Losing a part of me

Category: Accidents

  • Day 708

    How exciting… today’s the day I go in for the second part of my dental surgery. I am not excited about that.

    I was excited that I not only decided to but actually bought a treadmill yesterday. I am not excited that while trying to put it into my car I broke a finger. To add insult to injury, my finger was trapped in the treadmill for ten minutes while the teenaged girl who was selling it to me tried in vain to not panic. This was not the first time in my life that as the injured party I had to calm and console the other person. This poor girl did not do anything wrong, but I could not convince her of that. I finally told her to get some liquid soap so that I could extricate my finger from the vice-like grip. The fact that I did not react at all – I did not raise my voice, I did not swear or curse – was a feat. I rewarded myself by smoking a $500 cigar when I got home… and self-medicated with what I will call Scottish Penicillin.

    All this, and I still do not have the treadmill. I have left a down-payment for it so it is mine, but I have to go back with a friend to pick it up.

    I suspect that my weight would have dropped a bit more this morning had I not had the whisky… or at least if I had not had so much of it.

    See you tomorrow.

  • Day 370

    ‘Ass over teakettle’ is an expression that came to mind this morning during my walk with Her Royal Floofness, and I decided to look it up when I got home to see if I could trace the origin. From my very brief research, it seems that it is a slightly later iteration of the term ‘tail over teakettle’ that was first used in a piece in Everybody’s Magazine from 1927. The exact wording of the altered phrase that stuck with me seems to be from Pagany, Volume 3 by Richard Johns (1932). I gleaned this information from pieces on https://english.stackexchange.com, and I thank their reader for asking as well as for the people who responded.

    Whatever the origin of the phrase may be, the reason that it came so readily to mind as I walked my dog this morning is because this is exactly how I found myself flying on the trail through the park.

    By all indications, with the exception of a couple of bitterly cold weeks in December, this has been the mildest Canadian winter I have experienced. There have been windy days and damp ones which make it feel colder, but for the last month, the high temperatures have been slightly above the freezing point, with the overnight lows dropping beneath. In dry conditions this causes no issues, but when there is precipitation, the straddling of that line will make for icy conditions. On Sunday we had snow, on Monday the temperatures warmed, and Monday night they dropped again. Snow turns to water; water turns to ice. Mitch’s foot finds icy patch (which are often almost impossible to see), Mitch’s feet go up, Mitch’s ass goes down.

    Since my return to Canada mid-2021. This is the second time I have done this. Once was about a year ago, on a cold and snowy day just down the street, I hit an icy patch that was camouflaged by a light dusting of snow and went flying. I stayed down for a few minutes before asking for help getting up. The ordeal is outlined in an article I posted to my weight loss blog (OW! – Losing a part of me). The penultimate paragraph of that piece reads:

    I don’t know how different this would have been had I been 100lbs slimmer, but I do know that I am not as young as I once was, and I have to be careful. I do suspect that if I was slimmer, and if I was not still recovering from a broken ankle and wrenched knee, I would have likely had an easier time standing up than I did.

    I go on to say that I have no intention of trying this again when I have lost the weight. I could not have thought then that I would, precisely 369 days later (and eerily close to the predicted 100 lbs. slimmer) do just that.

    Unlike a year ago, there was no comedic (to an outside observer) teetering and trying to retain my footing before giving in to gravity. I went right down. Exactly like a year ago, I immediately checked my surroundings for impending danger, then took inventory of my body to ensure that nothing was broken. My head (always the biggest concern in a hard fall) had not come close to impact, and my Akubra hat remained secure and straight. My right wrist hurt a little but was not injured. Anyone who has gone through serious military training understands the difference. Other than that, nothing hurt or ached. I checked to make sure my surroundings (other than that one still invisible patch of ice… even up close) were dry, and I stood up. I re-evaluated, and there was still no pain. My back, my neck, my hips, my ass, my knees, my ankles were all good.

    I don’t know how different this would have been had I been 100lbs slimmer… now I know. I went through it unscathed and was able to recover much more quickly and I was able to right myself without any assistance.

    I should mention that Princess Sophie was, just as she was a year ago, wondering why her Daddy fell, and was glad to see that I was okay.

    Falling down is never fun… especially as we get older. While I am not going to get any younger, I will continue to lose weight. Hopefully I will never fall again, but if I do, it will be even less traumatic because I am not nearly four hundred pounds.

    Yesterday was another good day on my program. I did not veer at all, enjoying all four meal replacements at regular intervals, the last one at a reasonable hour in the early evening. I drank a lot of water, and I spent a lot of time running to the bathroom. I was completely unproductive with regard to work, although I did write two articles in this journal totaling 4,000 words. I was (and I suppose still am) distracted knowing that in less than twenty-four hours I am calling an Uber to take me to the airport, and by tomorrow evening I will be in Dallas with Leslie. It has been nearly two months since we were last together, and it is hard. I know that we are lucky in some respects. Even ten years ago, a couple in our shoes would have had to spend money on long distance calls, and would have been limited to audio only, whereas today Leslie and I can video talk for free every day. A couple in the same situation fifty or more years ago would likely have had to settle for exchanging letters (remember those?) and relying on the post office. That does not make it easier for Leslie or for me that we are mostly apart and spend so much time in the Rectangle Zone. We have had so many emotional hardships due to our physical separation, but when we are together… everything is right in the world again.

    This morning was the first day in fourteen that the numbers on the bathroom scale were up from yesterday. It was within the margin of error (.2 lb.) but it was still disappointing. I was hoping that two more days of loss would take me under the 290 lbs. mark for when I got to Dallas. Now that seems unlikely. Even so, Leslie looks at me on video and wonders what it will feel like to hug a much smaller Mitch than she has ever known.

    We had a frank discussion this morning about my visit, and how I will be modifying my program for the week that I am there. She is worried that I am talking about a lot of different foods, and she is worried that this visit might be a trigger that pulls me off the program completely. I told her that while I am excited to be eating certain foods, I am not going to go wild, and there will be no meal where she will think I have gorged myself. I will be on a modified program, which will include a few salads for lunch from our favourite place, a few dinners out where I will eat well but reasonably, and a couple that I will prepare for her at home. I told her that I will be stepping onto the bathroom scale daily, and that if I see it is getting out of hand then I will rein myself in… but if I gain less than two pounds during the week then I will consider it a success. I would be thrilled if I do not gain any weight, but two pounds is my hopeful limit. I will mention that while I will be eating reasonably, I will be eschewing snacks, treats, and desserts. I might take a bite of something that Leslie orders, but that’s it.

    Yesterday evening my diet buddy and I had our call. Last week our usual call was canceled because of scheduling conflicts, but we did want to have our touch point yesterday. We are both going through a lot, and it is important that we keep in touch to make sure neither of us has fallen off the wagon. It was good to hear that she is also doing pretty well, despite a lot of travel. She has been exposed to a lot more temptations of late than I have. She is also eating solid foods, but because of her surgery she cannot eat nearly as much as she would like and continues to lose weight. I am proud of her. My ideal situation would be to be able to only eat much less than I used to, which would mean that I could not eat the quantities I am used to. When I am ready to ween myself off the weight loss program and onto solid foods, my two main strategies will be wise choices and portion control. If I can succeed with those, then keeping the weight off long term will be easy. If not, I expect that I will spend the rest of my life gaining a few pounds and then forcing myself to diet to lose them so that I do not fall back into old habits and weights. Honestly, I think the part of maintaining for the rest of my life is more daunting than actually losing the weight.

    I have done a bit of work and a bit of screwing around since I started writing, and I have things to do. I have to fold laundry and pack my suitcase, and I would like to do a little studying before my meeting and then class this evening. It is time for a meal replacement (and there are two puppies reminding me that it is time for them to get a treat), and then I will do my work. I will stay on track today…

    Have a great day folks!

  • OW!

    Remember, over the last few posts, that I mentioned that there are some things I cannot do as well (or at all) as a morbidly obese man? I just had a really close call.

    Princess Sophie asked nicely to go out for a walk. Not only does she deserve it for being so nice and polite, it is also my duty as a doggie-daddy to let my girl take me out for regular walks. And so we bundled up, nice and warm. Princess Sophie eschewed her coat, but I put on a sweater, a scarf, a ski jacket, an ear-band, and my hat. Off we went.

    Sophie seldom wants to go very far when it is cold and dark, and when you add snowy to the mix she knows to do her business right quick and then come home to the warmth. We went across the street and down the block, and we had just crossed back to ‘our’ side of the street to head home when we hit a patch of ice on the sidewalk.

    Daddy went ass over teakettle.

    To be fair, that is not entirely true. I completely lost my footing, but there was a point where I felt that I could have recovered. I also strongly suspected in the moment that if I did try that, I might stay on my feet, but I would almost surely tear something; if my recovery attempts failed, I might fall on my head and really do myself an injury. I decided to go down on my own terms. Yes, all of that went through my head in that split second; welcome to the mind of a trained fighter.

    I went down on the hard sidewalk. I did my best to contain my fall and minimize any damage I might have done myself… and I was quite successful. Yes, I likely exacerbated the existing pain to my knee, but I threw the leash out of the way, and as I fell I bent my knees and body so that my two hands could break the fall, rather than the fall break one of my two hands.

    I did an excellent job of it, considering the circumstances. As both soldiers and martial artists are taught, when there is no further immediate danger, stay put. Take a moment to evaluate your body. Head was fine, my knees both hurt a little, but it was pain and not injury. My very recently broken ankle was somehow unhurt, as was my other foot. My face and torso were untouched, and my bum was cold on the hard ice-covered sidewalk, but there wouldn’t even be a bruise. I was, from all indications, fine. Nothing was broken. Not bones, not my phones, nothing. My eyeglasses, which in the scheme of things may cost less but would be more difficult to replace than the phones (as well as harder to live without for a few days), were also intact. I checked to see that Princess Sophie was okay, and she was… although you could tell she was worried about what happened to her Daddy. The pup-poop-bag-dispenser came open, but I recovered the pieces (as well as the bags, neither of which would have been the greatest loss).

    Okay, everything is in order. Step 1, I took my earbuds out of my ears and put them in a pocket. We had not seen any fellow dog parents on our excursion yet, but it would not be unusual for one to happen along and ask if I needed help. It would not do to not hear them because of noise-canceling earbuds. Step 2, stand up.

    I am a morbidly obese man lying on a sheet of ice. This step would not be an easy one. There was just no way to get a footing on a sheet of solid ice.

    I realized that the best solution would be to roll off the sidewalk. It has been decades since I rolled around and played in snow, but any Canadian (or anyone who has ever lived in snowy climes) will know that when you have to get a footing, you are far better off on snow covered grass than you are on ice covered sidewalk. I did just that – I rolled over onto the nearly pristine snow. As I started to do that, a fellow doggie daddy came along and asked if I was okay and if I needed help. I decided to not be a hero and explain that I was fine but I was having trouble standing because of the ice. He offered me a hand, and once again I was upright. I did a second complete inventory of my body and, determining that I would be okay, thanked him and walked the rest of the way home.

    I don’t know how different this would have one had I been 100lbs slimmer, but I do know that I am not as young as I once was, and I have to be careful. I do suspect that if I was slimmer, and if I was not still recovering from a broken ankle and wrenched knee, I would have likely had an easier time standing up than I did.

    Unlike so many of my other experiences, I have no intention of trying this again when I have lost all of the weight. Once was enough, thank you very much… I am going to do my best to stay upright, whether fat or slim.

    (This article will be referenced on my main blog page, http://www.garvis.ca)