Feeling Sorry For Myself Today

I woke this morning with a shrill ringing in my ears. The vibration so intense the pressure from the neuro-vibration was actually making my eardrums twitch.
Muscle spasms pulse as the inner corner of my eye puckers in a permanent cramp freezing each eyeball into place.
My lips are tingling and numb, my head is thrust backwards as my shoulders shrug in a cement like spasm forcing my chin in the air...
And then there's the pain....
Deep at the base of the brain it starts like my head is resting on the pain.
Like a sword has punctured the back of my skull and angled upwards and erupts through the bridge of my nose........
My throat is in a spasm and my tonge is pressed upon the roof of my mouth so hard you could actually hear a "Schmuckle" sound as I swallow and my tongue shifts its bond.
I am dizzy, the pain and spasms take over and it feels like my spine is curling sideways.....

I never talk about this....but today I feel very vulnerable and in the mood to share the horror of what makes me different today.
The monster that gripped me for a solid year 24/7 in 2005-2006 leaves me this migraine of a remnant of the time Normal took on a whole new meaning....


This is like a reckoning. A reminder to me how fragile all this life is and a notice to those who sometimes don't realize that I am sick because most days I seem FINE because I look normal.
Damn thing about neurological injury! No outward deformities or scars or war wounds to identify you as disabled in some fashion.
Some days my confidence still falls apart.

I know when the bad migraine is coming. In my head I am crying and screaming because I am not doing well at keeping the affasia at bay when the bad headache is coming.

Affasia doesn't go away for me. It is there but it is a purposeful act for me to stop the wrong word from coming out before it reaches my lips. It is like when the brain injury happened the affasia was so strong I didn't know the wrong word was going to come out until it was already said. Then as my body started to heal a bit I felt like I was thinking about my speech at lightning speed to catch the word before it came out of my mouth wrong. Which sounded like me studdering to fix the word as I spoke. Then as I healed more I got better at heading off the word at the pass. On my great days I just seem to pause a lot when I speak...and I can fool everybody.

But the thing is I am thinking every word through as a conscious act not a subconscious one, so I am constantly stressed if I am speaking. It is exhausting. This is why I rarely speak to someone on the phone. This is why I like being alone now. (actually absolutely need to be alone now)
I choose the days I have lots of contact with people. No one knows that. Well now they do...

I teach to challenge my mind. Like a physio therapy for my brain. The classes put me on overdrive but I figure I have to exercise my lightning word catching speed three times a week. Like going for a workout at the gym.

But on the pre headache and headache days ( I interchange migraine and headache- there is no difference for me now) my lightning word catching speed is set to "Turtle" and so the "Mumblypeg" in me is clearly visible.

People also comment on my memory. Most folks don't know I used to have a complete photographic and audiodynamic memory. Means I could remember a visual picture of anything and I could remember full conversation quotable from the past. This is why I can remember folks personal stories so well. Like the fact that MaryAnn liked her toast just passed by the toaster when we were kids, or the Fact the Laurel has a January Birthday or that Mike wore glasses and was left-handed and I havent seen him since 1981. My past memories are perfect.
But ask me to remember anything at all from 2004 and I don't know it. I remember 5 different days from 2005. I remember most of 2006. I remember from 2006 to three weeks ago. Then nothing.
The past three weeks of my life in a perpetual action are missing. But in three more weeks I will remember them fine. So if I had an exam I would have to study for it three weeks prior to the date of the exam or I would remember nothing. I then retain it in my long-term memory fine.

The consolation the education of like is not wasted on me it is just three weeks retroactive!
Problem of this is there is stress to it. Each day I awake to a new panic. Something I just remembered I have to do or tell someone but I was supposed to do it three weeks ago!

To lesson my stress I have a very large daily planner so I can referr to all my appmts and committments. I write myself notes three weeks ahead in the calendar to help me stay on track.

The tough thing is forgetting about the calendar. This sometimes happens.

Blogging helps me know what I did. And things like Twitter are great quick references. Email is a life line as I can re-read the mail. Converstation boxes and forums help me to. Well the threads references in the email are the actual true helper to me.
I have to keep all my thread historys for about a month to help me stay on the ball with stuff.

Well now I have completely scared you off. I am going to sleep. I am getting weird flashes of lights in my vision field now...

https://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2009/04/feeling-sorry-for-myself-today-i-woke.html

The Metabolic Diet Progress


Ok, so it has been almost 5 weeks since I started the Metabolic Poon Diet. I have lost close to 25 lbs. I have never starved. I eat a lot (every two hours cuz my diabetes) and I have more and more energy each day.

My headaches have not changed, but my joint pain is gone, and the sensory nerve in my leg that went on me is coming back, so that means it was jammed into my hip joint from some fat connected to a scar in my hip in the front of my leg! So if you are fat like me and you have weird joint pain or have numb spots don't shrug them off....or excuse them. They are because you are fat. Think of this as the common reason, and all the other stuff are the uncommon reasons.

I believe the joint pain reduction is because of two things. The loss of the excess weight the frame cannot hold well, and the fluid being held from too much salt.
I don't salt my food....never have, yet when I started the program I was holding 26lbs of water. I didn't lose all the water yet, and actually when we were stressed during the funeral, and having to eat restaurant salads I gained some water weight and lost fat. So it is important to understand how much hidden salt is in restaurant food. Apparently all restaurant meat is loaded with salt. And we won't even talk about the cheese and sauces! Wha!

I can eat as much as I want of lean beef, pork, chicken, fish and shellfish. I can stir fry with olive or canola oil. Olive oil is better because it is not genetically modified. Also my friend who is a holistic nutricianist said that deep frying should be done in pure coconut oil. So I switched the fryer to coconut oil for Cam and Carl's benefit. I don't eat deep fried anything now. Coconut oil cools hard like Crisco. If you cook or bake you can see the benefits of the coconut oil for other dishes as well (like cake icing).

I can eat as much as I want of green leafy vegetables and any vegetable from above the ground. Tomatoes should be eaten sparingly, and Cucumber and Broccoli should not be the entire amount of the veggies you eat in one sitting. There needs to be green leaves too, and they should be the majority of the portion.

The rule is you can eat as much as you want of the above meat and veggies but there must be two hours between the meals.

Things I can never have: peas, beans, butternut or acorn squash, corn, potatoes,
This is where this diet is very different from the diabetic diet.
The diabetic diet counts carbs as ok if they can rate 15g in a serving.
This is not ok for Metabolic Diseased people. They will still take those carbs and turn them into fat creating sugar.

Also notice I have not said anything about wheat or fruit.
On phase two of the diet I can have all the above good stuff, and I can add two servings of fruit or a grain product(that is not wheat) per day. A serving of fruit is 1/2 cup. The grain product I use is a special pita made of soy flour. One pita is a serving.
If you want to lose more weight then don't do phase two and save it for special days. Cuz phase two lists desserts and treats that I can have if they are in a measured portion.

A lot of folks like soda pop and flavoured drinks, and they are recommended in very limited quantities if they are diet ones. Apparently these empty carbs in diet drinks can cause carb cravings. So I don't drink them at all. I drink coffee (black), tea (black), mineral water(for the fizzz), water, and home made black iced tea. My majority of drinks is mineral water.

Since I started the diet I have been able to reduce my anti-seizure meds to one portion a day from two, remove my diabetic meds all together, and I am off my blood pressure meds, aaaannnd my arthritis meds are used only if I overwork myself exercising.

Yeah, I said it....EXERCISING....HA....HOW....'BOUT....THAT!? I am not constantly exhausted, and I can exercise! Carl and I did almost 3k on a walk to and from Chapters two nights ago and I kept a good pace. The reward was some new books and a coffee! Woo Hoo!

Yesterday I had my blood work, so I am really excited to see what that says.

I went into the Metabolic Diet program with the idea I wanted to feel better. I did not worry about the weight. After about the first 5 days I began to feel better and better. The first 5 days were hard because of carb cravings and withdrawl headaches. But it was a bearable hurdle for many more weeks feeling great!

My Rheumatologist was tickled pink with my progress, my family Dr. is cheering me on, and my pain Specialist is the one completely responsible for getting me into the program.

I truly believe that two things happen to me with foods. Some foods cause my body to react with inflammation (arthritic) pain because they trigger bad signals in my body. Those bad signals turn on the survival mode of my body and flick all the switches to store everything I eat into fat stores because the wrong switches got turned on by the reaction food.

So my reactors are wheat, corn, potatoes, excess salt, and by looking at that list is is easy to see gluten has no place in my body. Years ago I was off gluten and for those years I never gained weight. I just never correlated the gluten with slim for me. I used gluten-free products because when I got diagnosed with Sjogrens it was because I was unable to digest gluten or meat for a long time(6 yrs). Using a gluten free Asian vegetarian diet (which meant veggies, fish and eggs) I put myself in remission of my auto-immune disease. When I got the enzymes back to eat normally I jumped at the chance, but about a year later I started to gain weight, and never even thought it could be because of the gluten I began to ingest.

So far I see why the diabetic diet didn't work for me, and how some of my pains and vital statistics were greatly effected by my weight after my neurological injury. This knowledge is paramount to learning how to eat.

When I feel like I have an understanding of it...I will tell you about the second part of my weight loss program which I have done on my own, and is not part of the Poon Program.

The next part is using a very specific hypnosis to help me learn how to listen to my body, and to not work through pain, or tiredness or stress, and give my body time to heal up.

This will stop me from being a work-a-holic me so I can really hear the messages my body gives me so I won't overdo it and aggravate my head pain by being too type A for my own good.

This part is a very personal skill which has to do with changing a very entrained and ingrained part of my personality so I can stay healthy and keep recovered. This will have much more of an impact on my life than the weight loss for sure. But, the two definitely go hand and hand. This hypnosis is only for those who are not afraid to know their hidden truth. Which could be one's ugly side. So it is not for the faint of heart or the ones who don't like change.

https://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/06/metabolic-diet-progress-ok-so-it-has.html