“When you are in the valley, keep your goal firmly in view and you will get the renewed energy to continue the climb.”

-- Dennis Waitley

Day 58 AS

Not a lot of change other than down a couple more pounds and the good news that I'm finally starting to get back my stamina, due in some part I think to normalizing my blood pressure. My internist switched me to a less powerful med at its lowest dose -- and at first that made me go even lower. She had me cut that in half (no mean feat as the tablets are the tiniest ones I've ever taken to start with!) and that seems to be doing the trick. I haven't had a dizzy spell in several days and I am starting to feel more energetic -- yay.

The lighting at work is still making me want to rip my hair out and scream at my inability to cope with it. I have a new incandescent lamp on my desk and a new glare screen on my monitor, so am hoping, hoping, hoping that this helps. Fortunately I can do a lot of my work remotely, as long as I can connect to a network and have a telephone available, so I continue to work at home part of the day.

I saw my endocrinologist a couple of days ago and we're increasing my oral med at night in hopes of getting my morning tests back under 100. The good news is that after a couple of days it's down to 125 again, so we're close. I'll try it a couple more days and if it doesn't make it there I'll increase my morning dose also. The great part of this is that if successful, I'll be able to continue without insulin and without a second oral med... a great improvement from my pre-surgical state! I'll be doing kidney function tests again in a couple of weeks and am hoping they come back normal as this particular med can sometimes affect them.

More good news (from my perspective at least!)!! "Food freedom" day arrived a couple of days ago -- I can eat whatever I can tolerate now (except salads (too hard to digest still the experts say)) which will have to wait another few weeks). Rules are protein first, vegies/fruits next and carbs last, and I can still only eat 3-4 ounces at a meal, but it's nice to have more options. I may just enjoy a spoonful of dressing for Thanksgiving with my turkey. Last night my dad called to let me know that he and his wife will be coming up from San Diego to visit for the holiday so we're really excited. Hopefully this visit will end better than his last one when I had to leave them to rush John to the ER. That was followed the next day by emergency surgery to remove the alien empyema from his collapsing lung... we definitely don't want to do that again!! I'm thinking maybe kicking back, watching the parade and some football may be a lot more fun.

The other nice thing about "food freedom" day was that my restriction on drinking vs. sipping liquids was lifted also. This has cut my vitamin/med taking time in half almost since I don't have to chop everything up into small enough pieces to swallow with a sip of water. After two months that was becoming quite annoying -- particularly in the morning trying to get ready for work in a reasonable amount of time. Yippee.

One last bit of good news to share. This morning we had our annual IT all-hands meeting at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. I had no problem walking and talking at the same time with everyone else -- no breathing issues and no pain. It was AWESOME!! Also AWESOME was the fact that a few colleagues I respect (and like!) well were awarded for their accomplishments in the past year -- one of which even was one of the overall winners -- very cool, and very well deserved. I'm so proud of them!!