Sunday Stroke Survival ~ My Big, Fat Body

I wish I was in this shape instead of larger!

No it's not a personal image thing. It's the truth. When you have to say that round is a shape, you know you are obese. I have a gut that I can use as a table. No that's not boasting. I'm saying it with shame.

I recently went to the cardiologist. She looked at the stats and told me I'd gained weight. Five more pounds was added to my bulk and I now weigh more than before my stroke. I'm obese (bordering on morbidly obese) and I know it. Chock up another item that keeps me in the high risk range for candidacy for another stroke or heart attack. Genetically indisposed for high cholesterol no matter how much medicine I'm on. Married with a strong family history for weight relate medical problems.

I hear ya, "But Jo, you can change your weight problem." Yes I can to a point. The extenuating circumstances hold me back. The pressure sores on my foot is a biggie. I'm under doctor's orders to stay off it as much as possible. It's a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. If it were on the toe part of my foot, I could focus the main weight bearing towards the heel as I walked and vice versa  for the heel. But no, it happens to be on the outside edge of my instep. There's no way of not putting pressure on that.

Prior to the pressure sores, I was walking half a mile a day and losing weight. I had lost thirty pounds of unneeded bulk with a minimum of twenty more to lose. But since May of last year, I put all of that back on and then some. Talk about frustrating! Combined with the muscle relaxers for my spasticity and my hubby in hospice, I find that I'm nibbling more not because I'm hungry but to stay awake. The fatigue I feel all the time and medication are a double unchangeable sword. While I may nap and catch forty winks during the day and early evening, it's not a restorative sleep, but from exhaustion. I'm staying awake the only way I know how.

Couple that with a prior eating disorder of equating comfort with food and I've got some major problems! I guess I'm just making excuses, right? I could pick the right kind of foods to nibble like carrots or celery. I actually do this quite frequently. But calories are calories. Intake without burning them off in some way is an imbalanced equation...thus the added weight. Added to all the stressors in my life, it's definitely a no win scenario. Mentally, I know these are just excuses, but stopping is more trouble than it benefits right now.

Yes, added weight or obesity and smoking are changing risk factors, but for now correcting them is  on hold until I can do more about them. Am I on the verge of another heart attack or stroke? You betcha. Is there anything I can sanely do about them? Nope! Things I can't do anything about take a backseat to those things I can do. I'm taking it one day at a time on good days and one second at a time one bad days.

Yes, in an ideal world, I'd not smoke and be the perfect weight according to the charts. BUT this is not the idealistic world of Fantasy Island. This is the real world with all the joys and heartaches that a body can stand.  I don't sweat the small stuff. There are very few big stuffs around so long as my husband is breathing. Once he stops permanently, then it's all small stuff again. If he starts breathing again, it's still small stuff after he does. BUT the moments in between are killer.

I do what I do to survive in this moment. To handle this or that task in hand.  The past is the past and the future will unfold in spite of what is happening today. For today, I'm fat and sassy. I have a great sense of humor in spite of the world's roller coaster. Tomorrow's problems because of today's actions will be dealt with in time as will all things. Yes, I'd like to lose eighty pounds, but for today I choose to be happy and semi-sane.

Nothing is impossible with determination.