The Man I Slept With Last Night

The October Wellness report begins on this last day of September. I need to tell you about my sleep partner of last night. His name is Travis and he's 34 years old. He bikes to work every day, is the father of a three month old son, and runs the Sleep Lab at the hospital. I had lots of time to chat with him as he wired me up with 27 different attachments that monitored various body activities while I slept last night. Most of them were attached to my scalp so my hair was full of this gritty, sticky stuff when I left the hospital this morning.

It was an almost pleasant and close to comfortable event. The room tried hard not to be a hospital room but there was no escaping the bad decor and the just there for function bathroom. Its best feature was its outstanding cleanliness which I approved highly. But I did sleep after watching some HGTV on a monitor that was so high up that I couldn't really see it with my glasses and couldn't really see it without my glasses so I gave up on that and read for awhile. I talked to Sarah on the phone for a few minutes, read some more, than alerted Travis just by talking that I was ready to go to sleep. He came in and plugged the hose in and placed the C-PAP mask on my face and bade me a quiet "good night."

I figured it would take me a long time to go to sleep but in what seemed like mere moments, Travis was back telling me it was time to get up. I slept the whole night through which is extremely rare for me. I did this in spite of the weird mask, the hard bed, the lack of fresh air, and not enough reading time. I am very impressed with the C-PAP and can't wait to have one of my own.

Then this morning I made several calls to various doctors for a follow-up appt. with my sleep doctor, one with my fancy downtown cardiologist, one for a colonoscopy (lucky me), and one for a mammogram and a bone density test on the same day. All went smoothly; can you believe that? The only glitch was that the hospital couldn't find the order for the mammogram and the bone density test. That took a few more phone calls and ended up that my primary care doctor's office will need to re-fax the order. That's not too bad and not too inconvenient. I can easily try to rework that this afternoon.

So there. All medical considerations are attended to and I'm still lurching around the gym floor with my personal trainer. The eating program is a little wobbly at this point but I haven't given up. Are you as up to date with your own personal wellness program as I am?????

Sorry, Rita

Rita is our department secretary. She is a classic beauty with her dark eyes, flawless creamy skin and a serene face played up by almost black naturally curly hair. And to go along with the good looks is her remarkable efficiency, astonishing sense of detail and a calm, soothing manner. Another notable quality is her ability to be professionally responsible for all the really interesting and intriguing people who pass in and out of her office and the no doubt often juicy drama that inevitably takes place when several English teachers work together. She has provided me with much needed help for the many years that I have been an adjunct member of the department. Going beyond the call of duty hardly describes her effort to help all of us run our teaching lives smoothly and successfully. I have the highest degree of respect for her.

So the guilt I feel for upsetting her during a department meeting last week is still rattling around in the front of my brain. Here's what happened: I took the opportunity to sneak into the work room during a small break to "run off a few copies." We are not supposed to run more than ten copies at a time. A hundred and ten copies isn't even close but I figured I could just bang them out and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately, I jammed the machine after only three copies hence my need to summon Rita from the meeting. She was not happy and drew my attention to the notice that reads "one sided copies only" which is why my project jammed up the works. She then spent some precious minutes unjamming everything and making sure the machine was back to normal while I prayed hard that she wouldn't have to call the repairman in. When the machine was healthy again and I was trying to shower her with gratitude, she quietly mentioned that it wasn't the machine repair that was troublesome, it was the fact that she was not in the meeting to cover her secretarial duties as she should have been.

I felt pit in the stomach bad for selfishly causing her this interruption and inconvenience especially since she has always been so prompt and good about taking care of my needs over the years. I was tempted to publicly apologize to her after I slinked back into the meeting but couldn't bring myself to do so because then I'd have to publicly confess that not only was I cheating about the number of copies I was making, but I also didn't read the notice about "one-sided copies only."

She said she forgave me and I hope she did but I still feel so bad. I am so sorry, Rita. You are too good in so many ways to be treated in any way but respectfully and honestly.

Post A and Post B

A. Wellness Update: oops-a bit of a gain today and I knew it would happen. I didn't want it to happen and I was hoping it wouldn't but it did. But I don't feel all that bad about it. My personal trainer put her finger in my face and cautioned me not to beat myself up. "Just get back on track." She repeated the ideas of not punishing myself and getting back on track enough that I didn't feel quite as hollow with guilt as I had when I arrived at her studio. Then the Weight Watcher lady advised me to focus on the good choices I'd made this last week rather than all the cake and other birthday celebration food I'd consumed. Funny, though. I couldn't bring even one good choice to mind. All I could think about was the chocolate birthday cake that I ate at three different celebrations. Somehow the memory of that stays with me better than the cauliflower and broccoli I ate with my Barbie-sized sandwich at lunch yesterday.

B. This is New Roof Week here at our house. The crew arrived early Monday and are still here staple pounding and throwing large heavy objects off the roof onto the ground. I have stopped jumping in fear that the falling objects might be roofers' bodies. I've also stopped straightening all the wall art 50 or 60 times a day. I still expect faces to be looking at me outside the windows and I'm still trying to sneak showers by not turning on the bathroom light or the fan in case the workers might be passing that window. Not that my body would be of much interest to them-I just want to protect them from what their wives will look like in future decades.

My Needy Peeps

There are currently three of my people on my Focus List. One is almost hospital bound with a spouse who is recovering from a serious surgery. A second is working through a troubled marriage and a job loss at the same time. A third is putting the pieces of a life together after a particularly frightening psychotic episode. All three are in crisis mode of one kind or another with the first one easily more grounded and stronger than the other two but still needing positive energy from the outside. The third on the list has a helpful and concerned support group to help see the way through this dangerous time.

It is the second one on the list who is really the most in need. I can almost always come up with some way or idea to help someone close to me through a rough time but this one challenges every fiber of my being. I cannot think of a single practical way to help this person navigate the current boulder-filled road. The absolute only thing I can do is to be ready to help if and when the need arises and to continue to love and trust that a way will open itself up. The person is suffering the depths of dark despair and I wonder daily if any light at all is shining on the road. I commit myself to a continual offering of some of the positive energy that the good place in my life right now finds me with. I have an extra strong shoulder to lean on and want my people in need to lean away.

A fourth list member has been moved to the less active Focus List. This person has made the way to a new life from a broken marriage after a trial of several years and a journey of thousands of miles. I wish the other two crisis-laden people in my life could know the details of this success and learn from the events involved that anything is possible if you consider all the angles and give yourself enough power to allow the light to beam through. Sometimes it shines on things that we least expect to provide direction and answers.

Wellness Update

I hereby extend my Wellness experiment into the month of September. I lost 7.8 pounds and ate healthily this month. There were no (ZERO) eating binges of chocolate items or chips or party food. Those things were around, accessible and available but I made good choices. That doesn't mean I didn't eat them; it means that I didn't eat them to excess as I usually do. I ate fruit and vegetables to the point that I got tired of chewing lettuce and crunching carrots, but I didn't leave them out of my daily eating.

My personal trainer brought me along slowly but surely compensating for the arm injury I suffered the first of July when I fell off Amy's bike. I am stronger and am conscious of where my body is stiff and tight. I try to move the stiff parts every day and walk in the mornings when I don't go to training.

I'm proud that I made it all the way through one month! And, by the way, today is a special day because it's my First Day of Medicare. I think that should be celebrated. I will celebrate that and my birthday by eating my all time favorite treat: homemade chocolate cake on Sunday when the family gets together to celebrate Labor Day. Hooray for me and good luck with the September Wellness extension!