Got 11 minutes in tonite
That’s two and a half more minutes than last night. I don’t want to push my walking too hard. The docs claim that my long walks had nothing to do with blowing my testicles out, but I’m not convinced. After all, the ER doc, and the urologist I saw a week later each gave me a radically different diagnosis. One said it was varicocele, and the other said it was an infection. So I’m being cautious, and I’m going to build my distance back up gradually. Of course, I couldn’t do 80 minutes walks right now if I wanted to, because I haven’t walked in over a month. But I could probably do 20 or 30. But there’s no rush. I figure I’ll take my time, add a minute or two every night, or every couple nights, and by the time I need to get my winter walking shoes out of the closet, I’ll be back up to 90-120 minutes a night, just like back in the old days in Tennessee.
Winter Walking Shoes: I think I can pack mine up for the year
Yeah, I think I can pack my winter walking shoes up for a while…just joking, of course. In Southeast Texas, there usually isn’t much of a winter from what I understand, and this year there wasn’t one at all. I know because I was here. And now it’s hitting the 80s every day, and it’s the first week of April.
Good news on the testicle front. My pain continues to decline overall. It still spikes, but the baseline is getting lower. So that’s good, and I hope it continues. Due to my discombobulated testicles, it’s been about a month since I’ve walked. I really, really want to start walking again, but I need to take it very easy for a while. So tonight I walked around the block. It took eight and a half minutes. It used to take about seven minutes. But that’s OK. It’s a start, and I’m glad I can manage that.
My testicles are on the upswing!
Today is the closest I’ve come to feeling normal “down there” in about three weeks. Maybe the powerful antibiotics I’m taking are starting to have an effect. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still not back to normal, but today is the first time in weeks I was actually able to believe that I will ever again be normal and pain free down there. It felt so good that I was tempted to go out and take a 15 minute walk, but I didn’t. Although the urologist says that my nightly 70 minute walks I was taking for the couple of weeks before this incident had nothing to do with causing it, I’m not 100% convinced that he’s right about that. So I want to wait until I’ve had several days when I feel normal again, and then I’ll get back out on the pavement, and I’ll build my time back up slowly. For now, today’s improvement is wonderful (although I still have a ways to go), and I don’t want to do anything to sabotage that.
Keep your testicles crossed!
My testicles are kind of in limbo
Which means my walking program is kind of in limbo. Actually, it’s on complete hiatus until this problem goes away. I went to the urologist Friday, and I got some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that he said my ultrasound looks fine, I don’t have a varicose vein in my scrotum, and he doesn’t have any idea what the emergency room docs were talking about. The upshot is that I don’t need surgery. It seems like a radical disagreement between medical professionals, but since ER docs are usually newly minted MDs, with very little experience, who are running around the hospital like chickens with their heads cut off, and acting as jacks of all trades, I think I’ll take the word of the person who’s been doing nothing but urology for the past 37 years.
So that was the good news; I don’t have a varicocele and I don’t need surgery. The bad news is that I still have the problem. He believes I have epididymitis, an infection, and he prescribed two weeks of a powerful antibiotic. And then I’m to go back on April 20th for a check up.
In the meantime, until the pain and swelling are gone, I can’t do much of anything. My apartment is a complete mess; all I can do without experiencing pain is lay in my recliner or on my bed, so I’m not cleaning house at all.
However, the pain and swelling have gone down somewhat. I was able to walk to the washer and dryer in my garage yesterday and do a load of laundry. And, while things aren’t any better today, they’re no worse than yesterday, which means I’m in less pain than I’ve normally had over these past two weeks. Maybe the drugs are working…I sure hope so.
Anyway, once I’m back to normal, I intend to start walking again.
Keep your testicles crossed!
My urologist appointment is Friday
Going in to talk about surgery on my testicles. I’m hoping I can get this problem taken care of ASAP,and get back to walking. I was doing pretty good until I had a blowout in my scrotum. Walking became unbelievably painful. And I love walking, so I hope the doc can get me back to good as new. I’ll know more Friday.
One darned thing after another
One of these days, I will definitely be posting daily, or almost daily. Yes, I know I’ve been saying that, and now I’ve been gone for almost three weeks. Well, there are a couple reasons for that. My monitor went on the fritz, so I was unable to post for several days because of that. Then, after I got that taken care of, I was having trouble using my computer chair at home, due to some physical discomfort. I thought I’d pulled a groin muscle, and assumed I would be fine in a couple of days, so for the past week I would just come home and get in my easy chair to relieve the pain. Didn’t get on the computer at all.
But I didn’t get better. Made a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow (Monday), but things got worse this weekend (pain was worse, swollen testicles, and more…), so I finally dragged myself to the emergency room. They tell me I’ve got something called varicocele, which is like a varicose vein in the scrotum. The good news is that it’s quite common, and usually responds well to treatment. The bad news is that the treatment is surgery. Now I’ve got to make an appointment with a urologist to see about getting the surgery.
So it might be a while before I’m back to walking and blogging.
Today’s update
Not much to report on the weight loss blog front. I got 40 minutes of walking in tonight. I was tempted to blow it off when I got to the gym and discovered I didn’t have my earbuds for my mp3 player with me, as I don’t enjoy walking at the gym, with all the racket going on around me, without my paranormal radio podcast to drown it out. Walking outside is different; I prefer having my mp3 player, but I don’t really mind walking without it. But I hate walking at the gym without it. But I knew that if I went home, once I got there, the odds of me heading back to the gym were very slim. So I forced myself to get 40 minutes in. Then I blew it all by getting two half price Sonic burgers and large onion rings.
So…pretty schizo, obviously. My commitment to weight loss was not in full force today. Or last night.
I really gotta work on that. Or I’m gonna keel over in spite of walking most nights.
I’m also working on adding a picture to my blog, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to do it. Either the header, or the sidebar. But it’s over my pay grade.
So, all in all, I’m not really feeling real good about things.
But, I’ll be back at it tomorrow. And, one of these days, it will click, and it will click for good. Just like it finally did with smoking, after several attempts to quit every year, for several years in a row. I failed and failed and failed. But I kept at it, and I finally succeeded. And somehow, some way, I’ll succeed at this, too.
Back from Burleson
Babe’s Chicken is just as good as everyone says it is. We got there about 5 PM; when we left an hour later the line out the front door was already 20-25 people long. They tell me it can get to over 100 some nights. Didn’t make it to Chipotle, which I was hoping to do, as all we have here is Freebird’s. Freebird’s is pretty good, but can’t touch Chipotle. There’s a new chain called Bullritos which I tried the other day in Houston; it was awful, IMO. But I digress. My friends and I both love Chipotle, and we were planning on swinging up to Fort Worth or Arlington to visit one, but there’s a weekend construction project on I-35W just north of Burleson, and the back up was causing huge delays. So after our first trip, we decided Chipotle could wait til next time. But I had a great time at their house, playing pinball on their XBox or something. They’ve got a huge TV, and it was a blast playing, as I used to be addicted to real pinball. I could get used to this virtual game. Plus, I talked my buddy into stopping at an adopt-a-cat display at a pet store we passed, as I love cats, and he wound up buying a lovely female cat and taking it home. His wife and kids loved it; the other two cats are getting used to it. So all in all it was a great weekend (except for the $125 gas it took for the round trip), and I can’t wait to get back. But for now it’s back to losing weight. I will be heading for the gym right after work tomorrow.
Got one hour in tonight
One hour of walking, that is. Of course, it took me about an hour and 45 minutes to do it, but that’s okay. I did 36 laps at the gym, or 3.0 miles, in about 61 minutes. Not quite three miles an hour, but almost. And that’s pretty good for a guy who’s 50 and weighs over 350 pounds. Last night I got 30 minutes in, walking around my neighborhood. Ideally, I prefer to walk outside, but there are several reasons I decided to go back to the gym. For one thing, going to the gym is more of a commitment than just walking around my neighborhood. When I go to the gym, I actually have to drive to the gym, go inside, show my membership card, get a locker, and change clothes before I hit the walking path. No big deal, but once I’m there, I’m kind of committed to walking more than just a few minutes. On the other hand, when I come right home after work, fully intending to go out and walk, it’s just too easy to tell myself that I’ll do it in 15 minutes or so, and before I know it, the night is gone, and I’ve never even gone near the door. It’s called inertia, and it’s a big problem. My huge gut at rest tends to remain at rest, all the good intentions in the world notwithstanding. Another reason is that I like precision. Again, it’s not a big deal, but I like to know exactly how much distance I covered. The gym has a walking track, and it’s a twelfth of a mile long, so I always know exactly where I stand when it comes to mileage. Also, mosquitoes are already bad here in South Texas, and even when I wear Off, I still get a few bites. There will be a lot more of them around in a few months, so it will be even worse. Along those same lines, pretty soon it will be too hot for a man my age and condition to be walking outside, so I really need to get used to going to the air conditioned gym. And finally, if I would happen to keel over with a heart attack, someone would notice right away, and since the gym is attached to the best hospital in the area, I’d pretty much have it made in the shade!
Planning on getting another hour in tomorrow. Friday, I’m going to Burleson (Fort Worth area) for the weekend to visit some friends I’ve only seen once in about 10 years, and I fully intend to go out to eat with them at some of our favorite places, like Chipotle, Babe’s Chicken, etc. I won’t go overboard, but I’m definitely going to indulge. Not sure if I’ll get any walking in; that depends on several factors, but I’m sure going to try. No matter what, though, I’ll be back here Monday, and back to the gym, and back to filling you in here at Weight Loss Blog X.
Today’s weight: 351.8
The Struggle Continues
As I said below, my weight loss blog got hacked last week. For several days, anyone trying to reach this website got diverted to a non-existent website in Russia. Apparently thousands of other websites experienced the same thing, at least according to my hosting provider, HostGator. So that’s why I haven’t blogged for a week; I spent several days trying to get that taken care of. And I let that override my plan to go walking every night. Which is sort of understandable, but not really. Yes, it was important to spend the time trying to get my site back up. But it was more important to keep my commitments and walk for 30-60 minutes every night, and to watch what I ate. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t walk at all last week, and I ate a lot of fast food to save time, in order to get my blog back up and running.So now I’m back at 355 pounds.
Yes, I can sure pack the pounds on fast when I let myself go. The most I’ve ever weighed is 357, and I hit that again a few days ago. But my digital scale actually flirted with 359 before it settled on 357, which is pretty scary. At this rate I’ll be 400 pounds before next year rolls around. And that simply can’t happen. I’ve got to get this under control, and do it now. Forget worrying about hitting 400 pounds; every day I continue living like this I’m at very high risk for a heart attack or a stroke. I’ve got to get it into my head that I’ve got to lose half my weight in the next couple of years, or I’m going to die. Which is constantly on my mind. Every night as I fall asleep I lay there in bed wondering if I’ll even wake up in the morning. I worry about having a heart attack while I’m driving, or at work. Of course, I could have a heart attack while I’m out walking, but if I do, at least it would have happened while I was fighting the good fight.
So I’m headed out for a walk right now. And while I’m walking, I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking about how to turn my walks into a do or die habit. Back when I smoked, I didn’t let anything keep me from my cigarettes; I need to have that same tenacity when it comes to doing the things that are good for me, like walking, and eating right. I need to find out why I keep getting off track, distracted from my health and fitness goals. I quit smoking after 25 years, and I would’ve sworn that was impossible. So if I can quit smoking, this should be doable, too. And it is. If I can quit smoking, I can do anything. I just need to figure out how to make it happen.
Today’s weight: 355.6