Yeah.  So after that last post I was a bit embarrassed and decided to stay away from posting for a while; at least until I could post something positive and not whiney.

The problem is I haven’t really had a day where that would happen since.

But I’m still alive at the moment so, small victories I guess?

My plan is to update this more, like I mentioned last time I posted (forever ago).  I’ve been working on some recipes and stuff that would fall under both heart-friendly, and diabetic-friendly.  I hate to say it, but aside from having to *add* carbs to everything to get my blood sugar where it needs to be, my diet is looking fairly paleo.

But let me put this out there right now.  I think the ‘paleo diet’, as a thing, is ridiculous.  It just happens to have a few good ideas that I find myself, in the search for a balanced and healthy diet, borrowing or adapting.

Moving on:  To explain a bit why I had my tantrum, and the ongoing shitshow that my life (and that of those around me) has apparently become, I’ve decided to recap my year.  Hopefully it makes the whining, both past and ongoing, a bit more palatable.

1.  January 2, I post on Facebook about how I’ve finally had a year I could call really awesome.  It was personally and financially very rewarding and for the first time I was looking ahead to the future with plans and, most importantly, hope.  The kicker here is that as soon as I hit ‘post’ I think to myself ‘damn, I just jinxed myself.  It’s going to be an awful year now.’  Boy was I prescient in that moment.
2. January 15, I get a huge bill for a root canal I had in the last week of December.  The first in a long series of financially devastating happenings for a year in which I am hemorrhaging money.
3. April 1, I fulfill the obsession I’ve had since I saw them announced and buy my first brand-new car.  My new baby is a 2015 Mustang GT.  My plan is to turbo or supercharge her next year.  There are people running 9 second quarter miles with only that mod and slicks.  It’s sick.  Every time I drive it I smile.  My previous car was fast, but it’s a different kind of fast.  The v8..so shiny and chrome.  I comment to my girlfriend and a few different friends on multiple occasions that I like the car too much and have become convinced that something is going to happen to take it away from me.
4. When I got the Mustang I didn’t trade in my previous car, a badass 2010 WRX.  It was clean, well taken care of, and well modified.  I figured on the private market I’d be able to get a decent amount of $ for it.  Subarus go like hotcakes around here, especially WRX’s.  I did some research and saw models older than mine, with higher mileage and rebuilt titles going for a few thousand more than I was asking for mine.  No biggie, right?  Apparently not.  While I watched all the others listed on my forums sell for crazy high amounts I got almost no feedback on mine.  There were a few test-drives that went nowhere.  For whatever reason, I wasn’t able to sell it until two weeks before #9 on this list which, if you read it, you might understand even more how immensely frustrating this is.  It was also pretty financially heavy, as I was carrying two full car payments and full-coverage insurance on both.
5. June 4, 4 AM I have a heart attack.  The same day I am diagnosed with diabetes.
6. Two days later my girlfriend gets the results back from some genetic testing she had done the previous month.  She is positive for a genetic mutation common in her family.  Many of the women in her family die young from various cancers, from brain, to bladder, to colon, etc.  She will now have to be tested on a very regular basis.
7. A week after I get home from the hospital my dad cuts his thumb almost in half on his band-saw.
8. A week after that my sister’s husband, who has bankrupted them and lost their home and cars due to his drug addiction, comes into her room with a knife.  He tries to lure one of my nieces out in a really muder-y way.  She gets out and moves in with my folks and I…and her two young girls.
9. July 20, I get the first in a series of bills that add up to, post-insurance and out of pocket, almost 30 thousand dollars.  At minimum this adds $500 a month to my bills for the next 5 years.  On top of this I have 7 monthly prescriptions, test strips for my glucose, and regular follow-up with my cardiologist, and primary care dr.  This news is absolutely devastating to me.
10. A month ago my other sister’s husband shoots himself, leaving her behind with the two kids they were raising.
11. A week ago my mom goes in for major surgery.  She is recovering well so far, thankfully.
12. In three days time, I will be trading my Mustang in, just like I thought I’d have to.  Even though my bills are in arbitration now, I’m not confident there will be any kind of significant reduction to the now almost $30,000 bill.  Between the new car, and selling some of my other most prized possessions I hope to reduce the tangible impact on a month to month basis.  Remember earlier when I mentioned I felt like something would take it from me?  Yeah.  That happened.
13. In this time I’ve also had one of my (former now) teammates at work flip out, hold his family hostage with a gun, and get arrested after threatening to kill the cops that showed up.  Another flipped out and had to be taken to the hospital under watch.  He’s now in mandatory therapy.

Yeah, I get a bit whiney.  I apologize, and don’t.  (to the 0 people who read this).

So here’s where I’m at, after the stack of shit above.

The bad:  
I can’t sleep.  I toss and turn and think all night.  This, in itself, is nothing new, but it’s worse than it has been in a long time.

Pretty much everything that I was passionate about or really enjoyed has been taken or changed in some way.  Food is slowly  becoming purely utilitarian.  I can’t drink.  I don’t bake bread on Sundays anymore.  I won’t be able to finance another movie this year, or expand my filming gear at all like I wanted to.  I’m selling (have sold) some of my favorite music-making gear.  I’m selling my favorite gun.  I can’t afford to upgrade my bike in fall like I’d planned to all year.

I feel flat, or low now.  I have a hard time really enjoying anything or, at least, getting very invested in it.  Movies just pass time.  Video games I know I should enjoy just kind of happen while my hands move.  I play my guitar listlessly because I don’t feel anything.  I smile and talk like normal Matt would, but there’s nothing going on behind the scenes that’s of any real value lately.  Even when I try to disappear into a book I’m only half paying attention.

The good:

I’m down to 213 from my post-hospital weight of 235.  I really wish they would’ve weighed me there before I lived on fluids for 3 days.  I think I was closer to 240 or higher.  Anyway, the cool thing about this is the first ‘big’ weight goal I set myself was 215. I haven’t seen below 215 on a scale since 2006.  Goal 2, the final one I think, is 199.  In my adult life I’ve only been below 200 once.  I had a weird summer where my weight dropped suddenly to about 265.  I’m not sure what happened and I look like a crack addict in all the pictures from that year.  After I had my tonsils, uvula, and part of my soft palate removed in 2005/6 I lost 25lbs in the month I was unable to eat solid food.  It put me right at 200, hence the 199 goal.  If I lose 14 more lbs I’ll be the lowest weight of my life since I was around 14, excepting that freak summer.  At this point I’ve thrown away a ton of pants and the ones I’d saved or bought too small accidentally are loose on me.  At this rate I’ll have to buy all new clothes soon.  I’ve always told myself if I got skinny I’d wear nice suits all the time.  We’ll see if that happens.  At very least I will stop wearing hoodies every day.

I’ve moved from solely cardio to a weight routine the owner of my gym showed me.  It’s nice to see some definition start returning where it’d all melted away after the hospital and diet changes, etc.  I’m jogging more too.  I still have a hard time maintaining more than a 4-1 ratio or so, but I’m doing them more often than not now.  I still want to do a Ragnar, but my first stated goal for next year is to do the Echo Triathlon with friends I’d done the biking part on about 10 years ago.  This time we’ll each do all three segments on our own.  I think I can do this.  I’ve been killing it on the bike and I’ve always been a pretty strong swimmer.  Plus I heard my SLC gym is opening up a location in Ogden with a pool.  So I should be able to get some good practice in over then next 10 or so months.

My replacement car is pretty cool.  I went to the dealership to look at a 2008 wrx with 110k miles, and they somehow worked a deal where a 2016 with 0 miles is cheaper.  Still can’t figure it out, but whatever.  I’ll take it.  I do feel like a giant asshole though.  Because I’m super depressed about getting a brand new WRX.

Poor me, right?

Thursday is my first follow up with my cardiologist.  I guess I get to find out how dying or not I am.  A few weeks after that I have my first follow up with my regular doc as well.

So who knows.  Maybe some happy posts?

Then again, the way this shit’s been going for me, they’ll probably tell me I’m dying in some other weird, stupid, way.
Until next time…