Stagnant

TL;DR?  See the bolded parts.  But you'll miss a lot of the awesome.  Just sayin'.

This year has not gone according to plan in the least.  It's been so strange!  If you know me, you know how freakishly OCD, scheduling, planning, psycho-organized I am.  I mean, I have a marker board calendar, a large paper schedule, a small paper schedule and a digital planner - and I use all four of them regularly.  I wasn't kidding on the psycho-organized.  So it's not like me to let things get out of hand. 

But they have.  Everyone in the world I'm sure knows about my health issues.  I post about them like I'm Instagramming sushi.  Or coffee.  Or whatever hipsters post about these days. But in case you haven't seen my statuses of hypochondria, here's a quick summary.

In August I got a corneal ulcer from a scratch in my eye that developed into autoimmune scleritis.  I spent late August through mid-November in constant pain and only able to see blurry objects at best.  I couldn't drive. I couldn't work out.  I couldn't hardly read a text message.  I increased my monitors to 150% because at least it gave me something to do.  Also, I'm addicted to the computer.  Would that make me a Hardcore Facebooker?  Nah, it just means I have no life.

By mid-November, I finally had it solved but began having severe stomach pain.  Like, really severe.  On the floor, writhing, screaming, crying, thinking of an ER run severe.  For eight hours.  It happened about once a week until late January when I decided to see someone about it.  I was sent to a GI specialist where I was evaluated.  They thought it was gallbladder inflammation or gallstones.  One ultrasound and some blood work later and that was ruled out.  

So what was it then?  An ulcer?  Hernia? Colon cancer?  My dad had colon cancer back in 2008.  Did I have the body of a fifty-year-old man?  I then had a colonoscopy and EGD, by the same GI specialist that worked on my dad no less.  By the way.  Worst. Prep. Ever.  Can't they make colyte any better tasting?  It's kind of like if you take fruit loops and a ton of salt, and mix it with melted plastic.  Now drink 64 ounces of all of that in less than two hours.  Then, do it again twelve hours later.  It's about as fun as it sounds.

I digress.

During the EGD, they saw that my stomach villi was inflamed and blunted.  I looked like a speckled Easter egg, which means it was pretty severe.  While I was waiting for my results from that test, I was sent for a barium swallow to rule out Crohn's.  The barium stuff tasted horrible - I nearly gagged it back up on the nurse, who was clearly mortified at the concept of a pudgy twenty-something spewing berry-flavored sperm shake on her smock.  On the bright side, it was way easier than the colyte because I only had to drink 16 ounces of it.

The barium swallow returned clean.

All of this took from mid-January all the way until mid-April.  That's forever for someone as neurotic as me.  I always want answers right now so I can figure out what to do next.  Instead, I was in an eternal state of hurry-up-and-wait.  It was annoying at very least, and sobbing-on-the-floor, contemplating-my-own-mortality inducing at the worst.  So much for being spiritually well-adjusted, in tune with the universe and all that fine jazz I always hope to accomplish from being a pagan.  Chronic illness will do that to you.

On the 29th, I had my final GI consultation.  My official diagnosis?  Celiac Disease and IBS.  Because, you know, one stomach issue just isn't enough. Sad thing is that it took me this long to get here and I still don't feel fully healed.  Frankly, I feel pretty darn awful.  While I had scleritis, I couldn't see to move around, much less exercise.  My husband had to make all the food and, to alleviate the stress my illnesses were causing (both mental and financial), I moved away from the diet.  By December 2012, I had gained almost 15 pounds.  Then came the stomach issues.  The entire time I was being tested, I was asked to eat large amounts of gluten.  And, admittedly, I stress ate a bit too.  I mean, who wouldn't want a Swiss Roll to fill the void of their potential gravestone marker looming in the future?

When they weighed me in on Tuesday, I weighed 183 lbs.  I'd gained another 15 lbs.

It's not like I hadn't known that I was gaining.  In January, I signed up for the same exercise class that started me on my weight loss journey last year.  It was supposed to start April 1st.  I guess it was a giant April Fools joke because I got a phone call on March 31st telling me it had been cancelled.  Only three people total had signed up in my district.

Either I have a small district or that class had degraded severely since I last attended.  Or both.

Frustrated, I sent out a message to my friends: Did anyone want to start exercising together?  One of my good friends responded and we decided to walk every Monday and Wednesday at a local park.  But she too suffers from autoimmune issues (seriously, common as an STD) and cancelled the first week.  On the following Monday, it snowed.  Yes, snowed.  Because Mother Nature is a bipolar bitch.  On that Wednesday, I was dealing with nausea and stomach pain and had to cancel.

The first time we walked was two weeks after the start date.  The following Wednesday, she was too chaffed to walk.  The following Monday, my mom's car broke down and I had to rescue her.  And yesterday?  It rained, sleeted and was between 40 and 50F all day.  Nope.

I can't lie that all the cancellations between the two of us has been discouraging.  We both have said that it seems the universe is against us when it comes to losing the weight.  Personally, I like to see the universe as a sadistic woman on her period who likes to toy with me in her free time for her own personal amusement.  That being said, we would move it to a mall, but both of the local malls are closed.  There's not a lot of indoor places we can walk that we both have access too.  It's a huge pain!

Because of the constant cancellations, my husband and I got a pass to attend a local community center.  I'm not a giant fan of gyms or walking by myself, but I do like to get social and take classes.  They offer some complimentary classes.  Most are way out of my league in terms of my current physical abilities, but their Tuesday class seemed promising for those just starting out.

On Tuesday, my husband said he wanted to come with.  By 4:15, he bailed and I had to strike out on my own.  It made me late and, because the class is only 30 minutes long, they wouldn't let me in.  And, honestly, I still had my keys in hand so I would have needed to grab a locker.  I also wanted to talk to the instructor before I started.  There were so many factors as to why I couldn't get in to that class.  So I just left.

I sat in my car and cried.  I beat the crap out of my steering wheel - I probably burned a good 50 calories just doing that.  The weather was in a terrible shape so I couldn't just run around the building.  I couldn't get over my humiliation enough to go back in and try to walk the track.  So I drove home in rush hour traffic, curled up in bed and listened to Lea Michele belt Get It Right like a child throwing a tantrum.

Once I got over my momentary brush with immaturity, I posted a lengthy help request to Facebook.  Everyone was fantastic, but I still haven't found the advice or help I guess I'm looking for.  I have no idea what I even want to hear.  I don't honestly know what will help me.  I feel completely, rock-bottom, end-of-my-rope discouraged.  I'd like to imagine that, if I were a Disney Princess, this would be the moment of the story right before I have a huge victory, succeed in all of my wishes, goals, dreams and hopes, and become the hero of China or the leader of my people or the girl with Stockholm Syndrome who's into bestiality... er, scratch that last one.

Telling me to just get up and do it, while absolutely correct, isn't working on getting me motivated.  Telling me to track my calories, take small steps and not watch my poundage but find another measurable number to follow also doesn't help because it isn't anything I don't already know.  They're factual, but they don't motivate me.  Telling me to take classes isn't helping because I've tried.  I've tried so many times this year and it failed every time.  Some people even told me to just love myself the way I am - that, if I wasn't motivated to lose the weight, then I didn't really want to lose it so I should become comfortable with it.  But I can't be.  I wasn't a bigger gal in high school or early college.  My conditions - Multiple Autoimmune Syndrome encompassing hypothyroidism, psoriasis, scleritis and Celiac Disease, coupled with IBS and anxiety - put me there.  I'm not saying that I'm not partially to blame too; I love me some Swiss Rolls.  But I don't think my occasional love affair with sweet cream wrapped inside chocolate-y goodness is necessarily the reason I've gained over 30 pounds in nine months.  As a perfectionist, being that far overweight is just being complacent to me.  I can't give up.  But I can't figure out how to start.

I feel like my life was a gorgeous, perfect, neatly-combed fishtail braid in August.  Scleritis removed the hair tie and Celiac Disease coupled with IBS and anxiety hastily ran a comb through it.  Now it's a wavy, frizzy mess and I can't figure out which hair product to use to control the destruction.  Every time I try to start braiding it again, it just falls apart because it's too damaged to do anything else.

Man, that's the girliest yet truest thing I've probably ever said.

I need a plan, a way of approaching things that's different than the last time.  I need someone that's in it with me; I've never had that even last year.  I don't want to do this alone and I don't want it to feel like last year on repeat for one reason: I know it's not only going to be as hard as losing 43 lbs is just normally, but it's going to be even harder because I don't feel well 90% of the time.

I'm not going to quit because I'm a stubborn, cold cunt with a strong resting bitch face sculpted from years of not quitting.  If I had ever quit anything in my life, I would have never moved up a grade to get out of a terrible middle school despite administration's warnings; I would have never changed high schools to get out of a high school that was going to be terrible for me; I would have never changed science classes (and, in effect, never met Aaron).  I would have never went to college, stayed in college, changed schools to find a program that I liked, fought financial aid to cover my classes when they made errors after graduation, resigned from my job with Kaman's to freelance full time, gotten married at the age I wanted to, moved in with my high school sweetheart, gotten four pets (let alone cats), been a pagan, or any other of the things that make my life what it is.  I have spent my whole life fighting tooth and nail for everything that I am and I'm sure as hell not going to go down with this ship.

I just can't find the damn life jacket.