Tuesday, January 28, 2014

I'm still here!

Wow, I so didn't intend to go MIA, but life happens.

I'm happy to say that Nora is still doing amazing.  She really is 100% normal and fine and happy and healthy.  It's awesome.  She is such a sunshine!

I was fine all week, didn't feel traumatized at all.  I felt like I dealt with it fairly well.  But then.  THEN.  The weekend came.

It started on Saturday. I still felt pretty good, but there was an underlying uneasiness.  And I cheated.  I ate a lot, actually.  I didn't go overboard, but I definitely did not do HCG.  Sunday was worse.  I kept looking at the clock, thinking, "Was Nora pushing her chair to the counter right now? Was she eating the medicine right now? Right now is when Josh brought her limp and gray into the bedroom." And so on.

It was like re-living it all over again and I lost it.  I was stressed, snippy, and I ate.  I planned to start HCG again on Monday.  Monday there was no school for my kiddos, so we took scones and a thank you note to the fire station medics and the police department. It was a fiasco.  The medics were out on a call, the police officers were out in the field, the kids were CRAZY BUSY, talking, jumping, moving non stop.  I ate.

I haven't weighed myself.  I can't bear to see what I've gained.  Today I planned to get back on the HCG wagon, but I had a scone for breakfast.  I'm thinking to just fast the rest of the day, and drink lots of water.

I've kind of lost my motivation.

Another factor is my mother in law.  She is doing very, very poorly.  She is confined to a wheelchair now, and soon will be confined to a hospital bed in their home.  She can't speak, at all.  She's so frustrated that she cries.  She is in pain.  It effing sucks.  Sorry for the language, but it's a truly horrendous situation.

We are supposed to go to Mexico in 29 days, and I just have this feeling that mom is going to die shortly before we are supposed to leave, and we will have to cancel our trip and attend a funeral instead.  It SUCKS.

We are all praying, so hard, that God will just take her home!! Set her free from this body that she is imprisoned in.  We can't bear to watch her suffer and slowly break down any more.

So there's lots of stress and horrible situations but I don't want to just throw in the towel.  I want to continue my weight loss journey and get all the excess weight off.

I plan to start up HCG again tomorrow, after fasting today.  I will weigh on Friday and I just pray and hope I'll be back to where I was at my last weigh in.

Please pray that God will have mercy and take Kris home soon.  Pray that we can be a light and joy to her, that we know how to bring some sunshine into her days until she is set free from her broken body.

So, that's where I am.  Still fighting.  Not giving up.  Not perfect.  But enduring, standing back up, giving it my all.


Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Posting from pediatric ICU

Wow. The last two days have been a blur.

Yesterday morning, Josh and I were lounging in bed, the kids were coming in and out, eating cereal and watching a movie. Pretty typical Sunday morning for us, if we don't have plans.

Around 10 Josh heard Nora start crying in the living room. He went out and a few minutes later Kate came back and told me that Josh needed me. It didn't sound urgent so I got up and was going to use the restroom. Instead, Josh came running in the room with a limp, gray Nora in his arms.

I immediately screamed for him to call 911 and bent over Nora, watching her breathing get slower and slower. I was panicked because I couldn't remember how to do CPR on a baby. Josh was on the phone with the paramedics and I was asking the kids what had happened. Did she fall off something!? They said no, she just fell down. I got so nauseated and ran to the bathroom and threw up bile.

Thank the good Lord above we literally live right around the corner from a fire station with a medic unit. They were there in under 5 minutes and immediately gave Nora oxygen, attempted to get an IV in several different places on her arms. When they couldn't find a vein, they said they were going to have to drill through her kneecap in attempt to get one. They tried. Twice. I was back in the bathroom throwing up again.

When I was done, I ran out to the living room to ask the kids once again what exactly had happened. And that's when I saw and knew exactly what had gone down.

Nora plays at the TV console, and laying open on top of it was an almost empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills. A prescription we had just filled 3 days prior and had 45 tablets. Now, there were only 7 in the bottle. I ran back with the bottle to the paramedics and told them she had to have eaten them. Then I threw up again.

The medics were frantically trying to get her in the ambulance and I bolted out of the bathroom, into the ambulance and we were off. We had been driving for a short time when the guys in back yelled something, and suddenly we were speeding with the lights and siren on. I was praying with all my heart, so sick and nauseated, the image of my usually rambunctious girl laying there, basically lifeless.

The docs at the hospital were stumped, had never had a case like this with that medication. For reference, my 8 year old daughter takes 1.5 pills a night, and Nora ingested somewhere between 30-40. Her heart rate was at 6 and kept having periods where it was stopped for what felt like an eternity but was probably 10-15 seconds at a time. It always started up again, but they had the defibrillator on her just in case. She was completely unconscious and unresponsive. Didn't even cry as they poked her more, trying to get an IV in. Her blood pressure was also extremely low... Like 14 over something and normal is 80.

They finally ended up intubating her so the ventilator was breathing for her. They had given Nora two doses of a drug that would hopefully stop/counteract the sleeping pills, but neither worked.  At that point they consulted with the pediatric ICU at the big Doernbecher's children's hospital and the attending physician accepted her case and told us we would be transferred. They sedated her so she wouldn't injure herself on the ventilator.

They wanted to life flight her, but it was too foggy, so Doernbecher sent down a PANDA transport. Basically an ambulance with full life support capabilities. Josh and I decided to ride together in the truck, following the ambulance, since we weren't allowed in the back with Nora anyway. As we were walking to the truck, the ambulance took off with lights and sirens blasting. I can't even describe the horrifying and sickening feeling it is, to know your baby is in there, and you may not see her alive again.

The 45 minute drive to the hospital was long and surreal. It didn't feel real; this couldn't really have happened!! We had a prayer chain going, and I *felt* a deep peace, knowing Nora was in God's hands and that there were so many precious people praying for us.

We got to Doernbecher and walked in as they were settling Nora in, after doing a CT scan. She was still unresponsive and pale, but her heart rate had come up a bit. And she did cry periodically,  on the ride from our house to the hospital and in the ER, but she definitely wasn't awake or lucid. But at least I knew she was alive.

Once at Doernbecher they checked her out, but were just as clueless as to what to do. Multiple calls to poison control and lots of googling later, they decided  all they could do was help her ride it out and make sure she didn't stop breathing and that her heart didn't stop. She was still sedated and intubated.

Later that evening she started to come out of sedation and was wildly thrashing around, trying to stand up, trying to pull the tube out, etc.  The doctors were actually quite glad to see that, but they had to give her more sedation three more times because they weren't comfortable taking her off the vent yet.

At long last her breathing and heart rate stabilized enough that she could come off the ventilation and have the tube removed.  As they took it out I was standing near by, and she woke up, opened her eyes, saw me and stood up, lunging for me! I was so incredibly grateful that she recognized me, that she was strong enough to stand, and that she was fighting.

I got to hold her after that, despite all the wires coming off of her.  We snuggled and it was amazing; the best feeling ever.  In the wee hours of the morning her heart rate, blood pressure and breathing all came up to normal levels and stayed that way.  They discussed letting us go home that day, but Nora was still way too groggy.  She would only wake up for 2-3 minutes and then conk out again.  They wanted to see her fully awake and walking around before they let us go.

So we got moved out of ICU and down to a normal room.  Throughout the night she steadily improved, all her vitals were good, and I started seeing "Nora" come back.  Her eyes, although very heavy and sleepy, had a twinkle and she smiled a bit more.  By the time the doc came in around 9am, she had been up and walking around, eaten a bowl of strawberries and yogurt, and was waving at the nurses.

(It took me a couple days to write this, so we are home now.)

We got discharged this morning, and it truly is a miracle.  Nora is 100% back to her usual, normal self.  The kids were in shock, because they had seen her at the hospital yesterday and she was sleeping/grumpy and not herself at all.  They keep asking how Nora got better so quickly. :-)

We had so many people praying for us, and I am incredibly grateful for those prayers.  I am also incredibly thankful that we still have sweet Nora with us, that she didn't sustain any brain damage, nervous system damage, or any long lasting side effects.  You'd never know how close to death she was by just looking at her, except that there are pokes and holes and tape residue everywhere. :-P

Anyway, we are back home and Nora is as spunky as ever, climbing, running and playing like nothing ever happened.

Obviously while I was at the hospital I didn't have HCG food there, although my good friend did bring some up the first night, but I couldn't stomach it.  I had two salads, some Mike&Ike's, and an apple at the hospital. I have no idea where my weight will be tomorrow, because I didn't drink hardly any water, and they didn't have any fat free dressing.  But you know what? I don't even care.

All I care about is that my kiddos, all four of them, are safe and sound and healthy.  I'm glad I didn't fall off the wagon completely, and I plan to continue on, no matter what the scale says tomorrow.

So that's what we did; how was your 3 day weekend? :-P

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Hooray!

I was down today, thank you Jesus! Down to my lowest weight yet, from before I gained.  Speaking of, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why I had such a huge jump in weight.  I didn't cheat, so that wasn't it.  I'm guessing it was lack of drinking enough water, too much salt in my soup, and possibly oil from my chapstick and making the kids food.

So, I bought these:

Oh, yes I did! And I wear them, too.  Anytime I make anything for the kids, I wear them.  

Also, tonight I am starving but have eaten 2 rice cakes with turkey and cucumbers, an apple, had 2 cups of coffee, and 3 egg whites + 1 whole egg with a little fat free cheese.  I was sooooo tempted to cheat; there are so many "good" (read: junk) foods in the house right now.  Then I remembered I had sugar free jello in the fridge! So I had one of those and my sweet tooth is satisfied. :)

I will leave you with a picture of my precious girl.  She is such a sweetheart!


Friday, January 17, 2014

Well, shucks!

Ugh, today was not a good weigh-in!

I weighed yesterday and I had dropped back down to where I was Tue (so I must've gained weight from eating that salad at Applebee's).  I was very good yesterday, and all I ate was the following:

One rice cake (so my vitamins wouldn't hurt my stomach).  A 16oz americano with sugar free flavoring and nonfat milk, an apple, a bowl of my tortilla soup and 4 licorice pieces.

Today I was up 1.6!!!!!!! Wahhhhhhh. I am not moving my ticker back up, because that's too depressing.  I'll just leave it where it is, and hopefully tomorrow I can move it down again.

I know I need to drink more water, and my soup does have quite a bit of salt, but sheesh.  I was actually excited to weigh today, and then that happened.

Oh well, I'm not giving up.  I really, really, really need to drink more water.  My stomach is just sort of on edge lately and water doesn't sound good at all.  But, I think it will help a lot, so I'll give it my best shot.

MB-I'm so sorry you have such trouble leaving a comment! I don't know how to fix it. :(

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend! I'm hoping to be down tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

I'll leave you with a picture of a delicious cup of coffee? cappuccino? hot chocolate? Who cares, the cup is cute. ;-)


Wednesday, January 15, 2014

No Weigh In

Last night Josh and I went on a "date".  He is the Vice President of the our local BNI group (small business group) and they had a little shindig, so we went.  There was so much delicious fried, fatty food!! Onion rings, mozzarella sticks, nachos, loaded potato skins, french fries, hot wings, and on and on and on...

I didn't cheat.



Then Josh and I went to Applebee's and by this point it was 7pm and I was STARVING.  My plan was to order a salad with grilled chicken and non-fat dressing.

Guess what? Applebee's doesn't HAVE fat free dressing.  Not a single one!!

So I ended up getting the chopped chicken fiesta salad, which had corn and beans, onions and jalapenos, with the dressing on the side.  I used a tiny bit of dressing every now and then.  It was actually really delicious, but I knew it wasn't exactly on plan.  

So I chose not to weigh this morning.  I knew I'd most likely be up, and I didn't want to feel frustrated.  So I'll weigh in again tomorrow.  


Tuesday, January 14, 2014

True Words

I love this. It's so very true.  And yes, it may seem ironic that I'm posting this while doing HCG and the numbers ARE kinda important.  But in the end, they really aren't.

MY WEIGHT DOESN'T DEFINE WHO I AM.  It doesn't decide whether I'm a success or a failure.  It can't determine if I'm a good wife, mother, friend or a bad one.  It's just a "reflection of my relationship with gravity".

So liberating!!

I am doing HCG not to reach some magical, longed for number on the scale or size label in my jeans.  I am doing it to lose excess weight that is holding me back.  I'm doing it to be healthy, so I can run and play with my kiddos. So I can get dressed in the morning, and forget about it. Not be readjusting my clothes all day, feeling uncomfortable.

With that in mind, I changed my end goal from 135 to 140.  I may even change it to 145, as that's what I weighed before Nora.  And I was happy there.  And, really, as soon as I can fit back into my jeans, I'll be done, regardless of the number on the scale.

Have a really good day!

Monday, January 13, 2014

Down, Up, Down

Hi Friends!
So, on Saturday morning I was down into the next decade! I was so excited.

Then, I spent all day making Chex Mix and Muddy Buddies for a church fundraiser.  Literally, all day.  I made two batches of regular chex mix, two batches of gluten free, dairy free (by using coconut oil and omitting wheat chex) and two batches of Muddy Buddies.

I am proud to say I didn't cheat once. NOT ONE TINY NIBBLE.  NOT ONE!! I even drove 20 minutes to have someone taste test the batches made with coconut oil, instead of just tasting it myself.  I was dedicated, you guys.

So imagine my total and utter dismay when I stepped on the scale Sunday morning and I was up almost an entire pound.  Back into the 190's, just like that.  It was from the oil/butter from the goodies.  I had tried to be really, really careful but apparently it wasn't enough.  I should have worn gloves, but I didn't have any.  Lesson learned.

Even though I was totally frustrated at being up so much when I hadn't cheated (and in fact hadn't even eaten hardly at all), I wasn't tempted to quit or give up.  Not one iota.  I have to get this weight off.  I did really well the rest of the day, but Nora was a total grump in the evening.  Finally got her into bed and got my chores done, and WOW.  Then I wanted to eat.  I ended up eating black licorice and some pretzels that had no fat and low calories.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the scale today, but lo and behold it was back down to the number I saw on Saturday. THANK YOU, JESUS!

It would have been sooo discouraging if it took me several days to lose that one pound I gained.

So anyway, things are going in the right direction. I'm tempted to panic that it's going slower than in the past, that I won't be as thin as I hoped for our Mexico trip.  But I'm not going to stop.  And you know what? I'm going to enjoy the living daylights out of our trip.  Yes, I will be bigger than I ever imagined when I was planning our trip, but that's ok.  Life isn't about weight.  I will enjoy the time I get to spend with Josh, alone with no meetings, no work, no kiddos... Just us.

Hope you had a good weekend!


Friday, January 10, 2014

I'm here! I'm well!

Hi Guys!
Sorry for the absence the last four days; life is so busy! Good, but busy. :)

I'm still going, haven't fallen off the wagon.  The weight loss has slowed down, and it's a tad bit frustrating, but it's still going down.  And really, can I complain about 9.2 pounds gone in 12 days? No, I can not. ;-)

Just wanted to pop in and say hello (Hi MaryBeth!! Hi Tereza!!) Thanks for your comments; they really do help so much. :)

I am hoping and keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that I'll be down in to the next "decade" tomorrow.  I've been stuck in the 190's *gasp* *deepblush* since I started, and I'm ready to never, ever, ever see that number again!

Hopefully I can get on here tomorrow (or Monday) with the good news that I broke the barrier. :)


Monday, January 6, 2014

Going strong!

Hello, my friends!

I'm down a little less than 8 pounds, and I am so thankful and so excited! Although I'm tempted to be frustrated or discouraged at how far I have to go, I just keep reminding myself to take it one day at a time.  And today I was down 1.8.

It has been fairly easy so far, although I have been "cheating" and eating things that aren't strictly HCG foods.  I discovered that white cheddar rice cakes only have 45 cal and 0.5 gram of fat each, so I've been topping two of them with turkey breast and honey mustard. SO GOOD.

I've also been eating my tortilla soup with 1 tablespoon of fat free sour cream. Aaaand if I'm being perfectly honest, I've had Mike & Ikes or black licorice every single night.  I get SUCH a sweet craving! I'm really trying to watch it though, because it can spiral out of control so quickly.

I still need to work on drinking more water.  Although I'm drinking less coffee, and my tea is really good, I haven't been drinking near enough water.

I'm in desperate need of a shopping trip, so that's on the agenda today.  The holidays were crazy and I couldn't figure out what day it was for the life of me, ha ha! But now school is back in session and things are more normal around here, so that should help.

Hope you had a good weekend! I still need to do my Resolutions post, but haven't managed to get that far.  Soon, I hope. :)

Friday, January 3, 2014

Joie de Vivre

**I'm not sure what's up with the funky highlighting, but I can't get it to go away. :-/**

Joie de vivre (French pronunciation: ​[ʒwa də vivʁ]joy of living) is a French phrase often used in English to express a cheerful enjoyment of life.

Isn't that just great!? I love that; cheerful enjoyment of life.  Is there anything better? To really and truly ENJOY life?!

That's one of my New Years resolutions; to live in the moment and to enjoy the moment.  Enjoy the mess and the noise, the chaos and the craziness.  It's not going to last forever.  


I was in the library with my kiddos and niece, and a kind old gentleman commented on how fast they grow up, how fast we get old.  It's true.  Time is our life, and it passes so quickly.  I want to make the most of it, cherish the moments and not be so distracted with things that don't matter that I miss what is important.


These are such cliche sayings, but they are true:








I was hoping to write more, but my "little moments" need me, so I'm going to put my actions where my words are. ;-) I'll try to pop back on later to finish this post. 

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

2014

Happy New Year, to everyone!

I hope you had a fabulous celebration. I am a major grandma old soul, and was in bed by 10pm.  However, the dog barked ALL.NIGHT.LONG.  Was she scared of the fireworks? No. Did she need to go to the bathroom? No.  Was she bored? Yes. Oh my word, I was so irritated with her!

Anyway, the older three kiddos stayed up with Josh and rang in the New Year while Nora and I snoozed peacefully in our beds.

HCG is going splendidly so far!! *happy dance*

I'm down 5 pounds in 3 days, and I am absolutely ecstatic.  We had a New Years church conference, so the last 3 days have been really busy, which has helped a ton.  I was busy and not sitting around thinking about food. ;-)

I was able to stick to my diet, even while at the conference; I ate plain salad with turkey and an egg one day, brought some of my yummy bean soup that evening, and had more plain salad.  Today I took 4 hard boiled eggs... only I discovered they were soft boiled and nearly retched.  Even now, just typing that, my stomach is dry heaving.  Bleh!!! Slimy and gross.  *shudder*

Anyway, I ate the hardboiled bits on salad with dressing that I brought from home.  I'm going to have more of my bean soup tonight for supper.

I have been doing fairly well with my water intake, but it could be better.  I didn't want to drink a ton and be in the bathroom during the conference, cuz I needed to keep an eye on the kiddos.  But now we're home and I can work on getting more water in.

I've also cut WAY back on coffee, only having it once or twice a week.  I've been trying to drink more tea; Josh got me this DELICIOUS black tea with crushed raspberries in it, and I add a packet of Truvia and some fat free half and half.  It's really good.

All in all, things are going well and I'm looking forward to being healthy and vibrant in 2014.

I'll be back tomorrow with some of my resolutions for the New Year. :)