"Trim, Healthy Mama" Journey-Forward

Last week I got my very own copy thanks to the generosity of a sweet friend of mine. I mentioned to her that I wanted to get this book but it would have to wait until the next payday and she ordered it for me then and there. Goodness, some people...
The week prior I had been reading as much as I could on the Facebook page, there is a wealth of information in the files and the wide variety of topics in the posts gave me plenty to try to wrap my brain around.
Why do I want this book? Why do I want to try another "diet"? I've tried quite a few over the years, just for the "fun" of it let's walk down diet memory lane.
High School- I don't remember what grade, I joined Weight Watchers. This sums it up...



Did I have some meat on me? Yep! I always will. Should I have joined Weight Watchers? Probably not. If I remember correctly I gained weight and prompt quit...
The next diet I remember was "The Weigh Down Workshop" with Gwen Shamblin. Good premise, stop eating when you're full. Sounds easy enough. In all fairness, Gwen taught a very true principal. If you are turning to food for your comfort you are replacing God with food. I knew I was an emotional eater but how do you change that? This post isn't about that, I'll save that for later in this journey.
Next I did a similar program called "Prism" and I don't remember the woman that started that. I lost the most on that program, I think around 40 pounds. It was the first low carb diet I tried.
The last diet I did was an expensive one called "Ideal Protein". It's mostly packaged foods, very low carb and it worked. I lost about 40 pounds in 3 months and maintained that for a few months after going off it. With this program you take quite a few supplements and when I went off the diet I went off the supplements and lost a lot of hair. That seems to be a pattern with me, I have thin hair and if there is any change in my health my hair falls out! I'm hoping that with "Trim, Healthy Mama (THM) my hair will improve again. If not, wigs may be in my future, and there are some cute ones out there now days so maybe that wouldn't be too bad!
Since going off Ideal Protein I've gained all the weight back I lost and probably more but I refuse to weigh myself because it will be the most I've ever weighed and I don't even want to see the huge numbers on the scale!



But, I do want to have a record of my progress of my weight loss so when I officially start I might have to weigh myself and take my measurements. For the rest of July I am going to gradually incorporate some of the foods as I read through the book and try to figure out how it all works and then at the beginning of August I will hit it full force.
I'm guessing I need to lose a minimum of 60 pounds and 80 pounds at the maximum. That would put me at less than I've weighed since high school! Hard to imagine...
My first step is to try some of the breakfast foods because I don't usually eat breakfast so I need to figure out what is the most practical/realistic option for me. Wish me luck!

The Flu of 2013!

Friday, January 18th was my baby's 4th birthday! He asked to go to Chuck E Cheese, the only way he even knows about Chuck E Cheese is because the Salvation Army we frequent is right next door and we had been to Half Price Wednesday just 2 days earlier! If you don't have a Salvation Army near by I'm sorry, it's a wonderful place! But that's a different post...
So being the wonderful parents that we are we took him to Chuck E Cheese. He was so happy! Every time they sang "Happy Birthday" to someone he thought it was for him! It was so cute... I don't know if that's where we go the Flu from Hell but the next day my husband started not feeling well. Chills, fever, body aches... the typical flu symptoms. He stayed in bed most of the weekend and had Monday off for Martin Luther King day so he took it easy that day too.
We go to Classical Conversations on Mondays so we were gone all day and I could tell that morning that I was starting to come down with something. By the time I got home I was ready to lay down! Fortunately my mom was still here and she fixed dinner and took care of everything that evening.
From there the details are a blur but let's just say everyone in our family ended up getting sick and it's taken forever to recover from this! Last Friday, one week after his birthday, I took the baby to the doctor because he was throwing up and I was concerned about dehydration and asthma complications. They tested him for strep and influenza A, he had influenza A. The doctor prescribed Tamiflu and when I picked it up from the pharmacy got sticker shock from the price! Without insurance it's $170 and with insurance it was $65! Seriously! Then when I told one of my friends about it she sent me this article. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/07/recommended-tamiflu-has-flawed-results.aspx
So it isn't very effective in helping with flu symptoms but it is effective in causing other health problems that are worse than the flu! That's worth $65 to me! We gave him one dose before reading the article but then I couldn't bring myself to give him another one.
He is still not feeling well and running a low-grade fever! The doctor said this flu is lasting 7-10 days and that seems about right, which, when you're sick seems like an eternity!
Hopefully we won't have any more sickness like this and we'll be done for the year.

Keratoconus-- Part 2

UPDATE: Yikes! I'm not so good at getting these posts out, sorry! This was about a month ago...
We are now 3 weeks and 3 days post op and Todd got the sutures out of his eye today.
In part 1 I said that I would update his progress 4 days after his surgery but at that point I really didn't have anything to add because he didn't have a noticable change in his vision. The surgeon did warn us that this would be the case but we were hoping he was just being cautious and that Todd would in fact notice a difference. Needless to say, Todd was disappointed and some what discouraged by what the next few weeks were going to be like for him. Because he couldn't wear a contact on that eye his vision was worse! His vision in his right eye with a contact lens is 20/80 which, I believe, is considered legally blind so safely driving was not an option. I had to drive him to work which meant a 2 hr. round trip twice a day leaving the house by 5:15 a.m. then leaving again at 3:30 to pick him up we knew this wasn't something we could keep up for very long.
 His job requires him to work on a computer or read paperwork all day so having poor vision in one eye and horrible vision in the other brought to mind a humorous saying "blind in one eye and can't see out of the other". Not so funny when it actually applies! At a follow-up visit 10 days post op we explained what a hardship his vision was and that we weren't sure how he was going to be able to work for 4+ more weeks like this. We had considered applying for some type of disability benefits but had no clue how that all works. After thinking for a moment his doctor said that in Todd's situation that he would allow Todd to begin wearing a contact lens again but just to drive and for work. He warned Todd that the lens may not fit and that the correction would probably be wrong too but that it would at least allow him to drive and work. When we got home Todd put his old lens in and was relieved to join the land of the seeing once again! It wasn't perfect but it was better than blind!
So today he got the sutures out which was something that we were told could improve his vision because the suture was slightly pinching the eye to where it might possibly cause an astigmatism. After the surgeon removed the sutures Todd saw the optometrist to see what options Todd had from here.
She explained that Todd has 3 options for contact lenses.
1. A hybrid lens similar to the Synergeyes lenses that he tried with no success.
2. Piggyback lenses which is wearing first a soft lens and then on top of that lens his RGP lens.
3. A lens called Sclera (read more here)
In talking over these options it was decided that until Todd's eye has healed more that the piggyback lens would be the best option for him. I had never heard of piggyback lenses! First a soft lens is placed on the eye and then the RGP is worn over the soft lens. The soft lens allows a more comfortable fit while the hard lens brings the correction. Who knew?!

My Husband's Eye Surgery- Keratoconus Pt. 1

 I'm hoping our story will be helpful to Keratoconus patients who are considering the INTACS surgery so I'm going into more detail than I normally would, if this doesn't apply to you or isn't interesting to you, you might want to skip this post.
6 years ago my husband and I made a special trip from our home in North Austin to an eye doctor in San Antonio to see if he was a candidate for a new procedure called INTACS that would hopefully fix an eye condition he has called Keratoconus (KC). Long story short, they said he wasn't a candidate because of the thinning of his cornea. We left feeling disappointed but at least we had tried and now had an answer.
Before I get into the whole story you might want to know what this big "K" word means!
Keratoconus is a degenerative disorder of the eye in which structural changes within the cornea cause it to thin and change to a more conical shape than its normal gradual curve.

He was diagnosed with this condition at the age of 20 and was fitted with Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) contact lenses which were the only solution due to the fact that the hard lens reshapes the cornea of the eye and corrected his vision.
In 2008 Todd's eye doctor at the time told him about a hybrid contact lens that was supposed to be more comfortable for KC patients. Synergeyes  were supposed to give the comfort of a soft lens with the correction of a RGP lens. This was not the case for Todd. They were very painful to get on and off and once he got them on he experienced double vision and constant discomfort. He went back to the doctor several times trying to get the proper fit but finally gave up on them and returned to his RGP lenses.
After the experience with the hybrid lenses Todd felt somewhat frustrated and hadn't gone back to that eye doctor for several years but in the past year he had noticed a decline in his vision and knew it was time to find a new doctor.
In July he returned to an eye doctor he had been to previously and during that exam she noticed some blood in Todd's eye (that's another post) that she wanted to have looked at by a surgeon in the office. During the appointment with the surgeon they discussed the blood but also Todd's KC. This surgeon asked Todd if he was familiar with a procedure called INTACS because he thought he would be a candidate for it! Of course Todd told him he had known of INTACS for years but had been told his cornea was too thin for this procedure. Apparently in the past 6 years the measuring of the eye has improved to where this surgeon felt these rings could be placed safely in the eye. 
Todd was very encouraged and we began the process to get the surgery approved by our insurance.
Originally our insurance turned Todd down because they said that he had not tried other options available to KC patients such as the hybrid lenses so we had to have his medical records from the previous eye doctor sent to the surgeons office and then they had to send it to our insurance which caused us to have to wait another month to have the procedure done.
Monday, September 17th, 2012 Todd had INTACS placed in his left eye. He has a follow-up visit 10 days after the surgery and I will give an update after that appointment.
 

Oh the Pressure...my first post!

So many times I've thought "If I had a blog I would write about this!" I have attempted to blog in the past but the vision I have in my mind of how my blog will look never quite matches up with what appears on the screen. Then my patience with my own ineptitude comes to a quick end as I sit comparing my attempts with the lovely blogs I read on a daily basis and I resign myself to the audience of blogsphere once again.
Well here I am, trying out for the team one more time! Even if the pictures don't look right or I can't get the header the way I envision it I'm going to keep plugging along because at this point, no one knows I'm here anyway. I might as well practice.
Since this is my first post I want to talk about the name I chose for this blog.
Choosing a name for a blog is quite the mental chore, right next to naming a child! I wanted it to be unique but not weird, meaningful, thought provoking, understood by those who might stumble upon it. I will be blogging about life, about home. As a Christ-follower we are told this Earth is not our home, it's a temporary home. How many of us have lived in temporary homes? Dorm rooms, apartments, rental homes even a stay at a hotel is a very temporary home. Most of my adult life I've lived in temporary homes but now we own the house we live in. The difference between how I felt about those temporary homes and the home we now own is very different. There is a feeling of being able to live differently, put down roots, make it ours. In a rental the obvious difference is not having the ability to change things the way you would like it to look. Most landlords don't allow you to paint let alone take out the carpet and put in hardwood flooring or add on a room to the back! So if Earth is my temporary home does this mean I live my life differently than if I thought this time on Earth was it? That once I die I just cease to exist? No after-life? Think about that.
The Bible also talks about storing up treasure here on Earth and where our treasure is so will be our heart. But treasures here on Earth burn, decay, get lost, stolen, crash on the stock market...
God has blessed me here on Earth but my goal is to store up treasures in my true home, Heaven.
Here goes the beginning of my blogging journey, no pressure!