Making the Effort

I'm in almost constant pain lately with my knees. The left, with the torn medial meniscus, is worse, but both are painful. Each step is accompanied by pain. When I turn over in bed at night and rest one knee on the other, I usually am awakened by the pain. I walk slowly at all times, carefully placing each foot, hunching my shoulders to try to brace for the pain. I'm counting the days until I travel to Cleveland to consult an orthopedic specialist at the Cleveland Clinic.

During our 4th of July week at Lake Erie, my time bobbing around in the cool water was pain-free, leading me to believe that a little water exercise would not be a bad thing. At a party a week ago, several friends suggested I try out the water classes at the JCC.

After one more nudge from a chorus friend last night at rehearsal, I got my butt out of bed this morning, pulled on my swimsuit, and got myself to the 8:45 "Twinges in the Hinges" class.

After 45 minutes of bending and stretching and burning calories and reveling in bending my knee without pain, I'm feeling pretty good. And pretty proud of myself.

But you know who I'm feeling ever prouder of (if one can feel proud of people one doesn't even know)? The several morbidly obese individuals I saw at the gym who were making the effort.

I don't like my weight. I've been working on it and am proud that I'm now at the lowest point I've been in three years. But when friends look at me, they say, "You don't need to lose any weight."

I can move okay. Yes, I'm in pain, but I don't need a walker or a cane. I just need to move my butt.

But these people I observed today? What effort to even get out of bed or out of the chair. What effort to get in a car to get to the gym. What effort to get into a swimsuit. What effort to get to the pool, and into the water.

I am awestruck by the willpower of these people to make this effort—all this effort.

My BMI is now at 25.5. With the loss of four more pounds (I can do that!), I'll be at the normal weight range, out of the overweight category. I will feel like I've done a tremendous favor for my knees.

It's a big deal to me. It's nothing like the big deal of several of my classmates this morning, but I'm proud of me. And I'm proud of them.

May we all keep up the effort!

Slow and Steady

The year I turned 59, my body went to hell. In about six weeks, I gained 15 pounds, and it was all in my midsection. You've heard body types being described as apples or pears? After a life of being a pear, I suddenly morphed into an apple. My clothes didn't fit. I hated what I saw in the mirror when I turned sideways. I was mortified.

No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to increase exercise and decrease food intake, nothing changed. The scale display sat on 175 each morning. True, I'm 5'8", so 175 isn't a terrible thing. But when I examined BMI charts, I was in the "overweight" category. I had never been anything approaching overweight.

When I was in high school, people would tell me that when I turned sideways, I disappeared. That high school image is what we maintain of ourselves, right? How could this have happened?

The very worst was looking at this new body when trying to buy clothes. I'm sorry, but with a hormone-induced post-menopausal bulging belly, Spanx can only do so much. And it's not enough! I put on my black elastic-waist skirt and my white shirt to sing at Blossom and looked in the mirror as I walked out of the dressing room. Who-who-who was that very round older woman? Certainly not me!!!!!

After watching the scale go back and forth between 174 and 179 for several years—and during the same period suffering several knee injuries that impeded efforts to take more walks—I slowly started changing.

The Jazzman needed to take in more fiber to fight his diverticulosis. The Jazzman was told by his doctor that he needed to cut down his sugar to avoid adult-onset diabetes. The Jazzman decided to take more salads for his lunches. And since I'm the designated kitchen staff, I just started doing those things along with him. Then I heard Dr. Oz talk about green coffee pills. It may be a bunch of hooey, but there were guests on the show who had real and actual weight loss results, so buying one bottle of the pills couldn't hurt that much, could it?

Slow and steady, ounce upon ounce, day by day, five trips up and down the stairs each day. This morning I got on the scale and it said 169. One Hundred Sixty-Nine Pounds!!!!

Now to you skinny minnies and petite pollies and sweet young non-hormone-affected things, that may not seem like a big deal. But for me, who has wanted to cry for THREE YEARS each time I looked at the scale and it read 17x, 169 is One Great Big Deal!

And so I will keep putting one foot in front of the other. I go to Cleveland Clinic in three weeks to get a second opinion on my knees. Less weight means less stress on my aching knees, means greater ability to walk without pain, means easier access to exercise, means greater ability to lose weight.

At even one pound per month, by next summer I will be able to look at myself sideways in the black skirt and white blouse and not shudder.

And once I reach the "Normal weight" category on the BMI calculator, you can bet I'm going to feel like a winner. Hell, I might even spring the $70 for a new CleveOrchChorus dress that will actually fit me!

(And an enormous salute to PianoLady and to my daughter-in-law, both of whom have lost a Whole Lotta Weight this year. You inspire me.)

Doing What One Needs to Do

May I make a confession? I hate exercise. I have never enjoyed exercise, ever in my entire life. In Pathfinders (the Adventist equivalent of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts), I ran the 100 yard dash and did the high jump and broad jump and got lots of blue ribbons for swimming competitions. And I like to walk. But to tie on a pair of track shoes and actually walk out the door? That doesn't happen easily.

The Jazzman and I joined the JCC about six weeks ago. I've been averaging once a week for hitting the treadmill. Not so good for the amount of money the membership cost. I kept looking at the class schedule, and decided to try a cardio class. I'm 61, after all. I don't have the lung capacity I used to have, which is a bit of a challenge when singing. So I went to Cardio Low a week ago. And I lived through it.

So I went again on Friday, and a friend of mine showed up for the class. And the people in the class are all so friendly and helpful and encouraging to me. And the teacher is friendly and nice. And I was proud of myself for making it through the class.

So I went Monday. And I went Wednesday, even with a headache.

I think I can do this.

You know what one of my motivating factors is? The thought that by the time I hit 62 I might not have wings hanging down from my upper arms.

That's a noble goal, dontcha think?

There Is No Catching Up

I'm feeling like a slacker for not posting on a regular basis any more. I used to be able to sneak in a quick post at the office, and just hope that no one with any power over my employment would notice. But now I work for my son, and I constantly feel I'm not doing enough. Of course, most mothers think they're not good-enough mothers, so I guess my attitude at my new job is simply a follow-on to my attitude as a mother.

A couple of notables events: my cousin, Cindy, visited Mother at the nursing home last Saturday, cell phone at the ready, so I was able to speak to Mother for a few minutes. By all accounts, she's anxious to get back to her beautiful apartment at Fletcher Park Inn. The more she hangs on to that desire, the harder she'll work in physical therapy. At least that's our hope. My oldest brother is supposed to go to NC this coming weekend, and we're hopeful he can move Mother back to her apartment.

Little Miss Ridley turned 7 on the 29th of May, and her talented mother threw a fab Beatles Rock Band birthday party for her on Sunday. I don't believe I've ever seen a 7-year-old with as much self-confidence as Ridley possesses. She was in her element, surrounded by friends and the star of the day. And what a hoot to hear all these elementary school children singing 50-year-old songs perfectly. I never knew all the words to the Beatles' songs, choosing rather to sing what I thought the words were. ("Lucy in disguise with diamonds.") The babes will take their first solo plane ride on Thursday, off to visit the Colorado set of grandparents. Their daddy and their uncle had taken many solo plane rides by the time they were 7 and 9, so Boston and Ridley are just following in well-worn footsteps.

I have good days and bad days at the new job. The bad days are when I can't figure out a piece of software or a quick way to make things work correctly—when I feel stupid; when I feel my 60-year-old brain just doesn't work like it did ten or twenty years ago. The good days are when I learn something new—when I master a technique or figure out a cool way to do something. I love those days, and I cling to the hope that they will become more frequent and the bad days will wither away.

The Jazzman and I snatched a little piece of time yesterday to visit the Y and the J to check out their gym plans. He is being enormously supportive of my doctor's directive to get my ass in gear. We're leaning toward the J, which is more reasonably priced, has better parking, and is just two blocks away from my house. We've taken morning walks twice this week on the neighborhood sidewalks. The first day I tripped on an uneven square of sidewalk and dropped my knee to the concrete with a thwack! Clearly I need level surfaces on which to walk.

And I'll close with the note the newly-60 PianoLady sent me. She was quoting one of her son's best friends. He had just returned home from his first year of college, after a year of institutional food. He shook his newfound protruding belly and said, "Don't tell me to get in shape. Round is a shape!"

You're now as caught up on my life as you're going to get!

Shake a Leg!

I told you last week about my conversation with my doctor regarding my recent decreased lung function. I told her my plan was to walk every day on my way to "the office." However, the weather had been cold and wet and, generally, unenticing. I walked around the block one day when I got home from doing the banking for my boss. My block is only ten minutes around, so I need to make it two blocks or more. But regardless, I haven't done it. My butt is not off the chair. I am not exercising.

I've decided to learn enough golf to be able to play a few rounds when the Jazzman and I go to the lake for the week of July 4th. We were going to go to the Par 3 course at Mill Creek Metroparks on Sunday morning, but we ended up working on the house instead. So when he said he had a 2:30 tee time with his golf buddies, I suddenly decided I was going to go walk along with them.

When we arrived at the Mill Creek course, all the wives had come along, so I paired up with the wives and walked the three-mile course. I watched everything they were doing—each stance, each swing—and felt I would be welcomed by this group, no matter how poorly I played. (I've always heard that in golf you're only playing against yourself, anyway.)

Now, when I say I walked the three-mile course, please be mindful that it was not constant, steady, fast-paced walking. It was walk to the first tee, wait for the two young guys ahead of us to clear the green, then hit-chase-hit-chase the ball until we got to the green, then walk to the next tee and repeat. It was a lot of standing, some walking, and two sit-downs on available benches.

I'm not complaining; let's be clear about that! I'm just saying it wasn't exactly aerobic activity. But activity it was. When I woke up on Monday morning, I could hardly get my body out of the bed. Every muscle and tendon—and, yes, even my bones—hurt. Ached. Burned. If ever there was an indicator that I'm out of shape physically, my sensations on Monday morning were the clear indicator.

Must. Get. Exercise.

But, oh, what a gorgeous day it was in the Mahoning Valley on Sunday afternoon. Blue skies, puffy clouds, around 72 degrees.

It was the kind of day that makes up for all the gray, rainy, cold, snowy, foggy, cloudy days that seem to be in abundance in this part of the world.

Until I master what to do with clubs and little white balls, I'm perfectly happy walking a round or two with my friends.

Effing Exercise

You know the people in my family love a good alliteration. Effing Exercise may not be the most creative alliteration you've seen on this site, but it completely describes the prescription my doctor gave me yesterday.

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If you live in Mahoning or Trumbull county and you're looking for a good internist/family doctor, I wholeheartedly recommend Dr. Angela Roberts, who has recently joined the practice of Dr. Paul Rich, 5170 Belmont Avenue, 330.759.2511‎. Dr. Roberts is smart, compassionate and practical. She doesn't laugh at my crazy ideas and she makes me glad I made the call to her office. And she's accepting new patients. (She's a YSU grad. Oh, and a musician. We speak the same language.)
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When I took the g'babes to North Carolina for New Year's week to visit their great-grandmother, Ridley gave me her cold. It took me six weeks or so to get over that cold, and I still, five months later, have a nasty bronchial cough that just hangs on. Sometime in late winter or early spring, I began feeling a weight in my chest. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, I could hear a rattling or wheezing when I breathed out. When I was in rehearsals or performances with the COChorus, I would sometimes run out of breath far earlier than in years past. Or when I went to grab a breath before a long phrase, I would fight the urge to cough.

I've always considered myself fairly healthy, except for my chronic headaches. So these lung symptoms didn't give me a warm feeling. Of course, my imagination was taking me to lung cancer or esophageal cancer. Whatever the worst case scenario was, that's where I was going with this weight on my chest.

Now that I'm not driving to Akron every day (yea!), I felt free to take the time to get the problem looked at. This morning I spent two hours with Dr. Roberts. She ran an EKG and took a chest x-ray. These were all good. My lungs were clear and my heart was great. Then she ordered a spirometry, a test normally given to determine if a patient has asthma.

I had to take a deep breath, then exhale quickly and fully through a tube that measured the exhalation. This was done three times, then I was treated with a medication to open the tubes. After sitting for ten minutes with my NYTimes crossword, I had to do the exhalation again.

Dr. Roberts came back into the examining room and said, "The good news is, you don't have asthma." I had no problem with my lungs.

"However," she continued, "the bad news is . . .

"your lungs are 69 years old."

Wait. I'm 59. In five weeks and five days I'll be 60. I'm often told I look much younger than my age. When the g'babes were little, people were surprised to hear I was their grandmother. So "your lungs are 69 years old"??!!!

Dr. Roberts looked into my eyes and said, "Jan, you're out of shape."

Well, sheeit. For the past two years and two months, I've spent two hours a day driving to and from Akron, eight hours a day in a job where I felt, oh, never mind, and an hour a day running errands at lunch. Running errands, not walking around the block. And now I'm paying for it.

My lungs are 69 years old.

We all want to exercise, right? We all want to be in good physical shape. Now my doctor has told me I must get into physical shape.

She said, "Don't start fast. Start slowly. Walk, don't run."

I nodded.

She asked, "Do you have a plan?"

"Yes," I responded. "Now that I'm working from home, I will walk around the block before starting work." She nodded.

She wants to see me again in three weeks.

I've got to get off my ass.

Aging sucks!