Health Update

Well been on the new course of antibiotics for 5 1/2 days, not seeing much difference, except fever now is low grade if I move around too much. The antibiotics I have been on since this started back in July are as follows...

1) Cipro. for 5 days

2) Macrob. for 7 days

3) Cipro. IV (while in ER)

4) Cipro. for 10 days (in which I have taken 5 1/2 days)

I got a call from the hospital/ER that I was at last Wed. night and they told me to stop taking the Cipro. they pescribed last Wed. because my infection is resistant to it. According to my Urinalysis that they did (they divided my infection from my urine into a lot of p-tree (?) dishes and tried to kill the infection with different antibiotics)...guess what antibiotics did not kill the infection...yup the ones listed above!!! However one of the ones that did kill the infection was Bactrim so they called in to my pharmacy a 10 day course of the Bactrim antibiotic. Which I am told to start taking in the morning. Hopefully this will all be over with soon and I can get back to quilting.

I was told to still keep my follow up visit with my primary care doc next Tues. and have them check for the infection..they said their should be a HUGE improvement with my urine culture. If there is then I should be able to get some customer quilts done next week...here's hoping :0)  

Emergency Room Visit

I posted recently that I had a UTI infection, started mid July. Well the past couple of days I have been feeling very tired and off and last night after dinner I started getting sick and my temp shot up from a normal temp to a high temp in 40 min, chills, shakes etc..DH took me to the emergency room where they ran some test...urine culture and complete blood work. Tests showed that yes a massive infection is still present (that hasn't been responding to the previous antibiotics prescribed the last two times this past month). My white blood cell count is highly elevated (which doc said is to be expected given the size of my infection). Good news is that my blood sugar levels are normal, and there is no signs of kidney damage. So the doc hooked me up to an IV of antibiotics and perscribed me yet another dose of a different antibiotics that will run a course of 10 days this time along with a follow up visit at the end of the antibiotics to do another test to make sure the infection is gone. He also said until this infection is resolved that I need lots of rest, lots of water & cranberry juice and no working during this time.

So had to cancel all my drop off appointments for the next 10 days. For all of those that currently have their quilts here at Gecko Quilts, please be patient, they will get done in the order that they came in, as soon as I am told by my doctor that I can go back to work. I am so sorry if this is an inconvienece for any of you but my health has to come first here. If you need to pick up your unquilted quilt, please call me and I will arrange a pick up time next week. 

Thanks for your understanding. 

I Hate Being Sick

Sorry no pics today.

Just me feeling sorry for myself. I have been sick for the most part since 7/19/11. It started with a bladder infection, I have only had 1 other bladder infection in my life and it was almost 3 years ago. So when I got this one I wasted no time got to the doctor, confirmed that yes it was a bladder infection and started taking antibiotics. Felt better, and finished the meds. All seemed fine then within a week after I finished the antbiotics, it was back

:0( Made another doctor appt but had to suffer through the weekend. mean while my oldest who just got back from a Cali vaca with her friends came down with the flu...can you guess what happened? That's right since my immune system was already weakened because of the on going bladder infection I got the flu as well! My doctor appt was Monday, they confimed yes my bladder infection did come back, most likely because the 5 day antibiotics given to me before wasn't long enough...so now I am on a different antibiotic and this time it's for a full week. On top of that my temperature shot up to 102.7 degrees (and pretty much stayed their all day and into the night even with taking Advil) Monday as well because of the flu my DD gave me compete with full body aches, chills and nausea. My fever finally broke in the wee hours of the night but still feeling kind of drained....Again I hate being sick!!! And of course it had to be when my MIL was out of town, DH and I was looking forward to having some time alone while she was gone but instead I have been sick :0( 

Occupational Hazzard, sort of

Last Thursday I cracked a rib, sort of, don't know for sure, didn't get an x-ray.
Anyways I was talking to a customer on the phone while I was sitting at my desk. I have an office chair that has adjustable arm rest and I turned around to look at my calander and my arm slid off the arm rest and my rib cage hit it with a harsh blow. Started feeling some pain right away but there was no bruising. Several days later still have some pain when I move, but can take deep breaths. I hate to go to the doctor so instead I went to web md instead (I know I shouldn't self diagnose but I have no fever, no bruising etc... so no infection, no internal bleeding) Just dull aching when I move a certain way. Web md says the only thing a doc would do anyway would inform the patient to take asprin or Ibprofin...advil has worked for me so far so I can continue to quilt, since it is on my left side and I am a right handed quilter. Good thing too because I am over booked for the next 2 weeks.

New Week, New Outlook

The first week of the year was gone, I was glad to see it go. Now a new week is here with a new outlook for me. 


I decided a healthy lifestyle is sure to fail if I fail to plan ahead. So changes have to be made so I can fit everything in in a day. I am sure I am not the first person that realised that 24 hours in 1 day is just not enough hours to get everything done and I am sure I won't be the last either. But if I want to succeed in my goals this year I need to prioritize my days. I decided to change my appointment schedule so I am able to exercise in the morning after I drop the twins off at school. I have found out that if I don't get my workouts done in the morning before my shower chances are I won't get it in that day. This was becoming to be a challenge because I had been starting my customer appointments at 10 am, this does not give me enough time to work out for an hour. So I am pushing my appointments back later in the day to fit my schedule better. 


This way I will be able to workout after the kids go to school and before I have customer pick ups/drop offs and since I don't actually start quilting until 2 pm it just makes sense. 


I am also going to try to make sure that I keep my weekends for family this year, it's no fun working the weekends while my family is having fun without me. Balance has gotta be key this year. Juggling a business, family and a healthy lifestyle won't be easy but it will be well worth it in the long run if I can pull it off.


Today I restarted my diet (my healthy lifestyle) I want to loose 12 lbs in 12 weeks. I started off the day by burning 684 cals in 1 hour on my recumbant bike and I am pleased to announce that I stayed on my meal plan all day! 1 day done, 83 days to go for goal.


   

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back To Work I Go

I finished my first customer quilt of the year today, I loaded it yesterday but didn't actually get it finished until today. Why is it that after a holiday or vacation it is always hard to get back into a groove? It didn't help either that the kids don't have to go back to school until Wednesday. Every time I went to quilt, a pair of eyes where starring down at me from the stairs waiting until I finished a row to ask me a question, usually resulting in me having to defuse an arguement or to fix a problem they were having. During the summer months they aren't like this but I guess they are starting to get antsy and are looking to get back to their routine (I know I am!!) :0)


Anyways for some reason I was lucky enough that no customers wanted appointments Monday or Tuesday of this week it has given me a chance to ease back into my work schedule. Wednesday however is another story, I have appointments scheduled all day from 10 am-2 pm then I need to get at least 1 customer quilt done hopefully 2 before I call it a day.


I started back to healthy eating and exercising on Monday after a not so healthy December. I lost 6 lbs by Thanksgiving then the holiday goodies derailed me for the month of December. But surprising enough I only gained back 1 1/2 lbs during that time, and that was with bad eating and no exercising! So Monday I started exercising again, I want to loose another 10 lbs (a total of 15 lbs from when I originally started before Thanksgiving). I am going to just start off the year with cardio for now then maybe in a few weeks I will add some weight lifting to my plan. When the twins were babies I started lifting weights to get back in shape, it worked really well and I discovered I liked seeing definition in my biceps, I even was even starting to see faint lines of my ab muscles too, that's how much I was into the whole weight lifting/ cardio thing. Chris even got into it for awhile as well. Then 9/11 happened and well, we went into mourning with the rest of the country and some how bad eating and lack of exercise became the norm. 


So why did I decide to get back to a healthier lifstyle you might be asking yourself? Well because my clothes were shrinking, lol! and with the ecconomy as bad as it is, who has the $$$ to go out and buy new LARGER sizes of clothes. I would much rather keep my current clothes and add new items here and there to expand the wardrobe not my waistline. Plus since my Hysterectomy last spring, bad eating brings on more hot flashes. Plus I read somewhere that weightlifting promotes stronger bones and since "mentalpause" (as we call it here in our house) weakens bones/osteoperosis (family history with this) I figured I need to be on the offense instead of being on the defense later. 


My goal is to get to my desired weight goal by the end of March, not difficult to achieve if I stick to it. And then to maintain my weight while I continue to lift weights and do cardio to lower my body fat % some for the summer. since we have a pool (most people do in AZ) we tend to be in it on a daily basis come summer so must look good in that bathing suit.


Oh and I decided to stop coloring my hair and let it go back to it's natural color (which is dark brown) but now it has more grey in it. I am courious to see what I look like with the silvery highlights. Should be interresting. I also ditched the bangs.     

When Did This Happen? The Middle Age Denial

I was that girl that was able to eat anything she wanted and never gained an ounce. Even through my child bearing years I got back down to my prepregnancy weight within 6 weeks of given birth without even trying. After the twins were born in 2000 I decided that I probably should start working out to tone up (having twins in your mid 30's wasn't like having a single baby in your 20's). So I started a program called BFL (Body For Life) it is  a diet exercise program that combines cardio, weight training with healthy eating in 12 week challenges to reach your goals. After 12 weeks I wanted to kick it up a notch so I switched to a program called Leanness Lifestyles, a more detailed approach than the BFL program. When I was on it I got some good results, I had nice lean muscle definition especially in my biceps and I was even starting to see my 6-pack abs emerge. I felt good, and I looked good. But as life got busier chasing after the twins as they got older, I had less and less time to workout and eventually stopped exercising and eating healthy. Eventually I stopped altogether, I made excuses for not exercising and tried to convince myself that as long as I was able to still get into my same size clothes that everything was fine. But then I noticed that the scale was adding a lb here, a lb there all the while I was trying to convince myself, no big deal I could loose those few extra lbs just like before without much effort. But soon the 1 lb here and there reached 20lbs above my old base weight (base weight= the weight your body gravitates to on a regular basis). What was a real eye opener though and what has motivated me to do something about it was about 2 weeks ago I decided to try on some of my dress clothes (I don't where these much since I work at home as a professional longarmer) so it has been awhile since I needed to wear them. But since the holidays are comming up I wanted to decide what I was going to wear. I could not deny the fact that my clothes were very tight and did not look good on me. Then I took a real good look at what my body now looked like...."When did this happen?" What happened to my body?" At that moment I decided this was it, I needed to make some changes. Going out and buying larger size clothing was NOT going to be an option. So I decided that I was going to loose 15 lbs by the end of the year with doing cardio and cutting out all junk food and keeping my calories to 1200 per day. This averages out to about 1 1/2 lbs per week. Not too hard to do as long as I can avoid stress eating. Once the new year hits I plan on adding weight lifting to my weekly routine, and then my fitness goals will change.


Anyways I have this computer software program (I had it for the past 8 years or so) It's called "Diet Power" http://www.dietpower.com/ it is a personal weight & nutritional coach program. Basically how it works is that you set a diet/goals where you set your start date, your current weight then your goal weight. Then every day you log in what you eat, your exercise etc... and it helps you stay on track. It is easy to use and I find it that it helps me be more accountable than without it.


I started out doing 90 mins of cardio daily but I have cut that back to 60 mins instead. The hardest part is trying to fit it in during the day. On the days I am meeting with customers I don't get to exercise until later in the day, I prefer to exercise in the morning but since I am not an early riser this is not always possible. So I try to make do with fitting everything I need to do in a 24 hour time frame.


I will give regular updates on my progress, so far I have lost 4 lbs in 2 weeks.