BMI Challenge — Page 2

Still Compliant, Still Gaining Weight

May 21, 2011

As quite a few of you on Twitter and Facebook are aware, I had another intestinal scare on Thursday. You see, Beautiful wrote about enzymes on Wednesday and every time she or I write about anything to do with blockages, something happens. Without fail. It’s really quite creepy and must stop this time. I’ll get to my lungs and weight soon, but first, it’s story time.

Thursday morning

I woke up feeling out of sorts and shrugged her off and indicated that I wasn’t feeling well when she came to wake me up on Thursday. I got up around 8:30 and started my treatments, but was feeling sore and crampy, only it wasn’t in the usual blockage area indicated from my long history of blockages. Like a seasoned veteran, I weighed the pros and cons of having an omelet for breakfast and just went for it with plenty of enzymes.

I got upstairs to start work around 10:00 and was more or less completely unable to concentrate. The cramps were coming in waves and in harder and harder force, but I can tell the difference between a resistance cramp and an uncomfortable cramp. These were the latter, no nasty, tight ball of crap anywhere to be found by exploratory pushing of my squishies. Sore, yes, but I didn’t have the tell-tale knot of disaster. Beautiful went back downstairs seeing my clear distress and got me a 20oz Gatorade and an extra Dulcolax to hydrate and flush anything that was in there.

Thursday afternoon

I was feeling better by dinnertime and insisted on eating despite Beautiful’s firm reminder that I “felt fine” before our Outback dinner for my birthday 2 years ago. [Read more…]

The Return of Fatboy

May 14, 2011

July 15 2010

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired about my weight, living under the guise of “Fatboy” and resting on my laurels from last summer.

No more!

As an avid listener of Dave Ramsey, who says “If I can control the man in the mirror, I can be rich and thin!” I have to take the same approach to my life and get me under control so I can be rich, healthy, and fat. Same principles apply: control yourself, don’t go with the flow. No more preaching from my soapbox about what I did do or what others can/should do to improve their lives. This is “go” time again for me, same as it was last spring.

What is the State of the Fatboy?

Sadly, I went from 135 at the end of the summer in 2010 down to a weigh-in of 103 a couple of weeks ago. That was the straw that broke my back this year. 103! The last clinic knew, I was 116 in April when I said I was dying because I was so exhausted and losing weight and coughing constantly. The doctor amusingly looked at me, saw and verified that I was non-compliant because I was working my butt off on both ends of the candle (you know the saying) and needed to do my darn treatments and take a break.

[Read more…]

Cystic Fibrosis and Baldness

February 14, 2011

Another world first is occurring everywhere CFers are getting older: baldness. What parent who was told their child wouldn’t graduate from high school would have thought the day would come when CFers are living long enough to go bald? Furthermore, what normal person thinks so highly of the “privilege” of baldness?

I’m not sure of how long ago it was, but several years ago I was shocked to feel a little stray hair growing out away from my hairline – out in the middle of my forehead! I went to the mirror and verified that was what was going on. Soon, I had quite a few of them, growing down a line along the edge of my hair. Unless I had somehow started growing more hair down past my hairline, I was losing hair behind these lonely little guys.

They say you get your hairline from your mom’s dad. Well, my grandpa is known to say that he’s not bald but has more face to wash. He’s not bald in the traditional sense but his “face” is quite large now, although he has 48 years on me. I used to have a full, curly, head of hair when I grew it out – as recently as 2008 when we bought our house. That was the last time it looked good to have hair of any real length in the area shown. I’ve tried to grow it out, but I just can’t get past that ridiculous stage to see if having long hair is enough to fix that. Besides, I don’t really want long hair with all of the heat and humidity we have here 10 months out of the year… and a buzz is so low-maintenance!

Of course, there are other ways we are visibly showing our age that aren’t directly related to being either men or women, such as arthritis, age-related eyeglasses, skin disease, and probably some dentures by now. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be darn proud to be bald and sporting new knees.

What non-CF-related things are starting to show your age?

Fatboy’s New Life and the Journey Getting There

January 29, 2011

Sorry about dropping off the map here recently. I’ve been on Twitter and Facebook, but not here just for the sheer amount of time it takes to write content that I’m happy presenting to the world. Tonight, I’m making that time, even though I have a to-do list in front of me that is absent an entry about blogging. Oh well!

Friday was a life-changing day for the Petersen house. Beautiful’s last day at her office job came to a close at 4pm EST! After months of working conditions growing worse and it affecting her physically and emotionally, we threw in the towel trying to live a double life – a life where we get up 2 hours earlier than we should and spend too much energy repairing the damage done during the week in many areas of our lives. Monday will be her first day fully participating as a co-founder of Petersen Media Group and we are totally stoked!

It has always been my goal as a husband to be able to provide for her to be able to stay home if she chose. [Read more…]