Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 311

    Friday was a perfectly normal day in the Garvis household. Leslie and I did some shopping in the morning, and then in the afternoon she took a nap while I relaxed next to her. I have been experiencing a minor discomfort in my torso; it is not a stomach issue, rather in the muscles around my back and into my sides. It is nowhere near the level I would need to even speak with a doctor, much less make an appointment to go see one. Still, it is there, and I will pay attention to it.

    After waking from her nap, Leslie prepared her special chicken salad, which I look forward to trying today. You see, after the preparation it must sit for twelve hours, so I did not even get a taste of it. I am eager to though and will report back tomorrow on how wonderful it is. We decided to add one ingredient to a small portion of the salad, and so one of the containers will have dill in it.

    For lunch we picked up food from the prepared foods section of the supermarket. Leslie opted for pasta salad and a couple of meat balls. I chose a Thai chicken curry soup which was scrumptious! For dinner we had Chinese food, which will likely be my last really bad cheat meal before going back onto the program. Of course, there are leftovers of that and the Italian food, so those will be eaten before they go to waste.

    As will always be the case after indulging in Chinese food, my weight was up slightly this morning. Was it worth it? I do not know. I think Leslie’s Lemon Chicken was, but my General Tao Beef probably was not. There is a huge container of leftovers in the fridge, and I strongly suspect that most of the beef will end up going into the bin.

    Leslie is sad that we only have two more days together before she returns to Dallas on Monday. I am trying to keep that out of my mind, and just enjoy our time together. For the next two days we still get to sit together, laugh together, go to sleep and wake up together. It is difficult, but I try to focus on that… and not what will be after Monday’s dreaded drive to the airport.

    This evening we are going to Lyle and Dorothy’s for the Thanksgiving meal that was aborted Thursday because of Lyle’s health. We are both nervous that Lyle will be overdoing things less than two weeks after suffering a stroke. We have voiced our concerns to Dorothy, and she promises us that she is doing most of the work. I think we cannot help but to be concerned about our friend. We told them that we are really looking forward to seeing them, but take-out fast food would be fine with us, whatever would require the least effort on his part. In any event, I am sure it will be a lovely evening; however concerned we are, he is a big boy who will decide for himself what he can and cannot do.

    The weather forecast says it will be sunny with a high of 11° Celsius today, which means there is a good chance that Leslie and I will be enjoying a cigar on the balcony before we head to Hamilton. We have a couple of minor errands to run along the way. We will make a pit stop at Bulk Barn to collect some peppermint hot chocolate powder for her to take home with her, and we have to stop in at Pet Smart – or another pet store – because Princess Sophie broke her name tag yesterday. We have nothing else planned for the day, only to be together and to enjoy being together. It is a gift that we appreciate so much more for our long and frequent separations.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 310

    My diet buddy had to cancel yesterday’s meeting for professional reasons. She is a teacher in a school and was acting principal yesterday. There was an accident with the school bus, and she had a lot of reports that had to be written. That is a perfectly understandable reason for canceling!

    Leslie and I spent a few hours with Lyle yesterday, and he shared with us his holiday slide show. It is amazing how people go on vacation differently, and how different their telling of a trip can be. Lyle, for example, is a master chef, and a genius of the culinary arts. As such, there were scores of pictures of food, and he gave us a detailed explanation of every dish that they ate during their ten days in Italy. If it was me, expert in many things but not in foods, I might have had a picture or two of a couple of dishes, but I would have simply raved about how wonderful the food was.

    One possible unexpected consequence of the telling was that after seeing so many pictures (and hearing the explanations) of unkosher meats, I got queasy in my gut. Queasy might even be the wrong word; I was in pain – so much so in fact that I ended up in the washroom twice while we were there, and then after an uncomfortable drive home, once when we were here. It was a weird sensation, knowing that I was having those sharp pains, but also, not having eaten since morning, I was hungry. If ever two diametrically opposed pains there were!

    I had a small bite to eat when I was finished in the washroom, and then Leslie and I relaxed for a couple of hours. One unsurprising consequence of the slideshow was that both of us were in the mood for Italian food, and I made reservations at a restaurant in Oakville that I have loved for years and have not been to in quite some time. Leslie took one look at the menu and knew that she would be having the mushroom risotto – she is an absolute fiend for mushrooms! As I am eating differently than I did that last time I ate there, I also picked a mushroom pasta dish. Not only am I eating much less meat than I used to, I am also reticent to eat meat in restaurants that might serve pork. Also, the mixing of meat with cheese is forbidden. As such, the vegetarian options are simpler. It was truly tasty! For dessert, I had a chocolate tartufo (which is an Italian ice cream) while Leslie enjoyed her cannoli siciliano, which were both out of this world!

    With all of my cheats yesterday, I expected my weight to be up a pound or even more this morning. I stepped onto the scale and was shocked to see that it was down; not only was it down, it was down nearly six pounds! It was down to what I weighed two weeks ago, right before my knee started to hurt, and before my weight loss slide started! In disbelief, I stepped off the scale, moved it a few inches, and tried again, and then once more. While all three measurements were slightly different, they were all within the margin of error. Is it possible that my bowel issues yesterday afternoon cleared out some sort of blockage that has been causing my weight gain this past fortnight? I do not know, but I am really hoping that it is not an anomaly. I will continue as I have been these last few days and will once again resume my strict regimen once Leslie flies home. If I am back to where I was, then I will be thrilled. I have been thinking these last couple of days that when I got back to the routine, I would have nearly ten pounds to lose to get back into best-weight-yet territory. If this is the truth, then it is really only 2-3 lbs.

    We do not have a lot planned for the day. I know we have to do some shopping for groceries – we have to buy challah for the Sabbath, and Leslie wants to make chicken salad, so we need the fixings for that – but aside from that, I think we are going to spend a quiet day close to home. It is nice out, but extremely windy, and unless the wind dies down throughout the course of the afternoon, I do not see us sitting outside on the patio and smoking. The forecast does predict that the wind abates by about 3pm, so that might be a possibility, but we will play it by ear. One of the great parts about a lazy day – and a day when neither of us has to work – is that we can do that. No plans, we will just do what we want to do.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 309

    I have said before that I am blessed for my health. Not once, but three times I have been so morbidly obese as to worry doctors. And yet, with the exception of my gout, I have never had an actual health scare that turned out to be a real something. When I was turning thirty-nine, I was getting dizzy and light-headed and came close to passing out when driving. After a number of tests, it turned out that I needed glasses. That does not count as a real scare. Before I started losing weight the first time, my doctor told me that I had indicators of being pre-diabetic. Those disappeared when I lost a few pounds and has not reoccurred since. That too does not count as a real scare. My gout, for all of the pain and discomfort that it causes me, is relevant to my diet, but not to my overall physical condition. As I said before, I have been blessed. There are not a lot of middle-aged men who are morbidly obese who can say that.

    I am reflecting on this today because a very close friend told me yesterday that he had a minor stroke last week, or rather a TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack). It happened the day after I collected him and his wife from the airport to drive them home. It happened the day after they gratefully handed me a slice of pizza that they had smuggled into Canada from Rome, Italy. It happened a day after we talked about how great he was feeling, and how much walking they had done on his trip to Italy. It shook me. I messaged him yesterday to ask him what time Leslie and I should come over today for our scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner. The response was unusual from him: Call me now please. While we speak on the phone all the time, it occurred to me that he has never asked me to call, certainly not with any urgency in his tone.

    I hope I can be forgiven for not reaching out to him these last ten days. On the day that he suffered his TIA, I not only started teaching my class, I also realized how much pain my knee was in. Over the next few days, my ability to walk was hindered, and I could hardly go to a doctor as I was teaching my class all week. I was stressed that in the middle of this class I was teaching, I also had to take time out to meet with the psychologist who was evaluating my son the younger for his educational assessment. I was stressed about that and was also anxious that Friday my wife was coming to visit. For a couple of days, I was also stressed that Eduardo had asked me to pick him and his wife up early Friday morning and drive them to the airport, meaning that it would be an extremely long day. While the stress of that would be relieved, it would soon be replaced by a call from my ex-wife that my son the elder had a series of seizures and was transported to hospital for unknown reasons. For three days he lay in intensive care, sedated and intubated… for reasons nobody could explain. All of this weighed on me, and in fact it is not uncommon for me to not speak with even my closest friends for weeks on end. It does not mean that we are angry, it simply means that we are busy.

    When Lyle told me what happened I was truly shaken to my core. As he continued to try to apologize that he had lost track of time and would not be preparing Thanksgiving dinner for us, Leslie and I were just concerned for him and his health, fancy meals be damned. Today at lunchtime she and I will take him a quart of soup. We will sit with him for however long he is comfortable, and then we will take our leave. We will likely not even stay for lunch; we will just deliver the soup for him.

    Leslie and I talked after we got off the phone with him, and we discussed how this is a strong reminder that I have to keep to my weight loss and workout goals to get healthy and slim. I want to spend a very long and healthy life with her. In order to do that, I have to live a very long and healthy life. The steps that I am taking (and must continue to take) are a big part of that. I have been so lucky all these years to be healthy despite my obesity. I have likened it before to gambling; I have been ‘playing with the house’s money’ in a casino; anybody who knows anything about gambling knows that given time, the house always wins their money back. The trick to winning is knowing when to get up from the table and to be happy with what you have won, rather than pressing your luck and expect to continue to win. I have to walk away from the table now. I need to lose the weight and get into shape now, before the casino takes its money back. I need to get healthy before my not-unhealthy streak comes to an end.

    I do not know what else we have planned for today, but Leslie and I will likely just take it easy. It is going to be warm out, so we might sit on the patio with a cigar (or two) this afternoon. We’ll see. Right now, I am only concerned about seeing Lyle, and making sure that he is okay.

    Today is Thursday, and so I am supposed to meet with my diet buddy. We have not spoken since her surgery, and I know she was recovering in, of all places, Yukon. She was supposed to fly back into town this past Monday, and I have reached out to ask her if we are speaking today. I hope we do, but that will be up to her. I still wonder if now that she has had the surgery if she will be as motivated to meet. We’ll see.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 308

    Today’s was an expectedly disappointing weigh-in at the doctor’s office. I know these last two weeks I have been taking a much laxer and cheat-friendly approach to my weight loss, and that is partially because of the utter agony I was in for ten days, and partly for other reasons which I will not rehash here. I know that in two weeks time – at my next weigh-in – I will be back on track.

    My knee is still bothering me, but much less that it was just two days ago. This morning I took Princess Sophie for her walk, and we did the long walk around the park for the first time in a couple of weeks, just because it was the first time that I could walk the 2,000 steps without being in utter agony. Also, I would think, because Her Floofness has been completely unimpressed by the onset of the cold weather and snow, and this morning the snow had melted (it was warmer yesterday), and though it was chilly, the wind has died down and the sun was shining.

    Yesterday’s dinner was homemade chicken soup with matzoh balls. I am so happy with how the soup came out, although my matzah ball technique needs some work. They tasted great, but I want to work on the size and consistency. That will come with practice. I am just glad that I had not disgraced the name of my ancestors by making lousy chicken soup. There are some things that every Jew should know!

    This afternoon we will drive to Cambridge to spend a few hours at Ryan’s cigar lounge and man cave (the heated garage). I am looking forward to seeing my friend who I know has been suffering from a few issues and can use a friend to talk to. The cigars will be a secondary benefit… although a real one!

    Team Canada squares off against the Belgian squad today, in our first World Cup match since 1986. I remember watching that last match (I was laid up in bed with a broken leg and watched it in the comfort of Donnie and Iris Hersh’s condo). We did not score a goal in that (or any other) match. Our Mitch’s-adult-life World Cup debut has us facing the top ranked team in the world, but I am still hopeful. After all, if Saudi Arabia (ranked 51st) can upset Argentina (ranked 3rd), then hopefully Canada (ranked 41st) can upset Belgium (ranked 1st). I will not be watching the match. Not only is Leslie trying to avoid the World Cup, I know that everyone at Ryan’s hates soccer. It should not be an issue today.

    My plans for today are to not go off track too badly today. I will limit my snack intake and will be good. After all, I seldom overeat when I am smoking cigars! Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, and while it not a holiday here, Leslie has the day off, so she and I will go to Lyle and Dorothy’s for dinner. We have been looking forward to that – they are absolute magicians in the kitchen, and we know that dinner with them will always be our best meal of the week. We are also looking forward to catching up with our friends.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 307

    This morning I did something that I have not been able to do for over a week. I went about my morning routine, took my pills, but did not include pain killers. Yes, my knee is actually starting to feel semi-normal again! I am very happy about that. After making a scrumptious breakfast of French toast for my wife (of which I only had a few small bites), I had a meal replacement shake. If there is any better sign of my commitment to eating but not overdoing it this week, I do not know what that might be! For lunch, I am going to pick up one of Leslie’s favourites… and one of mine too. Shawarma is a huge delicacy in parts of the world where I have spent a great deal of time, and I have always considered it to be part of my culture. Strictly speaking, it should not be too much of an aberrance from my weight loss program… as long as I do not do it too often.

    It seems to be turning into a lovely day outside, and I suspect that Leslie and I will take advantage of that by sitting on the balcony and enjoying a cigar. Even if I have to turn the heater on, it will be lovely for us to be able to do that. Last night we went to Eduardo’s for a couple of cigars, and that was truly nice… but we also enjoy smoking when it is just the two of us. Today will be such a day. I know that tomorrow we are going to Cambridge, where we will smoke with Ryan et al, and Thursday we are going to Hamilton to have Thanksgiving dinner with Lyle and Dorothy (as well as with Rob and Pippa), so being able to spend a day where it is just the two of us will be a delight.

    While my weight yesterday morning was up above the 310-pound mark, today it is down nearly half a pound, at 310 pounds even. I am okay with that, knowing that I only have a few days left of ‘vacation with my wife,’ after which I will go back to my boring routine. I am truly hoping that by the end of the week my knee will be back to normal. While I doubt I will be back in the gym before she leaves, I would like to resume that next Monday. Knowing (or at least now strongly suspecting) that the injury to my knee was not an injury at all, but was in fact just gout, I will be able to hit the ground running. Even so, I suspect that I will be skittish about my lower body and will spend a lot of focus on my upper body strength for a bit. The treadmill will be my go-to lower-body routine for a bit.

    Today should be a relaxing day with my wife… a bit of shopping, a lovely lunch, and soaking up all of the love that a married couple should have.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 306

    The doctor at the clinic suspects my knee injury is actually an inflammation of gout. While I did not know that gout could manifest off the foot, this is amazing news. It means that with the right meds, I’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. I already woke up this morning in significantly less pain than the last week! I do confess though that I think it is part of getting old… I am hurting, and for no good reason.

    I am eating regularly this week, although I will be very careful. I want to enjoy my week with Leslie, and once she is gone I will go back to starving myself and the gruelling exercise routine. I deserve a break… but I will not go nuts.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 305

    After a long day not being able to do anything, we drove my son the younger home, and I took Leslie for a scrumptious Greek dinner. Here’s a tip: it hardly matters how good you are on your diet. If you finish dinner with a Chocolate and Almond Baklava with a scoop of ice cream, you are unlikely to lose weight that day. I was only up a fifth of a pound, which I’ll call a success.

    Leslie and I ran errands today after sharing an omelette for breakfast. I made chicken with a Buffalo sauce for lunch. Now we are sitting at the walk-in clinic hoping the doctor will magically fix my knee.

    Dinner will be leftovers – both Greek from last night and chicken from lunch. I am hoping my knee will not be in so much pain, and I can resume some sort of physical activity.

    I did not sleep badly last night. Tonight might be better… we bought new pillows!

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 304

    Yesterday was a very divided day. It was always going to end wonderfully, as I picked Leslie up from the airport. It is so wonderful having her back in the Rectangle-Free Zone! Her plane landed early, and she was in my arms by 11:00pm. That is where she belongs!

    Unfortunately I got some bad news yesterday midday. My ex-wife called me and told me that our son the elder had a seizure and was in the hospital. We still have no word on why, but we are praying for the best. The fact that I was able to deliver the remainder of my class in a semi-competent and coherent manner speaks to… something, I don’t know what. I will say that it was exhausting, trying to stay focused on IT security while my mind was entirely elsewhere. Hopefully my students were satisfied by the delivery, but I know I could have done a better job.

    After class, I waited for Leslie to get to the airport in Dallas, and we lit the candles and said the prayers over WhatsApp. I hoped that they would bring me calmness but was obviously praying for my son. I think I was crying as I read the benedictions that I have recited thousands of times without a thought. When it was over, I devoured the challah with peanut butter. That, and a couple of biscotti-thins at Eduardo’s later in the evening, accounted for the sum total of my cheating… and must be the reason I once again gained nearly a pound this morning.

    I am wondering if my knee inflammation – which is huge, and excruciating – might have something to do with my weight gain this week. Yes, it is preventing me from exercising… but it is also extremely inflamed. I do not know how that works and am going to assume it is not, but it might be partially to blame. Who knows? Not I.

    Once again, the pain disturbed my sleep last night – worse than ever. I decided yesterday morning to wear a knee brace for a couple of hours to see if it helped. I know from past experience that wearing one all day increases the pain. By the time I removed it midnight was in the rear-view mirror, and there was no comfortable way to lie down. I did fall asleep for a couple of hours, but once I got up to pee, there was no position that worked. I finally got out of bed, knowing that sitting up is less painful than lying down. This is something else I do not understand. I sat at the kitchen table for an hour before realizing I have a perfectly good couch, and I did manage to get another 30-40 minutes of sleep before having to wake up to pick up my son the younger.

    Theresa called me when she got home from the hospital last night and asked me to pick him up at 7:30am so she could return. The original plan was for Leslie and I to pick him up and take him for breakfast. When I came in from walking Her Royal Floofness, Theresa called and told me he had not slept well and wanted to come to my apartment to sleep. That is exactly what happened, and he is fast asleep in my bed. The Princess goes into the room every few minutes to see that he is okay, but he has not moved in over an hour. I do not know how long he will sleep, but Leslie and I are content to be together and keep our voices down. We never had plans to go out today (we might have, but nothing was planned), and neither of us takes issue with a quiet and lazy day at home… especially knowing it is Holy Crap Degrees Below Zero outside. To wit, when I came in from the walk with HRF, I touched her face to kiss her with a hand that was never out of my leather glove, and she freaked out from how cold it was. Yes ladies and gentlemen, winter has arrived in Southern Ontario.

    When my son wakes up I assume he will be hungry, and we will all go out for lunch. We will let him decide where, but I am not driving to Buffalo Wild Wings… he can pick any restaurant he wants, as long as it is in Burlington. As it happens, if he was not here today, I would likely be sitting in the waiting room of the walk-in clinic, because after last night it is now clear to me that I need to have a doctor look at my knee. Spending an hour with my foot on the gas pedal is not going to happen. Wherever he decides to eat, I will be good. I want my weight to be slightly lower tomorrow morning, and not slightly higher.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 303

    Up nearly a pound today. Yuck. Yes, the weather has had me down, and my bum knee has prevented any serious activity. Neither of those were reasons to cheat yesterday. I decided to buy popcorn for when Leslie is here… and I indulged in a bag. This, after munching on some peanuts and dried apricots on my way home from the grocery store. BAD MITCH.

    What matters more than anything is that Leslie arrives tonight! I am so excited! I am really looking forward to finally having her back in my arms, and not in the Rectangle Zone where we have spent the last month on video chats. In preparation, I did laundry – my bed sheets needed to be changed, and there was a load of laundry already sitting in the dryer that I took the opportunity to fold. I bought only the provisions required to make her breakfast tomorrow, as I know that we love grocery shopping together. I finally got around to wrapping the Channukah presents that she will take back to Texas with her, and I included with that pile a Chanukkiah (candelabra) so that she and her son (my stepson!) can light the candles with me from Dallas. I have to remember to point out that the best way that I have found to clean the leftover wax out from the previous evening is with a flathead screwdriver… and I did my best to clean it out for her. I am ready for my wife to arrive!

    I thought I was going to have to get up at a ridiculously early hour this morning, but late in the afternoon yesterday Eduardo called and cancelled. He had been worried that his smaller car would not be big enough to hold all of his estranged wife’s luggage for the drive to the airport, but his son was able to get all of it in without too much trouble. While I was happy to help (even though it would have made today a very long and difficult day for me), I was relieved when he told me I did not have to wake up at 3:30am to start my day. Not to confuse sleeping until 6:15am with sleeping in, I was nevertheless able to start my day at a reasonable (and pre-planned) hour to go through my morning routines, including taking Her Royal Floofness for a walk to the park. Well, for me it is still a stumble/limp to the park, but my knee is a bit better than it was yesterday, and my girl was able to play with some friends, romp in the fresh snow, and do all of her business. She will likely have a playdate with Charlie today, but Sue will confirm that in the next hour.

    With the returned normalcy to my day, I will go to Eduardo’s after class this evening (after lighting the Sabbath candles). We will smoke a couple of cigars, and we will commiserate. His original thought last week was that he would be celebrating his estranged wife’s departure, which effectively ends their marriage. I told him that as Jews we do not celebrate the death of an enemy in war, we take the time to think on what that other person (even our most hated enemies are people too) have given up. It should be the same with the ending of an unhappy marriage. While they may not have been happy together, they did once care about each other to get married. He agreed, and so tonight we will not celebrate, but we will look back… and look forward.

    From Eduardo’s I will drive to the airport! I will pick up my beautiful wife and for the first time in just over a month I will be able to hold her in my arms. I miss that so much, and it feels like much longer than a month since she dropped me off at the airport in Dallas. Our physical separations cause me physical pain, and I know she feels the same. Each separation – whether a few days or a few weeks – is harder and harder, but the reunifications are so sweet! The anticipation may well kill me though… I still have fifteen hours to wait before I get to see her.

    This evening, right after class, I will call her, and once again we will light the Sabbath candles. We will say the benedictions over the candles, the wine, and the challah. Once again, I will say my prayers sincerely asking G-d to deliver peace and joy to all of my loved ones. I think this week, more than many, my loved ones are in need of it. I think maybe I am too.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 302

    I lost 1.6 lbs. from yesterday, which is a good bit of progress. These last two days I am down 2.4 lbs. It is still only about a third of the more than 7 lbs. that I gained in this recent slide, but positive progress is better than the alternative. I have written before that you can claw your way to losing five pounds over the course of a week, and then ruin it with one good (really bad) meal. Positive progress is slow, but regression can come too quick.

    My knee is still aching terribly, but if I am not mistaken there might be a bit of improvement over yesterday. It is still stiff and painful, but it might be less so than yesterday. I am hoping that trend continues. I have been giving a lot of thought as I lie awake at night thinking about the workout that probably did me in. I knew as I was doing them that the knee extensions were hurting me on that leg, but I did not want to back down. I will be very careful about anything around my knees going forward. Hopefully it is getting better, but I will continue to ice it and take the anti-inflammatories. If it is still bothering me on the weekend, I will go to the clinic.

    I got a call from Eduardo earlier today asking me to drive his estranged wife to the airport tomorrow. She needs to be at the airport for 5:00am, which means that I set an alarm for 3:30am. I will be going to sleep very early this evening. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day! I am picking Leslie up at the airport at 11:00pm, which means that I will not be in bed before 1:00am. A 22-hour day would have been common a few years ago, but not anymore. Fortunately I will be able to sleep from 6:00pm to 10:00pm after my class (and after walking Princess Sophie). Otherwise, I am not sure I would be able to manage it.

    It is mid-afternoon, and I have not cheat-eaten yet. I had my chicken and salad for lunch, and after my class, I will have a meal replacement. It would be nice if tomorrow morning I am down another two pounds, but that is reaching. I only hope to keep inching my way back to my best-weight-yet territory, but I am more than four pounds away from that, so hopefully by Monday.

    Today’s entry is late, and tomorrow’s is going to be extremely tired. I strongly suspect that tomorrow will be a two-pots-of-coffee day.

    Have a great day folks!