Week in photos

Free range afternoon

Mouse always has his eye on me

Jay has taken up juicing. Apparently all the guys in his firehouse are doing it? The first few rounds did not go well. I'm thinking that recipes are there for a reason.

Our septic tank runneth over and started backing up into the downstairs shower. Talk about gross. So we had to get our tank pumped and the line flushed. Farewell $460, I will miss you!

Gorgeous church  outside of Chestertown. My friend Christina is thinking of getting married there next year. I had to go to our Chester River Hospital last week to train my vacation back up. Afterwards, Christina took me on a tour of Kent County. We also visited her parents' gorgeous home in Rock Hall, where we had a few glasses of wine on the porch. Her mom also made some heavenly guacamole. It was a nice visit!

This beautiful tree on the church grounds is 400 years old

Marker from the tree

Jay hard at work on chicken coop #2. It will comfortably house our entire flock!

Mouse was about to attack Jay, so he gave him a good chase around the yard

Mom visited for a Scentsy party over the weekend

She loves her grandpeeps

And she brought me some flowers for my birthday

After mom left on Sunday, I went to Martinak for a long walk and some photos. I was taking pictures of this cherry tree sapling when this tiger swallowtail came out of NOWHERE and landed on the branch. It's not nearly warm enough for butterflies to be making an appearance. It reminded me of my dad. Maybe this was his way of saying hi. 

Watts Creek... kayakers enjoying the spring day

More cherry blooms

An osprey left its nest after I got too close. :(

Early spring at Martinak

Wordless Wednesday

 

Steroids are nasty

So I’m pretty sure that my high blood pressure was caused by a combination of pain and the methylprednisolone that I was put on to relieve the pain from my swollen tonsils. This stuff is evil.

I took my last dose of the stuff last Thursday and my blood pressure has been slowly coming back down. But by Friday it had not decreased enough for my concerned coworkers and I had significantly different BP readings from my left and right arms, which apparently is a bad sign. So they gave me an EKG.

Nothing like having to lift up your boob for your coworker to stick electrodes under. The EKG was abnormal, but not heart attack kind of abnormal. My doctor friend who reviewed it said that it was probably nothing and could be connected to the steroids, but that I definitely needed to see my PCP about the high blood pressure. At the doctor yesterday, they took another abnormal EKG and numerous blood pressure readings. By the time I had finally calmed down, it was down to 128/88. Much better than my previous readings of 140/110 and 158/108. Goes to show you how much pain and stress can affect those things. 

My primary care physician agreed that it was most likely nothing, but she is sending me to a cardiologist for an evaluation and stress test just in case. On my 33^rd birthday, I get to go see Dr. Okun. 

This is not how I envisioned spending part of my birthday, but oh well. Jay is probably happy because it means that I’m bailing on book club and now we get to go to dinner instead. And since we’ll be on “the other side of the bridge,” we will have plenty of great restaurant options in Annapolis and Baltimore. I’m sure that everything will be okay, but it will be nice to have him with me at my appointment.

All of that said, I’m not really sure what is going on with my diet right now. I’ve been committed to recording everything I eat with LoseIt, and have remained under my target calories for the past 8 weeks. However, somehow I’ve gained 2 pounds in the last week, while as long as I stick to my plan, I should be losing a pound a week. I think it is probably all water retention from the steroids and that this time of the month isn’t great for me. So I’m trying to be patient. I'm still exercising every other day, if not every day. I've been walking, doing the elliptical, and swimming. Over the weekend I did the stationary cycle and used the rowing machine. So my body seriously needs to get its act together.

Since I’m not sure how the diet is affecting me health-wise, I am trying to keep my saturated fats and sodium low. I caved a bit in the carbs department, but I haven’t completely caved to the point of eating pizza, French bread and French fries. But I did have a rough day last Friday. I had two tater tots, a big slice of delicious pineapple, part of a chocolate dipped banana from Edible Arrangements  and several fried green beans. And too many cocktails at Harry’s. I’m now trying to keep around/under 40-60 net grams of carbs a day and under or around 20 grams of saturated fat a day. My current struggle is with nuts. I am shoveling fistfuls of almonds and walnuts into my mouth. I convince myself that since almonds and walnuts are heart healthy that eating a pound in one sitting is perfectly acceptable.

Okay, I may be exaggerating with eating an entire pound of nuts, but I haven't exactly been counting them out.

In other news, we are running out of time to figure out who is taking care of our critters while we’re away. 

Mind you, this is when we LAND in Brisbane. We are down to 31 days before our flight leaves.

Normally I’d be fine with asking our friends to take care of the chickens, but three weeks is a lot to ask of someone. Plus this vacation is going to require cleaning litter boxes, and I don’t want to ask that of my friends. When you’re spending over ten grand on a vacation, another few hundred bucks for a pet/house sitter shouldn’t be an issue. However, Jay still won’t make a decision on whether he is going to ask a slightly odd guy he knows from the Masons. So I think he just wants me to take care of it. I sent out a message to our book club to ask for recommendations… some of the women have college age kids who might want to earn a few easy bucks. Fingers crossed.

My aunt Nancy has been sending these photos almost daily. I can almost smell the salt in the air.

This picture was taken FROM A McDONALD'S! Seriously, how beautiful is this place that even the McDonald's has this kind of view?

Hey, I just met you... but this could kill you!

Well, there must be something going on around the Blogosphere (or maybe my Atkins buddies) because my friend Kelly had a bit of a health scare a few weeks ago.

It looks like it’s my turn! I’ve been doing Atkins for seven weeks now and have lost 12-ish pounds. The first week I felt weird, but I attributed it to being an out of balance electrolyte thing. I had some chicken stock and everything was fine. Clearly the diuretic effect of the Atkins diet is screwing with me. Or maybe it was just the Atkins flu. 

Fast forward to last weekend where I was completely miserable. My throat was disgusting. My tonsils were enormous and covered in puss. I considered sharing the photo on the blog, but decided that was just TMI. So, I showed the photo to one of my doctor friends at work and she told me that I needed to get antibiotics. On Saturday, I took my sick butt to Your Doc’s In. The PA took one look at my throat and burst out laughing, “YEAH! You NEED ANTIBIOTICS!!” I told her that I knew that already.

Then she says, “There must be some mistake… you say that you’re not on blood pressure medication.” I said no, my blood pressure is always low – 110/70. She shakes her head and says, “No, you’re hypertensive. Your BP is 140/110. Are you sure you aren’t on any blood pressure medications, because you should be.” I convince her that it must just be because I’m in so much pain. My discharge papers list my first condition as hypertension instead of the strep throat that I came in with.

Great.

So I’m thinking this must be some kind of mistake. For the last month and a half, I’ve been dieting and exercising my ass off, have lost weight, and now I’m hypertensive?

So all this week I’ve been stressed about it and my chest has felt tight. I chalk it up to anxiety. I still think that a lot of it has to do with anxiety. If I could just freaking relax, it would be better. But now the seed of doubt has been sowed and every weird pain or tightness doubtlessly sends my blood pressure into stroke country. Which makes me more anxious. Which makes my pulse race and my blood pressure skyrocket. 

It's a vicious cycle.

Earlier this week, I mentioned my doctor's office experience to my friend at work Grace, who also happens to be the ED manager and my favorite coffee buddy. 

“That’s really high. You need to check it. Landra is in triage, ask her to check it for you.”

I suppose that I inherited some of my dad’s stubbornness when it comes to health problems. I’m in denial. Oh… and yes, my dad suffered from high blood pressure. So my denial is stupid, since I know these things can be genetic.

So of course, I put it off. Grace asked me again today how my blood pressure was. I sheepishly told her that I hadn’t had it checked.

She hauled me out to triage and checked it herself. It was 133/105. Still high. She said that it’s the diastolic (bottom) number that is the concern moreso than the top. She gave me a bit of a lecture on how important it is that I take this seriously. Consider me admonished.

I think that it may have something to do with my sodium intake. I also mentioned it to my boss, who agreed that the high blood pressure could be due to my excess ingestion of sodium. Looking back through my LoseIt app, I’ve been consuming between 500 and 1000 more mg of salt than is recommended. So I’m going to be reducing my sodium intake big time. Hopefully reducing my sodium to a normal level will make my blood pressure decrease to something that won’t kill me. Like back to my usual 110/70.

That said, I’ll be checking my blood pressure each day at work and I’ve agreed to call my doctor next week if it’s not lowered by then.

Fingers crossed that salt is the problem. If not, I suppose that genetics are finally catching up with me. Which sucks, since diabetes also runs in my family. 

On the bright side, at least I work in the ER where medical help is only steps away!

Wordless Wednesdays... vacation countdown

Last week in photos

Trip to Baltimore for the dentist and happy hour with my old coworkers

USS Constellation

Chickie driving me home from work

One of the peeps hatched from our eggs

Martinak Canoes

Martinak sunset

Osprey... time to get a better lens

Martinak sunset

Lonely sunset

Ancona chickiepoo. I need to name you.

Easter Egger chickie... I think I'm going to name her Chippy...

She is too freaking cute

With those chipmunk cheeks

Dr. Tasty, Esquire inspecting Miss Chippy

And running away...

This chick looks just like Mouse when he was a baby. One of my boss's kids claimed the little guy.

Farewell old IKEA dining room table, you've been good to me! Jay has spent the last week refinishing a table that his grandfather made. I'm struggling a bit with the color, but I'm hoping that eventually I'll get used to the lighter color wood.

Another gratuitous pic of Chippy

One of the White Marans chicks... pretty sure that's what she is. No name yet.

That's all for now!