The tune for this blog name goes along with the fine and impressive aria O sole mio.
As a token of my appreciation of the new ear worm in my head, I give you, for three minutes and twenty one seconds, Signor Luciano Pavarotti, no twiggy build himself.
My unexpected area of focus on the day of my breast cancer surgery (June 13) was — embarrassingly — my weight. A scale in the surgical prep area was the first one in a dozen years that I’ve been able to stand on, crutches and braces along for the ride. It had a broad, non wobbly base and a strong railing around it.
My moments on the device disclosed that I am some twenty pounds heavier than I thought I was. Er… pretended I thought I was, if we are being honest. And what would be the point of fibbing to my blog?
Photos taken of me on such occasions as my daughter’s wedding and a pleasant trip to Fresno’s Japanese Garden gave me to speculate that I might be reaching more of a barrel shape than the woman shape I previously thought I had. The surface mind poo poo-ed the notion that these images depicted the actual Emily.
The Inner Emily, nonetheless, was deep into panic mode. Because, well, how DOES one shed weight when so many hours a day are spent in a lovely power wheelchair?
Here, for your studious picturing of me lounging around in my upcoming new, attitude-laden wheelchair is the manufacturer’s image of it and its capabilities:
Twenty pounds is a great deal of extra personal real estate for a very short person to cart around.
Thus about the time I groggily noticed that the world was still there as the anesthesia wore off my mind began plotting means of dropping the excess Me.
The problem has not been that I eat too much. My vegetarian diet has included almost no refined grains, little fat or sugar, lots of fruit and veggies, for years. So maybe there’s been rather too much cheese, but who was counting?
Never slim because that’s not my body type, with or without the polio, my okay weight began shifting into bad three and a half years ago when my shoulders started with severe issues. The doctor thought this would be either rotator cuff injuries or the wear and tear of walking around with wooden crutches for sixty five years. Or both. Didn’t make any difference to me what the cause was — I was, due to the incapacitated shoulders, quite unable to push myself up into the cab of my faithful pickup truck and get myself to an Albuquerque medical center for an MRI.
So I pampered the shoulders for a few months until they stopped with the hurting. However, once recovered they were weak and unable to bear much weight. Or allow me to walk around for long before my arms would start to go numb.
That sort of thing took away much of my ability to do things like yard work that had once given me pretty good workouts. Less walking around is an obvious calorie enhancing activity.
So here I am.
For now I am doing the Dr. Fuhrman Eat to Live diet, which helped in the past when I also wasn’t equal to much exercise. It’s vegan, with very little fat or sugar, tons of veggies fresh and cooked, plenty of fruit. Legumes, a few nuts and such are encouraged.
I’ve been at it for over a week now and my clothes feel slightly looser. Wahoo!
Meantime, Fresno temperatures have been in the range of 108º for days, rather quelling even the dogs’ enthusiasm for outdoor exercise. But we have managed to record a few of the lovely flowers and trees around us. Very healing enhancing, these lovely things are.
Rising Over the Smoke 