Thursday, March 15, 2018

And so it begins...

  Recently, my doctor discovered that I allegedly have the spine of a 112 year old person and is amazed I was not writhing on his floor in constant pain. My husband diagnosed me as being extremely Polish years ago, but I digress. All I was grousing about was what I thought was a minor annoyance that wasn't going away. It felt like I was having a hot flash down one side of my leg when I moved a certain way. He sat me down and explained the results of my MRI in English and then developed an expensive treatment plan. It was the most polite robbery I'd  ever been to.
  The "treatment plan" involved me handing over three copays a week for 8 weeks or until the new golf clubs are paid for. Seriously, I found this practitioner from the recommendations of knowledgeable friends so I can't call the guy a "sheister" by any means. I'm just more annoyed/depressed by the expense among other things. I was also informed that exercise was verboten for two weeks. I was not even allowed to take a walk.
   For most normal humans, this is not that big a deal. Yours truly lasted three days before the antsy pants set in.  Who, in their right mind, loves to exercise? How are running, tire flipping, or burpees anyone's definition of a good time?  Herein lies the rub, it's  not the activity itself so much as what I get out of it. I had no idea how much I've  come to rely on the stress relief it provides until I wasn't  able to do it.
  A few weeks back, our area got a ridiculous amount of rain. We had water in our basement and the room I take my workout class in was also flooded. It also happened to be the week the hormone fairy hit. O joy. Earth was getting on my goddamn nerves. When even I notice I'm extra cranky, it's bad. I even asked my ob about it, suspecting I may be on the verge of menopause. She assured me that if I were, the grumpiness was supposed to decrease, not increase. Is there anything I can do to help this?, I asked. Her response was, you guessed it, exercise! Oi fucking vey.
   I have now almost survived two weeks of doing not much. My sanity was questionable to begin with but now I think it's close to packing its bags and leaving altogether. Besides the stress relief, the exercise allowed me to keep some very old beasts in their cages. When I began the high intensity interval training, I was somewhat in shape. Several months in, however, I began to lose weight. This was not intentional so much as it was taken off my hide. This past summer, for the first time in I couldn't tell how many presidents, I wanted my picture taken in a bathing suit. I don't think this ever happened to me even in my twenties, when you would have wanted to see the picture, much less twenty five years later! Mind you, last summer's suit was "age appropriate" but stylish.
  I have to continuously remind myself that my idea of no exercise has so far meant sneaking off to a gym on a friend's membership and doing some pedaling and eliptical stuff. I maintain my what's left of my sanity for your protection. My "beasties" are also old, crazy, and have lousy eyesight. These creatures  have been in my brain since my late teens. They criticize, catastrophize and are completely unrealistic. "It's been two weeks, you must need your own zip code by now!" Do I look any different than I did two weeks ago?, of course not. Rational thought has nothing to do with them. They do nothing but generate annoying swamp gas bubbles in my brain.
   I would love to evict these tenants, any ideas?

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