Eureka!

Gadzooks! By Jove! Zounds!

A breakthrough!

After waiting however many forevers I've been sitting here for a call from that seminar place, they finally gave me a call today. There's a seminar going on tomorrow, it seems, from 6-8pm not but 15 minutes from my house. Sweet!

For recap's sake, this seminar is the one thing I need to do (I think?) before I can speak with the surgeon Dr. Burritosmell recommended and schedule a time for the surgery. Needless to say, I'm very, very excited to finally get this show on the road. :] I'll be sure to update as soon as I get out to fully document the experience and everything I learn at the seminar.

On a sidier, angrier note, my shakes haven't arrived yet. According to Amazon, they were supposed to arrive anywhere from 2/23 to 2/29 and they haven't.

Dear Dr. Burritosmell,

While you've the age and appearance necessary to easily be confused for one of my family members, I fear that our time together is quickly coming to an end. Your antiquated tools and stubborn ways are keeping me from getting what I feel is proper medical attention. You may have some questions, so please allow me to elaborate.

I told you I had concerns about the accuracy of my blood pressure tests. I told you that in the past I was told I have high blood pressure; in face, it was so high once that the nurse asked me if I was feeling woozy or if I needed water. You told me today I have normal high blood pressure, when the sleep study technician, not even a fully licensed doctor, told me it was 159/108. You finally gave me medication after copious nagging, but you told me it was weak stuff I could easily get without a prescription.

I also told you I had concerns about the accuracy of your old, rickety kitchen scale. I'm sure those old scales, with the bar that spins around the scale the more the scale is depressed, work just fine for those within a certain weight range, but for us bigger people we need more heavy duty, modern tools. When my doctor before you tells me the digital scale reads 479 lbs then not two weeks later yours reads 446 lbs, I hope you can understand my concern. When the digital scale at the sleep study center says I'm 483 lbs and you tell me two weeks later that I'm 429 lbs and hey congratulations on losing 17 pounds I can't help but be skeptical. My diet hasn't changed, I haven't been exercising, and I was on the juices for all of 4 days.

This last topic's a bit more abstract than the first two but still pretty important. You're... like, an old Filipino curmudgeon. You're never particularly happy about anything, you're not very personable and you've a way with words that's particularly grating. Like when you say "What's wrong with you", "Why are you here" or "Well, if you keep using different scales of course you're going to get different results", I can't help but feel a little put off. When I'm in the middle of the most important medical emergency in my life and you say "Okay, I'll schedule to see you again in three months" it kinda seems like you're not as interested in this as I am.

Anyway, I'd say something like "it's not you, it's me", but I've always been taught that lying is bad. I wish you the best of luck with your business in the future. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check to see if switching doctors affects my weight-loss-surgery procedure at all.

The cold, hard facts.

One thing the sleep technician disclosed to me was how to determine if someone warranted a sleep apnea machine or not. Sleep apnea is a very big problem that is often overlooked, but it can lead to strokes, heart attacks, dementia and even death. Reggie White died of it! Anyways, he said if someone scores a 15 on some test, meaning someone woke up about 15 times in an hour due to an inability to breathe, they needed a CPAP machine.

Curious, I asked him how the numbers get. He said he just did a sleep study on an elderly man who scored a 70, meaning he woke up roughly 70 times in an hour, not even getting a whole minute of rest. He said that in that state the body never reaches the deeper levels of sleep, never dreams, and never gets any true rest. Freaky, right?

In the morning, he comes in to wake me up (I'm already awake) and he tells me I scored a 105. That's five points away from the maximum, which is 110. Shaken but not quite stirred, I took it on the chin and asked him how the night went; watch anything good on Netflix? I asked, remembering we'd joked about how he passed the time. He said he was busy all night monitoring me so he couldn't really watch anything.

:C

I'm starkly reminded of the nurse who took my blood pressure and asked if I was woozy, or if I needed to sit down.

Speaking of, he took my blood pressure and weight. I knew Dr. Burritosmell's old-school scale was off, but I still have to admit; I'm disappointed with what I saw. I jotted it down, but I knew I'd memorize it anyway.

That's my blood pressure (159/108), my weight (483 :C), and my sleep apnea test results (105).

These shakes, this surgery, the CPAP machine... they can't come soon enough. I'm in a really bad way.

Sleep Studies and How They Suck

To be fair it wasn't all that bad. The technician guy was nice; some guy named Ryan who abashedly claims he's told he's one of the best sleep techs in the bay. Tech Support turned medical support, we talked about nothing while he hooked up wires all over me. I always knew there'd be some wires, but this was just plain high school anime hentai ridiculous. I ended up with two belts, one around the gut and another around the chest, a wire taped to each calf, one on each shoulderblade, about 6 on my head and five or so on my face.

Lol, I look like a brown egg.

Anyway, I sleep about as well as you think one can with all those wires hooked up to them. I'm prone to toss and turn a bit and I asked the technician what would happen if some of the wires got disconnected. He said he'd wake me up and he'd reattach them. If he did try to wake me up, it certainly didn't work. There's nothing quite like awakening to the feel of someone taping something to your head, with some foreign voice talking to you mid-sentence.

I woke up multiple times throughout the night; my bed right now is two mattresses on top of one another (lolghetto) so the clinic's bed was the Aggro-crag in comparison. The room was pitch black, save for the dozens of tiny eyes of the infrared camera, fitting together like spider eyes in the darkness. Grrrrreeeaaattt. It didn't help that Ryan, who I'd built a rapport with, said "Oh, did I tell you about the guy who died in here?" right as he turned off the lights and closed the door.

Anyways, I woke up, he came in, unplugged me from the matrix and I did some paperwork. He had some... pretty alarming results for me, but I'll save that for the next post.

Well, that was fun.

After about five days of drinking this nonsense and losing about 4 pounds in the process, I'm donezo with this juicing fast. I sat with my buddy Morgan who did the shakes with me the first time around and weighed the options available to me. He's a really smart dude so I give his opinion a lot of gravity, and he pointed out that, pros and cons aside, the juice fast is meant to be a detox to make one healthier, whereas my focus is losing weight. When I got to a more reasonable weight, that's when I can start focusing about balancing greens and vitamins, but until then my priority should be getting the numbers down while keeping myself energized and healthy on the ride down.

The fact that the juices were gross, the cleanup was shitty, the preparation was overwhelming, the juicing took a long time and the fast deprived me of certain nutrients is merely an afterthought, though I'm glad he validated my thoughts.

So, with that said, I'm officially quitting the juice fast. It was fun and interesting, and definitely made me feel energized, but ultimately it's more trouble than it's worth. Worry not, though! I've already ordered shakes and will be jumping onto them as soon as they arrive. I look forward to that tons. Until then, I'll be on 1-2 juices a day and a light meal midday, since I know dinner's mostly wasted nutrients.

Last time I was on the shakes for about 8 months I lost 100 lbs, so I've high hopes this time around.

Also, the weight loss surgery is still underway, just a little... delayed. =/ I'll be calling them back this week to see if I can get any kind of updates about that.

Crisis averted

Yesterday, we decided to watch a movie after work. Chronicle's been all over the commercials and the premise was pretty interesting, so we decided to go watch it. The showing wasn't until 9:35, so we knew we'd get home around midnight and figured we could just juice then. What we weren't counting on, however, was me getting nauseous. I'm prone to motion sickness and this movie was pretty much shaky cam from beginning to end; I ended up feeling really gross and discombobulated, so when I got home all I wanted to do was sleep. I figured i could just juice everything in the morning when I woke up.

Thing is, my alarm didn't go off and I woke up AT 10am; pretty much when I'm due at work. So, I rushed through getting ready and just figured I'd do shakes for the day; I've still some leftover boxes in my trunk for emergencies like this one. Luckily, Jody was nice enough to get up earlier and juice not only his stuff but mine as well, setting me up for the whole day. What a champ, right? So, I was able to make it to work CRAZY LATE but with my juices in-hand.

It was super-cool of my roomie to be a bro like that and make my juices for me, but the whole while I couldn't help but think of what a hassle this diet has become. Locking away 2 hours each day for prep/cleaning/juicing is becoming a bit of a burden, moreso than I was originally prepared for. 14 hours a week dedicated to the diet, just tied down to the kitchen... man, it's draining and dragging. I'm trying to figure out how I can do a little bit of both instead; maybe a juice a day and shakes for the rest of the time.

Anyways, I'm still going to stick to this at least for the full 15 days. This week, though, to hell with recipes; I'm just going to get a bunch of produce I actually LIKE and see how that ends up working. Maybe exchange kale with lettuce and add some melons and pineapples. Yum.

Moar Joose!

Another night of successful juicing. As much of a hassle as the juicing process is, it can be fun, too. Tonight, the site we use to plan our drinks was down so we got to make some mystery drinks based on whatever we had and what we thought would taste good. They were mostly successes with one glaring, hateful mistake.

Fuck a grapefruit in the Lifebone.

Other than that, though, we made a solid four drinks for tomorrow and managed to prepare all of our drinks for tomorrow ahead of time. We were able to squeeze a fourth day out of our current selection (with some minor runs to the store for some filler veggies), which is something I must admit I can't do on the shakes.

Anyways, cheers, and here's to sticking to this nonsense. ^__^