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Another busy day in which I feel like I got nothing done
I've been at work for an hour but today has lasted eighteen million years or so.
I got to bed shortly before 2:00, but since I had a 9:00 appointment at the bariatric clinic and I knew that sometimes traffic and parking can be dicey, I got up at 7:00 in order to leave at 7:45, with a view to arriving around 8:30. Oh boy, did THAT not turn out the way I planned. It was snowing, you see. "Snow, Phnee?" you may ask. "Surely in Canada you are all accustomed to snowfall and can adjust accordingly?" To which I'd answer: "You'd be surprised, and don't call me Shirley!"
For some reason, there were no snow ploughs to be seen anywhere, including the highways. I counted no fewer than five vehicular collisions on my way to my appointment, and traffic had slowed to a crawl even on the side streets near my house. The trip that usually takes me 30 minutes when traffic is clear took an hour and a half, and therefore I arrived in the parking lot already 10 minutes late for my appointment. Then the parking machine stubbornly refused any form of payment card that I offered, and since it also didn't accept cash, I gave it up as a bad job and went in hoping that I wouldn't get towed or ticketed (which, luckily, I didn't). Then the receptionist ignored me in favour of finishing up the world's longest phone call, in which the patient on the other end was asking questions that were very obviously not urgent, and since by then I was 20 minutes late (I had called ahead twice to advise them of the situation) I was pretty stressed out, and it took all my self-control to remain polite and not come off as aggressive/impolite/entitled/whatever in any way, because that's a good way to get yourself thrown out of a medical practice these days. But I knew the nurse practitioner was waiting, and she couldn't know that the reason I was extra late was just because the receptionist wouldn't put a phone call on hold for one minute.
The appointment itself went well. I will put a few more details behind a cut, so that anyone who doesn't want to read about weight, deliberate weight loss and medical interventions for said weight loss can skip that part. I will not be discussing specific numbers.
Long-time readers of this journal will remember that I have been overweight almost my entire life (since I was about 11 years old). I have never engaged in crash or fad diets, but I have made multiple attempts over the years to lose what the medical industry would qualify as "excess weight." Many of those attempts were temporarily successful, but inevitably I would regain the weight I had lost and then some over the years, until I reached an all-time high during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic.
For what it's worth, I am an advocate for health at every size, and I don't think that a body's composition is a moral indicator. I think fat people like myself and people who are fatter than me should be treated with dignity and respect, and that there should be space made for us in the wider world. The reality, of course, is that none of that is happening. It's still mostly acceptable to mock and shame fat people, and to attribute their size to moral failings. Most places are not designed to fit us, from restaurants to airplanes to gyms. It's incredibly difficult to find clothes that fit, and when we do they are three times the price and so cheaply made that they fall apart within a couple of years. Doctors will routinely discount any medical concerns and attribute any problems being experienced to the "excess" weight, to the point of refusing to conduct tests or perform treatment unless the patient loses weight. If the patient does manage to lose weight, which is very difficult to begin with, by the time the doctor takes them seriously, it's often too late.
Anyway, I have a few reasons for wanting to lose weight. None of those reasons are cosmetic at this point. I have a few health indicators that are worrisome (a borderline A1C and high blood pressure) and have a strong correlation to excess body fat, especially since I carry a lot of mine on my upper body, an additional risk factor. I'm also just physically uncomfortable at this weight, compounded by my back injury from 2022. I'd like to be more physically active, but at my current size I'm finding it incredibly difficult to do that without injuring myself further. I'm also really concerned that, given my desire to move out to the country and start farming, basically, I won't be able to physically keep up with that demanding a lifestyle in my current condition. KK certainly can't help me out if I need to chase after livestock, or climb onto a roof to make a quick repair, or chop firewood, or whatever. I also need to be able to push/pull/lift things, and in order to gain strength I need to be able to exercise without too much risk of injury (see before). Being this overweight is seriously affecting my ability to perform my Activities of Daily Living, aka ADoL, and that needs to change.
My doctor referred me to the local bariatric program in late 2021 and I followed their medical program (a supervised liquid-only diet for six months) in 2022, and I did lose a substantial amount of weight. It has all come right back, the way it always does, and the doctor supervising me and I discussed it back in November of 2024. We both came to the conclusion that the next logical path for me to follow would be a surgical one, i.e. gastric bypass.
KK is actually also being evaluated for that, and she's further ahead in the program than I am, so I'm getting a glimpse thanks to her of what's in store for me. KK has more health issues than I do, both mental and physical, and so her process has been a lot more arduous than mine: several rounds of antibiotics to kill an h. pylori infection (which can apparently cause issues during or after surgery), multiple follow-ups with a mental health care provider to be sure she's mentally fit enough for surgery (because depression and other issues are common after surgery and can be life-threatening if not treated with extreme care), regular check-ins with a dietitian/nutritionist and behaviourist as well as the nurse practitioner. She also has to demonstrate that her sleep apnea is being controlled by her CPAP/other means with a 30-day sleep report provided by her CPAP company. Her chronic pain issues also make things more complicated, as her need to take NSAIDs on a daily basis means she's not eligible for the most common form of surgery, the Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, due to the risk of ulcers and bleeding.
My own preparation is likely to be simpler. For one, I am in pretty decent mental health these days, brain fog notwithstanding, and I have been seeing a therapist regularly for seven years, so they're taking that as a good sign. They may ask my therapist to provide them with a written assurance that I am mentally stable, but that's pretty easily done. I don't have h. pylori in my stomach (yay!), so that means no need for antibiotics. I will find out during my sleep study in March whether I have sleep apnea, and then I will, like KK, have to provide a 30-day sleep report if my sleep apnea is moderate to severe OR if it's mild but with frequent oxygen desaturation (i.e. my blood oxygen level falls often and dramatically during sleep). So we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I've been asked to cut back on my caffeine, which is fine since I was planning to eliminate it anyway. I was also asked to abstain from alcohol during the whole process, which is also fine because I basically only ever drink with my parents, so a couple of glasses of wine every couple of months. I've also been told to eliminate carbonated drinks from my diet, which makes me super sad, but is very doable. I've been drinking carbonated water that I get from my SodaStream, and I add a little sugar-free flavouring, and the bubbles make my mouth happy. However, in the interests of this, I am fine with giving that up, at least temporarily. I've heard that it's often possible to start drinking carbonated beverages again a year or so after surgery, so it's not a permanent ban on them, which is acceptable. Even if it turns out I can't tolerate fizzy drinks forever after, it's not really the end of the world.
More concerningly, I've been asked to try to eliminate all anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) to see if I can manage with just Tylenol. Roux-en-Y would likely be the best option for me (rather than a gastric sleeve, which is the other option available via this program), but only if I can manage without NSAIDs. If I get the Roux-en-Y, I can never take NSAIDs again for the rest of my life. Normally I wouldn't be too concerned, but I do rely heavily on NSAIDs to get me through the day when I throw out my back, which these days happens about twice a year. So I'm going to try my best and see what happens. If I can get by on Tylenol, so much the better. The nurse practitioner also mentioned that apparently there are muscle relaxants out there that don't have anti-inflammatory medications in them, so I can always talk to my doctor about that.
She took a few measurements, declared my blood pressure "beautiful," and then sent me on my way. I left with a large information booklet and my next appointment booked for three weeks from now for a group information session about surgery.
So, yeah. Apart from the inauspicious start to the appointment, it all went really well! I am cautiously optimistic about how this is progressing, and fingers crossed that I can get it all done within a year before my employment gets terminated next year. My contract might get renewed or it might not, but I really don't want to take the chance of not having paid time off work to recover from surgery. Right now if I combine all of my accumulated vacation and sick leave, I will have just enough time to take a month off of work, which is what's recommended after the surgery. I'm kind of hoping I won't need that long to recover, but honestly you never know. I think that the next few times I work overtime I may ask for the time in lieu, so that I'll have a bit more wriggle room there too. I am still going to be accumulating time every month until my surgery, so by the time I get to it I should have more of a buffer, but you never know.
Okay, onto other stuff that happened with my day that's not weight-related!
First off, I finally got my compost worms! I sent a follow-up email yesterday, got a reply from the owner of the operation referring me to an employee, and the employee answered my email at, like midnight, which is wild to me. Go to bed, people, I don't expect service 24/7 for worms, IT'S FINE. Anyway, I called her after my appointment and arranged to drive out to what kind of felt like the middle of nowhere to pick up said worms. I took them home tucked inside my coat, because she said they'd gotten cold and it would be best to get them settled quickly. Since I had a 40 minute drive in bad weather ahead, I figured human body heat would be just the ticket, and I wasn't wrong. They were in a glass jar, in case you somehow imagined that I just had pocketfuls of worms or something. :P
I got home without incident, caught KK up on all the happenings, got the worms situated in their new home, and promptly crashed out for a one-hour cat nap that was interrupted on multiple occasions by my beloved hounds baying loudly at the neighbours, the squirrels, the Amazon delivery person, and the lovely people who came to shovel our walkway. The dogs have Strict Opinions about anyone or anything coming too close to their house, you see, and those opinions are invariably loud and shrill. I love my dogs, they are a delight.
After that I had just enough time to shove my lunch into my bag and head to work. I left early just in case the road conditions were still terrible, but I was pleasantly surprised and arrived early. My coworker took advantage of my arrival to also leave early, meaning I'm working voluntary OT today for about 20 minutes, but whatever. What was more annoying was that he somehow managed to unplug the headset adapter while he was working. I'm one of the few people here who uses a headset, because between the back injury and the hearing loss, I find I can work much better with it. However, people keep accidentally or deliberately unplugging the adapters in new and creative ways, and, like today, I don't always notice right away. So of course my first call was for a possible IED (they're always false alarms but I have to treat each one as if it was real), and the headset wasn't working and my coworker had shut down the computer instead of restarting it, so I was on the back foot for at least 10 minutes until I got all the technical issues sorted out, which made me very grumpy indeed.
Since then things have calmed down, enough for me to type out this post, so I can't complain too hard. I remembered to bring my knitting tonight, and I'm hoping that I might actually be able to finish the Hubris Shawl, if not tonight then maybe tomorrow. Maybe. We shall see.
I think that's enough for now. See you on the flip side!
I got to bed shortly before 2:00, but since I had a 9:00 appointment at the bariatric clinic and I knew that sometimes traffic and parking can be dicey, I got up at 7:00 in order to leave at 7:45, with a view to arriving around 8:30. Oh boy, did THAT not turn out the way I planned. It was snowing, you see. "Snow, Phnee?" you may ask. "Surely in Canada you are all accustomed to snowfall and can adjust accordingly?" To which I'd answer: "You'd be surprised, and don't call me Shirley!"
For some reason, there were no snow ploughs to be seen anywhere, including the highways. I counted no fewer than five vehicular collisions on my way to my appointment, and traffic had slowed to a crawl even on the side streets near my house. The trip that usually takes me 30 minutes when traffic is clear took an hour and a half, and therefore I arrived in the parking lot already 10 minutes late for my appointment. Then the parking machine stubbornly refused any form of payment card that I offered, and since it also didn't accept cash, I gave it up as a bad job and went in hoping that I wouldn't get towed or ticketed (which, luckily, I didn't). Then the receptionist ignored me in favour of finishing up the world's longest phone call, in which the patient on the other end was asking questions that were very obviously not urgent, and since by then I was 20 minutes late (I had called ahead twice to advise them of the situation) I was pretty stressed out, and it took all my self-control to remain polite and not come off as aggressive/impolite/entitled/whatever in any way, because that's a good way to get yourself thrown out of a medical practice these days. But I knew the nurse practitioner was waiting, and she couldn't know that the reason I was extra late was just because the receptionist wouldn't put a phone call on hold for one minute.
The appointment itself went well. I will put a few more details behind a cut, so that anyone who doesn't want to read about weight, deliberate weight loss and medical interventions for said weight loss can skip that part. I will not be discussing specific numbers.
Long-time readers of this journal will remember that I have been overweight almost my entire life (since I was about 11 years old). I have never engaged in crash or fad diets, but I have made multiple attempts over the years to lose what the medical industry would qualify as "excess weight." Many of those attempts were temporarily successful, but inevitably I would regain the weight I had lost and then some over the years, until I reached an all-time high during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic.
For what it's worth, I am an advocate for health at every size, and I don't think that a body's composition is a moral indicator. I think fat people like myself and people who are fatter than me should be treated with dignity and respect, and that there should be space made for us in the wider world. The reality, of course, is that none of that is happening. It's still mostly acceptable to mock and shame fat people, and to attribute their size to moral failings. Most places are not designed to fit us, from restaurants to airplanes to gyms. It's incredibly difficult to find clothes that fit, and when we do they are three times the price and so cheaply made that they fall apart within a couple of years. Doctors will routinely discount any medical concerns and attribute any problems being experienced to the "excess" weight, to the point of refusing to conduct tests or perform treatment unless the patient loses weight. If the patient does manage to lose weight, which is very difficult to begin with, by the time the doctor takes them seriously, it's often too late.
Anyway, I have a few reasons for wanting to lose weight. None of those reasons are cosmetic at this point. I have a few health indicators that are worrisome (a borderline A1C and high blood pressure) and have a strong correlation to excess body fat, especially since I carry a lot of mine on my upper body, an additional risk factor. I'm also just physically uncomfortable at this weight, compounded by my back injury from 2022. I'd like to be more physically active, but at my current size I'm finding it incredibly difficult to do that without injuring myself further. I'm also really concerned that, given my desire to move out to the country and start farming, basically, I won't be able to physically keep up with that demanding a lifestyle in my current condition. KK certainly can't help me out if I need to chase after livestock, or climb onto a roof to make a quick repair, or chop firewood, or whatever. I also need to be able to push/pull/lift things, and in order to gain strength I need to be able to exercise without too much risk of injury (see before). Being this overweight is seriously affecting my ability to perform my Activities of Daily Living, aka ADoL, and that needs to change.
My doctor referred me to the local bariatric program in late 2021 and I followed their medical program (a supervised liquid-only diet for six months) in 2022, and I did lose a substantial amount of weight. It has all come right back, the way it always does, and the doctor supervising me and I discussed it back in November of 2024. We both came to the conclusion that the next logical path for me to follow would be a surgical one, i.e. gastric bypass.
KK is actually also being evaluated for that, and she's further ahead in the program than I am, so I'm getting a glimpse thanks to her of what's in store for me. KK has more health issues than I do, both mental and physical, and so her process has been a lot more arduous than mine: several rounds of antibiotics to kill an h. pylori infection (which can apparently cause issues during or after surgery), multiple follow-ups with a mental health care provider to be sure she's mentally fit enough for surgery (because depression and other issues are common after surgery and can be life-threatening if not treated with extreme care), regular check-ins with a dietitian/nutritionist and behaviourist as well as the nurse practitioner. She also has to demonstrate that her sleep apnea is being controlled by her CPAP/other means with a 30-day sleep report provided by her CPAP company. Her chronic pain issues also make things more complicated, as her need to take NSAIDs on a daily basis means she's not eligible for the most common form of surgery, the Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, due to the risk of ulcers and bleeding.
My own preparation is likely to be simpler. For one, I am in pretty decent mental health these days, brain fog notwithstanding, and I have been seeing a therapist regularly for seven years, so they're taking that as a good sign. They may ask my therapist to provide them with a written assurance that I am mentally stable, but that's pretty easily done. I don't have h. pylori in my stomach (yay!), so that means no need for antibiotics. I will find out during my sleep study in March whether I have sleep apnea, and then I will, like KK, have to provide a 30-day sleep report if my sleep apnea is moderate to severe OR if it's mild but with frequent oxygen desaturation (i.e. my blood oxygen level falls often and dramatically during sleep). So we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I've been asked to cut back on my caffeine, which is fine since I was planning to eliminate it anyway. I was also asked to abstain from alcohol during the whole process, which is also fine because I basically only ever drink with my parents, so a couple of glasses of wine every couple of months. I've also been told to eliminate carbonated drinks from my diet, which makes me super sad, but is very doable. I've been drinking carbonated water that I get from my SodaStream, and I add a little sugar-free flavouring, and the bubbles make my mouth happy. However, in the interests of this, I am fine with giving that up, at least temporarily. I've heard that it's often possible to start drinking carbonated beverages again a year or so after surgery, so it's not a permanent ban on them, which is acceptable. Even if it turns out I can't tolerate fizzy drinks forever after, it's not really the end of the world.
More concerningly, I've been asked to try to eliminate all anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) to see if I can manage with just Tylenol. Roux-en-Y would likely be the best option for me (rather than a gastric sleeve, which is the other option available via this program), but only if I can manage without NSAIDs. If I get the Roux-en-Y, I can never take NSAIDs again for the rest of my life. Normally I wouldn't be too concerned, but I do rely heavily on NSAIDs to get me through the day when I throw out my back, which these days happens about twice a year. So I'm going to try my best and see what happens. If I can get by on Tylenol, so much the better. The nurse practitioner also mentioned that apparently there are muscle relaxants out there that don't have anti-inflammatory medications in them, so I can always talk to my doctor about that.
She took a few measurements, declared my blood pressure "beautiful," and then sent me on my way. I left with a large information booklet and my next appointment booked for three weeks from now for a group information session about surgery.
So, yeah. Apart from the inauspicious start to the appointment, it all went really well! I am cautiously optimistic about how this is progressing, and fingers crossed that I can get it all done within a year before my employment gets terminated next year. My contract might get renewed or it might not, but I really don't want to take the chance of not having paid time off work to recover from surgery. Right now if I combine all of my accumulated vacation and sick leave, I will have just enough time to take a month off of work, which is what's recommended after the surgery. I'm kind of hoping I won't need that long to recover, but honestly you never know. I think that the next few times I work overtime I may ask for the time in lieu, so that I'll have a bit more wriggle room there too. I am still going to be accumulating time every month until my surgery, so by the time I get to it I should have more of a buffer, but you never know.
Okay, onto other stuff that happened with my day that's not weight-related!
First off, I finally got my compost worms! I sent a follow-up email yesterday, got a reply from the owner of the operation referring me to an employee, and the employee answered my email at, like midnight, which is wild to me. Go to bed, people, I don't expect service 24/7 for worms, IT'S FINE. Anyway, I called her after my appointment and arranged to drive out to what kind of felt like the middle of nowhere to pick up said worms. I took them home tucked inside my coat, because she said they'd gotten cold and it would be best to get them settled quickly. Since I had a 40 minute drive in bad weather ahead, I figured human body heat would be just the ticket, and I wasn't wrong. They were in a glass jar, in case you somehow imagined that I just had pocketfuls of worms or something. :P
I got home without incident, caught KK up on all the happenings, got the worms situated in their new home, and promptly crashed out for a one-hour cat nap that was interrupted on multiple occasions by my beloved hounds baying loudly at the neighbours, the squirrels, the Amazon delivery person, and the lovely people who came to shovel our walkway. The dogs have Strict Opinions about anyone or anything coming too close to their house, you see, and those opinions are invariably loud and shrill. I love my dogs, they are a delight.
After that I had just enough time to shove my lunch into my bag and head to work. I left early just in case the road conditions were still terrible, but I was pleasantly surprised and arrived early. My coworker took advantage of my arrival to also leave early, meaning I'm working voluntary OT today for about 20 minutes, but whatever. What was more annoying was that he somehow managed to unplug the headset adapter while he was working. I'm one of the few people here who uses a headset, because between the back injury and the hearing loss, I find I can work much better with it. However, people keep accidentally or deliberately unplugging the adapters in new and creative ways, and, like today, I don't always notice right away. So of course my first call was for a possible IED (they're always false alarms but I have to treat each one as if it was real), and the headset wasn't working and my coworker had shut down the computer instead of restarting it, so I was on the back foot for at least 10 minutes until I got all the technical issues sorted out, which made me very grumpy indeed.
Since then things have calmed down, enough for me to type out this post, so I can't complain too hard. I remembered to bring my knitting tonight, and I'm hoping that I might actually be able to finish the Hubris Shawl, if not tonight then maybe tomorrow. Maybe. We shall see.
I think that's enough for now. See you on the flip side!
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I've been reading along too, but given the magnitude of things going on everything I can think of to say either sounds trite or like spiritual bypassing or, worse, like doomsaying, none of which is my intention. <3