Round

I am very, very sad.

Our gestational carrier (surrogate) had another ultrasound on Tuesday and there was no heartbeat left in our little embryo.

We are crushed.

I am sad.

My husband is sad.

The carrier, A, is sad.

My mom is sad.

It’s just a really sucky situation.  We’ve been though so much to try to have a baby and now having another miscarriage just feels so unfair.  I really tried to keep my hopes in check through that first ultrasound, and decided after that to go ahead and let hope live, and it feels now like I was sucker-punched.

Spring is wonderful in so many ways, but for those of us participating in Spring Focus it’s also been a really great way to get ourselves focused on losing some weight right now.

We’re doing great!

We didn’t have as complete a response as last week, but I didn’t chase people down like I did last week either.

Over 19 pounds gone last week

Despite my pulling the group down by GAINING instead of LOSING weight this past week, the group still posted an impressive -19.5 pound weight loss for the week between May 17th-24th! Amazing!

That brings the total weight loss for Spring Focus Participants to over 60 pounds since our “official” start in early May.

87% are making progress towards goals

87% of Spring Focus participants who reported in said that they had achieved some or all of their behavioral goals! In fact, those who didn’t meet their goals this past week had met their goals in the previous week (and I’m confident they’ll hit them again this week!).

To show that it’s not all about the scale, this week’s badge shows progress towards goals!

Want to Join Spring Focus?

You don’t need to have joined early on to benefit from being focused! Our only objective is accountability & helping each other make Progress. Our group is in effect through July 4th, which means there is more than a MONTH to go (5 weeks in fact). We’re a pretty open bunch so if you think this kind of accountability will help you, just drop a comment here.

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My personal Spring Focus check-in

1. Healthy Eating : okay.  Starting to accept that next week I’ll probably start writing things down…
2. Exercise : Yeah! Went to the gym, had a good workout, also had a long walk
3. Focus on Relaxing : This went well most of the day - nice teas, tended the roses, cleaned up our living room (after having dumped all our weekend stuff there), read a few chapters in a book.

A Very Good Start

Wow, the Spring Focus group success was better than I’d expected, better even than I’d hoped for. It was good for me (I actually had a full week on plan!) but it was good for almost everyone who signed up too!

Beyond Weight Loss

Our Spring Focus group checked in on Monday with how they did on their weight loss journeys last week. And we checked in on just on pounds lost, but also on the underlying behaviors that we all struggle with.

Behavioral Changes for weight loss & control

We all know that certain behaviors help us lose weight, others don’t.  Most of us have been working on our weight for a long time, so most of us know what we’re “supposed to” do.  The challenge for most of us isn’t in learning what the behaviors are - the challenge lies in actually implementing those healthy behaviors.  Add a few healthy behaviors together and we should see weight control, add a few more healthy behaviors, and we should see weight loss.

So one of the things people (including myself) are doing during Spring Focus is setting specific behavioral goals.  Either for the whole period (May 4th - July 4th) or a week at a time (like I do).

Last week, 89% of participants had success with their behavioral goals!!! Some had less-than-perfect success (”yes, partly”) and some full-out, but I focus on PROGRESS, not Perfection so anyone who didn’t report “No” gets counted a success for me!

I’m tempted to stop the reporting of success right here, because honestly what you do day to day to move towards healthy living & weight loss is MUCH more important than what the scale says.  (In fact, some Spring Focus participants are only checking in on behavior, not on weight at all).

Impressive Weight Loss of 22.5 Pounds in One Week

The collective weight loss for ONE WEEK is 22.5 pounds!!  The week measured was from May 10th-17th, although some people report in for a slightly different period based on their own weekly weigh-in day.

Spring Focus is about Weight Loss Accountability

The reason I started Spring Focus was to boost weight loss accountability. My own & others.  I needed to start back, and I needed to commit to a long-enough period that I could build some momentum, but not so long as to be put off by the task.  Two months seemed about right, and July 4th as an end date had a nice significance to it.

I’m really pleased with how Spring Focus has worked for me & for the community.  If you want to check in on anyone to see how they’re doing on Spring Focus, the blogroll is on the right ?.

Want to Join?

You don’t need to have joined early on to benefit from being focused now & through June.  We’re a pretty open bunch so if you think this kind of accountability will help you, just drop a comment here.

Reporting on my goals for this week

1. Eat healthy without writing things down : this is going well.  I bought my husband macaroon’s from Pierre Hermé yesterday as a treat, but had the presence of mind to buy a nice box of gariguette strawberries
2. Daily weigh in : 193 again.  Whatever
3. Exercise : a super-long walk yesterday.  It was a lovely day, going for a walk was a great choice!  I enjoyed it enormously.

Just a quick update today - I don’t want to spend too long on the computer.

Springtime in Paris

It’s a beautiful Saturday in Paris & we had a nice lunch at a restaurant that has a wonderful greenhouse roof

And a walk home under the blooming trees

Still smiling

I was more than a little nervous waiting for the call from my mom from yesterday’s ultrasound with the gestational carrier / surrogate (my infertility saga is here).  My husband organized well for us to go out to dinner then to watch Pulp Fiction to keep me distracted.  Still, 45 minutes before the appointment I got into the chocolate, but not too much damage.

Finally my mom called from the doctors office with the words we were hoping for - “congratulations”.  I don’t have all the details - it was quite late here in Paris & my mom & the carrier were still at the doctors office, but I know there is a heartbeat, I know it’s one baby.  We were very relieved, and very happy.

The next few weeks of course still hold a relatively high risk of miscarriage - so those keeping us in your thoughts, prayers or crossed fingers please continue to do so.

My Spring Focus Update

It seems rather insignificant to think about my weight in the context of this big news, but I’m still doing well.  The fact that I made a plan adapted to these days has really helped me.

1) Eat healthy : working well. Had Korean (yum!) for dinner & it was easy to make healthy choices there.  The whole family loved it and we agreed to put the restaurant into more regular rotation.  At lunch today I had 2 bites of bread and 4 bites of dessert, but generally pretty good.  Yesterday’s brief chocolate affair was significantly curtailed by the fact I knew I’d come on here & report my transgression.

2) Water : was good yesterday

3) Daily weigh in : 194, which is UP, but luckily I’m in a good mood so it doesn’t matter

Extra : Exercise!  I think I’m ready to add an exercise goal next week.  I enjoyed hiking the past 2 days and today have walked to most of the things I had to do around town (see pic above for proof!).

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Spring Focus Announcements :

It’s not to late for you to join (someone joined us yesterday) - just comment here.

Tomorrow I will post everyone’s goals.  If you made a post about your goals & I found it, I’ll link it (if I miss it make sure you let me know).  If I don’t have your goals yet then you can tell me later & I’ll update the post.

Weight tracking will be collected on Monday : you can email it to me or leave it in my comments.  2 numbers please : how much you lost this past week (whenever you define your weekly weigh in date) & how much you’ve lost total since the start of Spring Focus.  I’ll post the COLLECTIVE result on Tuesday.  No leaderboards, no competition - everyone is pulling for everyone, and themselves!

I celebrated the changing of the year happily — happy to have my health, happy to have caught the endometrial cancer so early & found an effective treatment so fast, happy to have identified another path to parenthood, happy to have my friends & family, happy to have lost 30 pounds this year, and oh so very happy to have my husband in my life.

I maybe celebrated this happiness with a bit too much food in general, and carbs in particular, and what was supposed to be a free day on Thursday evening became a spillover into Friday, then Saturday, then again Sunday, but I enjoyed it & the few pounds I put on I think I’ll take right back off, and the break was nice & the relaxation complete.

Now back on track and planning a tight, focused week this week, plenty of exercise & that should get the scale pretty much back to pre-holidays stuff by next week — and hopefully kickstart another losing streak. 

I havent been commenting on blogs much, and don’t know if or when I’ll make it back to doing that — its hard to find the time with all the other things I like doing.  I will keep up my posts here, that’s for sure. 

I have a number of goals for 2010 (worked out before my surgery in November) which I’ll post later this week to get some accountability out there… lots of things that I want to finish from my ‘hanging over me’ lists. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2010 full of love, happiness, laughter and Health!

I’m back to work as of yesterday.  I’ve mentioned before that I am VERY grateful to have a great & understanding boss (and very protective employment laws) at this point of my life.  I’ve been officially off work for about a month, but have been seriously off track since late May when all this endometrial cancer stuff started.  So I’m taking back management of my team and a lot (LOT) of teleconferences & such, but basically no travel until January. 

I think a more regular schedule & more mind-occupying activities is good for me now.  I like the fact that I’ll still be able to go to the gym, still be able to go downstairs for lunch & tea during the day too. 

But I’m ready to be back in my normal life — even if it means less time online .

So yesterday I went to see my doctor for the post-game wrapup session. The surgical report, see how everything is healing up. Oh yeah, find out about the pathology report which I’ve been trying so hard not to obsess about over the past 2 weeks post-surgery.

The healing is going well, especially when I don’t overdo it, and more and more even when I do.  I have almost no pain now and haven’t taken anything stronger than Tylenol for over a week, and nothing at all since Monday.  He said everything is healing well, all the inside stitches seem to be doing what they’re supposed to, and he gave me some treatment to stop the end of the discharge/bleeding that’s been continuing.  The treatment lasts one week, then I can take baths & go swimming.  (And make whoopee, although before we saw him my husband & I agreed to tack another week or two on to the healing time no matter what he said, because he never seems very conservative with healing).

Surgical report had nothing special in it, nothing he hadn’t told me when he came to discharge me from the hospital, so no surprises there.

Can you feel it building up?  Yeah, so could I.

The pathology report was in, and it wasn’t perfect.  I mean, it’s fine, I most likely don’t need any further treatment (to be confirmed today or Monday at the tumor board meeting held today).  But instead of a nice pre-cancer state of affairs (my pre-surgery diagnosis), they found cancer.  And not even the earliest stage of endometrial cancer, but a tumor that had started to invade the uterine wall.  Official stage is 1B in the old staging system (they just changed all the staging classifications in the last few months).

What does this mean?

• Well, for one thing the decision to go ahead with the hysterectomy instead of pushing my luck with hormonal treatments was clearly a good one.  With a tumor already penetrating the uterine wall, I could have easily been one of the scary 5% who have their disease significantly advance despite hormone treatment.   The risks of the hormone treatment seemed out of hand already when I thought we were dealing with pre-cancer, but now I am very reassured we went the surgical route.
• Maybe this explains why we had such a difficult time having a baby.  Sure, my age has a good amount to do with it too, but my hormone tests have been okay and we have had many shots at good embryos or good timing with IUI & maybe nothing could really stick around & grow because of so much abnormality in my uterus.  One thing for sure, the feeling I had in June that my embryos would have a better chance in someone else’s uterus (surrogacy, which we are pursuing) is clearer than ever for me.
• Keeping my ovaries long term may not be a good idea.  In fact, I’m not so sure about keeping them shorter term either, and have been thinking a lot about this.  Since most of the time they remove them without discussion there is basically no data on what kind of risk I’m running.  I will, of course, have lots of follow up testing and monitoring to try to pick up anything amis, but I do wonder how effective that is.  I need to give it some more thought, but will likely go back to one of my second-opinion doctors from June and get another person’s thoughts on this.
• Do I do another re-reading of the pathology?  What will it prove, what will it help? The decision to do or not do anything will probably be based on what the second opinion doc says.
• I know I face years of worry - intense during the testing phases as they come up (more frequent in the first years, then decreasing, then much less frequent as time goes on).  That worry factor probably would have been there with another diagnosis, but is obviously increased now.
• Good luck getting me off the carb-restriction thing.  I started the carb-restriction stuff just for weight loss several months before the diagnosis.  Then as I was researching what wellness changes to make I saw all kinds of stuff about how sugar feeds cancer.  I was already liking low carb because I felt so good, no hunger & it was working for my weight, but the sugar (and other carbs) feeding cancer thing sealed the deal for me.  Still does.

Otherwise, the pathology results of pre-cancer, stage 1A or stage 1B have the same further treatment recommendations : NONE.

So in some ways I’m worried about nothing.  On the other hand, I found out yesterday that there is a big difference emotionally between pre-cancer & cancer, even if the physical treatment side is the same.

I don’t know if my reaction is normal or not.  My husband seemed to think I was creating drama when we had “good news”, but since I had really focused on having either the surgical result be pre-cancer or stage 1A I admit I was really shocked & scared when my surgeon told me of 1B.  I do think it’s something I’ll need time to process.  Luckily I have a new counselor who I am really liking.

I’m on the road to recovery pretty solidly now.

After Tuesday’s debacle I’ve paid more attention to taking it easy, and my mom had a reminder from her sister (who nursed her after her hysterectomy 20+ yrs ago) of how hard the recovery was & suddenly my mom is insisting I sit down, etc.  The pain has significantly reduced & 22 hours a day I’m feeling good (the other 2 hours I’m behind on taking my Tylenol & waiting for it to kick in).

I see the doctor on Thursday & hope hope hope to get the all-clear from his exam and the pathology report.

In the meantime, I’m walking a bit (trying for around 30min/day) and don’t have a huge appetite (my mom thinks from the surgery, I think from the carb-restricted diet).  The end result?  Another 2 pounds gone this week!  That brings my total to 31, which is damn respectable.  I’m so glad to have gotten in control of my weight this year.  And beyond pleased to have found an approach that works so effortlessly for me.

Well, as some of you cautioned, I have indeed overdone it.

My mom keeps insisting that we go out for a walk every day and I keep going no matter how I feel.  And she believes in making it longer and longer each day.  So yesterday was an hour and twenty minutes and after we got home I felt light headed for over an hour and then had terrible belly pains all evening (continuing today).

My husband (who has been telling me each day that I’m doing too much & that I need to rest) was really upset last night & told me that today I needed to listen to him, why was I listening to my mom?  Well, because she’s a doctor (retired, and with no knowledge of surgical recovery).  He said, no, she’s here to be a nurse to you, not a doctor.  Good point.

So here I am curled up on the couch with my swelly belly… but the idea of moving nauseates me, so it must be the right decision.

I think all the collective good will (friends, family, all my eFriends like you all) really helped me. The surgery went well and it’s been an easier recovery than I had feared. They were able to do the hysterectomy via laparoscope, which means far less abdominal cutting, and I was up on my feet about 16 hours later. I did so well in my recovery they let me out a day or two early from what is typical at my hospital. The only pain meds I had since the night of surgery is Tylenol and sometimes I boost it with an anti-inflammatory. I’m walking daily - trying to go about 5 min longer each day but I overdid it on Sat so trying to be a bit calmer about it.

My weight is hardly been my preoccupation, but I did start on the carbs 2 days before surgery (bread, dessert) and then in the hospital of course you don’t control your diet. They had me on a glucose drip for surgery & 24 hours after and the first things I was able to eat were breads and sweetened things (yogurt, applesauce). But the day after getting home from the hospital I got back on track, and I saw the 6 pounds of bloat (from carbs & surgery) fall away over 3 days).

I haven’t had much appetitite - small amounts of food satisfy me, and ‘normal’ portions make me nauseous (probably effects from the anesthesia & the mucking around the surgeon did in the gut). It helps me to not overeat, however.

All told, surgery was easier than expected, recovery is easier than expected, & emotionally I’m doing better than I expected.

Thanks again for all of your support over the past 6 months.