A lot of my life revolves around blood lately.  I’m constantly seeing it, smelling it, tasting it, accidentally leaving it on stuff, monitoring it’s contents and pressure, etc.  I’m essentially an auto-vampire now.

Two nights ago I was laying on the couch pretending to watch a movie and started tasting some coppery goodness.  I wasn’t eating anything, hadn’t bitten my lip or anything like that.  Very bizarre.  So I went to the bathroom, spat out some blood and took a look.  The gum behind my left canine was seeping blood.  There was no apparent wound or trauma and, as I held my lip up and exposed to air it started to clot (thank god).  I sat down and looked up the literature on my blood thinner.  Sure enough, gums bleeding can be a very bad sign.  Since it’d stopped relatively quickly I decided to wait on a dr call/visit to see if it happens again.  I did set an alarm for the middle of the night to wake me up so I could do a quick blot check.  The singer for one of my favorite oldschool bands died when he left an abscessed tooth bleed for too long and it shut down his system, so I wanted to be a bit cautious without going full-blown freak out mode.

The alarm woke me and I checked and there was no more blood.  I’m still here a few days later so I guess maybe, hopefully it was just a fluke.

I also bruise like an old lady now.  Seriously, it’s ridiculous.  If I lightly bump something hard I can expect a black mess the next day.  So maybe not going to be joining that boxing gym anytime soon.

The last fun thing I found out about my particular blood thinner is that there are some studies that don’t necessarily prove, but show a strong link between usage and major increase in instances or worsening of cancer.

So that’s cool.  Not only is it absurdly expensive (I’m currently taking them at the generosity of my cardiologist’s sample stash), but now, while keeping me alive from the stent and hopefully not causing me to completely bleed out at random times, it might give me cancer.  Or make it worse, if I already have it.  Who knows.  The way this year’s going that wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

I know nobody actually reads this blog but I’m throwing this out there anyway:  I’ve always been able to smell my blood, even on tiny wounds.  Now that I’m stabbing my fingers 4-7 times a day I’m smelling it constantly.  It’s very metallic, almost pungent but not in a bad way.  I’ve always liked the smell (and taste..yeah, maybe I’m weird) but I’ve heard claim blood is ‘scentless’, at least when it’s fresh.  Is this a thing other people experience?

O, Death
Won’t you spare me over till another year
Well what is this that I can’t see
With ice cold hands takin’ hold of me
Well I am death, none can excel
I’ll open the door to heaven or hell
Whoa, death someone would pray
Could you wait to call me another day

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.

My average resting heart rate has gone from 79 on Jun 13, the day I bought my fitbit, to 67.

It’s almost like I’m a real boy.

..when you’re on blood thinners and you get your first nosebleed and, in your head, it doesn’t stop and you bleed out.

I have all sorts of new and exciting ways to die now and the internal film reel shows me all of them unabashedly.

I’ve been trying to keep a level head and a positive outlook with all that’s happened and I think, for the most part, I’ve done a pretty good job.  I have my moments and I’m getting a bit grumpier about the new way food happens in my life (i.e., I feel like all I do now is eat, and I’m counting everything, and it’s all bland, etc etc etc) but all in all I’ve been looking at this as a positive change.  I’m feeling good, starting to notice a reduction in squishiness, clothes are draping on me better, exercise is getting easier even as I increase the duration and intensity.
Tonight I hit a milestone with my workouts.  I bought the running shoes I mentioned in an earlier post and was pretty jazzed about them.  So I spent 30 minutes of hard time (70+ RPM nonstop) on the bike where, until yesterday, I’ve been spending 20-25.  Then I took a few plates off my barbell, lifted for 10-15 minutes, and went straight on my walk.  I clocked over an hour of exercise.  The crowd cheered, the ladies swooned, the heavens opened up and such.  I tested my blood an hour later and I was in the perfect range, whereas I’ve been testing low lately.

So, damn.  I’m pretty awesome tonight.  I joined a gym for the first time in my life.  I’m talking to some friends about training for the Ragnar next year.  Soon I will be a buffed out, jocky athlete-type and wear nothing but underarmor and sweat pants.

And then I test my blood right before bed.

And it’s almost record low.

More food.  More carbs.  More eating when I’m absolutely, 100% not hungry and now I’m back up to almost 80.

Here, take these pills, watch your diet, eat well, or the diabetes monster (thanks mySugr) will get you.  And then, while you’re at it, exercise at least this much or else your heart will nuke again.

And then sit back and watch exercise steal hard fought glucose numbers as the two fight for dominance over my life.

Positive attitude can go to hell.  Tonight I’m over this.  Tomorrow, I’ll try to get back on the happy wagon.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need some dedicated walking/jogging shoes (yeah, I plan to give jogging a try once my walks have been going a bit longer).  I’m going to Park City this weekend so hopefully I can find some good ones at the outlet stores.

Since I got home I’ve been taking walks.  I started with painfully slow 6 minute walks 3 times a day.  Now I’m taking at least one 20 minute walk at a brisk pace.  In my recent and past life my exercise has either been indoors or happens after a drive to a starting destination but now I start from my house.

As I was walking tonight I realized that, in the past few days, I’ve seen parts of my neighborhood and the surrounding few miles that I haven’t seen since I was a kid, trekking around.  Or-to be more precise, now even when I’m on roads I drive every day of my life I’m actually seeing them.  There are houses I used to play at and ones we all used to avoid.  Every neighborhood has a witch; ours was no exception.  I forgot some of the houses had pools that are not easily visible from the street.  There are dips in the road I loved hitting on my bmx, sometimes even standing on the top bar.  There’s the house the cute girl lived in, where we all hoped and prayed the blinds might be forgotten someday, even though they never were.

And there are so many varied smells that come with walking around.  Smells you don’t even catch on a bike.  Each house, and yard, and area where maybe more water gathers than others-they all have their own scent.  I caught myself stopping on more than one occasion to take in some wonderful breeze that caught my nose.

This, to me, is almost revelatory.

I’ve always prided myself on being a very sensual person.  Not in the sexy sense, mind you, but very sense-oriented.  I would often get distracted by a sight or smell, and still do here and there but these walks are making me realize how much of the world I seem to have just forgotten somehow.  In all the hustle and bustle and structure of my day to day life I forgot what the simple pleasure of getting out and experiencing the area around me.

And now I’ve rediscovered it.  And I love it.  Every sweaty, wheezy, counting the timer and heartrate on my fitbit second of it is a treasure.

It’s early but today’s a bit rough already.  The renewed exercise has me ravenous and I woke up starving.  I had breakfast and then, when I tested my glucose, was at the low end of where I want to be.  I had a snack but I’m still hungry, and not for the wholesome healthy stuff I’ve been eating.  I want a fucking steak.  Or a disgusting burger that drips grease between my fingers as I mow it down.  Or a massive bowl of ramen with salty broth, pork belly, and perfectly mid-boiled eggs.

Or at very least, to be able to sprinkle a little bit of salt on my edamame.

I guess the last link got taken down for copyright or whatever.  Here’s a new link.

https://youtu.be/Osz6T5TbOGc