Before I start complaining, let me just say that I'm really proud of how well my dieting efforts have paid off. I've worked hard, and I'm down twenty-three-and-a-half pounds since last summer. My clothes fit better, and my health should be better, but as you may know I've been plagued by blood pressure and/or heart problems over the last few months. They are, no doubt, related, and I'm tremendously disappointed that the blood pressure issue (I never had problems with my heart before) has not improved with my weight loss. Getting healthier was my number one reason for wanting to lose weight. More specifically, I didn't want to end up like my mother. Her weight contributed to all the problems that led to her death, and in those last years she didn't have a very good quality of life. One of the problems she had had for many years was hypertension. I don't know how many medications she took for it, but there were a lot. I'm up to two. I want to be off both of them.
Last night I noticed that my feet felt odd. I looked down and, to my horror, they were hugely swollen. I had made dinner, but I wasn't on my feet all day long, and even if I had been that swelling would have been extreme. I sat down and put my feet up, but the swelling got worse. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my ankles simply disappeared. I had "Flintstone feet". I couldn't even wear flip-flops. I decided that the swelling would probably go down overnight, and it did -- somewhat. I didn't go to sleep until after midnight and got up at four this morning to take my son to the airport. My scoring shift started at 8:15, so I decided to lie on the sofa until 8:00. I may have fallen asleep briefly, but not enough to matter. At 8:00 I dutifully got up, washed my face and brushed my teeth (again). I was already dressed. My feet were definitely better.
Because I ended up with essentially two scoring shifts tacked together, and scoring leaders begin fifteen minutes before raters and end fifteen minutes after, I had no lunch break and logged out and back in at 12:45. I got a note from the scoring company asking if I'd work until 6:30 (which really means 6:45 for me), and I said sure, why not. I would have been finished at 5:15; another ninety minutes didn't make that much difference. On one of my breaks, I called the cardiologist's office to see what to do about my feet. "Oh, yes," said his assistant. "He needs to see you in the office." The soonest appointment I could get was next Monday! A whole week with this mess. (They've progressively swollen throughout the day, even though I've had them propped up, but they're nowhere near as bad as they were last night.)
Tomorrow I have my night class, and I usually stand while I teach. In this class especially I like to stand because each student has a computer at his/her desk; it's hard to make eye contact if I'm sitting. This week I won't care. This week I will peer around things in whatever way I must to be able to effectively teach the class. My only hope is that I can wear shoes, and that in whatever shoes I wear my feet aren't oozing out of them. On the whole, I don't care what I have on my feet. I just want all of this medical crap to go away!
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