My November Resolution

As grateful as I am to have survived two years with heart disease and to have a healthy heart that allows me to be here today, I continue to struggle with debilitating fatigue. As I recently told a friend, surviving isn’t enough anymore – I want to actually live again. It becomes pretty depressing to spend each day looking forward to an early bedtime, to sleep away most weekends and to see no light at the end of the tunnel. My energy level has been low for two years now, and I’m sick of it!

Everyone has been blaming my fatigue on anemia even though I have continued to feel bad during times with pretty normal hemoglobin levels. When I went to see my hematologist last week, I was delighted to find that he believes there is something causing this exhaustion beyond anemia. I felt like I was on the show ‘House’ as I watched him and his fellow brainstorm about what might be wrong. Finally, after muttering in terms I didn’t understand, his eyes lit up. He thinks I may have a cortisol deficiency that would have been caused by my adrenal glands being damaged when my organs failed two years ago.

I’ll find out early this week whether or not my cortisol level is abnormal. I really hope it is because it would apparently be a relatively simple fix. However, I’m recommitting to being hopeful and optimistic about finding a solution to this exhaustion – whatever it is.

Most people make New Year’s Resolutions, but after feeling a glimmer of hope and reflecting on my recent mental state, I don’t want to wait another two months. So here’s my November Resolution:

Anemia Be Gone
My hematologist still believes some of my fatigue is being driven by anemia, and we have a plan. Every Friday morning at 7:30 I will have my blood drawn for a hemoglobin level. If it's below a certain point, I'll get a shot of Procrit, which helps stimulate red blood cell production, which treats anemia. My commitment to feeling better is stronger than the physiological inertia that shivers at the sound of a 7:30 appointment in New Brunswick. So far so good – I got my first shot this past Friday.

Battle On
I really hope cortisol is the answer to my nagging exhaustion, but I am committed to finding and fixing whatever else is wrong with me. I do not accept feeling this way. There is a solution.

Choose Happiness
Having an upbeat attitude and optimistic outlook served me well for a year and a half, but I have allowed myself to sink into a spiral of negativity for the last few months. Feeling sad and sorry for myself will only make me feel worse, so I choose instead to be happy. I’m going to believe in a better future – knowing that the occasional pity party is inevitable and normal.

Diet For Good
The less I have believed I can feel good again, the more I have ignored my diet. But I know I can be better. I stuck to a painstaking diet of very low sodium for eight months before my transplant. I effectively stopped eating sweets for the first couple of months after my diabetes diagnosis. But in the last six or eight months, I have almost completely ignored my diet. It started with cheating occasionally but has developed into bad eating habits that I justify with an “I’m not going to live forever so I want to enjoy myself” mentality. While I still wholeheartedly embrace the mentality in general, I know that small improvements in my diet can contribute to a healthier – and happier – lifestyle.

Bueller...Bueller...Bueller...

Hello...is this thing on? I've received a handful of healthy eating tips and recipes, but I was hoping for at least double digits! I KNOW you have a good recipe that is already healthy OR is a traditional recipe made healthier OR is a dessert that doesn't have a ton of sugar OR a tip to get more vitamins and minerals in your diet OR a tip for sticking to a healthy diet OR a low-calorie snack OR something! Please share!

Why? First, to help me! After all, I am trying to stick to a heart-healthy, diabetes-friendly diet (although today was not a particularly successful day). I spent today in focus groups, which tend to cause m&m overloads. Second, to help other readers improve or stick to their diets. And finally, for a chance to win a great cookbook from the American Heart Association.

Pretty please?

See previous post for details. The deadline is Sunday, April 17!

Winning... It's Not Just For Sheen Anymore

I can no longer keep myself from posting a gratuitous Charlie Sheen reference. I haven’t yet decided whether I feel sorry for his public demise, or if I just want him to SHUT UP. It’s quite clear that he is most definitely not winning. Two of you, on the other hand, are indeed winning – great gifts from the American Heart Association! Congratulations to Eva Challen and Katherine (Kaffrin) Edmonds for winning the first BetterU contest! AHA will be mailing you a great assortment of goodies, from a water bottle and jump rope to a yummy cookbook.

As for the rest of you, this is your next chance to win – this time the prize is a nice hard-cover American Heart Association cookbook! You can use it for yourself and your family, or it would make a great gift for someone that could use a little nudge toward a healthier lifestyle!

I’m currently using a cookbook called “Diabetes and Heart Healthy Meals for Two”, which was produced by AHA in collaboration with the American Diabetes Association. I would recommend this cookbook to anyone (diabetic or not) looking for inspiration to eat healthy meals that are also delicious. I’m confident that the one being given away here is just as wonderful as the one I have. Whoever wins will have to give me the full report!

My Aunt Tine recently told me that cinnamon has been shown to have a variety of health benefits, including lowering LDL cholesterol and blood pressure – two common factors in heart disease. I tried drinking it in my coffee, but most of it ended up sticking to the mug, so I now sprinkle it into the grounds before brewing the coffee – talk about winning. I don’t know how much benefit I get without actually ingesting the cinnamon itself, but I think it’s a great example of the little things we can do to try to make more healthful choices.

I’d like to know what little changes you are making to live a healthier lifestyle, whether you joined the BetterU program or not. Do you have a favorite recipe you made more healthy? Have you started taking extra vitamins or supplements, like I'm trying to do with my cinnamon coffee? I can use all the help I can get, so I would appreciate any and all advice – and hopefully your ideas will benefit other readers too!

So, here’s the skinny:

FIRST – send a recipe or any healthy eating tip to me by e-mail or by posting in the comments section

THEN – you have one week, I'll announce the winner on Sunday, April 17

FINALLY – I will share everything I receive so that everyone can benefit from everyone else’s recipes and tips… after all, it’s not ALL about me :)

If, like Charlie, you are tired of pretending you're "not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars" and are ready to start "winning", then send me your recipe or tip today!

BetterU Week Two: Ignorance Is Not Bliss

I’ve made it through my first week of the BetterU program. Today is the first day of week two for me, so I’ll fill you in on how week one went and what’s going on this week. For those of you who have joined, I hope you’ll post about your progress in the comments!

My week one goal was to be active for 10 to 30 minutes each day. I did it for 6 out of 7 days last week, and I think that’s a pretty good start to a BetterMe. I exercised right here in my apartment 3 of the days – pounded on my quasi-heavy bag (yes, I know this is not a normal thing to own!) and just generally bounced around for 10 or 20 minutes. I went to the gym the other three days and even did my full 9-minute run once (45 minutes on the treadmill with three 3-minute intervals of jogging). All in all, I had an active week, thanks to the motivation I got from BetterU.

Week two is all about reducing risk factors for heart disease, which begins with knowing what they are and which ones you have. I happen to be very well acquainted with my own risk factors, and I encourage you to identify and reduce yours. The main controllable risk factors are as follows:

High Blood Pressure – Smoking – High Cholesterol – Physical Inactivity – Obesity or Being Overweight – Diabetes

If you don’t know what your blood pressure is, find a drug store that has one of those chairs with the cuff. Normal is 120/80, anything within ten or twenty points either way is probably okay. If you don’t know your cholesterol, talk to your doctor about having some simple blood work done to find out. If you don’t have a general doctor, find one! In the case of heart disease factors, ignorance is most definitely not bliss.

The point this week is that there are little choices we can make every day to reduce our risk for heart disease. With that in mind, I set the following goal for week two:

While on 3 days of business travel this week, I will choose to avoid sweets and desserts.

Now, you may be thinking: Isn’t this girl diabetic? I sure am, but I cheat and squeeze sweets into my diet sometimes. On top of this tendency, travel is synonymous with unhealthy eating in my mind. For some reason, I’ve always allowed myself to indulge while traveling. On trips like this, there are always sweets and snacks lying around, begging to be eaten. There are fancy dinners, which seemingly everyone finishes off with decadent desserts. Not this girl, not this week. Wish me luck!

Stay tuned for the winners of the week one contest – I will announce two winners as soon as I figure out what the prizes are :)

Why you should sign up for the program with Go Red For Women:

The Ugly Truth: Heart disease is the #1 killer of women age 20 and over, killing approximately 1 woman every minute.

The Good News: About 80% of heart disease is preventable.

What We Can Do: 90% of women have one or more risk factors for developing heart disease – together we can reduce this number drastically!

How BetterU Can Help: Research shows that women who Go Red are more likely to make healthy changes in their lives.
• More than 1/3 have lost weight.
• Nearly 50% have increased their exercise.
• Six out of ten have changed their diets.



Could You Be A BetterU?

The last several days have been less than ideal for me. I went into the hospital the mornings of Thursday and Friday for iron infusions. I was nervous about side effects but really excited about the prospect of soon having more energy. It was expected that iron followed by another medicine would boost my hemoglobin and increase my energy – a very welcome change.

Thursday morning was fine. I was really nervous, but the whole visit was completely uneventful. The nurse found my vein with no problem and had the iron solution flowing within an hour of my arrival. I left feeling fine and went into work for the afternoon.

Over my nerves, I waltzed in on Friday morning thinking more about my impending business trip than any potential problems with the infusion. About 75% of the way through, I became nauseated and developed red splotches on my face. The nausea increased quickly, as did my heart rate, and the splotches made their way down my neck. The nurse stopped the iron immediately, hung a bag of Benadryl and called my cardiologist. I’ll skip the rest of the details, but after the Benadryl, a bag of nausea medicine, lots of IV fluids and an hour or two of drifting in and out of sleep, I felt a lot better. Today, I’m relieved to be feeling normal again – at least as normal as I felt before Friday.

Since we’d identified the driver of my fatigue, I allowed myself to skip out on exercise over the past week or so. It was just a convenient excuse for a break, since my anemia had been present for months. I realized this weekend there is no excuse for not being physically active. Doing some sit-ups and my wannabe push-ups is better than lying on the couch. Going for a long walk is better than standing still. It bothers me to exercise without giving 100%, but I’m trying to embrace the notion of more frequent work-outs at 50%.

With this new outlook, I joined the American Heart Association’s BetterU program today. It’s the first day of spring and I’m springing into a Better Me (hemoglobin be darned)! I signed up at www.goredforwomen.org/betteru and I really hope you’ll join me. BetterU is a free 12-week program designed to help ANYONE ANYWHERE decrease his or her risk of heart disease. If I can do it post-transplant and with sub-par hemoglobin levels, I’m sure you can do it too!

Sign up by March 26th (and be sure to let me know by email – aef616@hotmail.com) and you could win a great prize from the American Heart Association! And to help maintain your commitment throughout the 12 weeks, we’ll have more contests along the way!

The program encourages goal-setting and small changes that can be sustained in the long-term. My goal for the first week is to find one block of inactivity (between 10 and 30 minutes) each day and turn it into physically active time. Even ten minutes of extra activity each week adds up to over an hour of exercise I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten!

Even if you already exercise regularly and follow a perfectly healthy diet, this program will help you become more aware of the risks and warning signs for heart disease. So even if your risk is already low, I feel sure you can learn a thing or two through the BetterU program. Please join me today!

**Note that while the program is targeted toward women, men should sign up too!**

Happy New Year!

When I went to the gym this morning (and by “this morning” I mean at 1pm), I expected it to be mobbed with eager exercisers whose new year’s resolutions were to lose weight. That’s a familiar resolution for me, though I don’t believe I ever stuck with my various plans for more than a month or two.

This year I made my new year’s resolution about five months early. My new year celebration began on July 21 (well, really a few days later when I finally started to believe I’d survive). My previous year had been consumed by illness and fear, and I knew that while the next twelve months would still be difficult, they would be filled with progress and new hope. So I resolved to honor my donor by taking great care of the extraordinary gift I’d received.

A couple of months ago, I adjusted the resolution a bit. When I heard on tv that a Chilean miner named Edison Pena had been running while trapped underground and intended to complete the New York City marathon, my ears perked up. What he said next really resonated with me. He said, “I was running to be an active participant in my own salvation.”

So my revised 2011 New Year’s resolution is this: to be an active participant in my own salvation. In this way, I will honor my donor, become the person I want to be for my family and friends, and live a long, healthy life.

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2011 and success with whatever your resolutions may be!

Cheers~