De-cluttering Week 18 - A Birthday Wake Up Call

For my birthday, I had my first ambulance ride. 

Thursday we started moving my son from one apartment to the other. True, I had the easy job of sitting all day waiting for the COGECO guy to show up to connect the tv, internet, and phone,  but I did move a lot of boxes and things around during that time.  The next day I didn't feel so good.  I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so I know better than to over do it.  And that was, of course, the reason I got elected to do the waiting in the first place.  But hey, that's a long day to sit and do nothing when so much obviously needs to be put away.  I figure I had overdone it, and just took it easy all day on Friday. 

Saturday I woke up at 3:30 AM, very dizzy.  Moving anything just made it worse, so I tried to lay very still, flat out on my back for a while.  Then I rolled over.  Not a good idea.  Sitting on the side of the bed was just silly, but that's when my hubby woke up and asked if I was alright.  I admitted that I was not, and it didn't take him long to decide to call 911.  They asked some questions and then sent the ambulance to fetch me. 

The ambulance guys were really nice.  By the time they had arrived, I had put on some clothes, and had landed on the couch in the livingroom.  I had a bucket beside me as the dizziness had gotten bad enough by then to make me nauseous.  The guys asked some questions, and did some tests and apparently didn't like something they were seeing because they decided to take me to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals.  At my age, one doesn't mess around with dizziness, I gather.

The doctor tried to get me to describe the word dizzy.  Have you ever done that?  I remember, in the past, trying to get a doctor to understand that I was having periods of light headedness, and she couldn't seem to understand that I wasn't full out dizzy.  This hospital doctor, though, said there are several kinds of dizziness and he wanted to know which one I was experiencing. So I tried my best to describe what it made me feel like, even though it wasn't happening at that moment.  It had begun to come in waves.  So he had me do a little something, that made me say, "Here it comes again." 

I was totally amazed when he said, "Yes, I see that."  He said that my eye was jumping.  I couldn't feel that.  Then he had me turn the other way and repeat the experiment.  Immediately I saw the chair across the room roll up the wall, over and over again.  Think of a movie with a broken bit of film and how that last frame just keep repeating itself, over and over, rolling up the screen.  That's about what I was seeing. 

"Oh, that's so weird," I said.

 He responded, "No, it's what I expected." 

I told him it was certainly weird from my point of view. 

He was then able to diagnose an inner ear problem and gave me some pills that definitely seem to help.  I should be fine by the time the week is out.

All this is bad timing, or maybe good timing, depending on how you want to look at it.  It meant that I could not go back to help finish off the move today.... my birthday

The thing is, I'm getting older, and a whole new thought pattern has developed when things like this happen.  Dizziness could be sign of a stroke. It dawned on me that nobody else really knows where I keep such things as wills and insurance policies, or other important papers.  When I mentioned this to my hubby later, he just assumed I had such things in the safety deposit box.  They aren't.  I had been told years ago that it was hard to get into a safety deposit box if someone passes on, until it has been established who the executor is. That information, of course, is in the will. So if the will is locked away where nobody can get it, then that delays things considerably.

I obviously didn't get any of my de-cluttering done this week, at least not at home .....other than to take another box of books to the Merrickville United Church for their big sale later this month.  But I certainly have come up with next week's project.  I have to search out all those important papers from their current locations, and put them all together, where they can easily be found.  Next time I have an emergency, it might be too late to do that.

An InLinkz Link-up

Perhaps a Slight Change of Plans

As of Saturday I have been on the 17 Day Diet for a week now, and I’ve lost 7 pounds so far. My hubby is not on the diet, but he has lost 10 pounds in the same time frame. He’s eating what I’m eating, plus the usual carbs in his oatmeal at breakfast, sandwich at lunch time and potatoes or rice at supper. But since I’m trying to lose weight, he thought he’d try too, and he’s cut back on cheese, desserts, and cereal at bedtime. I said cut back, not eliminated, and yet he’s lost 10 pounds. I don’t quite understand this.

I know why I’m losing weight. Carbohydrates create energy. The body needs this energy to function. When people eat less carbohydrates, their bodies turn to fat for energy. It doesn’t matter if it gets the fat from something you just ate, or the fat around your middle. If you didn’t eat any fat, then your body starts using what you’ve stored and you lose weight. That accounts for my weight loss. If I could figure out what accounts for his, I’d include some of the extras I see him eat.

Actually, on Sunday we had to go somewhere and ended up eating at Wendy’s. I chose a salad that came with chicken, while he had our usual chili with his side salad. The pecans that came with my salad came in a bag, and while I tasted them (they were sugar coated!) I didn’t put them on my salad. For dinner we had a chicken stir fry. I was supposed to just put garlic and ginger and soya sauce on that, but I made our usual sauce, which contains, amoung other things, cornstarch and brown sugar. I even got into the rice a bit. Hey, I’ve been good all week and 7 pounds in one week sounds wonderful, but seems like an unhealthy drop to me. Well, sure enough, my weight is up a couple of pounds this morning.

I’m also a bit dizzy, so I think I’m going to have a carb included day today, and eat the rest of the stir fry for lunch. I love seeing those numbers on the scale go down, but it won’t do me any good if I’m not healthy when I’m finished. Checking things out on the web, I find that low carb diets are good for lowering blood pressure. That’s the last thing I need, as mine is considered low to start with. It would likely explain the dizziness though.

I’ve enjoyed my meals on this plan though, so perhaps what I’ll do is skip ahead to the next 17 day cycle, as various carbs are included in that one. It’s still a weight loss plan, just not so accelerated as the first 17 day cycle is. I’m not giving up, just modifying the plan to suit my own body.