If no news is good news, then news must be bad, right?

I had been planning to write a chirpy post about my weight and eating and taking a playful dig at myself for being so slack about the gym this part fortnight. Words were coalescing in my head, sentences turning into paragraphs, making me wish I’d put a notepad in my bag.

That was three hours ago. Then the doctor called my name to talk to me about the ultrasound I had last week. The news isn’t good. The radiologist who worked on the film found a small cyst in the right ovary, which may or may not be a haemorrhagic follicle or mass lesion. There’s a recommendation to do a follow up ultrasound in 4-6 weeks. There are also many small follicles in that ovary that raise the possibility of PCOS. So the GP sent me immediately around the corner to pathology to have some blood taken for a hormone assay. Knowing that I’m leaving next week, he organised for the results to be back quickly, so I have to go back in on Sunday to find out what the next steps are.

After such positive feedback from the technician last week, I’m feeling pretty miserable about this latest update. The nurse who took my blood was good though, and got it all out on the first try with her trusty butterfly needle.

I feel really sooky right now. I had a bit of a cry to Mikey on the phone before I came in to work, and then called my mum and had a bit of a cry to her too. I know it’s not the end of the world, even if the result is that I do have PCOS. I guess I was just really looking forward to everything being okay. My mum said that I might be pregnant now, but I’m not feeling positive about that either. The nausea and funny smell thing have vanished, and the home pregnancy kit that I did this morning, even though I’m not due for my period until the weekend, came up negative. Sure, that could be because it’s too early for testing, although it’s supposed to able to confirm pregnancy from 7 days post ovulation, and I’m now at ten. Then again, the tests were a cheap fifty pack from eBay, so who knows how reliable they are. And I’m starting to think that the symptoms I thought I had were all in my head.

I’m turning into that neurotic beast I hoped I wouldn’t become. I just want to go home and cry and sleep until next week.

I have managed to find a small highlight though – in this time of stress and misery, I have not turned to food for comfort. I’m still eating mostly healthy food in generally sensible portions. I’m not at the gym much, but I have reasonable excuses for it – we’re too busy sorting through the massive amounts of clutter at home to get outside. The daily routine at the moment is get home from work, organise and throw out, eat dinner, organise and throw out some more, then bed. I have to get my flex time up to three hours before next Tuesday so that my time sheets and leave all balance out before I go, so I haven’t had time to go to the gym before work. It’s all excuses, sure, but at least they’re reasonable ones, rather than me saying I just don’t wanna go.

So I’m having a crappy day, but I’m going to go and cheer myself up by going for a brisk walk during my lunch break. I’m sure I’ll think of some positives while I’m out to make up for the current batch of the blues.

Overdue – the updates, not me

I wrote this post on Friday and then forgot to email it home for completion, so it sat here at work all weekend, without me doing anything, so it’s maybe even more out of date than it was before. If this post were milk, you’d pour it down the sink about now.

In the ten plus days since I last posted, a bundle of things have happened. So many things I might not even remember them all, but I’ll give it a go.

Rutherglen was great – wineries with tasty stickies (it’s an area that specialises in fortified wines, rather than the big reds I’m used to), a saltwater swimming pool with just the right concentration of salt to let me swim with my eyes open underwater, and yes, secret squirrel sex. Oh, and a moussaka that was to die for! We came home with two bottles of Tokay and a slight tan from spending so much time in the pool. What we also came home with was a Pia suffering from mild to moderate abdominal cramps – specifically located in the region of her right ovary.

The five days leading up to my expected ovulation date, I did my pee on a stick thing with the ovulation predictor test strips. Had a string of negatives between Tuesday and Saturday and then got a positive on Sunday night. Tried again two hours later to check, still positive.

That was all pretty exciting. To go from not knowing whether I was ovulating to being pretty darn sure it happened has been a pleasant change. And if the pain and pee tests weren’t enough, my temperature chart also shows a proper shift, indicating that ovulation really did happen on Sunday. I’m not going to bother with a blood test next Monday, even though the good doctor would request it if I wanted. I just don’t like needles enough to get a confirmation of something that I’m already pretty sure about. Plus, blood tests take between one to two weeks to get results from, and we’ll be winging our merry way to NZ by this time in two weeks.

I feel quite positive right now about the whole baby making thing. It’s way too early to tell either way, although there have been two quirky things in the last three days that could be positive. I’ve felt queasy each morning until about midday, to the point that I threw up in my mouth in the shower this morning (TMI, I know). The night before last we went out to dinner with some friends and everything was fine til we got to dessert. I had a bite of the cheesecake that I had ordered to share with Mikey and it tasted off, although he swore it was good, and ate the whole thing himself. He didn’t get sick from eating it either. Last night we also went out** and for dessert, Mikey ordered a meringue and cream stack thing. Again, the cream tasted wrong, so I had a few bites of meringue and tried to leave the cream alone.

** We’re gluttons and use any excuse for a good meal out. This time it was that Mikey had new jeans and wanted to road test them, and we also wanted to find out whether the restaurant we want to have a farewell dinner at next week would have room for us. Sure, we could have just called the place, but it made more sense for us to rock up there and eat dinner

So it’ll be another ten days or so before we know for sure – assuming my period is due 14 days after ovulation, which is what happened last cycle. There’s no point me doing a preg test, even though I’m really curious, because I think mine aren’t sensitive enough. Besides, it’s probably not really a pregnancy if implantation hasn’t happened yet.

Another positive was my ultrasound yesterday. They ended up doing an internal one, and while the film won’t be available until next Tuesday, the radiographer was very descriptive about her findings as she waved her wand about. Normal left ovary and uterus, slightly enlarged right ovary with signs of a bleed, though nothing that looked like PCOS. So it’s not a 100% confirmation until I get the film with the notes, but it’s pretty promising for now.

I’ve got more news on every other front (the non-baby stuff), but I’ll make that a separate post so that I’m not faking writing in the really past tense

Pia and the twenty minute mile

Last week I spent more than a few hours on a couple of different fitness websites. In particular, Women’s Weight Training and ExRx.net. Being as how I get scared easily by the idea of being an intense gym bunny, I went to the beginners section of both sites, to see what I could see.

I guess my main problem right now is my fitness level. I am incredibly unfit, I use oxygen poorly and get very red faced and sweaty very easily when I’m faced with cardio. Weight training doesn’t fuss me so much, which is why I love it. But this whole unfit thing is something I need to fix. I don’t want to run marathons, but I do want to see improvement in my general fitness, and for that to happen, I’m going to have to work at it.

I don’t mind the treadmill or the exercise bike, however, I try to avoid using the elliptical trainer because it makes me want to cry. So much hard work! Besides, I still hate jogging/running, and that’s exactly the motion that piece of equipment inspires. The only time I plan on running is if I need to get away from something, and even then, I think I’d probably try to persuade it to leave me alone, rather than have to run.

I decided to check out the aerobic conditioning stuff on ExRx.net, found the Rockport Walk Test as a means of assessing my cardiovascular fitness and then went off to the gym to go and walk out my first mile. Amusingly, I came it at 17 minutes, 45 seconds. This puts me in the poor category and suggests that I go off and do the ‘blue’ walking program. I love it when something or someone will tell me what to do – it makes it so much easier for lazy ol’ me! As an aside, I often use that handy phrase, “I can’t brain today, I have the dumb”. I’m not typing it out in lolspeak because it’ll make me feel icky inside.

That was Friday. Since then, I’ve done three days of my week one ‘blue’ walking program, one mile (1.61 km) at 3mph (4.8 kmph). I feel like I’m crawling to start with, because it’s so darn slow, so I’ve been putting the incline up between 3 and 6 to make me feel like I’m actually doing something. Sure, that’s probably not what I’m supposed to do, as it does say my heart rate should be 60% of max, and when I’m striding on an incline it tends to be around 80% of max. Still, it gets me sweating and keeps me active for 20 minutes a day, which is all I can ask for.

So twenty minutes for a mile. Roger Bannister, I ain’t.

According to this program, over the next 20 weeks I’ll increase my speed to 4 mph / 6.5 kmph (about 20% faster than my normal walking speed of 5.5 kmph) and my distance to 3 miles / 4.8 km. Holy crap – I just did the calculations on that. Instead of galumphing along for only 20 minutes as I’m doing now, this is going to take 45 minutes! At least I’ve got 20 weeks to get there. Then I can retest and get myself a new program – or just fall on a heap on the floor.

As long as I pair all this cardio with a sensible amount of weight training, I should lose fat only and not muscle. I don’t want to end up all stringy and gross. The bonus is that I can read while I walk if I’m using a treadmill. The downside is that if I don’t have a treadmill, I have no idea of what the different speeeds are supposed to feel like. I think that’s something I’ll need to learn before I leave Australia and my beloved gym. I’m sure there will be a gym that’s just as good in NZ, but I doubt that I’ll be joining up immediately, unless they offer massive discounts to new migrants.

The good doctor

First off, I’d like to thank everyone for their supportive comments and so on after I regaled you all with my misery regarding doctors and blood tests and the disjunction between the two. Thankfully, some things have happened between then and now and I’m feeling a little more sane, and most importantly, happier.

Last week I went to see another doctor because I was a teensy bit overdue for a pap smear. This time, I went to the bulk billing one in Belconnen, because I hate having to pay $55 or more to have someone do what ought to be free, given it’s a preventative screen, rather than a treatment. The downside of this clinic is that they don’t do appointments, so you just rock up and wait until your name is called. That said, if I’ve got a good book, which I did, I’ll wait happily for hours if I’m going to get to see a doctor for free.

The guy I saw turned out to be a good doctor – which I must admit was a surprise, because I’ve heard some pretty bad reports about doctors who work in bulk billing practices, especially lately. People tend to think that if a doctor is any good, they’ll work somewhere where they can charge a lot and therefore be recompensed for their skill. The people who say that tend to forget that sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a doctor out there who actually does it for the love of it, because they feel it’s the right thing to do, not because they can earn squillions by doing it.

So while this guy was doing his thing, I mentioned my trip to the other doctor and her refusal to test my blood for the hormones I’d asked her to test. I’d already told him that I was trying to get pregnant, and that we’d be on the go since April last year. Anyhow, we discussed the results that I hadreceived and he agreed that this was worth looking into, and that gave me a referral for an ultrasound to check out my ovaries and a bottle to pee in to check for chlamydia, in case I’m asymptomatic and it’s busily rendering me infertile. And he told me that if I got the same biphasic temperature chart this cycle, I should come back on 7 or 8 days past ovulation and he’d order the correct blood tests for me.

How good is that? And how awesome is he? I was completely bowled over by a doctor who actually listened to what I was saying and brought up good ideas for ruling out problems. His view was that because all of that could be done at that clinic and analysed by him, I might as well do it there, rather than pay loads to have it done by the fertility clinic, especially if I’m not going to be staying in the country for much longer, as fertility specialists want to observe you over a long period, and time is something I don’t really have right now.

So the update is this – ultrasound Thursday week to look for cysts, then hopefully a blood test a few days after that, as I’m (roughly) due to ovulate this weekend. The only amusing/awkward part of that is that Mikey and I are spending the weekend with my family on a camping trip. So we’re gonna have to be very quiet, cos we’ll have the thinnest of walls between us and my parents, sister and her boyfriend. Secret squirrel sex ftw!

Week 7

Saturday 9 February, 2008

Week 7 weight – 95.6 kg

Initial weight – 96.2 kg

Back to my week 4 and lightest weight. Well, technically not my lightest ever weight, cos that would be 8kg or something, and I don’t think that birth weight actually counts…

I’m trying to keep up with the healthy eating, but I think my biggest problem right now is the meal timing. Not whether I eat at 6:30 or at 12, but whether I eat carbs in the morning and not at night. Part of Liz’s work with me involves helping me get my eating organised – and that means eating the right things at the right time. No carbohydrates after lunch for example.

I understand the reasoning for that – you eat carbs for dinner and then if the energy doesn’t get used up it turns to fat. The problem is that I like my carbs – be it brown rice, cereal, fruit, jacket potatoes and so on. Two days ago I ate an entire pineapple by myself. Good for me – except I ate it in the evening. I hadn’t planned on eating the whole thing, but it was just so delicious that over a three hour period I kept going back to the kitchen and slicing up more. Also, I’ll generally have a piece of fruit sometime in the afternoon or evening.

Then there’s the starchy carbs – like a jacket potato with low fat cottage cheese, or brown rice to go with my chili con carne (made with kangaroo mince for extra low fat). I can’t see myself having either of those for breakfast, and I’d only eat that at lunch if it was a weekend.

Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it. Maybe I should just continue eating healthily and exercising regularly and things will all work out. Maybe with a boosted metabolism that’s sure to come with increased muscle mass, the timing of my carb eating won’t matter. I’d like to think so.

No hormones for you!

I am tired and crabby. After two weeks of waiting, I got a little message on my phone that my blood test results should be ready (courtesy of gcal – all praise the mighty Google). I called up the medical centre to see if I could collect them, and the receptionist kindly offered to fax them to me. I then had to go pee from all the nerves of knowing any second now my results would appear in my inbox. By the time I got back, there they were, in all their upside down scanned glory.

Nine pages of results. Nine pages telling me everything I didn’t want to know, and two little blank spots where the results for my oestrogen and progesterone should have been. The only reason I went and got that done was to find out my progesterone levels, aka the 21 day test. So what have I learned from this? I think the take-home message here is that if a doctor doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you ask for a specific blood test, don’t trust them to order blood tests for you, because they won’t be able to order the right ones. Go find a new doctor.

On the plus side, my serum chemistry, thyroid profile, haematology, prolactin and androgens are all normal. I got negative results for my hepatitis and HIV serology, and my blood type is still A negative. Conclusion: at least one of the tests they did was done correctly.

My mum, a recently retired haematologist, suggested I call the pathology lab and ask them to test the serum for the two hormones they missed in my hormone profile. She said that the lab will still have my serum because required by law to keep it for at least a while longer, however they may not be willing to do the tests without the GP asking for it, or if it’s an expensive test. Right now I feel like it’s not worth the hassle. After all, the doctor’s intention was that I’d take these test results to a fertility specialist for analysis, but given the change in plans regarding the house sale, we might not be in Canberra much longer, and I really don’t see the point in going to a specialist and then leaving town four weeks later, before they’ve had a chance to do whatever it is they’re going to do.

Blah. It all feels like so much blah right now.

Update: I am SO ANGRY right now!

I decided to call the lab, like my mum suggested. They said that the doctor had not requested either oestrogen or progesterone, but that if I called the doctor and asked her to request it, they might be able to do the tests anyway, providing they still had my serum. I then called the surgery and asked the receptionist to ask the doctor to call the lab and request the extra tests. The receptionist said she’d pass on the message ASAP. So far, so good.

Then I get a call from the doctor saying that she won’t request the tests because she doesn’t know how to check for ovulation. I told her that the level of progesterone in my blood would tell her whether it had occurred, and she once again said that she doesn’t deal with fertility issues. I said that I wasn’t asking her to deal with it, I was asking her to get my blood tested to check for ovulation so that I could take that test to the fertility specialist. She said that the fertility specialist would order the blood test when it was the right time. I replied that it had been the right time when I had the blood drawn and all I needed her to do was to call the lab and ask them to do the test. She refused. I asked her whether it was commonplace for her to refuse to authorise a blood test that her patient had asked for, especially when the patient didn’t need her to interpret the results but needed the results to take to the specialist that she had referred the patient to. She said yes, so I thanked her for her time, told her I would never go back to her clinic and hung up.

And yes, before I get any comments about how doctors know best, I know she’s supposed to know best. That’s why I went there in the first place. That said, she didn’t know about a test that is commonly administered to check for ovulation and she wouldn’t authorise a test on blood that had already been taken. It wasn’t like I was asking her to authorise a new collection of blood, nor was I asking her to interpret the results. I already know that she doesn’t understand fertility issues, I didn’t expect any sort of treatment from her. All I wanted was a fricken test to confirm that my progesterone levels were elevated at that time. That would have been some sort of proof that my biphasic temperature pattern for my last cycle was based on hormones and not on whatever else might cause a rise in temperature, like a fever or whatever.

I’m feeling so shitty now. I just wanna go home and cry. In fact, I might just do that. It’s almost 3:30, which makes it almost home time (well, closer to home time than lunch time). And Mikey will be at home to comfort me about how stupid bloody doctors are. Gah!

Week 6

Is it week 6 already? And February too?

Saturday 2 February, 2008

Week 6 weight – 95.9 kg

Initial weight – 96.2 kg

Not a massive loss since my last weigh in two weeks ago. In fact, not a loss at all, given I’ve gained a teensy bit more than two weeks ago. I figured that after my post on Friday on weight and BMI and how inaccurate it can be as a scale of fatness, I should take all those measurements that I did back at the beginning to what else is happening, as realistically, the changes I’m noticing in my bra and muscles should be showing up somewhere, if not on the scales.

The hardest part was measuring my arms, because I’d sort of forgotten which freckle I had measured at first time around. Hopefully I got it right, If not, no big deal. Numbers in brackets are the original figures.

Bust – 113 cm  (117)
Waist – 110 cm at navel  (113)
Hips – 128 cm  (128)
L thigh – 76 cm  (74)
R thigh – 77 cm  (77)
L calf – 38 cm  (41)
R calf – 38 cm  (42)
L arm – 36 cm  (37)
R arm – 35 cm  (36)

This is an interesting change. My waist, bust and calves (and my arms, if I managed to get the right place) have slimmed down, my hips and right thigh stayed the same and my left thigh bulked up. I’m guessing that the increase in my thigh is related to the seated leg press, which is probably my favourite weight based thing, followed by the biceps curl.

The thing that doesn’t seem to be changing is my belly. I’m a little worried that even with the abs work and all the rest, I’m going to end up with slender arms and legs and boobs and still have my saggy, baggy, elephant belly   I haven’t even managed to get pregnant yet and I’ve got the sag of someone who just gave birth

Moving the goalposts

After writing an email to one of my new buddies yesterday, I realised I should probably update this place with regards to my goals. It’s all very well to say that I want to lose weight, but I need something more concrete than that. I’m a numbers girl. At one stage, all I ever did at work was play with numbers, making up stories based on statistics. Unfortunately I’ve moved away from data analysis now and I’m more in policy work, which means boring contract management for me. But I digress – and you’ll notice I do that a lot.

According to the BMI, I’m obese. Without knowing my exact weight right now (I’m guessing it hasn’t changed much, so we’ll estimate it at 96 kg), my BMI is about 35 or 36. If the BMI had its way, my ideal weight would be somewhere between 50 and 66 kg. Now we all know that the BMI is not an accurate measure of body fat, but for some reason, a lot of people still use it. I’ve got photos of me from before 21 when I was anywhere between 50 and 66 kg. In those photos, I look pretty darn good, although I did seem to have a very pointy chin back then. Nowadays, my chin is no longer as pointy because it’s got all that extra cushioning on it. I think I like it better the way it is.

Mikey prefers the me he’s got now to the me in the pictures, as he thinks I look too thin there. In some pictures I’m inclined to agree, especially the ones when I’m at the lower end of that weight range. Going by the old photos I’ve got, I think I look best at the upper end of the range, when I was in my early twenties. Here comes the problem with using weight as a basis for determining when you’ve reached your own version of perfection – as we go through childhood and then puberty, bone mass increases, with a peak at around the age of 30. Weight, and therefore the BMI doesn’t take into account what the weight is made up of, whether it’s bone, fat, muscle or whatever else you might have in your body, like your lunch. So a person who has continued to have the same general amount of fat and muscle between the age of say, 18 and 30, is going to weigh more over time, simply because their bones become more dense over that period. I’ve borrowed a graph from the MRC Human Nutrition Research website, an “independent, authoritative source of scientific advice and information”, to show what I’m talking about.

Now, back to where I’m talking about my goal weight. If I want to look and feel sort of the same as I did four or five years ago, when I remember being at my happiest, body-wise, I can’t expect to weigh the same as I did then. If I were to weigh the same as I did then, that is 65 kg or less, I’d probably be able to eke out a living by just allowing my relatives to feed me up to make me a normal size again.

So taking all of this into account, I’ve decided to use 70 kg as my goal weight. That will still put me in the overweight category, according to the ol’ BMI, but I think it’s a good weight to aim for. That said, if I get to a point before I hit 70 where everything feels just right, then I’ll stop there, because this goal of 70 is just a number to give me something to compare my current number to. I won’t know what my version of perfection is until I get closer to it, but this is a good stepping stone to that place.