This morning is bad. Period. Really effing bad. Mainly because I’m in horrible pain in my legs, hips and lower back. Nauseated, and tired all over.
Normally this time of year, the warm days of summer, I get some sort of break from being so sick. Weather affects arthritis, no matter what the doctors say, and for me it’s the cold and damp of the Canadian winter. Now the opposite end of the scale cripples me, as today is very hot, humid with a thunderstorm rolling in. A change in barometric pressure felt in joints and bones.
The added burden of pain doesn’t help my mental state. Obviously. Today is one of those days. I am struggling to get anything done, which brings me down even further. The frustration I feel feeds the spiral and down I go.
Of course the dogs will get fed, fresh water provided, but that will be the majority of it. No walk today as it has gotten too hot while I tried to gain function. When I go upstairs to lay down they will follow, lay next to me and get as many scratches and as much love that I can provide. They can sense my bad days.
I need to make a change, or give up. I need to fight back, or give up. I can’t keep taking one day after another of feeling rotten. I need better days ahead of me.
I really miss the break, where the pain lessens. The edema, which is swelling due to fluid retention is gone. The intensely burning nerves in both legs dissipate. In between kidney stones and the nausea they create. It used to be 3 – 4 months where I got some relief, where the trinity of pain, insomnia and depression didn’t rule my life. I felt good for a while. But this year it just ain’t happening.
Of course I blame myself for everything, and that means everything.
I’m not happy with my transitioning nor my depression, and my inability to take better care of myself. I need to find motivation to take control, instead of giving up.
If I quit whining, and ask myself “What’s the one thing you can do to make you happy”, it’s a pretty clear answer. I really want to lose weight. I’m too fat, overweight, and unhappy with myself. My weight is bothering me more and more.
Weight has always been an issue, and goes hand in hand with my mental state. The greater the depression, the less I take care of myself. Just give in or give up, whichever is appropriate.
My issue with weight started 61 years ago, appropriately enough, 3 months before I ended up in that hospital as a 7 year old. Weight was part of the cause for going to the hospital in the first place, that and my kidneys. Gaining 30 pounds in a few months and peeing blood. Something was wrong then, and continues to be wrong now. My weight and kidneys.
There’s also a whole range of issues with weight, psychologically and physically. Being directly tied to the rape that occurred (read more on that story here), the subsequent PTSD and gender dysphoria. I have fought being overweight most of my life, although there were 3 distinct periods where I felt comfortable with my weight, my self body image. One was due to hard work and poverty, not dieting. The other two were forced starvation and exercise, not enjoyable in the least.
The first time I dropped weight was when I dropped out of university, moved out of the folk’s house and started a job in construction. I was sweating in the Kansas sun laying chain-link fence for 10 hours a day. I lost all my excess weight, and turned everything to muscle. I was poor but happy, real happy. My folks thought I had cancer as I was rail thin. But I had a lot of friends, a good woman and music to be played. Yeah, poor but happy.
The second and third times were when I planned on beginning HRT, the first in 2010, and the second in 2019. I needed to transition, as my true self was somewhere inside me. Come out, come out, whoever you are.
The decision to progress from male to female, in all honesty, came the day I stopped getting drunk. August of 2008 when I came home, opened the liquor cabinet, looked at that bottle and said “this ain’t helping”. I simply closed the door and it’s been closed ever since. That’s another chapter in this story. “This ain’t helping”. Was it that easy? Not quite.
The decision to transition opened up in my mind and became a reality. Transitioning became the answer, a need. Despite my parents and rejection from the rest of my family, I knew it was the path I needed to follow. I started dieting, exercising and quit smoking, understanding the effects HRT can have.. I lost close to 50 pounds. That attempt at transitioning was derailed by a ministroke and a heart that was fighting a severe case of a-fib. You can read more about my HRT experience here.
After the two heart procedures and 8 years later, I felt it was time to transition once again. That, “touch wood” there weren’t any more unforeseen issues to force me to quit HRT again. I started a keto diet (nothing but protein) , and counted every little bite that went past my lips. 65 pounds and 3 family doctors later, one that knew what he was doing, I started transitioning for the second time with the use of HRT.
Like everything else I’ve attempted, the first year started off great only to slowly spin out of control. Not from HRT, but from Covid 19, a string of deaths, and my declining physical health. From where I started January 1 of 2020 to now, my body has continued its decline. Depression comes and goes as always.
Five years since starting HRT, and having the surgery (SRS), I feel it’s time to transition. All the extra pounds need to come off first. Don’t ask me why, it’s just not part of the vision I have of myself in the future. The added 40 pounds need to come off. Somehow. Back to starving I suppose.
My cardiologist prescribed one of the new weight loss wonder drugs, MounJaro. An easy way to take the pounds off. At the initial minimal dose I ended up deathly sick for 3 days. I tried the next dose 2 weeks later with the same results. Not so easy after all. If being sick and throwing up is how it works then it’s not for me.
I simply eat more than I burn off, especially since the eye surgery and the subsequent inactivity that followed. I’ve put on 15 pounds the last 3 months. Walking my dogs for 4-5 blocks is about all I can do. That and the 3 hours of standing and casting for trout once a week. I should be proud of at least getting out the door with them. At least I’m not sitting 100% of the time, but I don’t burn enough calories to keep my eating and weight in check.
So what do I need to do to change? Somehow find the motivation and energy needed to keep chasing the vision.
I don’t know what to do or how to do it. Maybe it will come to me soon.
It has to….