Sunday, August 21, 2011
A Week of Doctors
This week seems to been some kind of a peak and I think it's because of the doctor visits.
First I talked to Dr. Lowe who is a surgeon that was recommended by Dr. Anderson. I brought Karen with me, which when I do, seems to result in the doctors getting a better idea about what is going on with my health. The doctor obviously wanted to check out the hernia. He pokes his finger up around the hernia and then he touches it and says "Does that hurt?" Why do they do that? I'm sure they must know that it hurts, perhaps they just want to see how much it hurts.
During the check up the doctor finds out that I've been constipated, and suggests that I should have a colonoscopy. Then he found out that our family participated in the colon cancer study, and he felt even more that I should have the appointment, before the hernia surgery. Dr. Lowe got me an appointment with colonoscopy doctor and I got the appointment on Friday.
Into the colonoscopy doctor I go. I told him about the rectal cancer study, and it seemed like he knew about the study, but didn't sound like it led to much. He found about the hCG diet and didn't seem very impressed about it, but he didn't know anything about the diet, but he felt that he could advise me against doing the diet. I guess that OK on a certain level. Most diets are probably not too good for you, but that doesn't mean that every diet is bad for you. I guess my default position would be that I would probably advise against most fad diets. In fact the first time I heard of the hCG diet it sounded crazy to me too. Take a hormone that's found in pregnant women's pee? Your kidding right!
The long and short of it is that I found out that I definitely do have a hernia, and now have a date for getting it fixed. I also have a date for the colonoscopy. Knowing definitely about the hernia is a relief. However, the doctor said that the hernia is probably not what is making me feel so run down, and that was part of the reason that he wanted me to have the colonoscopy.
This week Karen sister Shawn and Barry came to visit. I'd told Barry that I didn't think that I'd be up to playing golf so we didn't do that. Instead Barry spent most of his vacation being a plumber by helping install a dishwasher, a disposal, a bathtub, and finishing up the tiling of a shower. I felt kind of bad, but I hadn't know that they needed the help, and with my visiting and helping my Mother I don't have very much time. There that's my excuse and I'm standing by it.
Finally at the end of the second week I lost about 1.3 pounds, which really sucks except that according to the data I lost around 4 pounds of fat and put on around 2 pounds of muscle. Now I don't know how much I trust that. It would seem to be impossible to be putting muscle on but that is what I would like to see, a loss of fat and going up in LBM. Karen noticed that my stomach just hangs wierdly because it must be mostly skin right now. She called it a dewlap, and that's pretty much what it looked like. It was pretty silly looking. This is going to be the last week, and I'm glad. I won't have to go back on the diet again. I'm going to keep the weight off, and hopefully lose some more weight. Hopefully the Primal Diet will do the trick. Perhaps I should actually read about what the Primal Diet is since I say that I'm following it now. That at least sounds a little better.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
I'm In Trouble and I Don't Know Why
OK the title is a lie, I do kinda know why, but it's not fair. The world's not fair.
Karen and I went on the hCG Dieting Phase where we eat ~500 cals a day. However, I'd been doing the Primal Diet before this phase and realized I could do the Primal diet on the hCG Diet. What I do is eat my fruit during the day then eat my vegetables and protein at night a couple of hours apart. It's a very cut down Primal Diet but still the Primal Diet.
Anyway it looks like I've lost about 9 pounds the first week.
I'm starting to try and look at the connection between the water and BF%. There is obviously a connection between the two because when my BF is low the water percentage is high. One day this week lost 6 pounds in one day. When I checked the water it looks like I actually lost 4 pounds of water that day as well. That makes sense so I'm going to look at it a little closer.
I'm pretty sure that I have a hernia. My groin area was really hurting on Tuesday so I went into an urgent care facility to get a second opinion. The doctor didn't impress me very much but when I described my symptoms he said that it sounded like I had a hernia and gave me a referral to one of their doctors, but they gave me an appointment sometime in September, then I called my doctor and he referred me to a surgeon that I was able to get into next week. After sitting around on Tuesday I was feeling pretty good for the rest of the week, then I went over to Linda Bond's house with the Priest Quorum to help tear out her bathroom, and now I'm not feeling so good.
So that's about all that's happening, we're on the second phase of the diet and I think I've got a hernia.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
"Trails to Testimony" by Brad Harris
I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas. It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well. I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy. Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected. The higher the H2O% the lower the BF. I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well. The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas. It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well. I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy. Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected. The higher the H2O% the lower the BF. I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well. The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
New Phases
Nothing much has happened for the last week. Today I went over to see my mother and helped Trisha clean the rocks around her path through the grass. Trish probably didn't need the help, but as she said it's fun to work with other people. Oh yeah I call Trisha "T" now. Here's the story. When I got my new iPhone I slowly started entering the texting world. Turns out that some people seem to communicate better through texting than any other method.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Best Laid Plans...
The last time I went to the doctor was right before our quick visit to the Taylors, our cousins in Arizona. I was thinking that that would be the last time that I'd visit in a long time. My BG was under control and I was hoping that I was going to be able to keep from getting sick with the bronchitis now that I had the silver water and the allergy stuff however...
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Three Weeks Have Flown By
Wow three weeks have just flown by. The last time I wrote on the blog was the day after the Los Conchas fire started. That fire is the biggest in New Mexico history. Last I heard it was something like 140,000 acres, which I actually have no idea how big that is but I'm sure it's pretty big. Sounds big.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
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