I'm conflicted about this too...

I can't figure out if I should take what the new surgeon told me as good news or crappy news.

Normally, I wouldn't feel the need to get a second opinion but under this particular set of circumstances I did. When I came back from fat camp with my left leg all boogered up, I knew I needed to get into the doctor post haste. I was also fighting another nasty upper resperatory infection, so my first stop was my G.P.'s office. They put me on antibiotics for the URI and gave me a shot of cortisone in my knee and told me to stay off of it for a few days and see if it got better. If it didn't get better, I was supposed to either go back to see them or get an appointment with our local sports medicine place.

I chose to go to the sports medicine place. I've spent a lot of time there in the past. Sometimes I've really got to wonder why the hell I'm such a friggin' klutz?!!! It would be nice to get through a whole year without spraining something or straining something or dislocating something or breaking something!

Anyhow, the two doctors that I've seen in the past at the sports medicine place didn't have any appointments available for weeks so I took an appointment with a new doctor. The new doctor did x-rays...didn't see anything but had a couple guesses. He sent me for an MRI. His guesses were right. Like I've mentioned (I'm quite certain way more times than you're all interested in hearing, but like I said from the get-go, this blog is mostly for me...so tough it up!)...I have a stress fracture in my left tibia and a torn medial meniscus. This doctor gave me a brace to wear...told me not to walk more than necessary and gave me two choices: a) wait for the fracture to heal and see if the pain goes away or b) get the arthroscopic surgery for the meniscus now (he said there was a 90% chance I'd need it) and rehab from everything all at once.

I wasn't sure what to think about those choices. I also really wasn't sure what to think about the fact that this particular doctor was GIDDY about the healthcare bill getting signed in. I think it's a travesty and am seriously considering a move to Cuba or something (if I'm going to be a communist I might as well go hard core!)...he was GIDDY! It creeped me out. None of my other doctors are happy about it. Some have retired...others are considering it. Did I say this guy was GIDDY?? Creepy. Creepy. Creepy. So...I decided I needed to see another doctor. If I do need surgery, there's no way I'm letting Dr. Giddy Pants near me with a scalpel!

Both my endocrynologist (one of the doctors who will probably retire and/or move with me to Cuba if the government starts telling him how to practice medicine) and my mother-in-law gave me the name of another doctor. This guy only does knees. Apparently, he does the knees for most of our local major sports teams and whatnot. He's supposedly a "knee guru" or whatever you'd call the best of the best of the best of knee doctors. I was surprised to be able to get an appointment with him within a few days of my first call.

The appointment was for yesterday at 3 p.m. My husband drove me to the medical center. I'm still popping Vicodin like M&Ms and driving isn't such a good idea. We showed up at the office at 2:45. I filled out my forms. (You know, if the government wanted to do something SMART to fix healthcare, they'd standardize all the stupid forms and give people something they could do at home and bring with them. That would save a ton of time and money for everyone.) After filling out my forms, I checked in with the insurance girl. She told me that because we have good private insurance (enjoy it while it lasts, right?!) we'd have no payment that day. Then we waited...and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited....and waited. I finally got called back at about a quarter till 5....me and 3 or 4 other people that had also been waiting forever.

The nurse took my MRI CD/DVD and paperwork and stuck me in an exam room...to wait...and wait and wait and wait some more. When Dr. Guru came in, he did pretty much exactly nothing for about a minute and a half. He told me not to wear the brace the other doctor had told me to wear. He told me to use the crutches the other doctor had told me I didn't need to use. He told me not to put any weight on my leg...at all. And he told me to come back to see him in four weeks.

Pardon my language, my more sensitive readers, but WHAT THE FUCK?

So, now I've got two totally conflicting sets of protocol about what to do. I don't trust the first doctor at all, but I didn't get to spend enough time with the second doctor to even guess at whether or not I should trust him. I DO trust my endocrynologist...and my mother-in-law...and all the reviews....but still! It would have been nice to have had the time to get my questions answered.

What do I do? How the hell am I supposed to get around without putting any weight on my left leg for four weeks? My right knee and ankle were messed up long before any of this happened and 5 minutes on crutches had them screaming bloody murder at me. I've been using a walker I borrowed from my Mom (leftover from her hip replacement surgery - looking cool, eh?) and while it's a fantastic upper body workout I'm a little afraid I'm going to kill myself or one of our dogs trying to negotiate around the obstacles in our home...not to mention that I'm already getting blisters on my hands.

Good God I sound like a whiny, obnoxious, little titty baby, don't I?

On a lighter note...Dr. Guru did say I could swim. If I had access to a pool, I'd be in it right now!! If fat camp did nothing else for me, it did seem to reignite the "I love to exercise!" flame I used to have burning all the time when I was younger...and healthier...and my ass wasn't so enormous.

1200 Characters is less than I realized:

(I tried to update my profile this evening...wrote all this and after trying to post it, found out that my estimate of 1200 characters was waaaaaay off! I thought it was worth posting anyway...for y'all to get to know me a bit better, so I'm cutting and pasting and sticking it here.)

I'm a wife and a mom. I've done a fairly decent job of taking care of my family for years...sometimes at my own expense. Right now, I'm learning how to take care of myself...sometimes at my family's expense. I'm HOPING to learn how to put everything together into one neat package. It's not an easy task.

I'm a cancer survivor but I don't think that defines my character...just an interesting tidbit of information.

I'm a retired scuba diving instructor. I had to stop teaching to save my hearing. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision. God, if you're listening, I'm only thinking in print..please don't get any funny ideas...and please, anyone that reads this that is actually hearing impaired (or whatever the politically correct term for deafness is nowadays), PLEASE don't take this personally or as any sort of devaluation of your disability. I do have some hearing loss and I do take it seriously. That's why I gave up a career I loved more than I can even explain. I just value peace and quiet greatly and live in a fairly noisy household. The idea of losing my vision horrifies me...but my hearing...sometimes I could take it or leave it.

I've lived my backwards. I got married young...had kids young...skipped going to college to get married and have kids and teach diving. Now that I'm older and my kids are getting ready to head off to college themselves, I'm seriously considering going back to school to study physical therapy. Had I gone to college straight out of high school, I would be a marine biologist right now...probably doing something exciting like counting sea urchins or worrying about the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Funny how life changes your plans, isn't it?

I know from being a scuba instructor that I'm a good teacher. I've spent many hours working with physical therapists over the years (slipped discs, dislocated shoulder, dislocated elbow, blown out ankle, etc.)...I know the exercises. And now, I'm helping a dear friend who had a stroke a while back do her PT...and with every success she has, I love the process a little more.

So, now you know a little bit about me...and if you hadn't already guessed, I also LOVE to write. I'm sure that every person with one of these blogs loves to write...we're all a little voyeuristic, aren't we? At any rate, I love to write...hope to maybe put all my jibberish together into something resembling a book someday. In the meantime, I'll barf it up here...and hopefully, a few of you will find it worth reading.

I am so conflicted...

right now. My husband is sitting next to me...with not one but TWO..crispy..steaming-hot..slices of pepperoni french bread pizza on a paper plate. Part of me is so ready to throw something at him and steal the pizza...part of me is just wants to go in the other room and hide until he's done eating. The smell of it is killing me!

I can't tell if I'm hungry or not. I don't think I'm actually hungry. I might be thirsty but I don't feel like hobbling into the kitchen to get more water.

I talked to a chef yesterday that was talking about making "pizza" on slices of Naan with fat free this and organic that. Is he kidding? Pizza? Balderdash! That's not pizza! I'm not sure if what my husband's eating right now is pizza either (it is on a French bread crust)...but it SMELLS like pizza!

I'm thinking that while I'm trying to lose weight that maybe...just maybe...we shouldn't have some things in the house...no pizza...no Oreos...no chips...no chicken wings...no french fries. I mean I can pass up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, no problem...but passing up pizza? That's a problem.

I think I am hungry. I am NOT going to eat pizza though.

The bad news is...

I got a call from the doctor's office yesterday. The results from my MRI came back. I'm even more broken than I was guessing. I have a stress fracture in my left tibia (shin) and a tear in my meniscus (the little cartilage doodad between the bones in my knee joint.) I think I spell meniscus a different way nearly every time I type it. If anyone knows the correct spelling and wants to clue me in, feel free!

I'll find out prognosis on Monday, but from what I was told over the phone it sounds like I have to wait for the fracture to heal and then I'll probably need surgery to fix the tear. Since the internet is such a great source of terrifying and depressing information, I was able to find out that it can take up to a year or longer for this sort of stress fracture to heal. Great. Crap. @#@!$#@!!! And THEN surgery!!!

The worse news is...this is all going on in my LEFT leg...otherwise known as my previously GOOD leg. What does that mean? Well...it means that I've been hobbling around with a brace on my left knee...putting most of my weight (which is still enormous!) on my BAD right knee...which is starting to hurt like a mother f'er. So...double crap!! I'm scared to even tell the doctor about it...but I guess I'm not going to have a choice. The way this is going, I'm going to end up in a Jazzy with a little flag before the end of the month.

On a lighter note...

The GOOD news is...The website that I found to log my meals and whatnot (www.fitday.com) has been nothing short of a diamond mine of information and tools. So, in spite of being temporarily disabled, I'm still losing weight. I'm down another two pounds since I got back from fat camp. The forums on Fit Day are fantastic and the people there have given me some great ideas about activities I can do without damaging my knee(s) any further.

All in all, I may be down, but I'm not out.

The battle goes on.

I wish I could...

eat like my parrot!! I have a yellow-naped Amazon parrot. Her name is Dagny. If any of you have ever read any Ayn Rand, you'll probably grab the reference...if not, tsk, tsk...and get yourself to the library pronto!

Anyhow, I'm sitting here watching Dagny eat her birdy kibbles. It's a fascinating process. The kibbles come in a rainbow of colors, shapes, and sizes. She very carefully sorts through the bowl to pick out the exact one that she wants (well, maybe not that carefully...sometimes she tosses some of the rejects to the dogs)...some days it will be the red ones, others the orange or green, today she seems mostly interested in the purple ones. She invariably avoids the plain, beige ones. Those are always left in the bowl or thrown to the dogs. I have to wonder if she knows that "eating the rainbow" is healthier for her and that plain beige food tends to be made out of a bunch of crap.

After she's selected her piece of kibble, she doesn't sit with her face in her bowl to eat it....she holds in in her beak and climbs all the way up to a perch at the very highest point in her cage. If I have the door open for her, she'll come out of the cage and either climb to the very top or over onto the top of her play stand. This process would be similar to me getting a piece of fruit out of the refrigerator and then grabbing a ladder out of the garage so that I could climb up and eat the fruit sitting on the roof of my house. Dagny repeats this process for every single piece of food that she eats. I wonder if I did the garage/ladder/roof thing how fast I'd lose weight?

Of course, bird kibbles aren't the only thing Dagny gets to eat. She gets oatmeal and fresh fruits and vegetables and hard boiled eggs and sometimes a little piece of cooked meat. I'm embarrassed to say that one of her favorite treats is a piece of pizza crust though. If we order pizza and don't share, the plantive parrot wails of "delicious??!!!" can be heard down the street. I guess even birds aren't immune from the addictive qualities of pizza.

All in all, it seems I've been feeding my parrot better than I've been feeding myself for the past few years. I guess it's time to start following her example and begin throwing the "beige kibbles" on the floor for the dogs (so to speak)....and maybe find that ladder.

I just signed up...

on www.fitday.com. With my knee all boogered up (I'll find out on Monday whether or not I'm going to need surgery)...keeping track of what goes into my mouth is going to be paramount! I spent 30 minutes this afternoon wracking my brain, trying to remember if I'd eaten breakfast or not. Thirty minutes! (I know it was 30 minutes because there was a 30 minute t.v. show on in the background.) I finally gave up trying access that piece of information from the memory banks. I STILL don't know.

Based on that lack of knowledge...which is either caused by early onset senility or the VERY STRONG narcotic pain medication I'm taking for my knee, I decided that having a place to keep track of what I'm eating seemed like a good idea. I've learned the hard way that an Oreo here...a chicken wing there...a Frosty on the way home from work....a handful of whatever...all of those little bits and pieces of things that I can eat without really THINKING add up to a LOT of calories. This website is free...most of the others charge. Free is good. It has places to track food, activity (won't be using that very much for a while), moods, measurements, weight, goals, a journal, and message boards. I might be forgetting something, but you get the idea.

Hopefully, between that...and this...and the fact that my family is gung ho to help me right now, I'll be able to stay on track. I don't want to regain the weight I've lost and even if I can't get a lot of exercise for a while I really don't want to give up the fight in the epic war against my ass!

One step forward...

and I don't know how many excruciatingly painful, very slow, limping steps back. Whatever I did to my knee in Utah has gone from bad to worse. I think that the steroid shot my G.P. gave me in it on Saturday morning must have helped with the pain just enough for me to move around way more than was smart. I tweaked it again today just by shifting my weight in my chair a bit and the ramifications almost brought me to tears. I have a fairly high pain tolerance, so I'm afraid this is going to be bad news. I'm going to the orthapeadic surgeon/sports medicine doctor early Wednesday morning. Keep your fingers crossed for me that he doesn't need to do surgery to fix whatever's broken. My healing rate from prior surgeries hasn't been so hot...they tell me it's going to be one night in the hospital and I end up having to stay for a couple of weeks. Rest...Ice...Compression...Elevation...(RICE)...and lots of Advil (although right now if someone offered me something stronger, I wouldn't say,"no.") Surgery is bad....physical therapy is good. Thankfully, I like to swim.

According to the...

scale at the doctor's office this morning, I've lost eleven pounds between now and the last time I was there. I'm quite certain that I didn't lose very much, if any, of that weight prior to leaving for Utah...soooooooo...without having had a final weigh in because I bugged out early on sick leave...I'd have to say that's what I lost while I was there. I was at Real Life for eleven days and out of that, I was either bloated up like a balloon and covered in hives and/or coughing like a 80 year old chain smoker for about five days. I'm bad at math, but...work with me here...11-5=6 days of full blown, die hard, winner-take-all, give it all I had working out. And in that time, I lost ELEVEN POUNDS!! That's flippin' amazing! Even when I take into account the fact that I was only eating 1200 calories a day...less towards the end when I was really sick. Woohoo! :)

So...what to do now? I want to keep up the momentum. How to do that? Dunno. Right now, I'm sitting in a recliner with ice on my boogered up knee. My doctor was nice enough to give me a prescription this morning for my gazillionth round of antibiotics in the past couple of months to clear up the case of bronchitis and inner ear infection I picked up. I don't think that I'll be running (or even walking very quickly) on the treadmill for a bit. What can I control? I can control what goes in my mouth. I can keep from hobbling over to the pantry right now and getting into whatever junk food is lurking in there. I can think long and hard about the work it takes to burn off those calories. Easy come...HARD to go.

I'm leaving...

on a jet plane...I'm not exactly sure when I'll be back again. Good grief. I never really liked that song. Sick. Sick. Sick. :( This blows big chunks! Literally. So...I made it through, what, not quite two weeks of fat camp? I'm feeling like such a total failure right now. I'm furious too. I'm mad at my inferior immune system. I'm mad at the self-important, inconsiderate people that feel entitled to walk around here sick, coughing all over the rest of us without a thought or care in their vapid little heads for the health of others. I'm mad at the people running this place for not quarantining the aforementioned people to help prevent the rest of us from getting sick. I'm just plain mad right now.

So, what am I going to do about it? I don't really know. I'm not going to waste time or money being sick here, that's for sure. I can be sick at home. So, I bumped up my flight and I'll be home just in time for Houston rush hour tomorrow. I hope my husband is looking forward to some nice booger snotty kisses from me. I look really pretty too...still peeling from the stevia hives. It looks like I've had a really bad sunburn...or an acid peel. Lovely. If I were married to a lesser man, I'd be afraid he'd leave me on the curb!

I should have a fat camp credit for the remaining two weeks and change of my stay. I'm hoping that after I get over this crud, I can maintain some momentum at home...I'm thinking that maybe coming back here a little further into the summer might be a better idea. Right now, everyone's cooped up inside, sharing the same dry, heated air...a recipe for quick and ugly germ transmission. I might even steal my Jeep back from my son and drive out so I have my own transportation.

We'll see.

Right now...I'm just mad...and disappointed...and sick...and looking at a closet full of stuff that needs to be packed.

This sucks.

Emergen-C why dost thou...

forsaketh me? I add you faithfully to my water daily. I take all my other multi-vitamins as well. I try to get enough rest. Since I've arrived at Real Life Fitness and Health (Fat Camp!)...I've been eating healthfully too. I wash my hands after going to the bathroom, before meals, anytime I touch something gross, and pretty much any other time it crosses my mind. I cover my mouth if I cough or sneeze and try to avoid being around people that seem sick. So, why-oh-why, Emergen-C, do I keep getting sick? It seems that I'm doing everything right. I stand back and watch those around me touch sweaty gym equipment and then wipe their noses with their hands and then touch the equipment again. I think about all the people that walk casually out of the bathroom without washing their hands. I watch other Fat Camp attendees line up like starving cattle in a feed lock to get their meals...straight from the gym...so few of them bothering to take the few extra moments at the sink to wash their hands. It confounds me, Emergen-C. Why is it me that gets sick and they that stay healthy? Is it the conspiracy between the germs and my ass? Have I stayed so clean throughout the years that my immune system hasn't had a chance to learn to fight off bacterial bugs and viruses and other weapons of destruction? I don't get it. Please help me get over whatever this bug is quickly, Emergen-C. I've been faithful to you for many years...don't fail me now.

My "OFFICIAL BEFORE" picture

I'll post an "official after" picture too...I won't be done with my journey...just the first leg of it, but it will be interesting to see what I can accomplish during four weeks of life at fat camp. Wish me luck!

I thought this would be good for a laugh...

I took this picture after Face Debacle #2 started to abate a bit...once the swelling around my eyes went down enough so I could open them and find my camera...and the hives went away enough so that I was able to stop scratching long enough to actually take a picture. Don't I look pretty?? LOL ;) Gross!

The Great Face Debacles

I forgot to mention the downside of my week...well, I didn't really "forget" to mention it...just left it out of the last post because it didn't really fit the theme of what I was talking about.

Fun stuff, this.

Debacle #1:

Early in the week...I think it might have been Tuesday but it's all a little blurry...we were coming back from breakfast and I started to get pins and needles in my face. They felt just like it feels when your foot goes to sleep...but in my face...scary stuff, this. The only other time I could recall having this sensation was when they damaged my parathyroids during my thyroidectomy and I ended up with low blood calcium levels for a while. On the other hand, high altitude, lots more cardio than I'm accustomed to = not an insignificant amount of fear that I was having a stroke. I spent most of the day sitting in an office with various people coming to poke at me...a couple trainers, an RN, the resident chiropractor (trust me if I thought I'd been having a stroke, I would have been at a hospital...I was nervous, but not stupid)...the Real Life staff doctor finally came...made sure I wasn't in danger of imminent death and sent me for some blood tests. I preempted him that night and took some extra calcium. The tests came back the next day. I was right. My calcium was low.

Moral of the story: I am my own M.D.

Debacle #2:

After dinner yesterday, I was craving something sweet. It was the only time since I'd arrived that I'd craved anything at all (besides sushi)...and it was strange since I'm not usually all that big on sweets. But, I was craving something sweet, so I decided that a nice cup of hot tea would do the trick. I'd been noticing these bottles of "natural" zero calorie sweetener on the table all week and I figured, "what the hell." So, I made my tea, added my sweetener...ended up putting in too much because it had an eye dropper thingy and I didn't read the instructions and used almost a whole dropper full instead of just a few drops. My hot tea was too sweet but I didn't want to waste it so I cut it with a bunch of water and ice.

Long story longer.

The stuff in the bottles was "STEVIA"....it's made from a plant that's related to RAGWEED. People that are extra super duper allergic to ragweed tend to be extra super duper allergic to plants in the same family....such as echinacea (learned that the hard way too)...chamomile...etc...

Long story even longer.

A few hours after I finished my tea and went to bed, I woke up barely able to breathe. My eyes had swollen almost completely shut and I was covered in hives. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), this wasn't the first time in my life I'd had this sort of allergic reaction to something. I always have Benadryl. I opened four of them and took the powder. That was enough to save me a trip to the ER. My face is still swollen I don't know how many Benadryl later, but I can open my eyes now and the hives are gone. The doctor here called in a Prednisone dose pack for me which is helping too.

Moral of this story: If you have severe allergies, don't eat it if you don't know what it is.

So this is why...

I've been amiss in my promised blog posts, faithful readers...(to borrow a wee bit from Mr. King...those of you who read his books will know what I mean)...

To give you an idea of why I haven't been online much, here's an example of what my days have been like at Fat Camp so far:

I get up at 4 a.m.!!! Yes, you read that correctly. FOUR IN THE MORNING!! Thankfully, I'm a morning person so I don't even need an alarm clock to manage this epic feat. Unfortunately, for the rest of the people here, I'm a morning person and I'm trying to learn to be quiet before someone kills me.

As soon as I get up, I pop a Synthroid (can't eat for an hour after I take it...for a place where we're trying to lose weight, it seems like all they're ever doing here is feeding us?!?)...then shower...get dressed...dry hair...double check my backpack for:

**two extra pairs of socks
**extra panties
**an extra sports bra
**deodorant
**a full change of clothes
**flip flops for the shower (even though I always forget to put them on and will probably end up leaving here with a raging case of foot fungus)
**MY IPOD!!!! (I'm not entirely sure how I'd be living through this experience without the five hours of cardio mix I downloaded before I left...one of the smartest things I've ever done...bar none)
**gum
**Advil
**wallet
**sunglasses
**water bottle
**a jacket (it SNOWS in Utah...magic! :) )
**Chapstick
**hand lotion
**some other stuff I'm forgetting now...or have forgotten before
**anything I think I might need for the afternoon activity (more on this later)...assuming, of course, we're told about it in advance...

By 5 a.m., I'm downstairs trying to be quiet and having my first snack (one protein and one carb..i.e. a hard boiled egg and an orange) of the day.

We get picked up at 5:20 a.m.

At 6 a.m. we're at the gym and we get to start BOOT CAMP. Boot Camp is like grade school calisthenics on steroids. We do jumping jacks and pushups and lunges and whatnot until we (I) puke. Fun stuff. Really. Well, everything except the jumping jacks...and the pushups...I hate the f'ing pushups...especially the "special" ones where you clap and other such nonsense. Nothing pisses me off more than NOT being able to do something....pissed me off yesterday to the point of tears. Pathetic. On the other hand, I love a challenge. Bring 'em on!

After boot camp, we have time for about an hour of cardio. I'm learning to LOVE the elliptical machines. I would LIKE to learn to love the treadmills. Eventually, my goal is to run my ass clean off. It's taken a week to find a pair of running shoes in my size. If I'd known that Utah had such a prejudice against New Balance women's running shoes in size 9-D, I'd have picked up an extra pair before I left home. Not knowing this, however, I waited to grab some here and was trying to make do with my old ones. Ouch. I finally got some today. They're beautiful...fit perfectly...if you're all good, I might even share a picture. Can you tell I'm very excited?

After the time for cardio, we hop in big vans and go eat breakfast. No. The egg and the orange wasn't breakfast. I know. Strange. That was a "snack." Now it's time for breakfast.

Breakfast consists of more protein...more carbs....they're big here on balancing a carb with a protein. Over the course of the day, we consume about 1200 calories...so even though it feels like I'm CONSTANTLY shoving food in my mouth, I guess I'm really not. I've previously eaten 1200 calories as a snack on my way home from work to tide me over before I make dinner. Some of the more memorable breakfasts have been some sort of pseudo egg mcmuffin, oatmeal and yogurt, and PANCAKES! If I never see the broccoli quiche surprise thing again, it will be too soon. :/

We're back at the gym within about an hour. Group classes start at 8:30. Any sort of group class that you can think of, this gym offers. They have everything. It's crazy. The "Pilates for Weight Loss" class I took the other day almost killed me. Lots of the women here love Zumba (no, it's not the same as the robot vacuum thing I have...that's a "Roomba"...I checked)...Zumba is some sort of cardio/Latin dance thing. I'd rather stick hot needles in my eyes. If you're not in a cardio or strength class, you're supposed to be working out on piece of cardio equipment at this time.

At 10 a.m....Can you guess? That's right. Another snack.

Then...more classes..cardio...

Then back in the vans for lunch at around noonish.

Then back to the gym by 1 or so. We split into groups at this time. Half of us do cardio (there are about 20ish people here...maybe...I'd have to count)...and the other half of us break into smaller groups and do strength training with personal trainers...then we swap.

At 3? What do you think? Could I possibly be hungry? Not so much...but tough. Another snack. At least they have conveniently located bathrooms and garbage cans for when I puke up all these snacks while I'm trying to work out.

More cardio.

4:45...Vans leave for dinner.

An hour later...back to the gym...

At this point in time, some people have appointments for massages and such. I had one massage this week. Daily would have suited me just fine. Some people bag the gym and stay home. Everyone else goes back to the gym and does....MORE CARDIO! Sense a trend?

All the vans head home for the night between 7 and 7:30...

Home, shower, pack backpack for the next day, take nighttime meds and vitamins and a large handful of Advil, crawl into bed, sleep for what seems like a few minutes, and wake up to do it again the next day.

Saturdays are a half day. Sundays are off. Sometimes during the week (like yesterday when we went snowmobiling) we go do something fun/active in the afternoon somewhere between lunch and dinner instead of some of the other stuff, but that's all a little hazy right now.

What do I know for sure? I've launched an all out war on you, ass! One of the trainers here even gave me an instruction sheet today to prepare myself to run a 5k! Me, a 5k? You betcha!