This is my brain. This is my brain after this weekend. Any questions?

Oh shit. I'm going to hell now. I friggin' forgot to call my grandmother on her birthday. I obsess over dates. I can remember the time someone was born, years after they told me. Hell, they will have forgotten and I will still remember!

It was otherwise quite the productive weekend. I mean, we put in some office hours on Friday, even working straight through lunch and staying past our regular weekday closing time (which is well past Friday closing time, as we work only a half-day on Fridays). We designed 3 different spankin' new business cards, too. And I recovered from a very needy, dysthymic patient who, without meaning to, can suck the life right out of you. It's fine, I know I bargained for that - that's just part of the gig when you help chronically sick, miserable people. And sometimes natural healing isn't fun at first, because you can feel worse for a while before you start feeling better. And what's more is, sometimes I don't have the answers right away. And even more, sometimes the human body forgets to read the physiology textbook and it goes off and does something unconventional.

So anyway... we finished out Friday by registering a few more domain names. We now have 17 in all. Yee-haw! Saturday we redirected a couple domain names to our main site and threw a second website onto the server under another one of our domain names, all in preparation for the radio show scheduled to go down that night. Which it did, without a hitch, until the very end when we all started falling apart at the same time. The entire show went strong, competent, and perfect until the last 5-10 minutes. But hey - at least if I fell apart, everyone else fell apart with me. So I don't feel so bad.

Then we went out to unwind at a burger joint and had some good laughs with friends. Sunday we went and checked out furniture stores in search of lamps to make sure we could still get one that handled the 3-way incandescent light bulb (shhhh) and a quest for lamps turned into a quest for end tables to set them on, which then turned into an excuse to entertain the idea of changing out the couch, followed by the resolution that we had no real excuse for a new couch when the one we already have works so well and our money supply is still so tight (and with so many more important things to save for like oh, a house).

We continued the search today, after which I made like 9 blog posts (I lost count) and listened to 2 parts of the second nutrition module, on which I'm already over a month behind. My husband even finished up the computer project and got the office cleaned, as well as some laundry done. I did dishes. He vacuumed. It was beautiful. So is our apartment when it's clean. Which it's not completely, but at least some rooms are and you just want to go exist in them for a while. And then I got to wondering why the hell it's so hard to clean other rooms? The living room and kitchen for some reason can never get clean, no matter how much attention we give them and how much time we spend cleaning them. It's like it does no good. Maybe we have too much clutter? Probably, but it's not like we can really get rid of anything. *sigh*

I got great sleep, too. And I responded to emails from frantic patients, researched information (realizing that half the foods I eat suppress thyroid function and realized my thyroid issue is probably due eating copious amounts of those foods daily for the past two years), and then experienced the ensuing panic that sets in when you start wondering how long it'll take to reverse that process if you've been contributing to it for two years already??

Then I craved a Big Mac and fries REALLY bad (this started a few days ago and had been growing ever since) even though every fiber of my being is very well aware of how bad those things are and on how many levels. I exercised a superhuman amount of willpower and went against the craving (again - it's not like that's the last time I'll ever be in that situation), and opted for a double quarter pounder with cheese, hold the bun. And I was thankful that the plastic utensils I used to cut and eat this burger (and you thought I was going to hold it with my hands) were actually strong enough to cut the meat (yes, I've dealt with plasticware THAT flimsy). And thus was the end of my evening--and my weekend.

So maybe it's little wonder that I forgot my grandma's birthday. I swear I thought of it earlier. But I had planned on acting on that thought later. Oh well - remember the peas? It's not like my grandmother isn't important - but my brain is like a cup, and my life is like water that fills the cup. And the cup is really small. Which means it doesn't take much before the water reaches the brim and spills over.

There's always tomorrow. Let's hope I can at least get through that :)

Pushing peas off the plate...

When I was a kid, I hated peas. Well, OK - I still do. But these days, I will (begrudgingly) eat them anyway, because I know they're supposed to be good for me. (I draw the line at lima beans, though. I tried them - twice. No dice.)

Anyway, when I was a kid (deja vu), I would obviously eat the other food on the plate (the chicken, mashed potatoes, and usually one other item) first, so that when it came to the peas, I could take a few bites and then claim (truthfully) to be full.

And if that didn't work? I pushed them off my plate and under the lip - you know, when the rim of the plate comes off the table and leaves a small space underneath....just small enough to hide a few peas? ....Yep.

So now I have this brilliant concept I came up with a few years ago when we started school without sufficient amounts of Vaseline on hand: when my personal plate gets full, I prevent burnout by moving a few activities/commitments/tasks off the list - in essence, pushing the excess peas off my plate.

It works really well. I mean, there's a limit - you can't just turn into an inert gas and sit there. And there's fine print - you can't just neglect to pay a bill and say, "welp, I pushed some peas off the plate this month!" It doesn't work quite that way.

But in these hectic days, where the "little things" can make or break your sanity, sometimes being able to blow off a minor errand or meeting can be very liberating.

See, this is one of the perks of being self-employed - you get a whole lot more say-so over your own schedule. Working for someone else but more independently is the next best thing. In either situation, you're free to prioritize, and you're not necessarily obligated to get every little thing done (although sometimes it may sure as hell seem like it).

I used to process payment for lab orders through my office. Now I let the patient deal directly with the labs themselves, which really isn't a chore - rather, it's quite painless and it costs less. Meanwhile, frees up a lot of time on my end. I hand them the orders and it's done and over with. Clean. Felt good to push that pea right off the plate.

I did health talks in my practice. For a year. To two people. One of whom was already a patient, and the other who had referred others but was never going to be a patient himself. It was more of a community service, really. Even if it was just a community of two diehards. As appreciative as I was of their dedication and support, and as much as I cherished the twice-monthly gathering, I decided enough was enough, and I pushed that pea off the plate.

See? Liberating. Simplifying. I'm not good at eliminating clutter from anywhere else in my life - hell, my email account is filled with emails going back 8 years - but I'm great at eliminating clutter from my to-do list.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. So much for my happy ending

Not that I'm exactly torn between the creations of REM and Avril Lavigne respectively...although the former is borderline-divine.

Yeah, apparently the world was supposed to come to a screeching halt today and those who had accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior were supposed to enter a warp zone on a fast track to heaven. Guess I missed that part. Oh wait, so did they.

It's more than kind of funny when the even conservative AM radio talk stations AND your Christian friends all poke little jabs at the most intensely fundamentalist among them. Seriously...did anyone actually think the world was going to end this evening as scheduled? And was anyone seriously egotistically self-righteous enough to believe that they, along with a select few identical drones, were among the Chosen Few on the guest list?

Lord I hope that doesn't apply to anyone I know. Not because I'm afraid of offending anyone, but because I'm somewhat concerned about my judgment of character and selection of friends if I formed any alliances with someone so 1) naive and 2) fundamentalist. Scary.

So the 6pm time slot came and went and in the end we were all still here, sitting around, listening to the radio and working on our iDevices. Question is, if the world had imploded on itself, would it miss itself? Would it miss us? Would the right hand of the Father actually have come down from heaven to scoop up the cream of the crop like an Allstate commercial? Somehow I doubt I would've made the guest list. But hey - if it's Opposite Day or Family Guy's Peter Griffin in Imagination Land, I just might have a shot. Maybe God doesn't have hands. Or maybe s/he doesn't care how I view him/her/it.

As it stands, I still have a radio show to prepare. I still have housework to do tomorrow and patients to see on Monday. I still have rent to pay and pounds to lose. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Life continues status quo. Did we actually expect anything different?

It was funny watching and listening to the freaks, though. And true to 21st century society, there were a fair share of opportunists seeking to profit off the whole thing. Aren't there always?

Halos & pitchforks

A while back I lived in a godforsaken town that shall forever remain nameless and plausibly denied. This town had a newspaper that ran a miscellaneous little column called Halos & Pitchforks. It gave kudos to peeps who deserved it, and put the smackdown on douchenozzles who had it coming. Well, so will I.

Pitchforks go out to my thyroid gland, which, for reasons still unknown, are slacking in the thyroxine-production department, despite an increased kick in the pants from the pituitary gland. Halos go out to newly-discovered medical scrub designer brand Koi for making me look (and feel somewhat) skinny again.

See how this works? Let's proceed...

Pitchforks to my neighbors downstairs who insist on blasting Tejano all day on weekends. Halos to speaker manufacturers that still make good speakers that I can lay facedown into the floor to childishly retaliate with music of my own.

Pitchforks to the lab companies who make things so unnecessarily difficult by treating lower-volume (read: not a cattle call hospital) doctors like something south of bathtub scum. Halos to the third-party middlemen that actually make ordering labs borderline-pleasurable.

Halos to Mac for making awesome iWork templates and on-board basic-but-dignified website-building software. No pitchforks at all...except maybe for that spinning colorwheel. But we all now that's Firefox's fault.

Pitchforks to the prospective patients who badger me about pricing when I have already friendly-but-firmly stated I could not discuss that until the appropriate time (implying that a free, general info session doesn't qualify as such). Halos when they sign up anyway...we'll see.

Halos to medical bookstores. Pitchforks to the chiro colleges who can't seem to emulate a med school's dignity. Welcome to trade school uncertainty and marketing at med school prices and stress.

Halos to the brave souls sticking their necks out to help drive the evolution of our profession. Pitchforks to those who seek to limit us all by trying to force their philosophical dogmatic decisions on the rest of us.

Halos to spellcheck. Pitchforks to those who can't seem to use it...or worse, ignore it.

Halos to my mother for her addictive granola, cowboy boot pen-holders, and kick-butt fashionably-sewed vests.

Pitchforks to repetitive commercials on TV. Pitchforks to me for watching too much of said TV LOL

Halos to colleagues I follow on Twitter who follow me in return. Pitchforks to those who don't return the favor.

Pitchforks to AT&T who seem to have suspiciously slowed down their network for the iPhone 3 holders (who wish not to upgrade) the millisecond the iPhone 4 came out. Halos to Apple for making the iPhone in the first place. Pitchforks AT&T...yes, again.

In fact, pitchforks to all companies who are increasingly forcing people into bundled services and long contracts. No halo to be had there. Sorry.

Halos to Google for such feature-rich tools, like satellite maps and being able to search for images by their predominant color hues. Pitchforks that it takes so damn long to load...still waiting.

Pitchforks to AT&T. Again.

Rehashing Hashimoto's

It's not like I didn't see it coming, but I also never thought it would happen to me. I was the skinny one with perfect proportions that everybody hated, who could eat as much as I wanted of anything I wanted and never gain a pound. I had skinny jeans and my pick of the boys growing up.

My how things change. I started gaining weight near the end of 2008, through summer of 2009. The pounds piled on effortlessly, and it seemed like I accumulated about 5 lbs a month right around the time of my cycle. I gained almost 20 pounds in 6-8 months. Because this took place right after getting married, people winked and nudged me, "are you SURE you're not pregnant?" I won't elaborate, but I was pretty dang sure I wasn't - and I was right. I leveled off, gaining and losing 5 pounds here and there, occasionally getting about 7-10 pounds off and then packing them right back on again, 5 pounds in a single week.

Now, I know I should be more active. I'm relatively sedentary in the office and after getting home in the evening. I also know I should cut back on carbs and sugars. My meals are phenomenally healthy but my snacking, as organic as it is, still needs help. But my diet is pretty spot-on for the most part and I get way more movement than most people out there. I take no medications, so I'm not bogging down my liver. My stress is slowly coming down (on average), so my weight should be coming off....right? Wrong.

So, having gotten tired of the "fanny pack" in the front and the "puffy butt" in the back, I posted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle message forum. The first reply was beautifully simple: have you had your thyroid checked? It was somewhat embarrassing, because that is what I DO. We went to the 3-day intensive last summer on this very subject. I help patients with this very issue. And here I was, Func Med extraordinaire, and I hadn't even checked my own. I looked at last summer's records; none of the thyroid tests had been included on my orders last year (I'm to blame; I ordered my own tests and neglected to check it).

So, the results came back. High TSH. Functionally high, mind you, but well into that territory. There was no question. T4 was bumping along a little sluggishly, too. And my white blood cells needed serious help, so there's obviously an immune problem. Given the concomitant gluten intolerance and my mother's positive thyroid antibody result, well, that seals the deal. Even without an antibody test, I'm almost 100% certain: Hashimoto's.

Wanna know what Hashimoto's looks like? Forget the stereotypical pictures of thin hair, dry skin, and brittle nails. Forget the fatigue, sensitivity to cold, and constipation. I have NONE of those. (Sure those symptoms are very characteristic of low thyroid, but don't do what I did and rule out a thyroid issue and/or neglect to test thyroid function simply because you don't have any of the above symptoms. Low thyroid, I now realize, comes in many flavors.) But nope, I have thick hair that indeed comes out more easily, but not THAT easily, and certainly not in clumps. I have oily skin and strong nails. I do not get tired in the afternoon, and I have to lull myself to sleep at night. I do get warm easily. I'm alert and energetic.

I'll tell you what I DO have: mild brain fog. It's very mild, so much so that I might not notice it had I not been trying to run a new practice this past year. But I notice that I forget things or fail to absorb information. Often, things don't "stick". My memory is suffering and my brain fatigues faster than it should. I find myself having to take breaks so that my brain can recoup.

I've never been pregnant, I don't take birth control pills or any other hormones, I don't partake in "crash" dieting, and I haven't yet reached menopause - all major triggers for a thyroid problem. I do, however, have a fairly high glucose average throughout the day; this may have triggered an insulin spike or ten, setting off the chain.

But seriously - if you look at me, I'm not your typical low thyroid individual. I'm not depressed, I'm not totally brain-fogged in, I'm not fat throughout my body, my hair is thick (hoping it stays that way), my skin has more oil than most, my nails grow full and fast, and I find myself pushing the Tabasco envelope to induce heat resistance. I'm up with the alarm and I'm up late into the night, without ever napping during the day. I'm also still within relatively healthy weight (hoping THAT stays that way too). You wouldn't see me on the street and know Hashimoto's instantly. In fact, even if you knew what there was to know about the condition, you may not even peg me for having it.

That in itself is a testimonial to a decent lifestyle. Here I am without having taken any steps to balance out my problem, nor taking any medications, and you probably couldn't tell (except for the fact that I tug at my jeans every 5 seconds). But when you eat well, move often, and manage stress, life pays you back. Even if you eventually owe some.

Soup: Tan resistance, Bullet-dodging, Sleep, Internet browsers suck, and Facebook (always) sucks

Back in the MySpace days, (which I'm increasingly tempted to resurrect), I blogged a little on my page. It wasn't much, but it was fun. Back then, I often couldn't think of a lot to say about any one thing so I took a few dominant thoughts circling around my head and put them into a post. Hardly any of the topics had to do with each other, but it turned out fine.

We've been fairly busy and a little short on spare time, so I haven't had much of a chance to conceive of any deeper thoughts as of late, but since a few thoughts still drift about here and there, some might be worth mentioning. Mostly cybersmall-talk. You be the judge.

I've spent a lot of time outside lately, walking to various places (score one for older, integrated neighborhoods without a lot of hyper-draconian zoning laws). In so doing, since we haven't had more than an inch of rain since October, much of that time has been spent under the beating hot sun. And yet, fair-skinned, easy-burn little ol' me doesn't have a lick of skin tone change to show for my efforts--which I find extremely odd. While I think that being brown and leathery is disgusting and unnatural, I would like at least some kind of acknowledgment of the sun on the part of my melanocytes. You know, just to ping the rest of us of their existence.

Every so often, in practice, I feel like I'm dodging a bullet. People will come in, expressing interest in what I do and seeking help and I'm thankful for that and I am indeed excited to help. However, some people just seem a little "off". Whether everything is purely innocent and genuine or whether there's a sinister motive lurking under a facade of sorts I may never know (nor do I want to). But this is why I'm not always bummed when the possible patient and the program turn out not to be a match for whatever reason (usually semi-pressing symptoms or the costs involved in going my route). I wish it would've worked out but to try and force it (even if I succeed) may end up doing more harm than good.

I've been sleeping!! In bed, no less. Celebrated my first month, I think, this last weekend. I'll fall asleep on the couch and wake up sometime in the middle of the night and schlep into bed where I stay asleep until long after the alarm starts going off.

Oddly enough, I also haven't had allergies since the end of March (I think). They seemed to stop right around the time I started sleeping better. I don't know if it's the lower stress or if it's the fact that we've had no rain for anything to grow. I'm inclined, actually, to lean toward the former, because we still had pollen showers and flowers/trees that bloomed despite the drought, even long after I started sleeping better. The allergy relief seemed to coincide much more closely with sleep quality.

Can we PLEASE have a decent internet browser? Safari lacks even basic functions and features and it's a memory hog that just plain sucks. Firefox gets confused and congested every so often (Microsoft-style), and...that's it. There ARE no other browsers. I also hear Google Chrome blows. So in this day and age of 2011, it's time to deliver something decent! That is all.

Facebook continues to suck doesn't it? In fact, its suckage factor continues to grow. The latest craptastic maneuvers include 1) eliminating a cursor in the comment box so that when you're typing a comment and you need to change what you wrote a few sentences back, you can point your mouse to your best guess, but you never know for sure until you start typing. Mystery Meat! and 2) yet another forced migration to a new-and-retarded layout. Casualties of war include useful things like discussions and whatnot that will be "archived", whatever that means. My question is, will we still have access to the past information? If so, how do we access it? If not, why the hell not? *Sigh* Facebook. Tsk, tsk. A mass return-migration to MySpace seems possible, even almost inviting.