Healthy Obsessions The Adventures of a Mild Obsessive Compulsive

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On Having Covid and After

It’s been a while since I posted on my health blog, but with everything going on lately. Well. I needed it.

My experience with Covid itself wasn’t bad. Or at least, I thought it wasn’t bad. My teammates at work at the time would disagree. But it’s all relative. In comparison to my pre-celiac diagnosis days, when I got bronchitis yearly, and pneumonia every couple years… it wasn’t bad. (And compared to the nightmare stories on the news, it definitely wasn’t bad.)

Finn keeping me company

I could actually lie down to sleep. Didn’t have to sleep sitting up. Didn’t need a nebulizer. Tessalon perls worked to suppress my cough. It certainly never got to the point where I had to even contemplate hospitalization. It was manageable. Manageable enough that I justified staying home and not going for testing.

I first got sick just before testing became widely available where I’m living. I was sick for a few months, and I could have gone by the end of it. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to leave the house. I didn’t want to deal with strangers. I especially didn’t want to try dealing with medical staff here when I don’t speak the language.

So. I just stayed home. I took meds. I dug through my old supplies and found an old steroid inhaler. Which I used. I took lots of baths, where the steam helped. I used my cpap machine even while awake, because the humidifier was a godsend.

I managed.

And then I seemed to recover. No more coughing. No more congestion (well, no more than usual; I’m always congested). No more sore throat.

I thought I was getting better. And I was. Better than the acute phase anyway.

I figured it would be like any other time I needed to get back in shape. Push through the pain and build up strength. Except that’s not how it worked this time.

I took Finn to a dog park. Took an Uber to get there, even though it felt ridiculous. Due to construction, he dropped us off on the other side of the park. So we had to make our way across. And it was excruciating.

I needed to stop to catch my breath constantly. My lower back and legs were in agony. I thought it was just being out of shape. Back pain wasn’t new. Neither was leg pain. Admittedly, this was pretty extreme. But I was proud I made it. My Fitbit said I hit 5000 steps that day. Pre-Covid, that was my daily minimum. After Covid, that was awesome.

And then I ended up in bed for two weeks.

And it happened again. And again.

Walking to the pharmacy two blocks away became an odyssey. I had to stop at least four times in those two blocks. Two blocks. When before I got sick, Finn and I were walking seven miles at least once a week.

I didn’t think it was long Covid. We were only beginning to hear whispers long Covid was even a thing. I thought I’d just gotten really out of shape being bedridden for three months. And I’d gained weight during that time, so of course I was more out of breath.

I don’t remember who suggested it. Probably Simran. She became certain I’d had Covid, even though I never got tested. My manager at work had thought so all along. My parents thought so, too. And… my dad is a doctor. Retired now. But also unlikely to believe I had an illness without concrete proof. I had to get both blood tests and an intestinal biopsy before he accepted I had Celiac disease. So. I slowly came to accept it. Not that denying it would do mr any good.

And now I’m trying to get my life in some semblance of order while managing the symptoms. My apartment is a disaster. I don’t cook becaude i just dont have the spoons for the cleanup. Heh. I’ve actually literally run out of spoons; I can find about two at any given time.

Crazy Tired and Don’t Know Why

There are so many potential causes:

  1. Mom’s radiation is over. Tremendous relief coupled with some amount of emotional collapse.
  2. Went back on sugar over last weekend when we went wine tasting.
  3. Went off SCD (see previous line).
  4. Ran out of Welbutrin (sort of). Did have a few pills left that were not extended release. Problem was, I forgot to take the second dose in the afternoon. Back on full dose as of yesterday.
  5. CPAP has sprung a whistle. The intake is whistling like mad whenever I use the CPAP. It’s bad enough that neither J nor I can sleep through it. I futzed around with my CPAP settings the last two nights (yeah, yeah, I know patients aren’t supposed to hack into the Clinician’s Menu, but I’m nosey). Which helped a little. Lower air pressure, lower whistle. Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion that the setting my doc had me on was probably correct. My AHI was not so good on the lower pressures. And the pressure average, come the morning, was always very close to the max pressure.
  6. Crazy hormone nonsense. Have I mentioned I have crazy hormone nonsense going on all the time? Yeah. I’m increasingly tempted to go back on the pill just to have it all STOP. But that has its own repercussions.

Today, off to the DME to see if they can fix the whistling issue. And then back to work in rush hour. Things are okay. I’m just tired.

testing

this is just a test

Moving and a Tangent

Welcome to my new home on the web. I’m still making tweaks and getting the place set up the way I like. Hopefully all will be in working order shortly. Have you seen anyhing that looks broken? Or hard to read? Let me know, and I’ll do my best to fix it.

Some recently earned wisdom: Don’t laugh while using a neti pot. Really.

The Weight Loss Quest: How Much OCD is Helpful?

Notice the animals instead of numbers? Maybe I should get this scale instead...

My endocrinologist wants me to lose 50 pounds. Yep, 50.

This presents me with a challenge to figure out how to use my OCD to facilitate weight loss, without letting it get out of control.

Before anyone tells me that I don’t need to lose any weight and I look fine (and thank you if you were going to say that) it’s not about the way I look. It’s about hormones. Insulin, to be specific.

I have PCOS, which means that I’m more at risk than average for diabetes or other insulin related problems. Weight is a big factor there. (I’ll go into more about this in a future post because I have, of course, obsessively researched it).

I do have to say, I think I’d be unhealthy (and damned unattractive) if I lost that much. I also think I wouldn’t have breasts if I lost that much. This would make me sad, as I rather like having breasts.

Me at my current weight. Wearing a pink wig.

The first challenge is figuring out how much I want to lose, instead of obsessing on 50. My endo pulled that number from a BMI chart. My current BMI is 28.2, which puts me solidly in the overweight category, nearing obese. However, I don’t buy into BMI.

In truth, although I weigh 20 pounds more, now, than I did when I got out of college 10 years ago, I’m smaller and stronger than I was then. The same clothing is looser on me now. Which means my muscle density has increased. Which is a Good Thing (TM). However, my BMI is higher.

Personally, I’m thinking 15 pounds, although that leaves my BMI in the overweight category, at 25.8. I’m picking that as my initial goal and ignoring that little obsessive voice that keeps saying, “He said 50. He did say 50, you know. How about 50?”

The next challenge is using my OCD just enough to be helpful but not so much that I’m miserable. As we already know, I’m good at tracking things. So, I’m tracking my intake. I know that if I follow that primrose path too far, I could end up in serious eating disorder territory. I have, luckily, never been in that territory, so for now I’m going to say my obsessive tracking will probably be fine. Thanks to my lovely iPhone, I’m using LoseIt to track my food intake. More later, no doubt, on that.

FitBit

I’m using my FitBit to track my exercise (this is where my Christmas money went – thanks Mom & Dad!). More on this in another post, too.

I’m also walking more.  Last weekend, J and I walked to a party 3 miles away instead of driving. There and back again gave us 6 miles, and two hours of conversation.

The most challenging thing, however, is not looking at the scale. Strange, to say I want to lose weight but then say I don’t want to look at the scale, no?

Thing is, for me, looking at the scale is self-sabotage. If I see that I’ve lost a pound or two, then I feel like I can relax, which means I end up gaining. If I see I’ve gained, or that I’m staying the same, I get discouraged and don’t want to continue. If, on the other hand, I don’t look, I keep eating and exercising according to plan. And the plan is a good one.

But every morning, I feel the absolute need to weigh myself. It’s not optional. I need to. I will stand there, frozen and unhappy, staring at the scale and not stepping on it, knowing I shouldn’t do it, but unable not to. This tends to slow the morning down considerably. Finally, today, I closed my eyes, stepped on the thing, and asked J to look – but not to tell me any numbers. Just to tell me if I was doing all right.

So far, so good.

Here’s an interesting BMI calculator in case you’d like to play with it.a.dir_resource_link{color:#a0a0a0;}[gigya width=”300″ height=”250″ src=”http://www.dietsinreview.com/media/instant-health-snapshot.swf” quality=”high” wmode=”transparent” ] More Diet Resources: Diet Reviews, Healthy Recipes, and Health News

Sometimes, OCD is useful.

It’s more useful if you can find a way to direct it, which is what this blog is all about. Me directing my OCD in the directions that help me. (Mind you, there are plenty of times when I can’t seem to direct it at all.) This blog is also about documenting the things I learn both from my obsessions themselves and in handling my tendency to obsess, in case anyone else is trying to figure out the same things. What can I say? I’m still a teacher at heart.

The last few years, I’ve been obsessing about health in general. In particular, figuring out what the heck was wrong with mine.

I also obsess about other stuff, like skin care or hair care. Or books. Or particular time periods. Or historical figures. Or fairy tales. So I’ll probably talk about some of those things here, too.

The thing is, I obsess. I can’t really stop that, and I don’t really want to. I get a lot of joy out of the things I obsess on, and sometimes a lot of use out of them, too. Hopefully, they’ll be useful for other folks, too. Or at least entertaining.