It has been well over a year since my last post. That is because everything about my life got really bizarre not long after that last post in 2010 and I'm just now regaining my composure.
In late November/early December 2010 the HypnoBirthing conference was on a Caribbean cruise. I drove down to Florida with my husband. The trip down was 2 12-hour days of driving, as was the return trip. During our time on the ship I spend much of my time in classes. However, we did make an effort to get to the gym and to choose activities that were...well, active...when we weren't at sea.
Even so, I ate the usual cruise fare in the amounts served. I gained 8 lb. in one week.
On the way home from the cruise we were notified that my husband's father had likely suffered a stroke. For the next couple of months either his mother or father were sick, or there were 'end of life' details the siblings had to attend to. Thus, we traveled to and from MI (at least a 6 hour drive each way) about every two weeks or so though the winter.
I had lost 4 of the 8 lb. gained on the cruise in the first week home. Each trip to MI was a gain of 2 or 3 lb. even though we took our own food as often as we could. We just didn't get the exercise we usually do and did eat out at least once each trip. We specifically booked hotels with gyms, but twice the gym/pool was closed for seasonal work and other times we just didn't have the time to ourselves to do what we planned. Each time we came home, I'd be able to shed a pound or two, but then we were on the road again.
At the end of January I got sick with a sinus infection while my husband was out of town and got horribly dehydrated. I didn't move from the couch except to deal with necessities for 5 days. I didn't eat, I didn't drink enough fluids. Honestly, I don't recall what the weight was doing because I was just wishing I'd die and didn't care what my corpse would look like.
In mid-February my MIL passed away. We had another trip or two to MI for a memorial, to help get his father situated at a nursing home and sort through a lifetime of belongings that had to be dealt with.
In April I was asked to fill a slot for a presentation that had opened up at a weekend birthing workshop offering at National University Hospital in Singapore. I was to present on Kangaroo Care for premature babies. It was a very exciting opportunity! My duties at work had expanded to include quite a bit of medical dictation, so between research and preparation for the presentation and my job, I was sitting a lot. In addition, winter in Wisconsin lasted well into May so it was too freakin' cold to be outside at all. I wasn't gaining, but I sure hadn't had the opportunity to deal with the 5-7 lbs. that had accumulated with all of the oddities of the entire winter. Even so, I had a plan to make up for it over the summer.
Singapore was GREAT! I loved every minute of it despite the fact that my right let hurt after the 22-hour flight there. I did get up and move every hour and a half to two hours except once when I fell asleep. When I woke up I had this cramp. But it never went away. Knowing that long trips can predispose one to blood clots, I was concerned, but there was no redness, no swelling. I took an aspirin every day and figured it must just be a cramp.
Most of the time that I was there I was, again, in classes much of the day. On the last day we hiked Bukit Timah, the highest point in Singapore and enjoyed the Botanic Garden...another couple of miles. Then I caught another 22-hour flight home.
Once again I fell asleep for probably 4-5 hours. And my leg got progressively worse all the way home. The day after I arrived home I was very concerned and my doctor ordered an ultrasound, showing several clots in my right leg.
For the next 9 days I received Fragmin shots in my belly and was prescribed warfarin. I didn't move much at all for the first week, afraid that I'd 'throw' one of the clots.
I spent that time researching blood clots & blood thinners.
What I found was that the longer one remains immobilized, the greater the chance of further negative consequences relating to the clots. So I began walking about 2-3 miles per day, slowly and with great attention to how I was feeling.
The problem was the warfarin (rat poison/blood thinner) made me incredibly tired. I had to nap several hours per day in addition to the walking. My employer was wonderful about letting me work around this new variable, but after about a month I knew I couldn't keep doing this. By this time, I had discovered that I have a heterozygous genetic mutation in two clotting factors...Factor V Leiden and Protrombin. This means that I am more likely to develop clots than people who do not have these mutations.
My grandmother has had issues with blood clots her whole life. She's also been on Coumadin (warfarin) most of that. There are a lot of very scary problems associated with this drug, like internal bleeding and stroke. Some have been hospitalized after minor incidents like a nick while shaving because they could bleed to death from something so small. I had already experienced a broken blood vessel in my finger and it scared the dickens out of me.
In addition, food and other medications like aspirin or other pain killers affect how Coumadin works. This means you can swing wildly from having blood that is way to thin and way too thick. Before the lab work came back I was being told 3-6 months was the minimum time I'd be on Coumadin. After it came back, I was being told perhaps a year or more.
In my 5 weeks on Coumadin, even with walking, I had gained 10 lb. That was piled on to the 5-7 from the winter. I had to get off this stuff.
My doctor helped me figure out how to keep my blood thin and dissolve the clots naturally. The Gordon Research Institute provided some useful information as well.
Still, it took awhile to wean (ever so delicately) myself off the Coumadin and onto the natural supplement program. I gained 2-3 more lb. during that time.
Regular exercise was part of the regimen to keep homocysteine levels down. High Homocysteine is associated with hyper coagulation. So I walked. Every. Single Day. I walked 2-3 miles on the days I was feeling dragged out. I walked 5-7 every chance I got. About once per month I hiked the strenuous Devil's Lake loop. I biked 28 1/2 miles once, and several rides of 13-18 miles. All summer long I ate appropriately and moved every chance I got. My weight stubbornly remained exactly the same.
I asked my doctor when it would be safe to do protocol again. A large part of my 'keeping the blood thin' protocol was fish oils, vitamin E oil, garlic, etc. I knew I had to be clot free to even think about doing protocol because oils will prevent protocol success. He said not to even think about it until December.
By November I was getting frustrated and it was getting very easy to justify eating things I normally wouldn't. I still had to move to keep my blood moving, but I found myself saying, 'Eh, f*ck it! If I'm not going to lose weight anyway, I'm eating what I want!' And I did. I gained another 10 lb. through November and December. By the end of December, I decided I couldn't take it any more! A gain of 30 lbs. meant none of my cloths fit, and even as active as I was, the techniques I'd used for so long to maintain my weight were failing me.
Today is my first day of Very Low Calorie Intake (VLCI).
I am still taking fistfuls of non-oil supplements to keep my blood on the thin side, because there is a theoretical risk that Hcg can cause blood clots. Knowing that I have a predisposition means I have to mitigate for that possibility. I have to point out though that I find it significant that I have this predisposition, I've been pregnant twice (making several thousand times more Hcg on my own that is used in protocol) and have done 4 solid rounds of protocol (when I lost the 85 lb.). I also did a couple of half-assed, short lived rounds when I thought I'd try to bump my numbers down a bit, which didn't work and the efforts were abandoned. (Once the Hcg was no good. Once a pharmacy assured me their drops were exactly the same as the injections. They lied.)
AT NO POINT, DURING ANY OF THOSE SITUATIONS, DID I DEVELOP BLOOD CLOTS. I feel it's important to say that because everyone wants to know if the clots were related to protocol. No. In fact, while 22-hour flights are a known risk, I am somewhat amazed that not only did it take that to create clots, but it may have been the entire year of crap to build. Any one of those situations I found myself in all year long could have started the seed of a clot. For all I know my body always has formed clots with long car trips and such, but my body has always had the chance to deal with them before they became a problem. But this particular year, just as my body could get right, I'd be in the car, or on a plane, again.
At the time of my incident, I had not had Hcg in my system for months. I had remained within 5 lb. of my protocol weight for about a year and a half before it went to hell in a hand basket. After the Coumadin (or after the blood clot...who knows?) my body did not respond to my efforts in the same way. I feel I need a 're-set.' I never intended to do protocol again. I figured that while I was 5-10 lb. above my goal, that was where my body might just want to be and I was ok with that. I did get down to that size 4 momentarily, but my body was much happier at a size 6.
But I didn't anticipate that my life could be out of control for an entire year. I didn't realize just how long it can take to recuperate from a DVT. I had no clue that a medication could mess me up so bad.
So here I am to log this round. I did not gain anything the first two days of loading. I gave it that third day because I felt it necessary. I gained 1.5 lb. on that day. Today I've had my two meals. According to my phone app, I've consumed 525 calories. I've not walked yet, but I will. And then I will do a short hot tub. I had two cups of coffee with stevia before lunch, and a diet stevia sweetened soda in the afternoon. Other than that, I've had about a gallon of water.
My supplements include probiotics, vitamins C, D3, E and B complex, triphila, neem, ginger, nattokinase, lumbrokinase and a baby aspirin. The C/E vitamin combo is to keep homocysteine levels down, so I feel I need the E even if it is an oil. I remain attentive to my body and am on the lookout for unusual bruising, in the event the supplements are working too well. I had no issues since I began the natural protocol, but I don't know if less food will change that. Obviously, I also will remain aware of any signs of unusual clotting.
I have no idea if protocol will work for me as it has in the past with all the ways my body might have changed, but we'll see.
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