Healthy is a Feeling

(Written Wednesday, May 10, on a hotel notepad while enjoying a beautiful view).

To borrow from my yoga studio's post: Health is not a look; it's a feeling.

After a recent blog post, more than couple of people told me I should stop worrying about how I look and just be happy. For me - the two often are inseparable. When I'm feeling healthy, I can do all the things that make me look healthy inside and out. There's a glow that comes from the inside - from endorphins and joy and feeling right with the world. And there are the physical changes that come from being active.

So what I'm saying is I don't feel well or healthy. I won't repeat the myriad of ailments and symptoms I have previously discussed (whined about). But I will tell you about the hope I have after meeting with the functional medicine doctor I mentioned.

I like her - Dr. T I'll call her. She's my age, talks a mile a minute and seems to know her stuff.

She didn't start our first appointment with "so what's going on? Why are you here?" Instead, she had read and studied the questionnaire that took an hour and a half to complete. She had come up with a hypothesis about my health but had a few blanks to fill and some blood work to check (that's on hold until I return from a work trip).

Dr. T also took recent tests and studied those instead of making me repeat them - no need to add to the health-care bill - thank goodness!

After writing down the long list of meds I take each day - for asthma, for allergies, for SIBO - and perusing some nutrient levels, Dr. T. said: well no wonder you are complaining of weight gain!" She said the drug cocktail alone could cause me to pack on pounds but deficiencies in vitamins A, D, B12, B6, iron and protein have sent my body into panic mode - holding on to everything it can. Fight or Flight and my body is fighting.

But why? More to be determined there but basically my body likely isn't absorbing the nutrients I give it. Determining if it can absorb any at all is the next step when I return from Miami.

Meantime, Dr. T has me doing a few things to help me feel better: She wants me to wean off of the acide reflux medicine - you have to wean off these things or your body freaks out and over produces acid. It's miserable - I know firsthand how hard it is to get off the purple pill. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar - Bragg's only - before I eat a meal will help to level out the acid and ensure that only good acid is being produced. Also licorice tablets in between meals instead of Xantac or  Tums if there are issues.

Cod liver oil is another addition with Vitamin A, D and some omega-3 fatty acids. This one is tough if only mentally. The name! But just once a day (admittedly I never got around to it yesterday - I was focused on a bad tummy) and lemon flavored. It just feels weird going down (yes, Victoria, Ty, Duane, Tiff - I KNOW what you are thinking!)

After Dr. T determines how deep the SIBO goes - as in can I absorb any nutrients or do we need to fix the leak first and then add in supplements - she wants to put me on vitamins B12, B6, Iron and pre- and probiotics.

I'm hopeful - a lot more so than I have been in at least a year. I'm also pretty annoyed at doctors who ignored or didn't see low-iron, protein and vitamin levels. Looks like my iron has been low for at leat a year. Seriously - I could have been feeling better?! Well, maybe not if I couldn't absorb anything then - but still! I actually found out my iron was low - despite feeling not so hot and this explains my fatigue - because I tried to give blood 3 times in the past 6 months but each time was turned away for low iron.

So I hope to get my life back - and I hope that on a day I spent an hour in the ladies room at work yesterday morning and then slept for hours after work - hardly able to open my eyes - like I had a flu - you know that feeling right? I had planned to go for a run and to a museum. I haven't made plans with two dear friends who live in Miami for fear I'll have to cancel.

I'm not asking to run marathons again - though I would like to - I'm just asking for most of my life back - not necessarily the extreme parts.

I made it upstairs and outside to write this and enjoy the view, a glass of wine and free hotel hour snacks (i.e. dinner). But then had to head back to bed. Around 8, I put my shoes on and went for a walk - determined not to let the day totally beat me.

B said today, "I give you a lot of credit for keeping up with the exercise with all this."

I told him it makes me a more decent human. :)

Free Hugs with your cocktail. I feel like that could happen anywhere - but I like it.

My blog in my chicken scratch - my view while writing

Interesting on my walk

No words

Obsessions

Cooking Shows And HGTV Can Be Surprisingly Inspirational

I'm obsessed with cooking and home-improvement shows.

Honestly if I could only have five TV channels HGTV, The Cooking Channel and Food Network would be three of them.

Last night as I sat in my hotel room not feeling well, I watched Chopped - a cooking competition with mystery baskets of ingredients. Surprisingly it was an episode I hadn't seen. The contestants were cooks at soup kitchens and included a Franciscan sister who started The Nun Run in Chicago and a soft-spoken but feisty retired woman who wants to make sure that all the teenagers at the LGBT shelter where she cooks are treated with love and kindness as if they were her own grandchildren.

Lovely and touching and inspiring - how often does that happen on what is essentially a game show?

I almost got sucked into this obsession again tonight. I am not well and mostly have been sleeping when not at work. Sitting in the too comfy bed surrounded by cozy clean white linens, I watched hours of Island Life and Chopped. When I looked out my window I saw this

I should try to run, I told myself for hours. Then I thought, if I put on running clothes, maybe I will go.

The purple striped running a shorts and wireless headphones were my biggest motivators. My most fun shorts. Whatever it takes, I think.

So now I'm out running in the darkness and liveliness that is downtown Miami when it's 81 degrees. - well anytime really. The water is lapping next to me and runners, walkers, dinner goers and dog walkers are all around.

I'm feeling better - even though I'm slow as molasses. Good thing I don't care. Sometimes, most often I find, it's the journey that's important.

I started my run listening to Eminem but now Jimmy Buffett and friends are singing to me via Pandora  - always happy joyful songs.

"Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call,
Wanted to sail upon your waters
since I was three feet tall.You've seen it all, you've seen it all."
-Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks At Forty

A little Zack Brown Band - Free.

"So we live in our old van
Travel all across this land
Me and you

We'll end up hand in hand
Somewhere down on the sand
Just me and you

Just as free
Free as we'll ever be"

And finally a little Bob Marley - No woman, No Cry.

"Everything's gonna be alright"

I'm starting to wonder lately if I'm choosing my music or if the universe is. 

And do these joyful tunes and words mean I'm hopeful again about love? Maybe.
I don't know who "you" is but I like the idea. And I do believe again that everything's gonna be alright.

So much so that I actually went out to dinner instead of ordering room service or takeout from the hotel I have barely left for three days.

I'm so glad I did. Delicious meal, friendly waiter who remembered me and a beautiful night to sit out on the restaurant terrace. 

On my way in and out, I enjoyed the bronze sculptures of Fernando Botero - sculptures I first saw two decades ago along the Champs Elysees in Paris just after we had studied the artist in class in Caen.
 

As I walked back to my hotel chatting with Tim of the long-lost friend ilk, the night was warm and calm and very nearly perfect. It felt like hope.

We chatted for an hour as I sat  outside the hotel leaning up against its entrance sign - a silly, cozy spot. 

The Mean Reds

Ice Cream For Dinner, Catching Up, Letting Go

My friend and favorite bartender Q said to me on Saturday night after she fixed me a virgin cranberry and pineapple juice and took my dinner order, "It's so good to see you eating. And whether you know it or not, you are doing so much better."

I completely agree with her. I'm feeling happier, lighter, more hopeful and less sad.

I had a rough day or two last week - mostly because I was sick and in bed - and had too much time in my head. 

Sometimes I feel like Truman Capote's Holly Golightly in the film adaptation - without the fancy clothes.

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds? 
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues? 
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? 
Paul Varjak: Sure. 
Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name! 

Holly is searching for where she fits - not in what city - but where she fits in the world, what her purpose is, how she is useful in the universe, who she is. And she's hiding - hiding from real love. 

My Tiffany's is the beach, getting out on the water to kayak or boat or fish.

View from my favorite pier and weekend job

It's also accomplishing something on my own such as the faucet replacement.

I'm in the middle of creating some more accomplishment opportunities - I just have to find the time.

My sailboats are on Marco now. I own a drill, a drill bit set, a miter saw, a Brad Nailer and a sander.  I have many projects in mind for these tools - first and foremost in my condo. Then my boats (I need jazz hands smiling emoji here).

Be afraid

Current color

Yes?

Now some random thoughts from the past week:

• I'm in my hotel room in Miami and have the loveliest fruit bowl in front of me with my very favorite and the most fun fruits: dragon fruit, pineapple, strawberries, star fruit, kiwi, mango. Seriously - love!

Dreaming of sailing as I look out my hotel window

• Ice cream for dinner - twice in one week.

Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey - I ate around the chocolate chunks and threw them away because I'm a freak and not a big chocolate fan.

Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake - just yum. 

• I wake up and find my keys in my front door more often than I would like to admit.
  
  
  
  

• I have the most wonderful friends. I really do.
  

  

  Jess always knows when I could use a fuzzy. Petting Boobs the rabbit.

  
  

  

  Purple polka dot ducky from Jess's son Max

  
  

  

  New friend Nancy visiting from Canada sent me this gem

  
  
• November means college basketball season starts!
  

  

  Go CATS! 

  
  

• And for your listening pleasure provided by a colleague with whom I regularly exchange musical inspirations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkoYOexplQ&feature=youtube (And I have a crazy crush on Justin Timberlake)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_yCEVmepsQ - for fun! I happen to love the third verse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ognnZ3r2qyQ  - you'll dance and laugh.