Footprints on the Moon

On the left is the first picture I took of myself in an SBRG league t-shirt. On the right is the most recent picture of me in an SBRG t-shirt, my headshot. You can see clearly that I’ve lost weight. But the fact of the matter is, I’ve been pretty well stalled out for almost a year. I still get people telling me that I look great, asking how much weight I’m losing, so maybe I’m adding muscle and redistributing… I’m more inclined to believe that I’m simply wearing more figure flattering clothes these days. I am, in fact, at basically the same weight now that I was at the beginning of the year. I’ve lost momentum, and I don’t really know how to get it back. Beyond figuring out what suppresses appetite anyway.

Weight Watchers changed their program just after Thanksgiving last year which threw me for a loop. My weight loss had been coming at a very steady rate until that point. Then I lost a couple more pounds through the end of the year and stalled out. I was firmly on a plateau. After that, I was frustrated with not making any progress. There was a little bit of “Well, I’m not getting anywhere so I’m going to just eat what I want!” I also couldn’t justify paying $18/month for Weight Watchers anymore. I’ve been trying to use MyFitnessPal to count calories, but it’s not really working for me. Partially because I have had exactly no motivation and have spent a lot of time tracking just how “bad” I’m being. And partially because calorie counting just plain isn’t working well for me. It seems counter-intuitive because calorie counting should be easy. You have 1500 calories a day, you deduct this 356 calories from that total. Easy, right? Except I can’t seem to have a concept of how many calories is too much to spend on a meal or a snack. With WW points, I knew that if I had 32 points a day, 8 points was probably too much to spend on a snack. But I have no concept of 280 calories being too many calories to spend on that same snack.

I don’t know what the answer is… Calorie counting is “easier”, it’s faster, I don’t have to spend as much time looking up/doing the math on labels to get the information I need… but it’s not working. I don’t know if going back on Weight Watchers would help. I do know that it’s $18/month that I don’t have, especially now that I’m trying to pay off the surgery. And I do know that I’m not happy with maintaining where I’m at now, especially since I’m not so much maintaining anymore as creeping upward.

So yeah… that’s where I’m at now in this journey.

I spent pretty much the entirety of last weekend crocheting on the couch and watching “Besterns.” Aka the WFTDA Western Regional Playoffs! (This weekend is South Central and next weekend is North Central Regional playoffs. Visit DerbyAccess to watch for free!)

We got our league pictures taken by the fabulous James Korn. Here is Jennuine Pain!

And these are my rocks in the league. My beautiful and amazing “derby wives”: Star Cross’d Shover and Naw D. Beaver.

I got plenty of Lucy-kitty snuggles.

The bill from the surgeon arrived and made me consider a second job in rv towing. This doesn’t include the ER visit, ER doctor, or anesthesiologist.

Pudge got some last minute snuggles before Killian arrived to spend the night. (Once Killian gets here, he hides under the bed. Or sits in the hallway hissing.)

About five minutes after he insisted that No, no, no, NO, he did not want to watch that! I’m trying to expand my nephew’s horizons beyond Toy Story and Sponge Bob and he’s having none of it. He’ll usually watch what I put on anyway, but with periodic protests. Now we’re watching Chicken Little for the second time.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted at all since the day before my birthday (yes, I can)! I got the best birthday card ever for my birthday this year.

“Happy Birthday Aunt Jennifer, 28″

He’s totally a better artist at 4 than I will ever be…

<3 Killian

The only thing on the back is that big green bow that you can see sticking out in the first picture. Is that not wonderful?! My brother's definitely got it easy for birthdays from now on. No need to buy expensive presents, like TJFormal prom dresses (no, I don’t know why he would, just go with it)… all he has to do is pull out some construction paper and the kid’s art supplies, and everyone will just be tickled to death to get it. Aunt Jennifer was anyway

As promised:

Here’s is my updated financials chart, as promised. Some good, some bad, as noted below.

Unfortunately, it’s about to look a whole lot worse. I did not add any of the pending medical bills because at this point I only have rough estimates of what those are going to be. I was told that my portion of the surgery costs is going to be $6175, less some mysterious discount but “we won’t know what that will be until we submit for payment.” Given that I just received my explanation of benefits for the ER visit, and the discount listed on that sheet was a big fat whopping ZERO, I’m going forward assuming the whole $6,175 is going to be mine. This does not include the aforementioned ER visit (and it’s expensive lab tests and ultrasound), of which my “insurance” is covering approximately $300. Nor does it include the pre or post-op visits to the surgeon. Not to mention any additional costs that might arise should I need to see my own physician to get clearance for returning to roller derby in a month or more. In any case, the number is probably going to land somewhere between $7500 and $8000 if my estimates are correct. Ouch.

I’ll be honest here. I haven’t got the slightest clue how I’m going to manage to pay for this. Trying to figure it out feels a whole lot like trying to figure out single premium immediate annuity rates. (I don’t even know what that means!) In other words, I’m kind of panicking over here. After I make the required payments on loans and credit cards, and set aside utility payments and the gas/food budget… I have $4.01 out of one paycheck and a whopping $42.91 out of the other. Not going to get very far at that rate.

My first plan of attack is to cancel the cable. I’m talking both TV and internet here. The TV portion of my Comcast bill is about as low as I can get it, and canceling just that raises the internet price, so I wouldn’t save much money without canceling both. That should free up between $75-80 a month. Honestly, Internet generally feels like a necessity in my life, but at this point I don’t see any way I can leave it on. Prior to the gallbladder attack, I was starting to consider making this change for awhile anyway… I was hoping to put that $80 towards one of my loans and pay it off faster.

I do have an iPhone though, so the ability to access Facebook and my email from that will just have to do for awhile. I considered moving to a cheaper phone without a data plan and keeping the internet, but I’m still under contract for two more months. Plus with the internet options available in my area, it seems like the savings would be a wash either way. And at least with the phone, I have my internet in my pocket and not only when I’m at home.

Beyond that, I don’t really know. Maybe I should start a chip-in… do you want to help me pay for my surgery? LOL I’ve admittedly been a bit lax in my budgeting lately, so I’m cracking down on that. Going back to “snowflaking” religiously rather than letting any extra from categories coming in under budget just fritter away somewhere. I keep an eye on the job ads, but it seems like everything that pays more than my current job doesn’t offer enough hours, and everything that is part-time/less than my current job is something that wouldn’t work as a second job. I’m at a loss. And really stressed out. I guess I’m going to pay what I can and hope it all works out. I don’t know what else to do.

*Even though the date is nearly halfway through August, balances do not necessarily include August payments. Many of those were just made today as I logged into these accounts to check balances.
** The thousand dollar jump in the total is due to the fact that I decided to finally quit pretending that I didn’t have a balance on the Amazon card, or that I was going to be paying it off so quickly that it didn’t matter anyway. With a number of purchases that could no longer be put off, as well as my changing financial situation, this card is turning out to be my “emergency fund” of sorts and is therefore still in use and not likely to be paid off anytime soon. Therefore, it earns itself a spot in the table even though the balance jumps around quite a bit.

Source*

The astute among you will have figured out that I did indeed survive my gallbladder removal on Tuesday, based on the picture I posted here on Wednesday of me looking so pretty during surgery prep! That or you read my Facebook page.

At this point, 9 days after the surgery, being back at work for 4 of those days, I feel like I need a Retractable banner stand to set up next to my chair at work. It should read:

“I feel fine.”
“Yes, my incisions are still kind of sore.”
“No, I don’t need anything.”
“I don’t care about the surgery you had 15 years ago.”

Hehe. Everyone has their own war stories, right? Some of them just want to share them with you. Repeatedly. Every time they see you. Even if that is four times a day.

As far as my own surgery, it went very well. I never got as nervous as I thought I was going to… just a bit apprehensive. By far the worst part of the whole ordeal was waking up from surgery. I woke up sobbing and writhing in pain. Somebody LIED to me. At this point, I’m thinking it was the anesthesiologist, but it may have been the surgeon. Either way, one of the two, in the pre-op chat we had gave me the impression that I would have plenty of pain drugs in my system by the time I came around and would essentially feel no pain. LIES, all lies. Granted, they were administering pain meds shortly after I woke up so I wasn’t in pain for very long at all, but for a minute there, it was AWFUL.

I also wasn’t a fan of my recovery nurse. She seemed to favor efficiency over being friendly and soothing… She put a wad of kleenex in my left hand for coughing and nose blowing, and put my right hand on the blanket over my incisions and told me to apply pressure before I coughed. But then I kept “getting in trouble” for using my left arm when she wanted me to set it down so the machine could take my blood pressure. I don’t remember what else she kept asking me to do, but I remember telling her that I couldn’t do it, and her snipping that yes you can. She wasn’t really MEAN (or maybe she was, I was pretty out of it)… her bedside manner could use some help is all I’m saying.

Once I got home, everything went pretty well. I thought I was going to pass out before I got into the apartment, so even as lightheaded and slowly moving as I was, I practically sprinted up the stairs to my apartment to get in the air conditioning and a glass of water. My super awesome friend Amy, who took half a day off to take me to my surgery, got me settled at home and went to the grocery store to fill my painkiller prescription and pick up a few things I wanted (applesauce) or she thought I needed (gummy bears). I spent a good portion of the next couple days sleeping off the painkillers either in bed or on the couch. I also watched a lot of TV on Netflix. I got pretty restless and bored after awhile since I wasn’t allowed to drive until I was off painkillers for 24 hours, and was therefore necessarily at home, mostly by myself, for 5 days. (This? A very good decision by the way, if some of the Facebook comments I left some of my friends in a painkiller stupor in the middle of the night are any indication. As in, they made very little sense when viewed later… not a good sign for my decision making abilities at the time.)

My friends were lifesavers in that regard… but that is a story for another post, I think. This one is plenty long enough at this point and I doubt many of you are still with me! I also still need to post about the financial impact of the surgery… I’ll get that post up soon, with my financial update. Maybe even later today… no promises. I’ve been back to work since Monday… that day was rough, I assure you, but I survived and am doing much better now!

*I found this plushie through Bakerella, who posted about the kidney one that she received after her replacement. Pictured above is the gallbladder one, obviously. Now I just need to convince someone to buy it for me!

The spoiler is right up there in the title: I’m having surgery on Tuesday to have my gallbladder removed.

It all started two weekends ago… I had a quiet Saturday evening in after a friend’s afternoon wedding. I picked up a pizza, made a pina colada, and watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One in anticipation of taking myself to see Part Two the next morning. I went to bed around 11pm.

At about 12:50am, I woke up out of a sound sleep to a really bad pain in my chest. It was pretty much centered on my sternum and stretching across my chest right where my bra band would go. I’d never experienced anything like it before… so of course the first thing I did was call my mom. She must have been sleeping like a rock because she didn’t hear it. So naturally, the next thing I did was post on Facebook. What? Isn’t that the most logical thing to do next?

Anyway, to make a long story short, after about an hour of pacing, and trying to call my mom, and getting about halfway out the door to take myself to the ER and going back to throw up, my uncle saw my Facebook post and offered to take me. We got about halfway there and my mom saw the missed calls and finally called back. So she met me at the ER.

First I got accused of having heartburn, so I got to drink a nice numbing GI cocktail, which of course did nothing whatsoever. Due to the hole in my heart, they also did an EKG. They did some blood work and everything came up looking fine. Then the doctor came in and poked and prodded my abdomen and I about hit the ceiling. Verdict? Hmm… we think it might be your gallbladder. So they got the nice ultrasound technician out of bed in the middle of the night to come in and check out it out. Confirmation, gallstone.

I got a needle in my butt with a pretty decent painkiller and once the pain was down to a manageable level, I was sent home with the instructions to follow up with the surgeon. After that meeting, it was pretty much decided that the gallbladder had to go. With a family history and my own risk factors, pretty much it is going to continue to be a problem in the future. So we’re going to take it out before it can cause more problems.

I’m almost out of time to write at the moment, so I’ll have to address the financial implications in another post. Suffice it to say, I won’t be saving any money to buy rustic dining furniture or the dining room to put it in anytime soon. I’ll be making payments to the surgery center thanks to my craptastic medical “insurance.”

Happy 4th of July, everyone! My family had our cookout for the holiday yesterday and I have to work today. I’ll get time and a half to babysit an empty building though, so there are worse things I could be doing today! Plus, have dinner scheduled with a good friend tonight

Whatever you are doing today, I hope you are happy and healthy. Stay safe!