the amazing shrinking woman

(That's me.) Apparently. This morning, another co-worker saw me and said, "Ashley! You're shrinking every time I see you!" I think that makes six people who have referred to me as "shrinking" when they haven't seen me in person (as in not over video conference) in a week or more. It's bizarre. I guess all I can say is thank you. One can't exactly say, "Yeah! I am literally working my ass off to look like this!" Technically, being a Veselka, I suffer from Negative Ass Syndrome. Line up the Veselkas, and pretty much down the line the silhouette goes in or stays flat at the ass. So I'm actually having to work on losing weight everywhere *but* my ass; doing exercise that builds ass muscle. ("I must, I must, I must increase my ass!")

The best part is all the new clothes I can wear (and finally feel like I look good in them!) It's *way* better than being stuffed painfully into something that I feel I could burst the seams of if I breathe too deeply. I might have to do a little fashion shoot to show off my new clothes and the 30lbs lighter me.

Operation Lose Weight

Okay - this is a delicate situation... a person's weight is something personal. Generally, unless you're slim & trim (or a man), you don't go around spouting off how much you weigh. So that makes it difficult to discuss Operation: Lose Weight for the Wedding. JR and I are in this together, which makes it SO much easier.

When we got engaged, we both agreed we wanted to be slim & trim in time for the wedding. With the busy schedules, drinking and great food here, we've gained a lot of weight. I wasn't at my highest weight (luckily!), but let's say this:

Feb 18, 2009: Xlbs (I'd gained 11lbs since Jun 2008!) Goal: X-40lbs.
Apr 14, 2009: 10lbs lost
Jun 15, 2009: 13lbs lost (we joined WeightWatchers)
Aug 19, 2009: 26lbs lost!!!

That means I'm over halfway there! I've dropped several clothes sizes, and continue to see the body changes. With 8 months and change til the wedding, that's not bad. But it's pretty much been lifestyle & diet changes so far; now's when it gets harder. Gotta kick the exercise into high gear (not one of my favorite things.) Things are only gonna get busier, and I've gotta build in the time for it right now.

wound a little tight

No surprise to anyone really, but I'm naturally just wound kind of tight. I've had trouble with anxiety for a long, long time, and for years now I've been taking medication for it. For the last couple of weeks though I've been having lots of trouble, despite the meds. I'm not having full-blown panic attacks, but hours-long episodes of a nearly constant tightness in my chest and this feeling of my heart jumping into my throat, my stomach flipping, and what feels like a racing heart rate occasionally skipping a beat. It's like being terrified every few minutes, if not more. I was thinking I was a little more stressed out than usual, and it would pass. But it just got worse.

Since that started happening, I've become hyper-aware of my heartbeat, which just makes things worse. It began to worry me so much on Monday that I got an appointment to get checked out the next morning. Despite everything I was feeling, my heart rate was healthy, my blood pressure is great, and my heart isn't skipping beats. They ran a blood test, and there's nothing wrong with my thyroid either. So I'm just having super long anxiety attacks.

I say "just," but in reality, it's hard to concentrate, it's scary, and it's been making it very hard to focus on work, which causes me even more anxiety. So my doc is trying out a higher dose of my anti-anxiety meds to see if that will get it under control. I really hope it works, because it's been hard to work, eat, sleep, focus. I'm physically exhausted from scrunching up my whole body from the tension. I went to bed at 10 last night, woke up at 1:44, and haven't been able to get back to sleep. :(

I'm trying to relax at work, but it's taking a conscious effort to walk more slowly, breathe deeply, relax my neck and shoulders. It's like I've become hard-wired to rush, every second. I actually suck at breathing! Who knew?

So... any tips on relaxing and slowing down? Good music to calm me down, meditation exercises, anything??? I really need some help with this.

the moment of truth (almost)

This week we had a work offsite, which is where your team gets away from where you usually work, away from your desks, to do something fun. And by fun, I mean brainstorming. Or a full on day of true fun. Ours was half-and-half. We spent the morning brainstorming, and the afternoon at a fabulous cooking class in the fabulous loft of a fabulous chef. It was absolutely... terrific. (Ha! You thought I was going to say fabulous, but NO! Actually, I was, I just didn't want to give you the pleasure.)

At these offsites, it's the usual team-building/workshop stuff. You break up into teams of 3 or 4, and you get to know each other better, maybe have a problem to solve. And almost always, this is one of the activities:

"Tell the group something they don't know about you."

And inevitably, the only thing that comes to mind is, "I am a cancer survivor." That's a big thing, and they definitely don't know that about me. But that seems like a cry for attention, a huge "poor me". And I don't want that. Plus, it's not generally something you discuss at work. First, there are HR issues. Not to mention group dynamics, possible unfair treatment (perceived or real by me or others), etc. So I have to struggle to find something else interesting.

Let's see... Aha! "I ran a marathon to raise money for the American Stroke Association! Did I finish? Well, no. You see... I was in the middle of chemo when it came around so I only made it 6.something miles..." and you're back to the cancer.

I know! Hobbies!
"I do pottery. Well, I did, until um... After treatment, I was too exhausted to go ..."
"I knit. I mean, I tried knitting. I got almost done with a great bag, but I can't seem to..."
"I love photography! I'm a pretty good photographer. You can check my flickr, but I haven't..."
"I'm a blogger. I actually don't want you to read it, but I haven't updated in a while anyway..."

This post began as a post about the murky waters of discussing chronic illness with co-workers. To do or not to do. But there's a trend here. Me seeing things through; actually, the lack of such follow-through. With pottery, cancer really was the factor that kept me from continuing. I didn't have the energy. But why haven't I taken it back up? I'm really busy, but... people make time for things they love. I can't seem to do that with anything anymore. I'm not making the time for exercise, or hobbies I already started. I have such a backlog of photos that I need to upload, it's ridiculous. What's in my way? NOTHING. Or rather, something. That something is ME.

I'm still battling daily with the demons of depression, anxiety, and procrastination. There's medication for the first two (believe me I'm trying), but there's no magic pill for procrastination. And if there were, I'd never get around to calling it in. (Thanks folks! I'll be here all week!) I know I need to get a handle on my health - exercise and eating right. Mustering the energy to do that is another matter entirely.

That's all really. I have no answers. Yet. But here's to hoping I do soon.

now that's a confident doc

It's 7:00am, the last stop before heading into surgery.
The doc comes in to go over any last questions before starting...

doc: how'd you sleep last night?
patient: doesn't matter how I slept. how did you sleep?
doc: well, you know - the bars closed at 2:30am, and I'm only a little shaky now! (holding hand out, putting on fake shakes.)

It's good to get a laugh out of your patient before quintuple bypass open heart surgery.

This was the exchange between JR's dad and his heart surgeon this morning. I think that and the Versed (twilight injection) helped out a lot. ;D

quite a scare

You know my health history - complicated, unusual, etc. I tend to be the embodiment of Murphy's Law regarding health. Two weeks ago I went for my annual womanly checkup, and since I'm 35 (gah!) the doc figured that with my history, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a screening mammogram done. They don't require it until you're 40, but knowing me... I'm thinking, "No problem. No lumps or anything, no reason to worry, and then they'll have a point of reference when I start going at 40."

Monday: the mammogram. I went in, they did their scans - not as painful as I had imagined - and I left. They said the radiologist would send my doc the results within two weeks.

Tuesday my doc's office calls, telling me I need to go back. "The radiologist needs additional scans of your right breast." OK... "Call them tomorrow to set up an appointment." I'm not gonna panic. It's probably just not clear enough. Maybe I moved. I'll ask more tomorrow when I call.

Wednesday I call the Radiology Lab, and (surprise, surprise!) I'm not on their list. I explain the situation, she looks it up, and sure enough, the radiologist did request more scans.
Her: "But your doctor didn't send us the orders."
Me: "Actually, my doctor didn't request it, the radiologist requested it. They just called to tell me to come back."
Her: "Yeah, but they still have to send us the orders."
Me: "But YOU GUYS ordered more scans."
Her: "Sigh. The radiologist just sends your doctor the report. If it says there should be more scans, your doctor still needs to reply with orders for more scans."
Me: Click.

Once I stopped screaming obscenities at a pitch only dogs can hear, I call my doctor's office and they work it all out for me.

Thursday the Radiology Lab calls me to set up the appointment. "Are these needed because the first ones were blurry? ..." No - they need to look at something more closely. I panic and make the appointment and then JR asks a bunch of questions that we had talked about asking them, but I was too flustered and I forgot. I call back, ask more questions, hang up, realize I still don't have all the answers, call again, ask more questions, and then I have all the answers I need, plus a big black lightning-bolty cloud of panic to stuff down into a tiny box.

Answers: the first set was a screening mammogram. They saw something on there that they need to take a look at. The second set would be a diagnostic mammogram, right breast only. It would involve magnification so they can get a good look, and it might require more views. My appointment gets set up for Friday at 1:15pm.

Friday I go to work, but I'm practically useless - I can hardly focus, I keep searching my directories looking for something and forget what it was I was looking for. If I had been reading a book, I would have spent all morning re-reading the same page. The time finally comes for me to head over to my appointment.

Mammograms are awkward. You change into a flimsy hospital top in a tiny room, and then you go sit in a separate waiting room with a lot of other women in flimsy tops trying to cover up their boobs. It's like bras are armor, and we're naked and awkward without them. When I finally get called, it's to a different machine than the first one; the lady puts this magnification fitting thingy onto it, and then she does the diagnostic mammogram. Which hurts. A LOT. Way more compression for diagnostic scans. It's surreal to look down and see your breast looking like this enormous pancake. And you just have to be all casual and breezy with someone grabbing and pulling and smooshing and pushing your breast into this thing. When that's done, you go back to the little waiting room with the other women, and every once in a while one of them gets called back for more scans, or another gets told everything is fine and she can change and leave. And part of you is happy for those women who leave, while this other, tiny, awful, dark part of your brain is saying, "but that means she's on the other side of the equation, making it more likely, statistically, that you won't be OK." And with each relieved person who leaves, that part of you is ... not really not happy for them, ... just more and more scared for you.

I get called in for more scans. This time I have two women fumbling with this machine and my breast, because this scan (on yet another machine) is really precise and hard to do. They have to flip the machine upside down and get my boob all smooshed inside, but when they go to the computer it won't work, and it doesn't say why. They think they must have the machine upside down the wrong way. So they flip the machine all the way over the other direction, get me all up in it again, and ... now the screen actually says it's the wrong way. They release me, flip it over again, yada-yada, and hooray! It works! They zoom way in on it, see what they're looking for, refer to the on-screen grid, and one of them has to very awkwardly get up underneath the machine with a fine-tip sharpie and mark that exact spot, and then stick a tiny metal bb on the spot. This, they explain, is how they'll zoom in to exactly the right spot from the side, which is the view they actually need. More turning of the machine commences, me standing very still with my breast in my hands, holding it just like it was, so they can squish it the other way. They take that scan, magnify it and call me over to the computer to see it on the screen. They point out three tiny white dots called "calcifications". They're telling me if the dots are inside the skin layer, it's OK, but if they're not, it's not so OK. They point out the skin layer and the calcifications, and to me it looks like they're not in the skin layer. I get scared. But they look happy. I'm confused. Apparently the skin layer is thicker than what I was understanding from their explanations, because it's OK. Smiles all around! "But I'm not a doctor, so the radiologist needs to look at it to be sure." Back to the waiting room for me.

When they finally call my name, it's to take me into the dressing room to tell me all is well and I can go. What a relief! I change as quickly as I can to go out to the other waiting room to tell JR I'm OK.

And we hugged and hugged and hugged, and it was a good day.

mental, physical, emotional exhaustion

With the way work has been this week, and working really hard on the house last weekend, I'm really feeling the bite. When we went to the EFF party the other night, I could hardly form a sentence without losing my train of thought or forgetting a ... you know ... those things ... WORD! That's how my brain has been working recently.

Today, I can't concentrate, I can't focus, my eyes and face are all puffy, I keep forgetting what I'm doing or saying. So did this article ever ring true:

Sleep: You Need More.

His list of things that sleep helps with is exactly what I need help with right now. I'm going to make an even more concerted effort than before. My #1 New Year's Resolution is now Sleep.