Cry Baby

I nag and complain so much about my health and sometimes it's so much that I wonder if I'm just one big cry baby. Sometimes when I see my mom walking around cleaning the whole house when she has a really bad flu or just had surgery I wonder if I'm just a big cry baby. When my pain has got me in tears I wonder if everyone else feels the same way I do and I just can't take it. Sometimes I find out that yes indeed I am a big cry baby but sometimes I do get the satisfaction of finding out I should be in more pain then I am. Those are the days that I pat myself in the back and say congrats on not being a cry baby today.
Today I had back to back doctor appointments. First to my bi-monthly therapy session. We've been discussing cycles that cause my depression to 'flare'. For those of you that don't know about three or four years ago I was diagnosed with chronic situational depression. Basically that means that my depression is under the surface waiting for a situation, a thing or an event to let it surface. The thing is that I never know what that thing that well resurface it is going to be. When I was diagnosed I was in a bad rut and I was put on medications. I didn't always want to be on them so about a year ago I slowly weaned myself off of them. I did this with help from my doctor, my psychologist and my therapist (you should never just go off your psyche meds without telling your doctors). My therapist and I began trying to work out triggers that I was aware of and now we're working on cycles that seem to happen that work around me getting depressed.
One of the cycles that keeps popping up in our conversations is my reproductive cycle. We have noticed that when I finally get a period my depression usually sky rockets. You read right I did say "when I finally". See last year I was diagnosed with PCOS (poly-cystic ovarian syndrome). Basically that means that due to hormone imbalances when my egg is suppose to leave my ovary and go down my fallopian tube the ruputure that is supposed to happen doesn't. So I get various cysts of eggs on my ovaries. My body each month raises and raises the hormones it sends out to get an egg down to the utereus. My therapist thinks that much hormones in my system may help with my depression surfacing. This has been a theory that we've been working on but haven't been able to prove since I haven't gotten a period since we began working on the theory.
This month my endocriologist gave me some progesterone to kick start a period. The result was me crying over everything and anything for two days after I started taking the meds till today.
My second visit was to the dreadful OB/GYN visit that all women hate. That's right ladies take your clothes off put on a gown crouch to the end of the table and open up wide for a PAP smear. I HATE PAP SMEARS! I HATE OB/GYN EXAMS! I HATE I HATE I HATE this part of being a woman. To make it worse after the student doctor a guy by the name of Craig ( I specifically asked for all women) did the initial how are you bit he gives me the gown and says Dr Helstrem well be with you in a moment. I know she's the only female in the practice so after I put myself in the gown I kept my ears open for a female voice in the hallway.
I hear the clitter clatter of high heels running in the hallway and hear the door open quickly the room next door. I know my doctor is seeing one more patient before she sees me. I roll me eyes as I realized great another 5 or 10 minutes sitting here naked. Then I hear her say in a very strong voice I'm really worried about you. The patient says 'am I about to hear some news I don't want to hear?". I want to yell to his room of course you are you idiot. I get up from my table to grab my cell to text while I wait. I'm sitting in my doctors office naked while she is about to tell a guy something not good what should I do? Then I hear it she tells him his blood pressure is 220/100 and that's why they put him on the EKG machine and that that's not looking too good either. My 5 minutes have passed and I'm thinking ok maybe 15 minutes naked isn't so bad this guy is about to have a heart attack. That's when she asks him all these questions that I realize is her trying to see if he has symptoms of a heart attack. He has none and the poor sap yet hasn't realized where she's going with this. Then she says I already called an ambulance and they're on their way to bring you to the hospital. We're going to stay here till they get here.
At this point I don't know if I want to throw my cell phone to the wall, go next door in my gown and remind them I'm waiting for them naked (that stops me) or yell hey naked woman waiting for you over here (that might make the guys heart attack worse though). I opt to just keep texting they'll get to me eventually. I may be naked and I may hate the procedure that's going to be done to me but hey I'm not having a heart attack!
When they do get to me Craig and Dr. Helstrem apologize for making me wait. I say hey at least I'm not having a heart attack. So here is when I feel like the biggest baby in the whole world. I always cry when the exam happens. I hate it but I figure relax and it won't be so bad. When I tell her that I hate the exam she says hey the books say there are no nerve endings in the cervix but I think it does so I believe you that it hurts. No one has ever told me that. No one has ever been as patient with me during an exam as she was. No one said I was being a cry baby. When she was doing the rest of the exam I told her that my ovaries had been hurting me. I usually get eyes rolling at this point. She explained that they were probably hurting because of all my cysts and that she could feel them. She said they felt pretty bad and she was surprised that I wasn't in more visiable pain. I felt relief that someone finally believed me. She told me to take some advil and go to bed when I got home.
I went to eat a late lunch or early dinner and then a pedicure and then another dinner followed by some Naked Chocolate before I got myself to bed but it was a good day in the end. Knowing that some of the complains I have aren't me being a cry baby but legit made me feel a bit better.

And the band plays on

So a friend commented on my blog asking me if I'm still off the juice errr soda. A few people have asked me in day to day conversation and my favorite was when a co-workers girlfriend incredulous reaction when I passed on the soda at a work function. She blatantly told me to my face that she didn't think I was going to go this long without it. The answer is I'm still off the juice errr soda.
So the reason I haven't blogged about it is because it has gotten easier to not drink it. It hasn't even bothered me to see other people drink it like it did at first. There's a two liter bottle of generic Sprite in my fridge from my birthday party and it's just not calling to me.
I think what helped was a talk I had with my sister-in-law about the reasons that Catholics gave something up for Lent. She explained that it was a type of fast a giving up something for the Lord. A sacrifice of sorts. Seeing it that way helped. She explained that on St. Patrick's people were allowed to have the thing they gave up for that day. I really didn't feel the need to have any for St Patty's though.
There is a story that my brother and mom tell of when I was three and I had the measles. Or was it the chicken pox? My mom says that it had gotten pretty bad. I had no energy and was just lying in bed by day 3. She was really worried because I was breaking out not only outside on my skin but there were pox (measles) in my mouth and throat. I'm guessing it hurt for me to even eat because she says that I refused to eat anything and when I did try t eat I would just cry. By day five she was in a panic. I hadn't eaten anything for days I was barely having awake moments and I had a fever at this point. My brother asked me if I wanted something when I finally woke up and opened my eyes. We all laugh because all I said was Pepsi. The family all ran to go buy some and to help me sit up and drink it. Since that day every time that I'm extremely ill or not feeling even 50% they give me soda. Today I've been really sick. My PCOS has caused a 6 month period of amenorrhea and my endo gave me meds to fix that. So I've been extremely hormonal and having the worst cramps I've had since I was a teenager. I've been laying in bed going in and out of sleep and when I'm awake reading my e-mail or my books. My brother brought me a diet Coke and I drank it because I was feeling that ill. I thought that it would be the magic fix and that I was going to love the way it tasted. I've gone 3 weeks without so I should have been happy to have my old drug. It tasted so gross to me. I hated not only the taste but also the after taste. Maybe I'm cured? I didn't want more and it didn't make me happy. I'll chalk that can as the one soda I could have had on St Patty's. As for now I've got 3 more weeks till I'm there. Easter here we go!

The Most Likely Way to Fail

I was a Vegetarian for almost 3 years of my life. For those almost 3 years every day that I saw my mother she would put meat in my plate. I would kindly explain that I didn't eat meat and she would explain how beef was okay. Each and every time I would be exhausted or end up in tears not knowing why my mom didn't understand.
Recently I was diagnosed with PCOS with a glucose intolerance. Basic translation is I can't have sweets, carbs or anything that is going to turn to sugar when my body digests it. Suddenly my mom was all about feeding me potatoes and corn two vegetables (if you can call them that) that I can't have. I've explained each time she gives it to me I can't have them. I've explained that the sugar isn't good for my PCOS and that because of my Metformin I literally get ill.
When I made the goal to lose weight when I was in a wedding party where the bride called herself fat b/c she was a size 6 compared to her sister a size 2 and her future sister in laws both size 0. I went to the gym every day for up to 3 hrs. I was on a serious diet. 5 meals a day only 300 calories per meal only one soda a day. What would mom do? She'd add stuff to meals that were not on my approved list of foods to eat. If I made my own meals when I would turn around she'd add stuff to it. Her excuse was that she wanted my food to taste better.
So obviously knowing that my mom likes to sabataoge my healthy eatting habits I have not told her about my go off of the soda. She figured it out yesterday. So today when she was making the meals for everyone at the office she served my lunch with a big can of soda. Each time my co-workers and I switched around the drinks so I could get a bottle of water she'd change the bottle back to the middle of the table and put the can of ginger ale next to my plate.
Crazy woman! Gotta love her for trying to keep me happy or what she thinks should make me happy.

Change of Routine

Today was my full day at work off of the 'juice' errr soda. It was really weird to be off of it while doing a full day of work. I noticed that my daily routine changed. In order to get a soda I had to go to the basement of the office. The first thing I always did every morning was go to the basement to get supplies for the office and then grab my soda before going to my desk to start checking my e-mail before getting to the pile of files of patients. It seems that every excuse (reason) that I found to go to the basement was on the side of the basement we keep the fridge with the sodas. It even worked out that the washer and dryer in the office (I do my laundry at work) were next to the soda fridge.
Today I knew that I had to stay out of the basement as much as I could. Maybe the two hour delay, that I gave myself, into the office helped a bit but today instead of going to the basement I went into the kitchen got some fruit and a cup of water and headed to the 'dining room'. I sat down to eat and took my time with the fruit and water. The time frame of eatting gave me enough time to settle into being at work. I think that's what going to the basement for my first soda of the day was about. I had to settle into my work routine and getting a soda was my way of doing it without being noticed. Maybe that's something I have to find a way to get me to settle into the work routine without the soda.
Another thing that I noticed was that without the soda I wasn't eatting so much. I suffer from panic attacks and obviously caffeine isn't good for panic attacks. I noticed that I would get jittery often while drinking my diet Coke. In order to settle the jitters I'd eat more often. Besides the fruit I didn't eat that much today. I forgot about lunch until 4.
I was also more productive. Each time that I had to go to the basement I didn't automatically go to just the one section of the basement to look for things. Being that it's the smallest part of the basement of course I never found anything when looking for things. Knowing that I was trying to stay away from that section when looking for paintings for an art show my agency is sponsoring I went to the larger part of the basement first. I eventually went to the appliance area but it was a quick roam not a slow diddle daddle visit.
I'm seeing good things coming out of this change. Hopefully they'll keep coming

A baby cured me

Day four and I think the cravings are going down!
I spent the whole day at church and with my niece. I'm still feeling that endless thirst but it's not as strong anymore. Maybe it was because I was so busy with the church going and with Mags that I had not time to think about diet Coke.
Maybe the way of getting rid of an addiction is not by finding something else to fill the void but by occupying your self with other things. Thinking of other things seemed to help me not think of the need for the diet coke. Now that that part is getting better I wonder if I'm going to see benefits from staying away from sugar and caffeine. We'll see what happens next