The Panda Post

POTS Series Post #1 can be found here.

POTS Series Post #2 can be found here.

My personal story with POTS is here.

Are you caught up to speed or been following me since post #1? Good, lets continue.

Today marks the completion of 14 sessions but it feels like I have done 140. The process kinda drags but what can one expect when you’re going 2x a week. They did recommend 3x a week at the start but my schedule couldn’t swing that.

So what’s the update? I’m feeling awesome! A few days ago not only did I attend my strength training class at the gym but ran/walked 2.8 miles to the gym to take the class! Then, that evening I went to a Taylor Swift concert. Talk about a tiring day but I owned it like a champ. I also have been able to get up at a decent time for work so now not only am I on time but early. Who knew I could be a morning person? The fatigue is down like whoa.

To be honest, besides a blah day here and there, I am starting to feel like myself prior to POTS.

At nuerofeedback I have completed sessions beyond the playing the video game. The other day I watched a movie but the movie would pause if I wasn’t getting adequate blood flow to my forehead (measured by a temperature censor) and we all know how screwy blood flow can be for POTSies! I also have done something called Roshi, which is a meditation type feedback. I am doing a little bit of everything but Heart Math and hand warming are still apart of it all.

So how many more sessions? To be honest I am not going to be able to go for the recommended 30-40 sessions unless I want to live in a cardboard box. My budget is fried so unless a money tree grows I’m going to stop at 20, the minimum amount, the place where they begin to see change for most clients (although I noticed changes a while ago). They say its after 20 where the changes stick.

I do plan to continue with Heart Math and hand warming on my own at home, so I won’t be stopping cold turkey, just no more nureofeedback.

I am also following a gluten free diet, recommended for me by the feedback folks. How’s that going? I’m almost at 2 months and its Tough with a capital “T” and there have been so many times I wanted to cave. Do I think it’s helping? Well since I started feedback and it at the same time, who knows. I do feel less bloated no matter how much salt I have so that’s an advantage

I plan on doing 1-2 more series posts and that should carry me through the end of the nuerofeedback. If you have ANY questions, don’t be shy! Leave a comment below, email me, smoke signal, whatever.

- Panda

Here’s a question – if someone gives away to you something unhealthy because they don’t want to eat it, should you then eat it?

Yes, cheese balls are gluten free, I was given them and I went off the edge on them yesterday.

So this morning with most of the jar left I threw it out. I dumped hundreds of balls in the trash can and of course recycled the container because I’m all Eco-friendly like that

This cheese ball binge could signal that I quit Weight Watchers.…so what did I do?

Well, kids, since I was too busy stuffing my face with measured servings of cheese balls I forgot to cancel my subscription before the midnight deadline. Whoops. So now I’m with it for 3 months.

Time to embrace it and give WW a big hug hello because it’s here to stay, well for 3 months that is.

- Panda

I think it was meant to be that I switched from Google Reader to Blog Lovin’ today, because the G-reader be saying adios come July.

I don’t really talk a lot about my mental health on here or at least nothing in great detail. I feel like no one needs to know EVERYTHING about this panda.

So during my blog spring cleaning this morning (getting rid of blogs where the writer had jumped shipped and getting new stuff) I added Hyperbole and a Half to my line up. I causally followed this on FB but never had it in my reader.

Today’s post was titled Depression Part Two. It’s lengthy but a lot of things are making sense for me now, why past 8 months have been they way they were. This post is exactly how I have been feeling. It’s amazing when something can finally vocalize everything you have been trying to say for months.

If you read the post (and I think you should, so go do it, but not until you are done with mine, mmmmk) I can tell you I am at the end of the post, have found my piece of corn, and slowly piecing my life back together. The pulmonary embolism and POTS royally messed with my head. Words cannot describe how low I have felt over the past 8 months so I’m not gonna bother trying.

So many times my friends have asked me “How are you?” and I became a robot with the response “fine.” If I gave you that response over the past 8 months, I lied. Can we still be friends? I’ll buy you froyo

What I will say is that I’m starting to feel better. It won’t be puppies and rainbows and some days will be worse than others but I feel like the happiness that has been gone is finally returning piece by piece.

I feel like NOW I am getting the restart that I craved or at least now I care enough to actually implement all the changes I said that I would do over and over and over again. For awhile, I began to question if I ever would feel the way I felt prior to all this health problem crazyness. I really questioned if I would ever care. 

So readers, thanks for hanging around with me during this chapter of my life. I know I haven’t been the most inspirational weight loss story ever told during this time but I haven’t rubber stamped “The End” on this either. I’m glad for my blog. It holds me accountable  and it means a lot to me when I hear “Hey, you inspire me!” Hugs for all!!

- Panda

Well my new swimsuit top (VS Bombshell) arrived and with my swim cami (Lands’ End) and bottoms (Target) it gets a two thumbs up. My girls are much better taken care of here than they were in the past…

Speaking of girls, I wanna have story time, so gather around kids.

My assets are something I’ve always had, even when I was at goal weight, they didn’t get smaller. Because of my blessings I have been blessed with attention from the opposite sex most of my life. And at age 16 this was no exception…

I was at Myrtle Beach, SC with the fam and floating around on my boogie board. This kid, probably around my age was ogling me but whatever, these goodies weren’t for sale. After about 10 minutes he finally says hello followed by “You wanna release those twins??”. Cue in disgusted look by me and leaving the ocean.

Fast forward 6 hours and its nighttime and I take the elevator up to my room. I get in the elevator and low and behold, twins releaser is in it. This is when common sense should’ve slapped me to not enter the elevator but I did. After the longest elevator ever, I step off and I hear “Nice twins”.

I enter my hotel room, really pissed that I have been ogled again by Mr. Twins. My twin brother was mad too and said “let’s find him!” so off we go and low and behold he still is in the elevator (maybe he was the operator?). So we ride to level 1 and since fights in small boxes aren’t my style I wait till me and my twin brother exit. Mr. Twins clearly knew he was in trouble so he didn’t exit and was desperately pressing the close door button. Within seconds I yell “that’s him” and my brother stops the door with only inches to spare. No punches were thrown but a clear “Stay away from my sister” was voiced.

I had no more problems with Mr. Twins the rest of the trip

So in the end I gave the guy what he wanted, he told me to release the twins, right? So I brought him my TWIN. *ba-dum-tshh*

- Panda