The Dog, The Cat and My Heart

Our dog, Daisy, fell getting into the mini van the other day. She's getting a little crippled up and was really excited to go for a car ride. Jay had run her (take her out and throw her Frizbees for her) and he runs her pretty hard. Anyway, when she tried the second time to get in while I was trying to quickly get the back door open for her to make life easier, she fell again and whined a little because she clearly hurt her right rear leg. She wouldn't stand on it at all. Jay lifted her in to the car and she immediately calmed down and seemed to be better. I figured I'd be making an emergency vet run on the way home at first, though. Anyway, we took Jay to work and by the time we were on our way home, she was moving her leg pretty well. When we got home, I tried to lift her out (she's a 58 pounder) and couldn't really get a good grip on her, so she gingerly jumped out without incident. She was pretty crippled up, so I gave her half an aspirin in some cheese to help ease her pain and then I didn't run her for 2 days so she could give the leg time to heal. Monday, I went to work and put her in her crate, as usual. I'm gone about 6 hours a day, but she does fine with a Kong ball with treats and peanut butter in it and some chew bones. However, when I opened the front door Monday afternoon, I was hit but a wickedly disgusting smell - she'd had the runs in her crate. Yuck!!! I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning that all up - washing the blanket 3 times and scrubbing the flooring with antibacterial soap, water and a brush. Then I sprayed the whole house with Febreeze, partly to get the smell out of my brain. It was a warmer day, so I had the windows open, thankfully. Anyway, when I brought her back in from the back yard and we got ready to head out for her run, she puked a little. Ah, yes, it was a lovely day.......NOT!!! That reeked like poop, so she had clearly eaten some when in her crate, likely trying to clean it up. Thankfully, that was on the hardwood entryway and was an easy clean up with antibacterial soap and water. We went for the run and I figured if she had anything else in her, she'd get rid of it while we were outside. But NNNOOOO! She had a little (LOT) more for me. We got inside, she took a small drink of water and then puked A LOT on the CARPET!!!! Same retched stench, too. I then spent another 45 minutes scrubbing carpet. I had to go pick up Rachel from school and when I got back and sat in my rocker which was near the puke spot, I thought I smelled just the faintest stink to it. So, back at it with another 30 minutes of scrubbing. Finally, I could smell nothing but the soap perfume. I spread baking soda on it overnight, vacuumed it in the morning and sprayed it with Febreeze, just to be sure. Ummmm, it appears our carpet was once lighter than it is now...ahem. But it doesn't smell anymore!!

Now for the cat story: Yesterday, I ate some beef jerky. I like that once in a while. So does our cat, Lacey. She begs and climbs on me like some lunatic. I don't eat the stuff much because of that, but when I do, I give her just a tiny bit torn into little pieces. But yesterday, she decided it wasn't going to sit right with her and puked it up. Twice. I was like, "Okay, already! Enough!" Sometimes, I really wonder why, why, why we ever agreed to have pets.

As for the heart issue....I had to see the Dr. today for a follow up on my blood pressure. She does this periodically when it's time to renew my prescription. Well, it was up higher than it's been in some time (okay, like BEFORE I took high blood pressure medication). Occasionally when I go in, it will be up if a lot of stressful stuff is going on; but on follow-up, it's back to normal. This time, it was higher and she decided to put me on an additional med for it to try to bring that down. It's a better blood pressure med choice for me because of the diabetes, though. Then she asked THE question: Had I had any shortness of breath, chest pain, ect. I thought what I experienced was from my back issues. Okay, I wanted to believe it was from my back issues even though I knew it was different from that pain. So I admitted I was having that occasionally when under a lot of stress. She wanted to do a quick EKG and, dang it, found an anomaly. She said, "Don't worry, it's not a big deal at this point and you aren't going to have a heart attack right now, but it needs to be looked at more closely." I have to have a stress test now and to be honest, I'm a little scared. My parents both started having heart problems in their early 50's. Well, they were diagnosed then. My mom was on heart meds by 52 and my dad had a heart attack and subsequent pacemaker by 54.

Here's my rant - I am sick of having health issues and although I KNOW they are ALL related to the fact that I am fat, I feel like such a failure at changing that. I have so much foot pain after a day at work that I don't have it in me to work out when I get home at night. I already get up at 4:35 on weekdays to get to work in time and I really, really can't see getting up at 3 a.m. to exercise. Yes, once school is out, I can immediately get focused and start a workout routine again, but MAN, I am ticked off that I was doing so great with WW and Curves before I had to take on working more and now things are getting worse for me physically. I'm really MAD! And....yes, resentful. And I know that's not fair, but I am. Dang it!

So, what will I do? I will start eating a little more carefully. I will start logging my food on my journal on the WW site that I pay $12.95 a month to have access to. I will plan to start working out the day after the last day of school when I know my feet can take it. And I will pray a whole lot that I can finally, finally, finally do something about my weight without allowing ANYTHING or ANYONE to interfer with my progress - Especially when I am actually making great progress. Because that ALWAYS seems to be the case. Just as I'm making noticable physical changes in myself, something happens that causes me to have to quit WW or Curves or some other program I've started. And I just CAN'T let that be anymore.

I know, I've said ALL of this before. I know. I wish I had the money for gastric bypass, because I tell you, I'd do it at this point. I'm scared I'm going to die if something doesn't change. I have a little girl to raise and there is NO ONE who can raise her as well as I can. She needs me (as much as I need her) and if I can't do this for myself, then I MUST do this for her. Pray for me......