, it didn't bypass any of my intestines).

It started, for Poscine, with a patient in her 30s who came in complaining of tingling in her feet. Poscine ruled out diabetes, which can cause neuropathy in the limbs. Poscine determined she was deficient in vitamin B12 and iron, and began giving her patient IV nutritional supplements and making sure that she was eating. But the patient declined; three months after her first visit, she could no longer walk and, bedridden, required complete care. Her body could not absorb what it needed to repair the problems.
Poscine persuaded the patient to agree to a partial reversal of her bariatric surgery. A section of bowl that had been bypassed was rejoined to the stomach so that more nutrients could be absorbed.
In three more months, she could get out of bed. A year out, she can walk again and is much improved.

This patient was lucky, not all reversals are that successful and show results that dramatic. Bariatric surgeons know that these surgeries can cause nutritional deficits, and supposedly tell their patients what vitamins and how much of them to take, and that they will have to take them for the rest of their lives. What they don't tell them is that all the vitamins recommended sometimes aren't enough and that the lab values that are considered normal for anyone who hasn't had WLS are not normal for someone who has had WLS and those "normal" values can, in fact, be dangerously low for them (and those patients don't find this out until they start having problems). Why do bariatric surgeons not know their patients are having these problems? Because these problems don't always show up right away. Sometimes they don't show up for years (5, 10, 15, or 20 years down the road) and these surgeons don't follow WLS patients for nearly that long.

“We are not saying patients should not get the surgery,” Poscine said, but that they need individualized supplementation and careful, lifetime follow-up. Harik estimated the percentage of bariatric patients who get into trouble as less than five percent of the population.

WLS patients need individualized supplementation and careful, lifetime follow-up all right and I can guarantee you that their surgeons aren't going to do that follow-up and they aren't going to refer patients to doctors who can, and will, do that kind of intense follow-up because if they have to tell patients this before they have the WLS, they just might have second thoughts about having this surgery.
What the WLS surgeons don't tell their patients is that most vitamins and supplements that they need to take don't always work if taken orally (surgically induced malabsorption doesn't just keep calories from being absorbed, ya know?), and that a lot of what they need to take will have to be done as injections or given by IV.

Still, bariatric surgery is growing exponentially, Poscine said, and doctors need to be vigilant to make sure their patients with intentionally compromised digestion get immediate treatment of neurological problems. She is particularly concerned that bariatric surgeons take to heart the results of the study, since, she said, few follow their patients over a long period — and many don't believe the study's premise anyway.

And this is the major problem with WLS - too many surgeons don't believe that the problems their patients are having are a result of their mutilated digestive tracts because they don't have to follow their patients long-term. After all, how much money can you make if you can't spend all your time in surgery? If you have to spend half of your time with follow-up care (which pays a lot less than surgery) you aren't going to make as much money as if you spent most of your time in surgery and a little bit of time convincing patients that you have the "magic cure" for all their ills in this one little life-altering surgery (too bad they don't tell you that the "life-altering" isn't always good, and can be fatal or debilitating).
These problems with WLS have been happening for more than 30 years and WLS surgeons don't give a shit. How many more fat people have to die, how many more fat people have to suffer debilitating complications and worsened quality of life before they figure out that being fat is not a fate worse than death?
I wish, by everything I hold dear, that I could have now the quality of life I had before I had my WLS, and I don't have nearly as many complications from my WLS as a lot of people do, and I'm still alive, unlike a lot of fat people who have gone through this shit. And I can guarantee you that my quality of life is worse now than it was 12 years ago. 12 years ago, I could do my shopping at Cub's or Wal-Mart without having to use an electric cart, I could walk through a mall for half the day shopping and not be in severe pain halfway through it, I could eat a meal at a restaurant and not have to be aware of where every bathroom was and make sure that one was within 50 feet of me at all times, just in case. I could climb stairs without having to use the handrail to pull myself up them (and I wasn't out of breath because I was in so much pain from climbing the stairs). Yeah, WLS sure did improve my life a lot.......NOT! And that's why this kind of thing pisses me off and why I blog about it and why I risk embarrassment from telling those TMI bits - because I don't want anyone else to suffer what I've been through, or to suffer even worse than what I've been through (just take a look at the complications list I've posted before, you'll see what I mean).

Power Plus Woman - Not to be taken lightly?

2009-03-31T09:11:00.002-05:00

Semi-good article here, but I think they may be wrong when they say she represents all fat people. They are ignoring all the other groups working on discrimination against fat people. Way to do your research, Fox News.

She is the voice of America's plus-sized population, a movement quickly gaining momentum in America today. POWER PLUS WOMAN, Lisa Marie Garbo, plus-sized role model and advocate speaks out on behalf of a suppressed subculture of men and women who have been without a voice, but who intend to be heard. The message is out universally about size acceptance, anti-size discrimination and equal rights for plus-sized people.

Excuse me, but no one asked me if she was speaking for me. This makes it sound like size acceptance is a monolithic movement where everyone agrees on what needs to be done and how to do it, which isn't true at all, from everything I've seen in the fatosphere so far. Is Lisa Marie Garbo involved in anything besides her Club Bounce and opening more of them in more cities? This article doesn't say, and that's what I'm more interested in knowing.
I also take exception with the following:

Power Plus Woman, Lisa Marie is dedicated to spreading the word that size-discrimination in our society leaves a lasting, negative effect on everyone. Just as the gay population was at one time discriminated against, overweight people continue to be disregarded and victimized daily. Garbo says, "With all the changes within our political and social culture, the timing for size-acceptance could not be more perfect than right now."

The gay population was at one time discriminated against? What world are they living in that they don't see the discrimination that is still continuing against the GLBTQ community? And comparing discrimination against one group with discrimination against another group doesn't account for the discrimination faced by people who belong to 2 or more discriminated-against groups (too many intersections to mention here, but y'all know what I mean, I hope).
And with all the changes in our political and social culture - give me a break. Those changes aren't going to help fat people, they're going to try and get rid of us. National healthcare (if they manage to ram that through) will end up being rationed and who is going to come out on the short end of that stick? The fat, the elderly, anyone who is seen as having a "lifestyle" that "causes" their condition. Insurance companies penalizing people who have those "lifestyles" mentioned above, or who can't meet the diagnostic standards for "health", which standards keep getting lowered all the time (the lower the standards, the more people can be diagnosed as "ill" or "diseased" and the more pills to be prescribed).
So she thinks these clubs of hers, where fat people can go to dance and socialize without the bullshit thrown at them in other venues are going to help? Yes, it's nice to have a place like that, but that is not going to change access in any public area where access is not available for fat people. Airlines aren't going to install better seating that fits a wider array of bodies, restaurants aren't going to install bigger booths, and employers aren't going to tell you they didn't hire you because you're fat, they're either not going to tell you anything at all or give some other excuse for not hiring you (which is exactly what most of them are doing right now when it comes to other groups of people who are discriminated against).
Do I think her clubs are a good idea? Yes, because it is nice to have a place to go where you don't have to worry about people making nasty comments/jokes about your size or refusing to let you in because of your size. It's nice to be able to socialize with people with whom you have things in common, but size isn't the only thing I want have in common with those with whom I socialize.
I agree that passing laws against size discrimination is something that needs to be done, but just because those laws end up on the books doesn't mean it's going to change much in society, at least not for a long time. How long have the laws about discrimination against those who have disabilities been on the books? Gains have been made, but people who have disabilities still face discrimination every day, overt and covert.

Federal and state laws declare that all persons within the United States are free from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and yet with the exception of Michigan, there is not a law that pertains to size discrimination. It is Garbo's objective to see that all overweight people be shown the exact same rights as their size-acceptable counterparts.

And those laws aren't doing much to stop discrimination against POC, women, anyone who isn't "Christian", etc. Laws help, but they don't change peoples' minds, they don't end bigotry, they just drive it underground.

Wal-Mart has my slacks

2009-03-28T17:54:00.002-05:00

Aren't I just the Little Miss Postypants today. I went to WallyWorld to do some grocery shopping and while I was there, I checked out the clearance racks in the Women's clothing section. I found a cute top for $3 (gotta love it), it's a red/black/cream swirly print on dark pink with a square neck and smocking in the front, and has raglan sleeves (no shoulder seams, YAY!!). They have some polyester/rayon/spandex slacks for $13 (regular price, not clearance) that actually have the same kind of front pockets as blue jeans, not those nasty side-seam-that-you-can't-put-anything-in-because-it-falls-out-when-you-sit-down-pockets (and they're a medium-weight fabric, with a silky smooth feel to them). They're made by White Stag, and so far, WallyWorld has them in khaki, brown, black, gray, navy blue, pinstripe black, and pinstripe charcoal. I like all of those except the khaki (it's too light in color and shows the dirt too easily for me), but I wish they also had them in royal blue, purple, burgundy, and hunter green (I have tops that would go with all of those colors that they don't have). They have some other cute tops there by White Stag, but the cut of them isn't something that would fit me in the sizes they carry (up to a 4X, which is a 26/28), those tops are all between $12 and $14. They also had some Faded Glory tops (tee-shirt type) that go up to a 5X (30/32), but I don't buy them because they hit right at the top of my hips, and I prefer them a bit longer (mid-hip or longer). Those were between $9 and $12, IIRC, and they had some pretty cute graphics on them.
Most of the other tops that were on the clearance racks had the empire waist styling, and those just aren't made to fit me (if your boobs are a D cup or smaller, they might fit). I don't think I would have bought any of them even they would have fit, since most of them had that damned puffy sleeve with the elastic (or a narrow sewn band) at the bottom of the short sleeve. I prefer my sleeves less constricting, thank you very much :)
So if you're looking for the kind of pants that I like (and they come in sizes from 16 to 30/32) at a good price, you now know where to find them. And check out the clearance racks, tops for $3 to $7, well, that's just too good a deal to pass up if you can find something you like. Oh yeah, they had some Just My Size tops on clearance too (most of them are too short for my taste, but they might please some of you).

Swimsuit idea for the rack o'doom

2009-03-28T12:14:00.002-05:00

I think I may have just come up with an idea to make a swimsuit that will actually fit my rack of doom and give it the support it needs. Y'all know I bought that Making Beautiful Bras book. It hit me after I took apart one of my really old bras that I could remake that out of swimsuit lycra/spandex, line the cups so they don't stretch, extend the back so I don't have to put the hook/eye closure there, make the bra straps out of the lycra/spandex, and attach a skirt of lycra/spandex where the bra band would be, and voila - a swimsuit that fits my bust and supports it. Not only that, with the multitudinous choice of colors/prints, I can actually have the suit I want in the color/print I want (not to mention that no one will have a suit exactly like it).
Now I'm wondering, if it works for the swimsuit, and gives me the support and comfort I want, can I make bras that way? I'd have to add the hook/eye closure, and wide elastic around the bottom of the band, but the added options that would give me for colors is mind-boggling. I may just have to invest in the fabric and some really good thread and try this one out, since I'm having a difficult time finding bra fabric in the real world and I don't much like shopping for fabric online (I can't see it, feel it, and the colors aren't true to life when viewed on my monitor). The elastic can be bought online, no one is going to see it (it gets sewn on, turned to the wrong side and stitched down).
Don't get me wrong, I like the swimsuit I bought, but there isn't a swimsuit out there made to support a cup over a DD (at least, not that I've been able to find), and I've been wearing bras for so long that I'm uncomfortable without that support (not to mention, the older I get, the saggier/baggier the boobs get, and I just don't like them bouncing around when I walk....). So I'm going to try this and see how it works. I'm going shopping on Monday for fabric (DH will want to go along and give his input on colors....lol....and he doesn't have to work Monday or Tuesday).

Who says animals don't think?

2009-03-28T09:23:00.002-05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, maybe the dog was trained to do this, but I kinda doubt it since s/he paddled at the side of the pool first.