Cystic Fibrosis Fatboy — Page 11 — The daily quest to gain weight

BMI Challenge Week 3

February 27, 2012

It’s the 3rd week now! How are things going? Up, down? Staying the same?

I had a weird time surrounding my GERD testing because they took me off Prilosec. That’s the last time I do something stupid like that. My stomach acid was killing my enzymes and I darn-near got another blockage. It caused other issues, too, including going all the way down to 115lbs, but I’m back up to 122.5 now. Thanks, Hamburger Helper!

I also got wicked heartburn last night after dinner, so you can only imagine how ticked I’ll be if the pH probe didn’t detect high levels after suffering all week without Prilosec. The whole fasting and not being on my meds (not to mention the tip of my nose wiggling every time I swallowed food) hindered my normal eating, so I’d almost be willing to do it again if they let me do it without fasting or going off Prilosec.

Don’t Measure Yourself by What You Can’t Do

February 26, 2012

Measuring It’s easy to think negative thoughts. It’s even easier when you’re in a rough patch – that’s when the negative can eat the positive for breakfast and leave you with nothing the rest of the day.

I can’t run a competitive 5k, 10k, half-marathon, or marathon like my friends who are getting in shape. For whatever reason, that really bothers me. As a kid, I used to love “field day” when we’d have track and field fun by grade and find the fastest and strongest in each category. I always wanted to be labeled “the fastest kid in the class” but I was too short and my stride wasn’t long enough.

Those races led to doing track in the 7th grade: the unfortunate year that I had excruciating growing pains in my knees. We saw the doctor and everything was normal. “Just run through the pain,” he said. I had to run a 1/4 mile every practice or race to get over the pain to be able to run free. That taught me a valuable lesson that I didn’t realize for many more years:

Life’s good things aren’t just going to be handed to me; I must be willing to go an extra [quarter] mile.

I’m starting to get into a drive for physical prowess for the first time in a decade. Starting my daily walks felt shameful to me. Walking! Anyone can walk; I want to run! Actually, I loathe running. [Read more…]

Fatboy Business Minute: Believe

February 24, 2012

Lightbulb

It’s time to update everyone on the biggest part of my life: our business. Things have been hopping ever since I spent some time with my mentor and coach in December. He flew down to speak at a local conference, so I picked him up at the airport and spent the better part of the day with him. We agreed on a trade: he equips me with tools and knowledge that boosts the business and I outfit him with a new website design that rocks his world and brings in more e-mail subscribers than his current rate.

So far, so good. December was something ridiculous – like $40 off our monthly record (set in June 2011) – and January was good, followed by our best February ever. Best by a wide margin. Why?

I believed it would be good.

No, this isn’t some new age crap that you get off late night infomercials. I’m talking about real, tangible goodness that happens when you believe. You see, believing isn’t about positive thoughts.

True belief implies action.

If you don’t believe something, it won’t have an impact on your actions. If you don’t believe you’ll get a promotion, job, raise, good doctor’s report, you won’t act like you will. Things start to slide. You’ll come in late, slack off, give an attitude. I know! I’ve been there. I’ve done that. You think you’ll go on IVs, so it’s okay to skip some meds or not do everything you can – be it resting or exercising – to kick the bug. I’ve got that t-shirt as well.

February 2009, we did well only because it was our first month and I had people lined up to work with. February 2010, we didn’t even make enough to pay the mortgage, let alone everything else. February 2011 wasn’t much better; just enough to pay the mortgage. I had some sort of February curse. All we could think of was post Christmas bills and people saving up for taxes – people who pay for my services generally owe a lot of taxes.

I told the entire previous paragraph to my coach over a coffee and a hot chocolate. I started to crack a smile halfway through and capped my sob story off with a laugh. “Don’t think like that! You can’t let the past dictate your future!”

Read that again. “Don’t think like that! You can’t let the past dictate your future!”

I had been planning for months for February like some international freeze on my reputation and projects was going to go into effect on February 1st. We’d trained ourselves to squirrel away funds from as many of the previous months as possible to ward off yet another bad February. Knowing February was coming had me feeling guilty over spending $8 on some food at an industry meetup because I was taking a square meal off our table when the famine hit.

“Don’t think like that! You can’t let the past dictate your future!”

I set it in my mind that we were going to have a good month, but it was still going to take some work. There had to be some plan in place to generate interest that wasn’t there in past Februaries and a plan to land enough work to avoid digging into our reserves. We did that, and people came. It was just like in Field of Dreams: we built it and they came.

What are you not believing in that you deserve? What will it take for you to believe it will come to fruition?

Esophageal Manometry: Post-procedure Update

February 23, 2012

Fatboy NG Tube
Ugh!

That’s the only thing I can say that isn’t exactly “not a nice thing” to say. There’s no way to say how today has gone without sounding like a whiner, so watch for yourself what I endured this morning, and then I’ll explain what the test showed (preliminarily by watching the screen) and how the rest of my day has gone.

Okayyyy? Now I can start my narrative.

We fought horrible traffic all the way in to the center. Since we both work from home, it’s been over a year since we’ve hit rush-hour traffic. We thought we were perturbed enough yesterday coming home at 3:30pm, but that was a far cry from this morning. Good grief, how do you people live like that? /wink Anyhoo, we didn’t have much more than a 15 minute wait before I was called back by a nice lady of about 50 named Betsy.

I advised her of my history of blowing chunks every time I had an NG tube placed. She ensured that I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since midnight and listened to all of my concerns. I could tell she’d heard these concerns before, but she assured me that she’d been doing this a good many years and that it was pretty unlikely from my history that I would ruin her scrubs.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“Yes, we’ll see,” she said.

[Read more…]

BMI Challenge Week 3

February 27, 2012

It's the 3rd week now! How are things going? Up, down? Staying the same? I had a weird time surrounding my GERD testing because they took me off Prilosec. That's the last time I do something stupid like that. My stomach acid was killing my enzymes … [Read more]

Don’t Measure Yourself by What You Can’t Do

February 26, 2012

It's easy to think negative thoughts. It's even easier when you're in a rough patch - that's when the negative can eat the positive for breakfast and leave you with nothing the rest of the day. I can't run a competitive 5k, 10k, half-marathon, or … [Read more]

Fatboy Business Minute: Believe

February 24, 2012

It's time to update everyone on the biggest part of my life: our business. Things have been hopping ever since I spent some time with my mentor and coach in December. He flew down to speak at a local conference, so I picked him up at the airport and … [Read more]

Esophageal Manometry: Post-procedure Update

February 23, 2012

Ugh! That's the only thing I can say that isn't exactly "not a nice thing" to say. There's no way to say how today has gone without sounding like a whiner, so watch for yourself what I endured this morning, and then I'll explain what the test … [Read more]

Time Elapsed Since IVs