Breathing-ma and quick-ER-ma, vw.

Well, I loved my first doctor, but when he went off shift, I got idiot doctor, who prescribed me 20 days on steroids. AFTER I'd told him that prolonged steroid usage causes me to get myopathy.

Of course, my doctor is not reachable, because of the holiday, so I have no idea what to do.

Take the drugs until you get ahold of your regular doctor. Anything is better than nothing at all. How soon after you started taking them the last time did you start having problems?

How long does it take for the myopathy to hit? I wonder if a few days of care and steroids will be enough to get things under control again?

How long does it take for the myopathy to hit?

It takes a couple of weeks. I'm planning on doing the "normal" taper that we usually do, instead of what the doctor prescribed. I'll double check that with my PCP as soon as I can get ahold of her. That will only be six days, rather than 20!

blows nose

This darned cold is still trying to kick my tush. We are packing up and heading down to Marina (near Monterey) for the night. I had wanted to party 2006 away, but I'll be lucky to be awake for the tolling of midnight.

Not sure if I'll be online later....so my best to the buffistas. May 2007 bring much joy and may 2006 go out with a whimper.

((vw))

I went grocery shopping today and my god! it's horrible. I'm trying to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup at all costs and it's nigh impossible. The bread I could find (that looked tasty) were some multi grain buns for $3.

I'm doing the You on A Diet thing features on Oprah and the author talks about using canned peaches and orange slices packed without syrup. I couldn't find it in my grocery store. I need to start getting my ass up on Saturdays and seeing if the farmer's market is any cheaper.

Yeah, there's even HFCS in Diet Orange Crush.

I've found it in salad dressing, crackers, it's the second or third ingredient in Powerade and Gatorade. I had to pay a small fortune to find juice that wasn't filled with it.

The people going after transfat should be going after HFCS as well.

I have found that I'm better off not trying to match yummy sweet treats with "diet" stuff, since both aspartame and sugar alcohols play merry hobb with my gut, and I can't abide the taste of saccharine or ... the pink stuff. I've done better retraining my palate. Instead of half a bag of M&M's, one square of dark chocolate, and slow down and enjoy it. If I need to grind my teeth and crunch through an afternoon of work, carrots and celery--the fact is, I don't even taste the chips or pretzels or whatever when I'm eating under stress, so naked carrots and celery solve the oral crunch urge for me. Instead of a whole bag of micro popcorn watching a dvd, I'll have a small cereal bowl of cheddar or ranch flavored Quakes--those mini-rice cakes. And I drink absolutely nothing but filtered water all the time. Two small cups of coffee in the morning, an occasional cup of tea, an infrequent glass of soft cider or cranberry juice, a four-ounce shot of OJ in my protein smoothie, and water the rest of the time. I've given up ginger ale except for upset stomach--it's too sweet. Club soda's too salty. I'll occasionally have seltzer alone or with the cranberry. But mostly, it's water--six to eight 10-oz. bottles a day.

And tell me why it is the stores are full of the sweet Quakes--apple cinnamon, caramel, etc.--and I can rarely find the cheddar and ranch ones?

A handful of peanut butter stuffed pretzels is better than a whole bag of regular pretzels, and I let myself get away with it because the protein in the pb makes up for the small amount of wheat.

I've managed to not miss most of the stuff I used to eat. But what I've been missing lately? Cinnamon toast. Not waffles, not even bread, really. Just--cinnamon toast. Or homemade biscuits with butter and honey, or strawberry jam.

Gotta check out that spelt stuff.

And of course, as militant as I am about what I eat and what I don't, the fact is that the weight isn't going to come off unless I exercise. The good news is that with the dietary change and the thyroid meds and the supplements I'm taking, I finally can move enough TO exercise. So yay to that.

At the moment, I'm eating a large salad of Newman's own mixed greens (and purples and reds, yay!) with a dollop of DH's mackerel salad (canned flaked fish, hot mustard, grated horseradish, dill, chopped dill relish and coarse black pepper), a dollop of low-fat cottage cheese, a chopped boiled egg, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Yum!