The Daily Crutch

I have gone many more days without posting than I would have liked. For that, I apologize for any faithful readers I may have. It has been a weird past few days.

I had thought I was feeling sick, or maybe even depressed. I had no energy to do anything or even care about anything. Then yesterday I was taking my son to the office supply mega-store to buy school supplies for the very first time (cue pride swelling music). About five minutes into the trip I felt pain in my sternum, and I didn't feel like I could catch my breath. I felt like I had to burp but when I did it made me nauseated. Honestly, I was worried I was having a heart attack, but I didn't want to panic too quickly. This had happened to me once before and it had turned out to be severe heartburn. I bailed out of shopping after only finding about four things, and went straight home. I took a Zantac with a massive glass of milk and I laid down on my bed with some coloring books and crayons so my kid could hang out with me until my husband came home. I did feel better after a while, although I do still have the remnants of the pain in my sternum. I thought about it and I figure it all comes down to soda. I love me some Diet Mountain Dew as my morning caffeinated beverage, but on occasion it can be hard to find. This summer especially so, although I tend to think my husband just doesn't look around enough. So I have been drinking a lot of iced coffee. Last week I was able to grab about three 12-packs and had been guzzling it like crazy since about Friday. I'm sure it was all that soda ripping my stomach lining apart that caused the pain, and I suspect it was the drop in amount of caffeine between coffee and DMD that cause my listlessness. So it was scary for me for a while, but at least that ended well.

Also in the "ending well" department, it's official: My doc has cleared me for Physical Therapy. I had no idea that I actually needed a prescription for that. He wrote out what he wanted them to do for me on a prescription pad. I thought that was kind of cool. I will be calling around tomorrow and will hopefully start next week. This will not mean the end of The Daily Crutch, though. I plan to have this be for all my general updates, because I have plenty of big changes I am planning.

The biggest change: I need to lose weight. Once I can walk again I don't intend to stop, and with my boy in school five days a week I am hoping to get a lot more of that in every day. In addition to the walking, I plan to go back to swimming laps three times a week and of course, that Wii Fit game won't be able to get rid of me. Last year I found a website called SparkPeople that is all about weight loss, and it helps a lot with accountability and goal-reaching. It has groups you can join for specific interests (I belong to groups for swimmers and Wii Fitters, of course) that give you a way to not feel alone in your goals, and can set group challenges that push you farther than you may have done on your own. I even made a walking buddy last summer. She lives nearby and we met up about two or three times a week before the pain in my foot became too much to take. Between this blog and SparkPeople I hope to see some success for a change. This is my page if anyone would like to join me.

I also need to organize myself if I am going to pull off getting the boy to school at the evil hour of 8 am, then go workout for hours and still have the house not be a total disaster and my family doomed to pizza nine meals a week. Any ideas?