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I’ve been waiting for this week since the end of January, because I’m going to see the retina specialist on Friday.  I’m hoping he can do a PAM test on me.  No, it’s not part of the Aunt Jemima treatment, it stands for potential acuity meter.  It will let me, and, more importantly, my team of eye specialists know how much of the “current” vision loss is due to the cataract in my left eye.  I would hope it would come back 20/200 or better.  If not, it might be time to rent a gun and buy a bullet.  (Relax, I’m only joking.  I’m worth far too much dead to take my own life.)  Even without a PAM test, I’m hoping that Dr. Garg (retina) will give the okay for me to have Dr. Ayers (cornea) takeout the cataract.  As much as I’ve loved the snow this winter, I don’t want it to foul up my 8:45am appointment in Bala on Friday.  I see Dr. Ayers on 3 March and I’d like to schedule the cataract surgery then.  I’ve gotta do something, it seems like my vision is getting worse by the day.  My frustration level is extremely high.

On Wednesday, I’ve got an appointment with my GP.  It was postponed from 10 Feb due to the little bit of snow we had (not to mention the lack of power and heat too.)  When I saw Dr. Rist on 9 Dec, she told me to lose weight.  Since then I’ve eaten only about 1500 calories per day.  On days that I did some physical work like shovel snow, move our store inventory, etc., I would eat more calories as a reward.  As of this morning, I am down 41 pounds.  I’m interested to see what she says.

Jake is spending the week living at school, something he will have to do for his junior and senior years at Westtown.  We dropped him off on Sunday and will pick him up this Sunday.  He was really looking forward to it.  Then, when we got there, he noticed a Super Nintendo game system (circa 1991.)  The seniors whose room he and his friend are staying in left them a note saying that they could play with the system.  We have a couple of games from the video store that Jake has always wanted to play, but we never had the system (well, we had it, but upgraded to something else before he was born.)  I’m worried that school work might not be first on his mind this week.  Eliz picked him up some candy from BJ’s the other day.  You know, BJ’s doesn’t sell anything in small amounts.  She got him a variety bag of candy bars (not the fun size, the normal size) and a bag with god know how many packages of Skittles in it.  He posted today on Facebook that he was selling the candy.  Prices were $.50 for candy available in the school store and $1.00 for candy not carried in the school store.  I’m interested to see what he does with the funds, though his intentions could be philanthropic.

Jane found her letters from Tabitha tonight.  Tabitha was conjured up when Jake literally lost his first tooth.  It either fell out onto the ground or he swallowed it with his lunch that day at Granite Run Mall.  He was disappointed because he was so looking forward to putting it under his pillow for the toothfairy.  That night, after he went to bed, I wrote a letter from Tabitha, a toothfair from the North American office.  I expected it to be a one and done sort of thing, but when he lost his next tooth, we was just as excited to get another letter as he was to get the money.  And of course, if you do it for one, the other has to have it too…  Jane actually got a letter or two before she even lost a tooth.  She would sometimes leave notes for Tabitha under her pillow.  Jane laughs at the letters now, but she had fun reading them tonight.  She said each one had a little education, like Sesame Street.  I also would include things that I thought would boost their confidence and nudges on nutrition.  One day I’ll post them or publish them.

It is amazing how easy 700 words comes off my fingertips these days…  So much for a short update.  More later this week on the retina appointment.

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Back on 9 Dec 2009, my doctor told me to join Weight Watchers or do some other diet program.  I told her that it would not happen.  We were in the process of boxing up the inventory at our business location in the Delcroft Shopping Center (you all know the one: lots of water, super high levels of hazardous mold, and mushrooms growing out of the carpet.)  My doctor and I went back and forth and she told me that I had to lose weight.  She told me I could try on my own by eating 1500 calories per day.  Okay, I’ll do it.  I don’t know if she believed me or not.

The next day, I started counting every calorie.  Before we go out for dinner, I look up the calories at the restaurant we’d like to go to eat.  If the restaurant doesn’t have the calories listed on their site, we usually pick a place that does instead (and go to the place that doesn’t list the calories only after doing some strenuous activity which would give me some extra calories to eat.)  I usually eat a salad for lunch, which consists of a bag of Fresh Express or a similar brand, some mushrooms, sometimes some peppers, sometimes some walnuts, and either balsamic vinegar or a low-fat dressing.  Breakfast is either two Dannon Fruit-on-the-Bottom yogurts (280-300 calories total,) McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal (two servings = 300 calories,) or two eggs with low-fat cheese (about 240 calories.)

Dinners are are anywhere from 500 to 800 calories (unless I’ve been doing some physical labor…)  It was apparent early on that I couldn’t do this without knowing some foods serving size.  Sure, a Gardenburger on a Martin’s roll with the low-fat Cracker Barrel cheese was easy to figure out (100+140+80=320,) but what about a serving of walnuts?  So I bought a scale from Amazon.com.  So, back to the walnuts.  I serving is 180 calories.  Serving size is 30 grams.  30 grams is a better than average handful of walnuts!  Half a serving will do on my salad…

Snacks include blueberries, grapes, celery with salsa, raspberries, blackberries, an apple, a grapefruit, cassava chips (these — available from Whole Foods – are my fav,) pretzels (both gluten-free and regular,) pumpkin seeds and air-popped popcorn.  Grapes are my single most favorite food.  It is absolutely horrifying how many I used to eat as a snack at night.  Now I usually have 100g-200g, depending on how many calories I’ve got left to “spend.”  The other fruits I’ve mentioned also are things that I used to snack on before and have just lowered the amount I eat at a given time.

I have always drank plenty of water, between two and three litres per day, which I still do.  I also drink hot tea in the morning (a Teavana blend,) and evening (Stash Lemongrass and Ginger Tea, Eliz’s fav and sometimes hard to find.)  I don’t add anything to either of those “cups” of tea.  In the afternoon, I sometimes have either Red Rose black tea hot or cold.  I add lemon juice from half a lemon.  If I’ve got 50 calories to spare, I might add honey to the hot tea.

There are certainly things I haven’t had since I started the 1500 calories per day.  Some I miss, like the Apple Chai Infusion from Starbucks.  Maybe once I work some exercise into my daily routine, I can get that again…

My goal is to continue at the 1500 calories per day for as long as I can take it (and Eliz and the kids can take me…)  I’m not sure why I’m doing this.  I think it is more for the challenge than being fat.  I don’t think that I’ve felt any better or worse since I started losing the weight, but I have noticed that I have more energy.  I still get a little more than five hours of sleep per night, except on the weekends when I sometimes get eight or nine hours.  I’ve already gone from my clothes being snug to just right to I-might-need-smaller-size.  I guess I can still do somethings…

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I’ve been on the eye drop Xibrom for about 10 days now, along with an increase in the number of times per day I take Predforte (from 1x per day to 3x per day.)  Not only hasn’t this regimen helped, but my vision continues to deteriorate.  I visit the retina doc in about a month and the cornea doc a week later.  I’m beginning to wonder what kind of shape my vision will be in at that point.  It can’t be that my local ophthalmologist, the glaucoma specialist, cornea specialist, and retina specialist all missed something, could it?

I had a blood test last week to test for a whole bunch of things including Lyme  disease, diabetes.  According to the less than warm and fuzzy card I received in the mail on Saturday from my doctor’s office, everything was normal.  I have to tell you that I get more personalized mail from Publishers Clearing House.  I was kind of hoping there would be something in the blood test that might give a clue to my vision.  No luck.  I will call my doctor tomorrow to see if she can elaborate further on my test.

At this point, I’m also wondering about what to do about making a living.  I would love to try to continue to build ForYourSalon.com, but that has become increasingly more difficult for me to do.  I haven’t really worked for anyone but myself and Eliz since 1985.  What could I do?  More importantly, who would hire me?  I’m interested in your opinion.  Comment here or over at Facebook (www.facebook.com/davidbenj) if you are a friend.

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