Everyone gets sick. Unfortunately, last night was my turn. Not fun if you were in my company. Dinner went down the drain and the headache that came when I was minutes from passing out (really, germs? really?) really made for a terrible sleep.

Guess how old that bottle is. I have no idea, either. I don’t even remember buying it. When you have a pounding headache, you stop caring about expiration dates. Luckily for me, it worked on my headache and I was sound asleep 30 minutes later. Sweetness :-)

Then Lana woke up and “helped” by laying on my chest. Her love heals, she said. It does :-) After she fell asleep and moved to a more comfortable location, I was able to breath again. Then, all was well.

Lesson: Keep meds up to date. (but don’t toss out any old ones until you do)

-Wendy

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UPDATE

Benign

I received the call. The news is good. The moles are benign and I go back in 6 months for a mole check. The mole on my leg had “unusual changes”, meaning I’m going to worry for 6 months until I see my doctor again.

However, I’m relieved that it was nothing and I can breathe again.

Removing the stitches. This scar has turned a sexy leg into a bar fight story. A stabbed in the leg with a butter knife kind of story. Oh, that bruise? It’s a bandaid burn.

 End of Update

 
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For the past few months, I’ve been keeping a little secret. I’ve told only 2 people and yesterday I told my mom. Today, I’ll tell you.

In May I went to one of those Free Skin Cancer Screenings they offer to the public. I showed up two hours early and the waiting room was already half full of all stereo types. I’m not even going further than that but will say that it was interesting to see such a diverse group of people in the same small room, for the same purpose, all together and patiently waiting for our name to be called. But hold up now, I’m getting ahead of myself, I need to back track a little..

Several years ago, I noticed a small freckle on my nose. It was an imperfection I was faced with daily. But I didn’t notice how fast it was growing and changing until a couple of years ago when my brother pointed it out to me. “Oh my god, cancer..?” – my first thought. And second and third. It was a question that was stuck on repeat. Every time I looked in the mirror and for the next two years I watched it like a hawk and tried to put the worry aside. What good is stressing out over something I had no control over? Not everyone is fortunate enough to have health insurance. We earn too much to get assistance but not enough to afford it ourselves and work doesn’t offer it. Yay.

Fast forward to May 2011. I’m once again researching skin cancer late one night because of this video I saw on someone’s blog:

I realized that not having health insurance was a lame excuse for not trying harder to get checked. And so my mission began. As I said, I was up late researching moles and signs of skin cancer when oddly enough, a public announcement came on tv saying they were doing free skin cancer screenings downtown and there was no excuse to miss out on getting screened. Everything was falling into my lap, yelling “Well?! Go!” So the mister dropped me off early the next morning and the wait began.

Two lovely hours with a child that cannot stand a parked stroller can drive a person mad. I came semi prepared and entertained her with books, stories and snacks . Time flew by for a while and I had forgotten I was even in a hospital waiting room. Until my name was called.

“I’ve had this mole on my leg since I was a kid and this mole on my nose is new to the family, it’s about 5 years new but grew in size and puffed up in just the last 3 years.” The doctor looks over my nose and makes faces of concern, then moves on to my leg and studies it longer, making faces of worry. Faces Of Worry!! That means, to me, that I need to have my leg amputated asap!

The doctor says “It could be nothing. It could just be a mole.. but I’m going to refer you to a dermatologist to be sure” but my eyes start tearing up. I don’t hear anything she says after that, I just nod my head and try to listen but her lips make no sound. I came to this screening expecting to be sent home feeling silly for worrying about nothing for years. She escorts me to the nurses station where she hands me a referral and tries to assist me with health care programs. I explain to the nurses that I’m on my own. No health insurance here. We make too much but can’t afford private insurance and work doesn’t offer it. One of the nurses takes my 3 yr old aside an entertains her while the doctor and two nurses school me on ways to be seen if all else fails. One of the nurses starts tearing up and gives me a number to call if by the end of the month, I’m still searching. Watching a nurse cry over my troubles really scared me and I begin to wonder if perhaps this isn’t as small as the doctor wants me to think.

I’ll spare you the long story of the circle I was sent on in search of health insurance. A very small organization opened their doors, not only to me but to my family and has insured us for a year. Because of wonderful people, I was able to see the doctor two days ago. After the new doctor examined my moles, he said the same thing the first doctor said; that I needed to have the mole on my leg removed and possibly the mole on my nose. Both need to be biopsied and it needs to happen now. To see this doctor, you have to schedule nearly month and a half in advance. He’s that booked. He also doesn’t want to make me wait to have the moles removed so he has me go back two days later for the quick procedure in between patients. And just like that, the leg mole was gone and the nose mole was carefully scraped off.

Before & After pics because I have to:

Nose Before

Leg Before

Nose After

Leg After

Now I just sit and wait until the results come in. And I thought all those years of wondering and worrying were stressful. I’m healing just fine. My only complaint? Bandaids have a superglue adhesive  that pulls too hard near my stitches. How am I supposed to change the bandage once a day if my skin feels like it’s going to rip? Least of my worries. I’ll stop being a whiny baby now and be thankful I even had a doctor to help me. This post is not about what I went through. It’s about getting checked. Everyone who knew I worried about my moles told me it was “probably nothing” but as much as they wanted to calm my fears, they’re far from being doctors and knowing what they’re talking about. For years I tried to ignore the mole that grew on my nose but it stared at me everyday.  I guess my fears outgrew my mole.

The road I’m on is a sweaty, achy, worth-every-cramp, uphill battle. To take off the weight I put on after a rough couple of years will be far from easy. I’m the complete opposite from the girl who eats her problems away. My deal is that I have so much on my mind and so much to do each day that I forget to eat or put it off because I’m not hungry. I make breakfast and lunch for my daughter but I’m either not hungry or too busy to eat and so I don’t usually eat until I start dinner. I kid! The mister usually makes dinner. Now, THAT I’ll eat.

That’s probably another one of my faults. I should make dinner more often because the mister could careless about eating healthy when money is tight. We have changed a little of our eating habits. We’re now more aware of what we eat and snack on, which is a big difference from what we used to do, which was nothing. Fast, cheap and easy meals was what we lived on and somehow are alive to talk about it. Crazy, crazy people we are. I know!

So my 1 meal a day has turned into 3 with a snack or two in-between. I’m no longer forcing my body to live in starvation mode. Now we’re en joying some fruits and some veggies but more than that, we’r enjoying properly proportioned meals and eating healthier ones at that. Not so much ground beef and more chicken and fish. Well, fish sticks and tuna is about as much seafood as I can take. I dislike seafood. (You heard me.)

Now, here is where I am today. Blurred for obvious reasons. I don’t need a clear photo coming back to haunt me but I’m also sure that after I’m back to a beautiful healthy weight and size, I wont really care about this pic as much as I do now.

top left: Curvaceous. Beautiful curves. I do NOT want to lose my curves, just slim them down.
top right: Thighs. I love my thighs but I’ll love them more when they’re toned.
bottom left: Boobs. I have more than I need and will have breast reduction surgery as soon as I reach my goal weight. Surgery I’ve wanted since I was 16.
bottom right: Booty. I like big butts and I cannot lie. But my butt will look a little more fly. (The blurriness of this pic and the way I have my hands on my lower back really make my booty look bigger. I like to think it’s not that big but I’ve been blessed with bigness so who knows.)

Now comes my workout routine.

It all started when my sister began working out to the P90X videos a couple or years ago. She lost quite a bit of weight in just a month and gained muscle. It was pretty impressive stuff. So I decided to jump on the workout wagon – home edition. I did really well and lost size; I’m sure I lost weight but I don’t own a scale so I can’t say. The mister noticed a difference in my butt, saying it was firmer and rounder. Ahh yeah! I like that the mister noticed little details. Big booty, small victories.

I started working out in my home last year but took a break (laziness at it’s finest) after taking a much needed ‘friendcation’ to see some good friends and be in good company. After returning, it just felt nice to not be sore (shortly after returning, I temporarily moved into my moms for 2 months to help my sister with her first baby. No room for me and my daughter, muchless space to workout.) I felt confident in my ability to eat right, eat healthy and lose then maintain the weight.

I was a fool, I tell ya! I have a few friends that can and do eat whatever they want but without gaining an ounce. Can you smell the envy? I wish I were thin and slim by nature but I’m only fit when I work out. Which is great because I love being toned, not just slim.

Working out in the comfort of my home isn’t as fun as being outdoors and being active. Why don’t I just get active? Because we are a one car family and while I’m homeschooling my 3 yr old, the mister needs the car to get to his job. I also don’t know how to drive the car we have. Meaning that I have access to my apartment and not much else besides the front and back porch of the townhouse we’re renting. (more on that, later)

P90X likes to kick my butt and I like to put up a fight but P90X always wins. Whether I bust my butt doing Plyometrics or if I feel sick and skip a day, P90X always wins. I can hear it now, calling me a lazy ass because I hurt my back doing yoga and decided to use the next day to stretch and recover. “You whiner! Get up and FACE ME!!” is what I hear every time I walk by my ‘Do It’ board. My ‘Do It’ board is covered in post it notes reminding me to move forward with the things I put off when I wrote said notes.

One thing I need to learn is to push myself a little harder but not to the point of breaking myself. What’s the point of injury if it takes me off p90x for a couple of days to recover? Makes no sense! I need to work a little harder than what I’m used to but only what I’m capable of. I sometimes think I’m Wonder Woman with all I do around here (not) and that I’m used to pushing myself to do more. But I’m not (Wonder Woman, that is) I need to push myself harder, smarter and finish what I start.

What is the biggest motivator I have for moving forward? Well.. my cute personal trainer of course. This:

I work out while facing my little summer dress. No joke. This Summer, I will be in that dress, even if it’s the last freaking day of Summer. I need to add a band to those, by the way. The resistance it’s set to is silly now. That’s how I know I’m building muscle. And I love it. My dress yells at me every morning. It hangs in my living room as a daily reminder. It yells at me if I try to take a nap on the couch on the weekend during “Rest Day” and it smiles at me after doing a good Arms & Back workout. That dress is my personal trainer and it’s kicking my butt.