Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

health & fitness, the ongoing saga of my job

Adventures in Dentistry

Friday was a little stressful.

We’d had a major network outage on Thursday, so the long-awaited move to production for one of my biggest ongoing projects at work had to be pushed to Friday — and I had a dentist appointment at 3pm, which meant I had to leave work by 2:45 at the latest, which meant that all the planets had to align just right for me to get everything moved into production in time.

I almost didn’t make my deadline. But things came together at the last minute — around 11am, actually, which left me enough time to get everything moved and tested and pass off one final last-minute task to a colleague on my way out the door.

I haven’t checked my work e-mail this weekend (I rarely do), but I’m sure that I’ll go back to work tomorrow to find that one minor (or not-so-minor) detail is keeping everything from getting passed on to the users. Even so, it feels good to have this just about behind me and just about in front of the people who need it.

Stressor #1 out of the way. On to Stressor #2: the dentist.

Of course, I got on I-475 to hightail it to the dentist’s office, and what did I find but bumper-to-bumper traffic. Of course. I contemplated calling and letting the office know that I’d be late, but I knew that their calls go to a central call center, anyway, since they have three or four locations, so by the time my status update got to the people who would need to know, I’d probably be there already. So, I just arrived ten minutes late, and no one seemed to mind.

[ALERT: NEEDLES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, SHERYL.]

A few minutes after I arrived and checked in, the dental assistant called me back and let me know that she’d be doing my fillings. At this point, I was a little nervous about what was to come, because I’ve heard tales from my co-workers who have been to this same office and had Very Bad Experiences. One guy got injected with anesthetic and his cheek was swollen for a week; another’s wife got her cheek drilled by the dental assistant. So, I made sure to find out who was doing what and confirm which teeth were getting filled. No problems there: the assistant was numbing and injecting, the dentist was drilling, and the assistant would come back to do the actual fillings. OK.

She put the topical numbing jelly on swabs in my mouth and left me with the TV remote for a few minutes, to wait for the gel to take effect.

My dentist’s office is pretty keen: they have wall-mounted flat-panel TVs with cable, and they give the patient the remote. In the rooms where they do drilling and filling, they also have TVs mounted on the ceiling above the chair. I saw that HGTV was on the screen above the chair, and it was showing my favorite show that I haven’t seen in forever because the network switched it to weekday afternoons (the bastards). Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember what channel HGTV was, and I didn’t have time to surf to it before the assistant came back at me with Very Long Needles. So, I had HGTV to watch, but Man V. Food on the Travel Channel on the wall TV as its soundtrack.

So, anyway. Very Long Needles. One in the left jaw, waaaay in the back, then one in the right, then another in the left. Pinch, some pressure, you know the drill. Then they left me alone again to wait for the real anesthetic to kick in. (Still never found HGTV.) Eventually, my entire bottom lip went numb, as did my tongue and jaw, all the way up to my left ear.

The rest really wasn’t so bad. The dentist did some drilling, of which I felt nothing; then the assistant did some filling, which took at least twice as long.

What was slightly embarrassing (and very annoying) was having a non-working tongue and bottom lip for FIVE HOURS after I left the dentist’s office. I had to try to communicate with the nice cashier on my way out, to pay my bill and schedule my wisdom teeth extraction.

I was more than a little shell-shocked when the cashier/scheduler told me that there was an opening next Friday with the oral surgeon. Um, okay. That’s a little sooner than I’d been banking on, but I guess we may as well get it over with. I somehow managed to enunciate, “Will I need someone to drive me home?” and was told that the standard procedure is for local anesthetic only, not full sedation, “so it’ll be just like today!”

Since they fly in their oral surgeon from another state, I had to prepay my co-pay for the extraction at the same time as paying the co-pay for the fillings, which hit me for about $200 total. Tell you what, I’m mighty glad to have insurance.

So, think of me this coming Friday at about 10:30am. I’ll be having my right upper and lower wisdom teeth removed by an oral surgeon — and after looking at the results of a Google Image Search for “wisdom tooth extraction,” I think I’ll be keeping my eyes closed as much as possible during the procedure. I really don’t want to see what implements of destruction this doctor will be wielding at my gums.

weight loss

Acceptance

A few ideas from different sources have recently converged in my brain. They haven’t all quite congealed into a cohesive thought, but they’re trying.

I rode a Segway for the first time at The Next HOPE in New York. Upon seeing the pictures Aaron took of me, my first thought was, “Look how puffy my arms are!” Only secondarily were ideas of a.) how much fun it was to ride a Segway, or b.) how awesome it was to wear a cute girly-cut shirt, because I can now.

Aaron and I had dinner and drinks with a couple in NYC whom we hadn’t seen in person in about four years. Their first comment to us was, “You’re so slim!” Sure, I’ve lost 30 pounds since I saw them last, but Aaron’s lost over twice that much. Mentally, I just assumed that his massive weight loss was making us as a couple look thinner. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

I watched a TED talk last night (via Whore of All the Earth) about happiness. In a nutshell, psychologist Dan Gilbert posits that the human brain has the capability to synthesize happiness. It comes off like sour grapes… until he relates the results of an experiment with amnesiacs, which supports the hypothesis that this is an innate function of the human brain, rather than a conscious decision to just be happy with what one has.

I related an incident to my Weight Watchers meeting today, one that happened a few months back, in which a co-worker asked me, “So, have you always been overweight?” Rarely have I witnessed the entire meeting room being so taken aback. They all insisted that the comments were harassment, that I should contact HR — but I disagree. At the time, I actually didn’t think much of that particular comment, and merely responded that, yes, I have always been overweight.

I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around the Fat Acceptance movement — not because I think weight should be a reason to discriminate, but because I’ve always been overweight, and have wanted to be a “normal” weight instead. I have a hard time accepting myself at the size I am, whether it’s 80 pounds overweight or just 20 or 25. I can’t imagine — literally can’t fathom — being obese and seriously happy about it, or even OK with it… because I wasn’t. I’m still not, even though I’m only “overweight” now.

Although I’m no longer an active practitioner of Zen Buddhism, I still appreciate and adhere to many of the teachings. One of these, one that helps me considerably, is the concept of non-attachment. I’m not attached to any given outcome. It’s like ambivalence, but not. It’s not basing my happiness on this or that. This weight or that weight. This job or that job. Kids or no kids. This city or that city. Every outcome has pros and cons, and I don’t need to prefer one over the other. Either can make me happy.

I can be happy as I am now, or I can be happy 20 pounds lighter. Preferably both.

weight loss

Aiming High

When I decided last week that I’d be pushing toward my 10% milestone for this week’s weigh-in, I failed to factor in the Fourth of July.

Good thing, too — I wonder how much I would have gained if I hadn’t? As it is, I’m up 0.2 pounds from last week, which is fine by me.

Even before the Fourth, though, I’d gained a little back of what I’d lost so far. I think it has to do with white rice, especially when served with Mediterranean or Indian food. Either my body doesn’t process it well, or I don’t estimate the serving size well, or both. I guess I’ll be shying away from the rice for a while.

On Sunday, Aaron’s uncle grilled some chicken and German natural casing hot dogs and cheeseburgers, served with baked beans and mustard potato salad (vegan, with jalapeños) and salad and fruit. Ice cream in waffle bowls or cones for dessert. Overall, I ate about 50 Points worth. My normal daily allowance is 25, but I also have 35 Weekly Allowance (aka “Flex”) Points to play with.

So, last week was practice. This week, I’ll be doing the same thing (minus the Sunday extravagance, of course): not eating any of my Flex Points, running three nights a week, only having one sweet treat in the evenings (even though they’re low-cal), and maxing out my fruits and veggies. In addition to that, I’ll be eschewing white rice this weekend — excepting, perhaps, stuffed grape leaves and/or sushi.

Next weekend, there’s nothing fancy going on. In upcoming weekends, I’ll be in New York City; Ann Arbor, MI; enjoying a couple of local ethnic festivals (the International Festival and the Festival of India); and maybe visiting friends out of town.

While I’m not going to eat boring this week by any means, I’m definitely going to avoid unnecessary splurges… so I can splurge when warranted, later on.

weight loss

Flirting with Milestones

One of the major milestones in Weight Watchers is losing 10% of your original starting weight. I reached that milestone on March 17, 2009.

I hung around my 10% mark for a few weeks, then went back up a few pounds. And a few more, and a few more, until I’d finally regained half of what I’d lost. That was this past January. At that weigh-in, I set out to get back to my 10% milestone again, then to keep going.

I did see that 10% mark again this past April, right before I went on vacation. It was a quick drop of four pounds in one week, maintained for one more, after which I promptly gained back all four (and only four) during vacation. Since then, I’ve been slowly — ever so slowly — on the decline again.

This week, I’m going to push to my 10% milestone once more. I have barely more than two pounds to lose, and I can safely do that in one week. This is the week when I eat even more fruits and vegetables, drink even more water, and exercise. This is the week when I limit myself to one “treat” (usually a diet ice cream bar) per evening. This is the week when I focus on my goal.

Two pounds? No problem.

weight loss

Slow and Steady

I don’t blog much about my weight loss anymore, really. I check in with Twitter and Facebook every week at my weigh-in with my slow and steady progress, but I kind of feel like the weight-loss lifestyle is old hat.

My progress, like I said, has been slow and steady:

Weight Watchers Graph

There was quite a while there when I’d “lost that lovin’ feelin'” and wasn’t working the program as much as I could — marked on the graph by that slow gain over the majority of 2009.

Topping 200 pounds at my weigh-in on January 5, 2010 made me refocus my efforts. I started tracking more regularly and more accurately, especially on weekends. I worked on increasing my activity (something I’ve had to refocus on lately, since I’ve been working through my normal lunchtime walks). I tried harder to find healthy options when going out to lunch with my co-workers, rather than throwing up my hands and succumbing to a piece or three of veggie pizza.

Last weekend was kind of an eyeopener of sorts for me, though. My Mom came to visit from Texas, and we spent some quality time together in Toledo, and some time in my hometown of Medina, two hours away. And not only did I track every meal (including stupidly large breakfasts and a trip to Olive Garden with friends), but I also stayed within my weekly allotted Points… and I lost almost a pound at this week’s weigh-in!

It is a lifestyle change. It can be done.

I am doing it.

Sure, I have 20 pounds yet to lose before I reach my (tentative) goal weight, but it’s only a matter of time now. I’m not one of these ladies who never hits a plateau, and loses all of her excess weight in a single 17-week session. It’s a little more challenging for me, a little more time-consuming. But still possible.