About losing when your health stinks (And more weight history)

During my pregnancy with my fourth son, I kept falling to the floor or ground. I would suddenly lose feeling in both legs, and down I went.

The most dramatic was at about 8 1/2 months pregnant. SOMEONE had missed taking out the garbage for a few weeks. I heard the garbage truck, and I bolted out the door to race the garbage man. I got a few cans to the curb, when I fell flat on my face, on my huge belly, on my way back up the driveway. My glasses flew far away. My neighbors saw, but looked on helplessly, as they were all retirees, in frail health themselves. (and I was a BIG girl!) The Rumpke Waste driver had seen what had happened. I could NOT get up off of my driveway! He came up, and asked me if he could help me up, and I gratefully accepted. He helped me to find where my glasses flew off. (That's the darn thing about being nearsighted, if you lose your glasses, you are really lost!) The driver was kind enough to grab all of the rest of the cans from the back yard, and he even took the cans back to the back after he had emptied them!

As I hobbled in the house in my shorts and T-shirt, I surveyed the damage. I scraped my cheek, my shoulder, my knee, and one toe had all of the skin hanging off ------ and the baby wasn't kicking! I prodded and poked, nothing.

I called the OB.
They told me to eat something. That would rouse the baby.
Nothing.
They told me to drink something with caffeine. That would rouse the baby.
Nothing.
I called the OB back. They told me to come on in. I called my husband. I packed up the kids, and away we went.

Of course, any time in the waiting room is too long at this point, and this seemed to be a slow day at the OB's. The baby didn't kick at all. As I got on the scale, THEN he decided to make an announcement, he kicked. They took me into an exam room, asked what happened, asked why I was taking out garbage, at which point I bit my tongue hard enough to sustain another injury. (But that is another story)

All seemed okay, but they sent me across the street, to the hospital for the day, for monitoring. Of course, at the hospital, they saw how scraped up I was, and again asked, how all of this happened. I told the story again, and worsened the wounds in my tongue, if you know what I mean... But, hey, the nurse properly cleaned and dressed my skinless big toe that I had issues reaching!

As I have a balance disorder, Menieres disease, and a lumpy driveway, and I was used to wearing my contacts, not my glasses, I blamed my fall there on a multitude of issues, but that didn't explain the million and one falls at the sink while washing dishes.

A while later, I delivered son number four, all 11 pounds, 1 ounce of him. He was born with a broken collar bone, just as I had been ages before! The break was NOT from the fall. He had gotten stuck, and the doctor felt it break as he was dislodging him. (It is actually pretty common in big babies. I had two other sons who out weighed him by one ounce, but this kid was all shoulders, he looked like a swimmer!) As I had heard my whole life how my mother had to hold me with the broken collarbone, I was pretty prepared for this. After working as a nurse aide, I knew to dress the bad side first.

After the delivery the falls kept coming. I was sent to a few orthopedists type doctors. I talked about the pain down the OUTSIDE of my legs, and up into my back. One of the doctors found a hernia where by inner thigh meets my torso. When the doctor would push in that crease hard enough that she would lose all color in her fingernails, I could not breathe to answer. This meant that I had a hernia. (Actually, I can pinpoint the day that I got that injury, and that injury was about a decade old!) I was scheduled for a hernia repair operation.

I had gone to a good medical practice. This doctor did lots of sports medicine operations. She was on the team that treated the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals, while the teams are not that hot, these are still people who make a living off of their bodies, thus, I thought that was a good testament to the practice.

Of course, you do all the normal pre-op paperwork, so you can go in on surgery day knowing that all will be fine.

As I am on the table, the anesthesiologist finds out that I am an asthmatic, so he will NOT knock me out. Okay, I had an epidural for the C-section with my first son, I can go through this awake.

I can cope. I'm kind of interested in medicine, so I pay attention to things like this. My surgeon arrives. And so does a student. I swear to this day that this student's mom cut the meat on his plate through medical school. The boy had NEVER held a knife before, and he was coming at me! The surgeon yells, in front of a fully conscious me, "DON'T hold the knife like that!". It gets worse from here. "DON'T cut there!". And, my favorite, the one that I paid for for quite a few years, "Whatever you do, don't touch THAT NERVE!" Let's just say that if I was grading, neither doctor would have passed that day.... Why in the heck would you let some kid practice, on someone who is FULLY AWAKE!??!?!?!?

As this was drive thru surgery, I was home that night, not that I remember much after I got the pain medication. The next morning, I woke up. My husband was at work, and I was home with a 4 month old, a 2 year old, and a 5 year old. I grabbed some breakfast, and read the discharge papers that my husband signed. I wasn't allowed to lift over ten pounds. (Recall that the baby was 11 pounds 4 months ago...) I was not allowed to be alone for 24-48 hours. I called a friend, read her the discharge papers, and asked her if she'd babysit me and my kids! My friend came over and hung out for the day. (Thanks Lynne!)

I had lost feeling in a great deal of one side of my body from the operation.
"But, the feeling would surely be back in 6 days."
"But, the feeling would surely be back in 6 weeks."
"But, the feeling would surely be back in 6 months."
"Maybe you have to just deal with it."

As I had to baby the incision on the inner leg, I was putting MORE stress on the outer leg, where the problem was to begin with. Meanwhile, the falling is getting worse, as is the pain going up my back, and down both legs. When I explained this to the surgeon, she said, "Oh, I guess you have another problem if the pain is THERE!" Well, that is where I SAID that the problem was from day one, HELLO!

As most moms know, a two year old can be a pistol. They love to get into things. We had baby gates everywhere that we could. Then, of course, when the baby was crawling, we needed the gates all the more. I was totally out numbered.

Due to speed of little people, I often had to hurdle the gates, (Normally this would not be too rough, as I am 6 feet tall, but after the operation, there was a very tight limit as to how far I could move my leg from my body!)

Due to the bi-lateral sciatic nerve issues, and the botched surgery, my mobility was very poor. I could shuffle along behind a grocery cart, using it as a walker. I could walk behind a double stroller. When I needed to lean a bit more on the stroller, I needed the 5 year old to add his weight to the stroller for ballast! I could not take my normal length steps. I could not take steps as long as my own feet. To say that I walked slowly would be an understatement.

I was home schooling the boys, and I had a poster of the food pyramid up in the kitchen. We ate by it. My oldest son moved down from his dad's house in New York to my home in Ohio, and I started home schooling him as well. Money was tight with 6 people on one income. The food pyramid allowed us to eat on the cheap. I gained weight. My walking got worse and worse.

We went on a home school field trip, and I shuffled on along behind my stroller. One mom had a digital camera. After the event, she asked us over to her home. She got pictures of my family. She showed them to me on her computer. My eyes teared up. I had NO IDEA that I was that fat. With the surgery, I couldn't wear anything fitted, or anything that pulled on my incision. I was in stretchy stuff and didn't notice how big I had gotten. I gained 80 pounds. It is probably fair to assume that I lost 20 pounds of muscle, and gained 100 pounds
of fat, from how sedentary I had become.

I picked up The Carbohydrate Addict's Guide to Heart Health. If you are a person, like me, who wants to know how and why your body is doing what it is doing, this is the volume to read. They don't even explain the diet until after you have read 150+ pages. They told tales of their lives, and how they stumbled across the information that changed their lives. It tells the painful tales of the weight loss sagas of the three authors. While this particular Carb-Addicts book had 3 authors, particularly painful is the story of Rachel Heller. Opening the back cover of the book, and seeing before and after shots of her will shock the senses.She went into some of the parts of weight loss that lie between the ears. As she is a long term success story, it was good to hear. If you just want to know WHAT to do, jump straight into one of the Carb addict's diet books, or Dr Atkin's books, but this particular book helped on some of the emotional front.

I went on the Carbohydrate Addict's Heart Health diet. I followed the Carb addicts plan religiously from June until November. I lost 40 pounds between June and November. I slipped off of the wagon some, until February. I didn't gain any weight, but I had quit losing. But, I had lost enough weight to help with my mobility issues, and possibly just did some healing from the botched surgery as well.

In February, I sidestepped onto the Atkins diet to jump-start my weight loss. Weight had been falling off of my frame on Atkins. I was going wheat free, and sugar-free. I lost another 40 pounds in 6 months on Atkins.

I went from 270 in 6/01 -> 190 by 8/02

I stayed below 210 until about 2006! (I would have to look through more journals to find the exact date.)

As we were moving 2 counties away, and had 2 homes to pay for at once, had a death in the family, lost our primary source of income, I went back to consuming filler, aka, grain, as I would NOT force the rest of the family to live on grain and feed myself more expensive protein based foods, as they liked my food too! I packed on some weight. I am in the process of removing it right now.