Yesterday marked a month since the day that permanently altered my life.  I haven’t been as regular at posting here as I’ve wanted to be.  I mean to remedy that, but for now I figured a recap/update of sorts might be in order.

So here goes:  Beginning with the recap..obviously.

I went into the hospital at 240something lbs.  My heart was dying.  My blood sugar was over 350 and the A1C read 11.5.  My cholesterol count was so bad they couldn’t actually get a reading on the ‘good’ kind.  My average heart-rate was pushing 100.  My blood pressure was high-average.

I keep using the term, but basically my body nuked itself.  In spite of my best efforts at being healthy my genes, mixed with being a (former) long-term smoker, decided that they needed to kill the prospect of replicating themselves into further lines.

I spent a few harrowing (read: boring after the first) days in the hospital unsure if I was going to live or, if I lived, how normal my life was going to be.  I got a stent permanently placed in an artery on, or in, my heart.  In the course of waking up one morning I went from feeling like a healthy individual to a chronically altered one.

I went home with a massive pile of pills, a blood glucose monitor, a cardiac and diabetic diet, and a body so weakened it took my full six minute walking allotment to get about 10 houses up the street and back for the first week or so.

Now, here’s where I cut into the recap with a more ‘now’ kind of thought stream.  One of the things I really spent a lot of time doing with my life was structuring it in such a way as to not have a lot of stuff outside my hobbies and interests driving my schedule.  If I didn’t have to work I got up when I felt like.  If I wasn’t hungry I didn’t eat-sometimes for a day or two.  If I didn’t feel like working out one day well..you get the point.

I also haven’t ever been into the idea of taking medicine unless it’s absolutely necessary.  I don’t take pills for colds, allergies, muscle soreness, etc.  It’s just not something I’ve ever felt was worthwhile.  I believe symptoms exist for a reason and taking something just to relieve them is extraneous and unnecessary.

My life wasn’t glitz and glamour, but it was comfortable and I rode the waves of whimsy far more than a man of my age (who isn’t a trust fund baby) should probably be allowed to.

Which brings me to the thing that has been hardest for me throughout this whole thing:  I live by a schedule now.  I take my pills at set times.  I eat at set times and measure and regulate what it is I’m eating.  I can’t sleep in because I need both food and meds.  I have to work out 5-6 times a week from 30-60 minutes.  I cannot miss taking two of my pills daily.  I cannot go anywhere without my nitro pills.  (side note:  I got a bad-ass pill necklace from http://tisurvival.com/ for them.  It’s a work of art).  Speaking of which.  There’s my 10:30 alarm reminding me to take them.  You know..so I don’t die and stuff.

Ok, I’m back.  Not like any time has passed for you, dear reader, but..well.  It did for me.

Schedules suck.

This is my struggle daily.  Some days I literally feel like my entire day is spent working, planning food, and exercising.  Then sleep, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.

The awesome part of this is I’m finally seeing pounds drop and tone come through.  Between the change in diet, riding my bike, walking, and today finally starting to jog, my legs are looking like absolute monsters.  I’m feeling really good and going faster and further every time I step out of the house or onto the recumbent.  I’m actually so badass right now that I totally broke the pedal off the crank of my recumbent.  Yay for more money I don’t want to spend right now!  I’ve had quite a few people comment on how I’m looking more ‘trim’ or thinning out, etc.  So that’s cool.  I can feel it affecting my confidence as well.  I’ve joined a gym by my work and will be joining one right by my house tomorrow.  I’m doing between an 1-1.5 hours a day so far, usually split in two sessions that I’d like to combine into one.  I’m basically ‘that guy’ now.  Don’t drink on weekends (or any other day).  Get up early.  Eat my carbs.  Hit the trails and sweat away my worries.

I set a goal to run the Utah Ragnar next year.

I’m also doing really well with the beetus.  As in, last week I stopped taking my primary med and have stopped seeing the hypo blood sugar happen, but have also not seen any instances of hyper, which is the main problem with my type (II).  I’m hoping with a bit more heavy exercise I might be able to reduce the other med as well which, I believe might drop me into the ‘prediabetic’ or just ‘normal’ diagnosis.
Only time will tell on that though.  For now I’m just happy to have one less med on my list, and to not be having to eat a slice of bread or a Kind bar, or extra rice every hour or two.  The massive amount of carbs was killing my soul.

My heart had no noticable damage aside from the piece of metal now holding one of it’s tubes open.  My blood pressure has been in fully healthy range every time I’ve tested it and my resting heart rate is fully where it should be.  My hope is that as I incorporate more jogging and keep hitting the bike harder, my overall health will drop this below 60 into ‘athlete’ levels.  Again, here’s hoping, right?

My diet has been stale a lot of the time.  No more fancy fatty stuff.  No salt on anything which is, surprisingly, not a bad thing at all.  It’s forcing me to be more creative with food choices and spices.  Red meat is essentially out of my life.  Aside from craving a disgusting greasy burger here and there, I’m cool with that.  The thing that sucks most is the carbs I ‘have’ to have with each meal.  I’m so tired of wheat bread, brown rice, and wheat pasta I could die.  Only I don’t want to, so I keep eating them.  I severely miss being able to simmer down some chard and call it a meal, or even just skip lunch.  It’s just..dumb.  And irritating.  That and I hate white meat chicken.  Seriously hate.  Like, loathe.  It’s awful.  It’s dry.  It’s flavorless.  I’ve eaten exclusively dark meat since as far back as I can remember.  It’s been an almost impossible transition for me.  I literally have to force down every bite of it.  But..as much as I love fish, I should probably not be having it every meal due to mercury and blah blah blah.  So, yeah.  Fuck white meat chicken.

I kind of lost my train of thought there in my fit of chicken induced rage.

There was a lot more I wanted to touch on in this post but it’s also probably time for me to turn in and I don’t want to save a draft and forget about it for a few days since I’ve referenced a few things as ‘yesterday’ and such.

OH!  My movie has a release date now.  I can’t share what it is yet, but I’m pretttttty stoked about that.  After the ordeal of making it and the worse ordeal of it’s post-production life I’ve been happy to let the distribution house just take it and do as they please.  But if I said I wasn’t eagerly looking forward to seeing the art they come up with and if anyone actually buys it, I’d totally be lying.  I was reading about the guy who directed Jurassic World the other day; how he had a movie at sundance that was like, a rom-com, and the right person saw it and he got handed the biggest summer blockbuster.  The same thing happened with Neil Blomkamp and his short that turned into District 9.  Both of those guys are far superior to my little exploitation tribute but, you know, it never hurts to fantasize about someone being handed a copy of my little film and deciding to change my life forever again-only in a good way this time.  You hear that Spielberg, Jackson, etc?  If you need a guy for the Gremlins remake, or a badass western, or a badass sci fi series…well..I might just know someone who’d be willing.