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Keys to Successful Dieting
So with renewed enthusiasm I got back on track to my goal. I’ve only got so much time left. I even did a little bit of motivational research and found a great blog about how to achieve New Year’s Resolution success. It talks about seeing yourself accomplishing your goal as a motivation to get there. I’ll admit, I’ve never thought of trying that. Funny, when I think about my wedding and planning it and everything, it started with a vision, and I used that vision to help guide me in all my decisions. Applying that to my resolution makes perfect sense. If I can visualize myself wearing that dress and walking down the aisle feeling better than ever, then surely I can do it!
Posted in Dieting, MotivationalBy Delylah
Organ Donor Awareness!
The website BlogCatalog is encouraging people to create blog posts about organ donation today. Since I’m not busy running due to the injury, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and ask people to consider becoming organ donors. Organ donation is absolutely crucial to the health and survival of many people who have serious medical problems.
Just one organ donor–one individual person–can save the lives of up to 50 people. That’s something you’re not likely to do in your lifetime unless perhaps you’re a doctor! There are several organs that can be transplanted, as well as many types of tissue (from corneas to cartilage… even veins can be transplanted, which I didn’t know!). Stem cells, blood, and platelets are also important items that can be used to save lives.
By Tracy
Exciting DVD set!
…and injury. 
Yep, less than two weeks out from the marathon, I have strained my hamstring something awful. It’s the worst thing that’s happened to me thus far, and of course it had to happen close to the end. Hopefully it won’t be so bad, though–I have done the longest runs I’m supposed to do, and all the time until the marathon (which is only TWELVE DAYS away! yipes!) is mostly tapering. I’m scheduled for 3-5 mile runs today, tomorrow, and Thursday, but I hope I can just skip them and start up again on Friday without too much trouble. I don’t think it will be a huge setback provided it heals up in a few days. Better rest than test, I always say… or rather, my friend Brad says to me. And since he’s more experienced at running than I am, I believe him. And though the injury comes at a really bad time in relation to the marathon, it comes at a GREAT time in relation to DVD releases…
By Tracy
A little over a month to go…
I can’t believe that in a little over a month I’ll be running a marathon through the (way-too-hilly…) streets of my favorite city! It’s incredible to think that in six months I have come from maybe running 5 miles at a time (and even that seemed far!) to having done several runs over 10 miles! My long slow runs are now about 20 miles, which is just amazing to me. They are long, and they are slowwwww, but they’re not impossible! My body really can do this! It’s hard to believe, though, that I’ll be running more than 6 miles further in the marathon than I’ve ever run before. I used to think I couldn’t even run 6 miles at all! But my confidence is growing, thanks in part to some great runners that have joined me on the way. Thanks so much to Brad, my initial running partner, who still joins me for part of my runs (my runs are his cool-downs from his big workouts!) and to Jennifer, who I’ve met through an SF marathon group, I couldn’t do it without you guys! So close to the goal…
Posted in Marathon Running, Motivational, UncategorizedBy Tracy
Get Healthy… or Else?
I’ve definitely found that my running program is helping me achieve better health. Beyond getting me in shape, the constant activity makes me want to eat more healthfully, because my body needs actual nutrients in order to finish runs. But everything I’m doing is voluntary–could someone really force me to get healthy? A few companies are trying to do just that.
Posted in Marathon Running, MotivationalBy Tracy
Space marathon
This is the coolest thing I’ve heard in a while: an American astronaut is going to run the Boston marathon from outer space! To be more specific, she’ll be running 26.2 miles on a treadmill in space–but her spacecraft will circle the earth twice during the marathon, meaning she’ll travel a greater distance than any other Boston runner!
Posted in Marathon Running, MotivationalBy Tracy
So you haven’t kept your New Year’s resolution…
So it’s already March and you’re realizing you didn’t keep up with your New Year’s resolution for even two weeks. Maybe your diet plan was undercut by too much stress and too little time, or your resolution to exercise daily was compromised when you pulled a muscle (which still hasn’t healed) by trying to do an hour on the StairMaster on January 1st. Your desire to organize faded away when you realized you couldn’t even find the things you’d wanted to organize. You’re at a bit of a loss, to say the least!
Posted in Motivational, Obstacles, Reminders, Your ResolutionsBy Tracy
Running the Sahara
All I can say about this group of guys who ran across the Sahara desert is wow. WOW. I mean, four thousand miles — in some of the worst weather conditions you can imagine! It makes a regular ol’ marathon in a regular ol’ US City look like nothing!
Posted in Marathon Running, Motivational, Obstacles, Your ResolutionsBy Tracy
Cause to Run
Wow, I wish I had heard about Cause to Run earlier! It’s a great way to raise money for charity while running the San Francisco Marathon. I knew there were a lot of marathons out there for cancer and other causes, but I didn’t know the San Francisco Marathon had a program like this.
Posted in Marathon Running, MotivationalBy Tracy
One Woman’s Story
I previously wrote about thinking a higher power may be at work, helping me to remain commited to my resolution and I promised to share a story I came across at about.com. This is the story of Christine Rowley, a Guide for many years at about.com’s Smoking Cessation Pages. She has been good enough to share her experience with emphysema and why we don’t want to deal with it in our lives. Although her story is sprinkled with humor, there is nothing funny about her story. If you are sitting on the fence about your decision to quit, I hope this will help you take the first step.
Nothing is Simple Anymore…
When someone in the family trips over your trailing 50 foot air hose in the family room, you know it, even though you are in the computer room, the kitchen, the bedroom, or the bathroom. If you have a lot of slack, you might not feel it. If there’s little or no slack, you feel a sharp yank on your ears, like someone trying to pull them both off at once! Your other scare is that someone has not only tripped, but may have lost their balance and may have fallen!
NEW LIFESTYLE
What’s it like to live with oxygen in a nose hose 24/7 for the first year? From what I’ve learned and have been told by others with COPD, that was the beginning of what could be years of living this way.
Your life takes on a whole new direction when you are told you have emphysema. At this point you find that you have quit smoking too late. It has been creeping up on you for years. You’ve been coughing your “smoker’s cough” around the clock without giving it a second thought, or kept your head in the sand and tried to ignore that chronic bronchitis which led to the emphysema.
BRAIN FOG AND EXHAUSTION
Although I’d been told I had emphysema (COPD) four years previously, I was shocked when my doctor only just now prescribed around-the-clock oxygen for me. That happened because I’d tried to rake some leaves in my back yard. I couldn’t believe how quickly I ran out of steam and could not catch my breath! Plus, I was in what I called a “brain fog” a lot more these days, so my doctor discovered my body’s oxygen level was operating on only 74%, where normally 90% + is acceptable. So, it was oxygen tank time for me.
MY NEW LEASH ON LIFE
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be “on a leash”, you’ll wonder no longer as your try to adapt to your new lack of freedom. Wherever you go, there it is. You’ll learn to dress without the “nose hose” on after you’ve found out what happens when you get dressed and find the hose now runs down the inside of your pants, making it difficult to navigate. For us women, you haven’t lived until you’ve trapped the hose on the inside of your bra and not noticed until you tried to leave the room.
Some “leashes” take a curious delight in becoming entrapped when you close the door on your two door style refrigerator, thereby forcing you to open the door once again to duck to get the looping hose out. Mine does this 97% of the time whenever I open the fridge door. Trust me, this is NOT a good way to stay on a diet!
NOSE HOSES AND EAR LIFTS
Opening a hot oven becomes an exercise in juggling hot racks, hot food, and keeping your cool oxygen hose off the hot surface! This can be done by tucking the hose between your knees. When you get up from the table, or from any sitting position, be sure you are NOT standing on your hose. Your ears will feel like they’re going into outer space if you don’t get off it quickly! If your ears are close to your head “before nose hose”, you may notice them beginning to flare outward if you step on the hose too much. A bold new style of makeover!
SNAGS
You will soon learn to hold your nose hose with one hand while gallivanting through the house. If you don’t, you will experience many backward head jerks due to the hose getting caught around corners, in the corner of appliances (yes, the refrigerator comes to mind again), and under door jambs. The rocking chair is superb at reaching out and snagging it often, and woe is you if one hand has a plate with a sandwich on it, and the other hand has a glass of milk! You have no way of getting free of the snag unless you put something down and yank it out from under the rocker. Passing mates are really handy right about then too.
TANGLES
The tubing (which looks like aquarium air line) can become kinked and tangled after a day of going back and forth and can actually become kinked to the point of nearly shutting off your air. Where you were at 2 liters before, you are now down to below one. Now you’ll need to find the kink and un-kink it. As you do, you’ll see the level on your concentrator return to 2. You’ll need to check your concentrator as you go by to be sure you are getting the air you need. The concentrator machine is a bit noisy, so you might want to keep it away from your living room and sleeping areas.
When sleeping, you never know if you are going to wake up with your nose hose still in your nose, or if it’s to be found atop your head where you pushed it in the night while asleep, or it may be lost on the floor.
Aghast, you wonder if you got enough oxygen during the night. You must also remember to take your medicine, including any inhaler prescriptions nightly.
THE PET THING
If you have dogs or other pets at home, they will react to it in different ways. One of mine hates the hose and avoids it like the plague. It’s taken him a year to even accept it. The other seems to think it links us together like Siamese twins, and she sits or lays on it every chance she gets. She’s responsible for some of my ear tugs, let me tell you! Cats, as you know, love to chase moving “strings”. Keep her nails trimmed.
OXYGEN LEVELS
Power failures are worse for you than your computer dying from power failure. If the power goes off, you need to plug into your bottle oxygen, which only lasts a short time, so it’s a good idea to have at least 4 filled bottles around continuously. Vacations are planned around your oxygen provider’s nationwide or worldwide reach and availability of oxygen wherever you go and when you need it. Trips into town or to the grocery store have to be planned by how much oxygen is in the tank you are taking with you. If it’s not enough, you will have to change the tank, removing the regulator and putting it on a full tank before going shopping.
STARING MATCHES
Once outside either with your large tank with the wheels, or with the portable unit, you cannot elude the stares of both children and adults. The worst are the smokers whose minds you can just about read by the way they look at you in horror. “I wonder if that could possibly happen to me? Nahhhh! I’m not old enough yet!” they think. Well, I used to think the very same way! When you have an oxygen tank, you no longer have an “invisible” disease. It is all too visible to the whole world. And it becomes scary. Almost all emphysema is cause by smoking, did you know that?
PREVENTABLE, BUT NON-REVERSIBLE
Emphysema is not a reversible disease because of the manner in which the lung is damaged. You lose more and more elasticity within the lungs as time goes on, and it becomes harder to breathe. You can avoid getting emphysema by quitting smoking just as soon as possible. “Now” would be best. The other option is to never start smoking. Believe me, smoking is not worth going through this in any way, and I wish I had never started smoking as a teen. Guess I should have listened to my Dad, right?
GRATITUDE
The good thing about having this oxygen 24/7 is that my gratitude has grown because my life has been extended for a time by having oxygen to help my body operate as well as it can. Without it, who knows how short the time would be. I hope that my life will be extended long enough for a miracle to happen; medical or otherwise. Truly, I pray a smoking-related disease NEVER ever happens to you.
Sadly, Christine has passed away. I hope her story will inspire you to quit before it is too late. It has inspired me to stick with my plan. Thank you for sharing, Christine, and may you rest with the angels.
Posted in Motivational, Your Resolutions
By rubyredshoes