Good God I've been sick lately.
Last time I wrote I mentioned that I felt flu-ish. What I thought was flu turned out to be a titanic abscess that had worked its way into my sinus cavity. Apparently bad abscesses mimic flu symptoms quite often - fever, chills, sweats, cotton wool for brains, whole body aches, nausea, that stuffed-up feeling in your sinuses. Well, maybe not usually the last part, maybe that was just the location of it.
Anyway, after weeks of feeling rough and not knowing why, and more weeks of that horrible taste in my mouth, and a few days of pain, I got rushed in for emergency surgery about three weeks ago. Which was painful and weird, because the anaesthetic only half-worked. Apparently it can be like that when you have a bad infection - something to do with the blood becoming acidic and deactivating the anaesthetic, I dunno. I was only half awake to listen. And OH MY GOD the smell. I've worked in hospitals before, in various units (including burns and dermatology) and I've smelled some awful things, but I've seriously never smelled anything like that before. Even the nurses were gagging. They had to totally decontaminate the room after I was in there, and the smell still stuck to things. I wouldn't be surprised if they had to burn the furniture.
I probably should not be feeling just the teeniest bit impressed with myself. Ehh, what can I say? My scientific mind is always curious. I just wish they'd been able to videotape it. Two huge, serious abscesses in the last quarter year, and I haven't been able to videotape either one. Boo.
This does, of course, raise the question of WHY I've had two huge, serious abscesses in the last quarter, when I've previously had two smaller, less serious ones in my LIFE. I have to go for blood tests, which I keep putting off. Probably the strep is behind it, it seems to be behind half of the things that have gone wrong with my health in the last year and change.
So anyway, I had the abscess drained and debrided, and then I had to go in three or four days later for a second operation to repair some of the damage and clear out the rest of the infection, and then a third one last week to build up my upper jaw again. My dentist told me last week that she thinks they've managed to save the jawbone, which is actually the first indication I had that it was really that serious.
So yeah. My exercise plan has been derailed. Again. There's always something. I have been walking, mostly doing things like grocery shopping and going to school, which does add up. Most weeks I average an hour of exercise a day, which isn't enough, but is better than nothing. I've lost three pounds, although this last week it seems to have gone back on again - I'm assuming this is only water weight due to it being the time of month, because there's no way that I've eaten enough to put on weight. I've eaten under my calorie goal every day since I started, although some days it's been very close. Other days I'm way below, which I'm trying to make myself believe is not good, because I'm still in that state of mind where less = always better, inside my head. Even though I know intellectually that this is not true. It's still very hard to reconcile what I now know to be true with what I've been taught for my whole life. I've been eating badly since I got sick - candy, sandwiches, junk food, potatoes - and while I'm always under my calorie goal, and under my fat goal 9 days in 10, I'm almost always above my sugar (although I'm not paying THAT much attention to it right now, since I go over it with a glass of orange juice and a carton of yoghurt; I'll worry more about sugar when and if I find that I'm not losing weight and / or I'm having problems with blood sugar) and never manage to get my fibre or protein. If I manage half of my daily recommendation of fibre and protein, I consider that a success, and that's not good. I'm trying. I really am. And now that I'm feeling a bit better - although not anywhere near normal, or even normal for me - I can try a bit harder each day.
I HAVE to get back to the gym, I know I feel better when I go, and I hate that I'm paying all that money for nothing when I have so little money to begin with. (It's extra tight at the moment too; I had to take two weeks off work this month with the operations, and two weeks off last month with the infections and broken jaw. I talk for a living, and I wasn't able to talk when the jaw was bad.)
Things ARE getting better though, however slowly, and they'll continue to do so. Touch wood. I just have to get my exercise and eating back on track.
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