Sad

It's really been tough to think of words to say about this, but I'm going to give it a try.

Last Thursday, Eddie's mom had a light heart attack. She went to the hospital and they scheduled an arteriogram for the next day. They found that she has 4 blocked arteries. The news was not good. One of them is 100% blocked, one is 90% blocked, one is 95% blocked, and the other one is 60% blocked. The only way the arteries can be repaired is by doing open heart surgery, which she is not a good candidate for. For her, because of her age and various other health problems, she would be a very high risk.

The decision was still up to her, but this week she decided to not have the surgery. They released her and sent her home with medications like blood thinners, cholesterol medicine, and some other things that I don't know what they are, and she has to wear a nitroglycerin patch during the day. She is not to do anything strenuous because I think they feel the more she does, the worse for her. What really surprised us was that they have arranged for Hospice to start coming to her house. That bummed me a little because I always thought that Hospice was sent during the last stages of life. Then it dawned on me that, for her, this may be the last stages of her life. She could have another heart attack at any time and may or may not survive it.

This has been a wake up call for me. The doctors told her this was not a recent thing, but had been building up over time. It dawned on me that people, like me, with high cholesterol probably have the junk building up in their arteries and some damage has already been done. Unless we try to prevent any more damage from happening, we could be in the same shape that she's in. That's a real eye opener. I have all the genetic risk factors of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and I am about 50 pounds overweight. Up until now, I knew I had those things, but I was in denial. I guess it I had just pushed into the back of my mind what could possibly happen if I didn't change my ways. Now, that I've seen what has happened to her and that it could possibly happen to me (or anyone), I've made a complete turnaround. No more am I going to piss and moan about the fact that I don't seem to have any willpower or self-control when it comes to food. It's really not a matter of willpower, but of want power. How badly do I want to get this weight off of me and be healthy again? At this point, really badly. I know there are some things that we have no control over, but we do have control over how we take care of ourselves and the food we put into our bodies. So, as of last Friday, I have started watching what I eat and I have been walking about 20-30 minutes a day. I hope to be able to build up to more exercise time, but if I can't, then that's ok too. As long as I'm doing something to try and improve my health, something is better than nothing.

Also, last night I started watching the new season the The Biggest Loser. I like watching this show because it's really inspiring. Those people work really, really hard to get their weight off and change their lives. I'm so thankful that I don't have as much weight to lose as most of them do, so it's easy for me to become inspired when I see all the good things they are doing to become healthier.