Appreciating My Limits

 Y'all, I'm slightly addicted to Reddit. Mostly, it's fun to read posts about cooking or tv shows or whatever, but sometimes I like to wade into the shit-filled ocean of political posts. Those posts make me hate humanity, because... WOW. But then, there's other posts that are non-political that end up being beneficial or even thought-provoking, like this one I read a few days ago. There was a post a week ago asking what you hated about your ageing body. Lots of comments about wrinkles, grey hair, creaky bones, etc. But then someone posted the opposite question - what do you love about your ageing body? Again, most people posted superficial things like "not having to color my hair," or "not having to please society and wear a bra." 

But there was one comment that really stuck with me and made me want to write this post. She said that she appreciated her limits. She acknowledged her age, her physicality, and what she could or couldn't do anymore. I realized that I had begun to do the same thing, though I didn't realize it until I read that comment. 

I'm not 20 anymore. I can't do all the things all the time anymore. And that's okay. It's not a failure if I can't carry all of the groceries in from the car in one trip. I'm not a loser if I don't sign up for every extra-curricular activity available. I'm not a quitter if I take a break from running and just walk instead. I'm not a wussy for skipping a gym day because of a headache.

Once I started to see this, my entire outlook changed! There's nothing wrong with slowing down! I don't have to keep acting like I'm fine all the time, like I'm a Boss Babe or whatever. I'm almost 50. My body is tired. I can ask for help. I can put things off. I can modify decisions. 

Of course this doesn't mean that I'm just going to curl up on the couch and be a potato for the next 40 years. It just means that I have realized that I can't - and no longer need to - hang with the young'uns anymore, and that's fine! 

Lazy Goes to the Doctor - Annual Wellness & Body Check Visit

After two years of focusing on Hubby and his health, I realized that it was time to take time for myself, too. As women, we often neglect our own health to ensure that other family members get the care that they need. Also, many women (like myself) often visit our Gynecologist once a year and call it good. We don’t get blood work. We don’t get physicals. We don’t talk about our general well-being at those appointments… It’s all about the specific biology that only females have, to ensure that they’re working right. We don’t think about the other 95% of our bodies!

So I set up an appointment with a doctor at my employer-sponsored clinic, hoping to focus on my weight, and get bloodwork done. She gave me a good once-over, checking reflexes and poking my soft spots (like my abdomen). Was I kind of hoping that I could get a GLP-1? Yeah. I’m 100 pounds overweight at this point. But I was advised that only one doctor in the clinic could prescribe those, because the insurance people were cracking down them (I guess doctors’ had been giving it out like candy!) And that doctor was really adamant that prospective GLP-1 patients show that they’ve been actively working on their weight and watching what they eat – she suggested that I use something like MyFitnessPal and track my calories for a few months. Combined with my Garmin app, I can use that to show Dr. GLP what I’ve been doing. Other than that, my doctor suggested the same tired suggestions of fewer carbs, eat plant-based, blah blah blah. She suggested I eat chickpea pasta and 14-grain bread. Nah, I don’t think so. She admonished me that if she was going to be my General Practitioner, I needed to always come to appointments as instructed, and follow her advice as much as possible, then told me that she’d follow up with me in 6 months to see how I’m doing. She also set me up with a ColoGuard test, for a colon cancer screening (instead of a true colonoscopy). Hubby’s gonna be so mad that I get the box and he had to do a full Pooper View!

After meeting with her, I had a full panel of labs done, and what a joke that was! The poor phlebotomist (like all phlebotomists) couldn’t find the vein in my left arm, thought she knew better than me, and tried to find it in my right arm. She called another phlebotomist over and they repeated the process. Then they called their supervisor over, who continued to strap me and poke me. She assumed no one could find it because I was dehydrated (LOL, as if), and brought me a cup of water to drink. They finally gave up on my arms and just stuck me in the back of my hand (like an old woman) and was able to draw blood that way.

I got my test results back a few days later, and except for my Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) being just slightly low (mine was 31.2, normal is 32), my Total HDL-C being slightly low (mine was 44, normal is above 50), and my A1-C being slightly high (mine was  6.1, normal is under 5.7), all my numbers were good! So for now, I’m going to focus on shitting in a box, upping my iron levels, tracking my food intake, and losing a few pounds. We’ll see what everything looks like in November at my follow-up appointment.

After I hit up Panda Express for lunch (so healthy!), I went to my other appointment, my annual body check at the dermatologist. Nothing has been bothering me, in terms of questionable-looking spots, but I had a few moles that I wanted to remove. I'm so thankful that Dr. M is open to slicing off anything I want gone! This time around, I removed two from my thigh, two from my arm, and two from my back. All of them were benign, as expected (the gnarly, ugly ones are never the cancerous ones). So now, for the next two weeks I have to deal with the pain, itching, scabbing, scarring, and eventual healing. But once they heal, my skin will look much better!