C25k: Day 1, Week 1

Yesterday I started the Couch to 5k (C25k) running program as detailed on coolrunning.com. I downloaded a podcast from Running Into Shape to help me keep track of when to walk and when to run. I recommend to anyone who wants to do this program to either download or make your own, it made things a lot easier to be told what to do when and for how long.

I am just coming down with a head cold so I didn't really expect to be perfect at this. I will probably end up doing the 1st week schedule for two or even three weeks before moving on. Between my head feeling like an overfilled water balloon I also have to be mindful of my back. I don't want to re injure it. As far as trips to the gym go I will NOT touch a weight machine until I meet with a trainer and get some advice (I have a meeting scheduled for 4/8) from my chiropractor. Hell the exercise will probably help my back get stronger so hopefully I can stop going so much.

Back to the C25K program. This week after a warm-up you jog for 60 seconds then walk for 90 ending with a cool down walk. All told you are exercising for roughly 20 minutes.

Yesterday was my first day on this program. The treadmills were full so I opted to try the elliptical. Probably not recommended but it was what was open. In the end I probably got more of a workout then week 1 is intended to give you but it felt great and, in my opinion, worked fine.

I made it about 3/4 of the way through before just walking the rest of the program. My back held up rather well but between being on the elliptical and having the head cold I didn't want to push myself to far. I could feel myself getting light headed and called it over about halfway through the actual cool down walk. Since I started a little early and walked through the last running portion I wasn't to worried about not getting a good cool down in.

Exercise

Part of needing to wait three months to recheck my thyroid levels is to make sure that they weren't out of whack from something environmental. The doc suggested I actually eat and to try to make it healthy (before I went in I was down to one meal a day, if I was lucky. I just was never hungry. Still am not but I try to eat at least a little something anyway.) and that I also start exercising.

So I am trying to eat more and healthier and I will also be going to the gym and starting the Couch to 5k running program. I plan on trying to keep track of how well it is going here. Since I am not doing this for weight loss I am not planning on tracking that however that may change. Any weight that I drop will just be an added bonus, at this point I am doing this for health and energy levels.

Basically, I just am tired of feeling like crap every day.

Because nothing can ever be simple...

Went to the doctor for my followup. He was happy with how the meds were helping me. The blood work however showed that my thyroid numbers were low, which means my thyroid is overactive. He said that the numbers weren't low enough that it should cause me to have such severe anxiety issues, so he is sticking with the GAD diagnosis, but it could make it more difficult for me to handle it without the meds helping. He wanted to check the levels in 6 months and continue with the anxiety meds. If it turned out that my Thyroid is still not behaving then I would go on meds for that and hopefully be able to go back to dealing with my anxiety with exercise and calming breathing techniques.

Then I told him about Mom.

Now I go back in 3 months to check on the levels.

I'm scared.

I got a message from my father. My mom had my younger sister, who is severely autistic, and they were meeting him for lunch at the mall. When she got there she got confused. She didn't know where she was or why she was there. They wandered the mall until my dad got worried and left the restaurant to find them. He said when she saw him she remembered what was going on and broke down.

He said there had been some minor memory loss before this, getting confused and very tired. They are going to the doctor today to see if it has to do with the thyroid meds but this episode was serious. There is a small history of Alzheimer's in the family, my great grandfather on her side being the only one that we know of. If there is no indication of her thyroid meds being off they are checking into it further.

This scares me. Very much.

Good news.

Part of the family drama that I have been dealing with is that my mother was diagnosed with cancer in late December, just days before Christmas. She had a lump on her thyroid and had to have the entire thing removed to be biopsied. It came back positive for cancer.

I forget the name of the cancer. They told us that the kind she had rarely jumped cell types but that it could get into her blood stream and attach itself to her other organs. In other words a rogue thyroid cell could attach itself to her liver and grow a tumor. It wouldn't be liver cancer, still thyroid, it would just be located in the wrong spot.

For treatment they gave her some pills that made her radio active for a week. These pills were supposed to find any and all thyroid cells, kill them, and highlight them so that after a few days they would show up on a body scan. Then the doctors would be able to see if they needed to take further action against the cancer.

My parents just called me with the good news. The body scan showed that not only were the thyroid cells located ONLY in her throat but that it also appeared to have killed them all off.

She will need to go through this once more in about 6 months, just to be safe, but the doctors were confident to call her cancer free.

Maybe there is hope for 2010 yet.

Things are looking up.

So, it's been a week on the meds and I can tell the difference. Granted it's not a big one and I still expect some pretty big roller coaster rides of emotions until it really gets into my system, but I will take any positive difference at this point.

I am happy. Truly happy and playful. I wasn't not happy before but I didn't feel this...carefree either. The fears and everyday worries that plagued me constantly have drastically declined. I do still have them, they do still pop in my head, but mentally smacking myself upside the skull to stop thinking like that is much easier. I have been realizing my worries earlier as well so they don't careen out of control, snowballing into huge issues. I can tell that my everyday outlook is changing as well. The negative thoughts are making way for much more positive and optimistic ones.

I still have issues and probably always will but I can look back on the last year and see just how bad I have let myself become. This has been going down long before I thought it was. It was so gradual of a change, so slight day to day differences, that I just didn't notice the cliff at the end. Thankfully I was able to grab a hold of the edge before falling and got help before to many fingers began to slip. It was close though.

Lets try this again.

Alright, so this whole blogging thing has been a major fail. No updates in months and really only because I knew if I posted it would be some self-hating dribble and I didn't really want to admit that I was having real issues. Having to type out and then read the shit that would have come out would have forced me to realize my issues and, well, anyone well versed in the world of denial will tell you that that just isn't good.

The reality is however that I have been suffering from anxiety attacks and just general issues for months, since summer really, and it all pretty much came to a head last week. I have realized that I, in fact, can't do everything on my own, I need to actually talk to people besides my husband, and I can't keep shit bottled up.

Truth of it is this is the worst that my anxiety has ever been. I can't remember the last real meal I had and I'm pretty sure that going days without eating anything isn't normal, especially when you don't realize that it's been days because you never actually got hungry. On top of the incessant worrying about little, really stupid, stuff (such as the fact that I managed to convince myself that my husband hated me because I dropped a damn pencil on the floor), the insomnia, and the feeling of a handful bricks resting right where my lungs are supposed to be, I finally admitted to myself that I might just need some help to get through this.

Thankfully I was able to get into my doc. He gave me some meds that I just started taking on Tuesday and already I can feel a difference. Its not big, I had major issues sleeping and woke up not being able to breathe still but when I got news that would have sent me into a tail spin (a whole other set of issues that I am dealing with right now) I didn't. I'm not sure if it was the actual meds or if it was just the fact that my mind knew I started taking them and is doing its own thing but either way I'm not going to fight it. I am still thinking that I might see a counselor or someone who is trained to help someone with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder, what a freaking catch all name that is, lol) but that won't happen for a while. Right now I am just going to let the drugs help get me back on freaking track.

Basically I am going to try to actually start using this thing again, instead of just looking at the link on my bookmarks and thinking about maybe posting something. I am also going to keep trying to write the story I am working on, it has gotten mostly positive reviews so someone out there likes it. I have been surprised just how rewarding it's been to write like that. Nothing meaningful or deep, but just a story. Maybe one day I will think of something original that I can actually put my real name on it and not just an internet SN.

So it's about two months late but here's hoping that 2010 brings brighter days! or at least more days where I don't have issues breathing then not.

:)

Breakdown for one please.

So...things have not been going that well for me here in the wonderful world known as my life. I finally had the breakdown I have been avoiding now for weeks and yet again I realize just how harmful it is to hold all that shit in.

Short story is - I started smoking again about two weeks ago after hitting a wall and realizing that not only am I not feeling any better but I was now trying to pull away even from my books. I did this knowing full well that smoking is a major hangup for my husband but sadly the smoking helped pull me back on track. Sometimes I really do miss it. On Tuesday I found a major mistake I made at work. A $3k mistake. I have a panic attack on my way home, the first in years, and while I was able to control my breathing the entire time and I didn't pass out it was bad. Really bad. I have never missed my medication until that moment when I had nothing to take. This all scares me so I come clean to my husband who, in what has become something of an inside message for us, thumps me on the head for being stupid, and then hugs me and puts me back together. I really am lucky to have him. He knows just what to say and how, even if he doesn't realize he does.

After that night I have felt much better. Wednesday was rough with having to talk to my boss, but it all turned out ok and I have felt much better since. I really hope that Tuesday night was the bottom of this hole and I can move forward and continue putting myself back together.

All I can really hope for is that when I am ready to check back in, I haven't lost any friends.

I am not a patient person.

Why is it that you can break apart in a matter of moments but the healing and putting yourself back together takes days/weeks/months? Of course if I am honest with myself I didnt break apart in moments, it was a slow fall, but I dont feel like being honest with myself at this time. If I do that I might actually realize just how...broken I really am and I would like to think I am getting better.

Really I am getting better. The physical anxiety issues have lessened a considerable amount. Now its just getting my brain back on track. Or at least on a different track than the one its on now.

In happier news, we are now puppy parents! We picked up the cutest puppy last Wednesday and have been adjusting since, lol. Bear (H wants the name to be Bare ::eyeroll::) is a roadside drop that my sis rescued. We arent quite sure what breed he is, the guesses right now are Lab & Pit. Either way he is smart, sweet, and very much a puppy, lol. Pics when I have some.

I am so weird.

Why take some sleeping pills (alright, fine, it was just a Tylenol PM, but still) and then fight to stay awake? Makes no sense. None what so ever.

On a good note my dishwasher was finally installed on Sunday. I all but jumped for joy. It even does a fantastic job. Who invented the dishwasher? I need to know so I can find them and kiss them. That and the person who came up with Jet Dry. #1 and #2 on my current list of best inventions ever. Lol.

And I made our first dinner in the new house. Yes, its been a month since closing, but I finally got the kitchen put together enough to cook on Saturday. It felt good to get something done. Oh, I didnt even burn dinner. It wasnt anything special, Italian Chicken for chicken salads, but I was proud. Especially because we didnt know how well the oven temp worked. Our old oven ran about 25 deg hot so we had to adjust everything. This one seemed to be right or at least close. We are going to try a pizza tomorrow to test it again.

A minor setback with a pinch of fear

** Just an FYI - I am not writing this for advice, I am writing this for me.**

I have found that in times of stress I tend to withdraw from the world around me. I pour myself into my books and hardly come out to breathe, preferring to live in the fictional world rather then dealing with the real one. Not a very good stress response but hey, its me, its what I do.

Well this past week I realized that I had fallen into that again. Fallen pretty deep. I haven't been eating or sleeping hardly at all (and the little bit I do get isn't restful). I have pulled away from my friends, both online and in real life. I spend all my time reading, even at work.

I am scared because not only did I miss what was happening, and I had been proud for catching and controlling it in the past, but am unable to stop it from continuing to get worse. Also I don't know whats triggered it this time. I can look back on my life and see the moments where I would get like this. I can see what made it happen, even if it was just a yelling match with my mother. Normally it would just be for a day or two then I would get over whatever happened. Only once did it span weeks like it has this time, my senior year of high school when my BFF passed away from cancer.

I broke down and took a sleep aid last night. I feel slightly better today but the rock on my chest is still there, making it hard to breathe. I still opened my online book the second I got to work. I know it will take time to get back on track. I know I just need to take things a day at a time. I know that it very well might get worse before it gets better. But I have never been a patient person. I am angry with myself for being this way and, yes, I know that I shouldn't be. And yes, I know I should be in therapy. And no, I don't plan on going right now.

With all that I also know that I can get through this. I can and will bounce back. It will take time and work but I will get there. As bad as I feel right now I am still miles ahead of where I could be. I believe that you can not know true happiness with out knowing true sadness, can not know true contentment with out also being restless. I believe that you can not live in the extremes of these things but need to live in a balance. I just need to find my balance point again.

Writing does wonders. I feel better now and understand more then I have in the past month if not longer, if I am really going to be honest with myself. It will only get better from here even if I do end up taking a few steps back every now and again.

Two weeks

We got our official letter from our realtor, we close July 17th at 3pm. I am excited beyond words but my anxiety is starting to creep in as well. I woke up in the middle of the night last night having breathing issues and my chest has been tight all morning. I am trying very hard to not worry but it is getting harder and harder. So I am trying to stay away from the House Buying Forums & FAQs. I do not need to read horror stories right now! I will be so much happier when this is all done and we have the keys in our hands. Much happier.

A raging case of PMS is also not helping. My anxiety is always 100 times worse when a stressful situation matches up with PMS and I dont get my right mindset back until a day or so after AF's arrival.

Another sinus infection.

First - Doctors really shouldn't be surprised at anything you say to them when in for a visit. Or, well, I should say they shouldn't act surprised. It's just a tad bit unnerving.

I have been having what I assumed to be allergy issues the past week or three. I would pop a Zyrtec and some Tylenol Cold and suffer through whatever they didn't take care of. Then last week I felt it in my ears and noticed that I was a lot more tired then I normally was, even after a rough night. Since this is how the last sinus infection in January started (that gave me pneumonia) I called the doc and ran in.

Sure enough its a sinus infection. Joy of joys. (eye-roll)

After she (the doc) came to this conclusion she asked how much pain I was in from it. When I said none (it really didn't hurt any, it was just uncomfortable and annoying, same as the one in Jan, that's how it got bad enough to give me pneumonia in the first place, I didn't know I was sick) she looked at me with the "you have got to be kidding" me face. After asking three more times, in three different ways, she finally decided I was telling the truth I guess and let it go. But it was still unnerving to be grilled about what kind of pain I was in and if I was *sure* it didn't hurt any.

So now I added another pill to my daily routine of allergy & cold meds (she told me not to stop it). I feel like I am old and need one of those pill calenders.

Morning - Antibiotics, allergy pill, and cold meds.
Afternoon - cold meds.
Evening - Antibiotics and cold meds.

Rinse lather repeat. Hopefully I will start feeling less stuffy and can back off the cold meds soon. I hate being sick.

A positive to having a back injury

A positive thing to having a hurt back and not being able to do a damn thing other then just lay there is that I have gotten a lot of reading done. The bad thing about that is that books are expensive! I have gone through more books in the last few months then I think I have ever read in a year. Hell, I have gone through 4 in just the last week. But to try and keep costs down I cant be going to the book store and dropping $50 on a handful of books every week so last night I made my way to the local library. It is a new library and boasts about having a large selection blah blah blah. I was disappointed.

I understand my favored genera of books, SciFi/Fantasy, isnt the most popular, but I do think it warrants more then three 4' sections worth of selection. Hell, they didnt even have Tolkien or Steven King (I double checked in the normal fiction, just in case).

I am disappointed in you Library. I remember now why I never really bothered with you and just purchased all my books.

Honesty is rough.

The Husband and I are burning out. We are both stressed and tired. I want to try and go away for a day or two to relax however I am also cheap and already short on funds. Our normal answer in this situation is to go camping but our fall back location is an amusement park.

I just went to check out the prices, make sure its as cheap as I remember and whatnot, I glance through the rides and rates for them. It made me realize that not only would I not be able to ride roller coasters but I cant ride just about every other fun ride out there. No scrambler, no tiltawhirl, not even the carousel would be a good idea. I could cry.

Its been since February. That's when my back went out. It was only earlier in April that I had my first real pain free day but that has been the only one. I don't want to risk it going out again from some stupid ride but why bother going just to see the husband ride things, that wont be fun for him either. The past two times we tried to go it rained and we ended up at the mall and driving around so we have seen all the other things to do out there.

Looks like we need a new location. :-/