OT - Cleaning the Natural Way - You, Your Mask, Your Home

We are back from FL. Disney World was fun but stressful in its Disney way. I was glad to leave. I can't stand the constant music and noise. They think every moment has to be filled with song. PUKE.

The beach. Now that was my style of vacation. We were in Siesta Key right off of Sarasota. The most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. Powdery white sand that doesn't get hot. Clear water. Clean. Friendly people. We rented a house with a pool too. Ate out and had dessert with every meal. Managed to get tanner despite all attempts not to. Mitch and Harry burned even with lots of liberal spf 50 lotion. I stopped wearing sunscreen after they burned because we stayed out of the sun as much as we could do. But 10 full days, mostly spent outside, add up to a nice honey brown tan. I rarely burn though. I sure wish Harry had inherited that from me. But the burn he got was far less than Mitch's. Mitch looked like a lobster. Harry only had a few small areas and he didn't even complain!

The sun also completely cleared up my skin.

Oh, here is a great story. Got a prescription facial at my derm the day before we left and the aesthetician is trying to convince me that I really need some benzoil peroxide in my routine. I said, I don't think so--the last time I tried to use it, my face got all red and itchy. She said it probably was a higher concentration and lesser quality product, I really need it in my routine. 100% money back guarantee. I gave in, bought it and I put it on that night.

Next day during flight my face feels hot.

Following morning wake up in Disney to face red, swollen, covered in a fine rash, eyes almost swollen shut. Can you say angry? It took about 4 days to go mostly away. The rest of the trip for the rash that ended up going down my neck and arms to go away.

It didn't help that I would order food at Disney that didn't mention (on the menu) having any cheese on it and it would come loaded with cheese.

I have this thing. I don't like asking for special meals--they usually make them so bland and disgusting that I would rather have a regular meal that I believe will minimize my dairy intake (I am allergic to dairy) and take my chances. Usually I just pick off the cheese or avoid certain parts of the meal. I used to tell the servers at restaurants that I have dietary restrictions and to ask for a meal prepared especially for me, but it ends up tasting like crap and then I get resentful that I am paying full price for less quality. My way usually works better. You have to be a good cook and know what goes into most foods though for it to work.

My first mistake was forgetting that the word panini automatically means cheese will be on the sandwich regardless of what the menu says. The lines were so long and I was so hungry I ate it anyway. Did not help the benzoil peroxide rash one bit! Otherwise it was successful. Occasionally I will ask for pizza without cheese. Its actually pretty good if you get some kind of fatty meat on it and lots of veg.

I actually don't even like cheese anymore. Funny. I used to be ADDICTED to it. Now I don't miss it at all. Eating that panini confirmed it for me. It just tasted off to me. I think food tastes cleaner without all that cheese muddying it up.

Harry's surgery is a week from today. I bought ice cream, pudding and jello today when I went to the store. I can't wait to get it over with!

Cleaning the house and putting crap away is pooping me out. Glad to have a break. But, gotta go make supper soon.

Jen

YAY YOU HAD FUN!!!!

BOO your aesthetician seduced you into a crappy product that made your face rash out!!!! I know EXACTLY what you mean - I've been doing that most of the summer. I've been doing pretty good on the Nature's Gate regime - my face is clearing up, but I'm also going back on tetracycline. We'll see how that treats me.

Definitely get your money back from the aesthetician and don't buy anything else from her/him!

I'm so sorry about the cheese thing! All of my friends have food allergies. I just hate eating out with them. I really prefer it if they want to eat with me, if they invite me to their house. Either that or we all bring our own food and don't share. I have several friends with cheese issues, and they are all different. "L" can eat goat cheese but not cow cheese. "D" cannot eat any melted cheese, and "M" will only eat cheese if her lactose intolerant husband isn't watching. It's too much for my pea brain. I demanded wallet cards with everyone's dietary restrictions, but they were too lengthy, and we had to switch to PDA's...

I am dying of arm pain and haven't slept decently in two days and I'm just so sick of this. I see the occupational therapist tomorrow. Pray for me.

Tell Harry he's a brave little boy and I admire him no end going in for surgery. I'm too scairt to do it.

Huggers,
B.

Harry is brave. He saw what I went thru and he believes me when i tell him it will be easier for him. Luckily for me they told me that they will put him under with gas thru a mask, not thru a vein like they did for me. I was getting really anxious about them putting a line in him while he was awake. That took a lot of weight off my shoulders.

Getting that surgery is the best thing I could have done. My ahi's are 1 or below now. My pressure is now down to 10/6 or 9/6. (From bipap 16/12). I have even had a night with ZERO apneas. I can even sleep on my side now that the pressure is lower--aerophagia is gone. Every time I dial down my lower pressure by 1 cm the top number comes down with it and the ahi's settle in after about a week. It is astounding.

I am now hopeful that the TAP appliance I am getting later this week might actually get me off cpap.

After a crappy couple of months (surgery, finding out Harry (age 4) has apnea too and needs tonsilectomy, breaking my toe, finding out (and curing) I had a fungal infection of the scalp, aaaack! I am ready for some good stuff to start happening!

By the way, going to Disney 3 weeks after breaking toe, not such a great idea. It hurt like hell, but I toughed it out and kept taping it. I think i might have actually re-broken it from the stress of walking so much. I was stubborn and didn't rent a scooter. I'm not sure why. Maybe because everyone on one was either old, obviously disabled or FAT. After leaving Disney, it got much better but still hurt some. Now it seems fine. I'll keep taping for a few more weeks. I never went without tape except one day when it fell off at the beach for a couple of hours and I was carefull. So, if it did break again from the stress it has healed up pretty quickly. Probably the pain was just a warning to be careful.

Jen

I am so glad you guys had fun! Surgery will be much easier for Harry, I have a friend whos kid was asking for chicken and corn the day after and telling her he wanted to go to the park.

They told my sister some time ago that my nephew needed his tonsills out, that he had sleep apnea and day time breathing problems. Then in the process of getting ready for surgery they discovered he had a bleeding problem. A few days ago they called and told her that his blood was doing things they had never seen before. Even pumped full of meds and extra plateletts his blood would not clot. They say it isnt hemophelia. So they are not going to remove his tonsills. Still hoping they figure it all out soon.

That sucks about the rash. I hate drs who dont believe you when you say your body cant handle something. You have been living in it for a long time...you know what does and does not make it go haywire.

My face is still looking good, still just doing OCM with a once a week sugar scrub. I did ACV scalp rinse again the other day. My scalp just gets so itchy and feels terrible....the ACV burns a bit, but the itching stops for a day or two.

The other day Faith and I were playing. I called her a sucker. She turned around and said "Not a sucker, your a candy". So now she keeps calling me candy. lol She is funny. Still need to go get her costume. She is going to be dorothy from the wizard of oz....one of her fav movies.

Waiting on that baby news Jen! lol

Jennmary,

Is this the same nephew with behavioral issues? I'll bet tonsils out would really help him if it is. I hope she takes him to a specialist. I wonder what crazy thing his blood could be doing? Sounds like he needs a team of specialists!

Thanks for the positive tonsil surgery story. I try not to worry, but it is hard. Harry can be a whiner. I tell myself that it is because he is tired all the time. Now that he is old enough to articulated it, he just says it. A lot. He will just roll around on the floor or couch and say he is tired if I try to get him to go play. His favorite activity is watching tv. I hope all that changes after the surgery.

Kids can be so sweet. I love it when Harry latches on to something sweet like that. Harry has always had this quirky association with the word "cute." He doesn't like to be called cute, objected to it since 18 mos old. Every grown up that calls him cute (this happens frequently) gets a lecture about how he doesn't like that word. One time he told a teacher at his school he would rather be called pretty. Pretty obvious he doesn't have an older brother or sister to make fun of him! Usually he says handsome.

He also had a love affair with the color pink for a while and then one day came home from school asking me with astonishment, "Did you know that pink is a GIRL color, Mom?" We try not to make a lot of gender distinctions because I just want him to grow up without a lot of garbage messing with his view of the world. For a long time he went around talking about how he was going to have a baby someday. I never told him he was wrong because he was at a rather obsessive age and I didn't want him to develop a hangup about it. More recently he started saying he is going to marry his best bud Ellie and she is going to have the babies--so obviously he figured that out on his own too. He did pretend to breastfeed a doll tho recently! LOL.

Anyway, there are some cute little boy anecdotes for ya!

I'm glad you are still having success with ocm. You were very reluctant to try it, remember. I don't do it every day, but I do it several times a week and I try to use soap as little as possible. I try to do extractions of anything that looks like it could be a zit starting to happen at least once a day and that actually seems to be working too. I guess you just have to do something. It can't be easy.

I wonder if you have that same scalp infection that I had? I used that nizoral shampoo just a few times and it wiped it out. Then I made a solution of Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) with just a touch of lemon juice and some skin healthy ess oils and used that for a while and haven't had a problem since.

By the way, the veggie hair dye that I told you all about. Completely faded already. I don't know if I will do it again or not. I need to contact Aubrey and ask if I was doing something that might cause it to fade. My grays look like they are dark blonde now, which against my dark brown hair is quite strange to me. I'm not sure if it is worth the effort again. Might just have to learn to live with the grays. Shudder. Can you imagine being 35, still having acne breakouts, some fine lines developing, substantial grey hair and PREGNANT. Ugh.

We are doing the timing thing with trying to get preg. If you do it 3-5 days before you ovulate you increase the chances of having a girl by about 10% (60% as opposed to 49%) supposedly. Doing it the day you ovulate increases chances for a boy. Apparently x sperm swim slower and last longer than y sperm and need some lead time--they make it to the uterus when most of the y sperm have pooped out and get the egg.

We usually start out trying like this and then start to enjoy the process so much we say what the hell, it is 50-50 after all. We would really like a girl, but it does feel a bit selfish to try to take the process into some form of control when we should just be grateful for a healthy pregnancy.

OK, enough blathering. We should really start our own forum for all this crazy talk we do here!

Jen

Yeah Jen, same nephew. I guess they are saying they cant get his blood to clot at all in the lab. Usually even hemophiliacs will clot with medication...his blood isnt. So now they wont do any kind of surgery because he will bleed to death.

I am so tired. I just want to sleep. I have a friend that lives up in washington and we were on the phone until 2am. Kind of sucked. Trying to come up with the cheapest way to get up there for a visit......it is so expensive to go anywhere these days.

Jen said "Shudder. Can you imagine being 35, still having acne breakouts, some fine lines developing, substantial grey hair and PREGNANT. Ugh. "

Uh, try 42, grey hair, severe acne, and a fat abdomen that causes people to ask me when the baby is due.

Hence the Tetracycline. And the hair dye. And the contemplation of diet and exercise. Hey, I don't want to go OVERBOARD!

My hair dye has faded, too, but not as drastically as yours. I see some greys creeping in. I haven't kept up with the "maintenance" conditioner I'm supposed to use once a week.

I say, try the Nutricolor line next time. Easier application, for what seems like the same results. Unless there's something in there you're allergic to, of course.

Must go do my little "arm yoga" exercises.

LOL,
B.

jennmary wrote:Yeah Jen, same nephew. I guess they are saying they cant get his blood to clot at all in the lab. Usually even hemophiliacs will clot with medication...his blood isnt. So now they wont do any kind of surgery because he will bleed to death.

I am so tired. I just want to sleep. I have a friend that lives up in washington and we were on the phone until 2am. Kind of sucked. Trying to come up with the cheapest way to get up there for a visit......it is so expensive to go anywhere these days.

Jen,

I figured. Did you see the Oprah a couple of weeks ago with Jenny McCarthy talking about her son and autism? One thing really stuck out to me of what she said (maybe because of my own weird problems): her son's behavior improved when they had him treated for a candida infection of the bowel and then they put him on a dairy free/gluten free diet.

Having suffered from candida myself (I got a bowel infection in costa rica from living in the country and drinking milk straight from the cow) and more recently on my scalp. And you prob remember I'm allergic to milk WHICH, btw, started immediately after I returned from Costa Rica. You might tell your sister it might be worth the trouble of sending a stool sample out to look for candida. It is a little known fact that the brain and gut are closely linked. That is why foods like sugar/caffeine/etc and even being constipated can affect your mood so much.

As for his blood, I can only offer information about blood gleaned from my Jehovah's Witness friends who refuse blood transfusions and therefore use natural ways to build the blood like consuming unsulphured black strap molasses and grape juice among a few other things. In a pinch they will accept meds to build the blood and they will accept saline, but they refuse blood products do to a certain interpretation of a passage in the Bible.

Obviously he is missing some factor in his blood and I hope for his sake that it isn't some incurable metabolic disorder, but maybe the result of some infection or something that he will grow out of. Surely at his age he has had some scrapes, did they have a hard time getting them to stop bleeding? Has he ever had a scab or brokent bone. I'm very curious about this. I sure hope they figure it out soon! Getting those tonsils out could go a really, really long way to improving his health and behavior.

Jen

Well, he has had a few small cuts....and they took forever to stop bleeding. Never anything bigger than that. They are saying it is a genetic problem but havent yet identified exactly what else is going on. We are all hoping they get it figured out. But they refuse to take any more blood from him until he reaches at least 28 pounds. He is 3 and still less than 20. But he was only 2 pounds 13 oz at birth, and both of his parents are very small people.
I had the longest day ever today, and tommorow looks to be even longer. No rest for the weary I guess.

Ha....I got asked twice in one day 2 weeks ago when I was due. It was pretty sad. I am supposed to start a medical weight loss program just as soon as my insurance approves it.

JM - NO way you look as fat as me. At least you don't have the double chins I have.

What program? Share share!

I'm topping 220 right now. I make "oofing" noises whenever I bend over to pick something up. I've given up on laced shoes completely....

We keep saying we're gonna start a cpap weight loss thread to share support. We really should do that.

A bunch of my coworkers are taking this MLM gimic drink called Isagenix and bragging about their weight loss. It's too expensive for me, and I don't trust the results to be lasting.

I'd like a meal program - but I tried Nutrisystem, and HATED the food. Much of it tasted rancid to me.

And I've heard nothing but bad about Jenny Craig.

I need to go checkout Jen's glycemic index diet book. I need SIMPLE meal plans, not poached salmon florentine for lunch on a work day...

LOL,
B.

jennmary wrote:Well, he has had a few small cuts....and they took forever to stop bleeding. Never anything bigger than that. They are saying it is a genetic problem but havent yet identified exactly what else is going on. We are all hoping they get it figured out. But they refuse to take any more blood from him until he reaches at least 28 pounds. He is 3 and still less than 20. But he was only 2 pounds 13 oz at birth, and both of his parents are very small people.
I had the longest day ever today, and tommorow looks to be even longer. No rest for the weary I guess.

Ha....I got asked twice in one day 2 weeks ago when I was due. It was pretty sad. I am supposed to start a medical weight loss program just as soon as my insurance approves it.

Wow that is one small kid! Harry is the opposite. He tops the charts. We are tall and so is he. He is often mistaken for 5 or even 6. I think he was close to 40 lbs by age 3. Now he is 43 lbs. Of course he was 10 lbs 5.5 oz at birth. Imagine pushing THAT out!

The women in my family genetically seem to develop large lower abdomens so I get what you guys are saying. My Mom was asked many times when she was due. Which sucks. I have it too, but since I'm tall I seem to be able to disguise it. For me, lower rise pants combined with a shirt just the right length minimizes it for some reason. Then there is the muffin top to contend with, lol! Harder to disguise in summer than winter of course.

I wish losing weight were easier. High caloric food is just too readily available and the manufacturers spend a lot of money trying to confuse us about what is healthy. The key is to eat like you know you are supposed to. Whole grains, no refined foods (nothing white: flour, sugar, pasta, bread, potato), fruits and veg. and lower fat meats (with the exception of salmon, since it is a good fat). Just eating real oatmeal for breakfast with a low or non-calorie sweetener can help some folks lose up to 10 lbs because it gets you off to a better start.

Luckily whole grain foods are getting more and more prevalent. I like the whole grain pastas on the market now--esp Barilla. I eat old fashioned oatmeal everyday for breakfast. I put in sugar-free apple butter to naturally sweeten it. It is really nice. I try to make the veg more and more prevalent with my meals and the meat and carbs just a side dish. Try to make lots of big tasty salads.

The book I recommend is: The GI Diet. There are two books. They both have the same info, but the second is also a recipe book and we really like about 1/2 of the recipes in the book. Mitch lost 70 lbs and has maintained it for over a year. He gains a few lbs occasionally but gets them back off quickly. I intend on working harder at this soon.

One of the major ingredients of this diet is fat free yogurt and since I can't eat that or the fat free milk, it makes the diet a bit restrictive for me. But I have followed it about 80% in the past (didn't really feel deprived at all) and lost 20 lbs over just a few months. I also did moderate excersise.

It really is calories in, calories out. It is a myth that some people have higher metabolisms than others. Some people just eat more calories and do less work than others. Sooooooo easy to do in this day and age.

I wish I could have kept off the lbs I lost from the tonsilectomy. Gotta start from scratch there now! ARgh!

Jen

I don't recommend my weight loss method!!! I got diabetes!!!

For me it is simply portion control (it's not what I eat as much as the amount I eat). I can't cook for 4 and eat for 3 anymore -- so I just eat for me. I've also become a habitual label reader. Believe it or not there are a lot of half way decent frozen things out there that can fit the calorie and carb requirements for a diabetic. I'm too lazy to cook all the time, and I'm the cook in the family.
Jen's right -- it's calories in, calories burned. I went from an uncontrolled typical male diet of about 3300+ per day down to a 1800 a day diet -- the dietitian thought that was a bit aggressive and I should have set it to 2500 to start. I left it at 1800 because I wasn't hungry at that level, so I wasn't starving myself (I've also been blowing it lately, so I have to go back to towing the line). I'm down 30 and need to drop another 30 (at least). Between the weight loss and the CPAP I may be able to get off most of my blood pressure meds in the next 6 months -- yay!!!
One of my things is that I don't look at the scale every day. Too depressing because weight will change from hour to hour, day to day, so.......I look every couple weeks -- then get depressed

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but weight loss isn't only dieting....

Keep at it because it will work!!!!! (but like you all, I really don't go in for the latest fad diets - Jenny Craig et.al.)
I wish you all good luck!!!! If you start a weight loss thread here, I'll follow along -- I'm on the same quest (as I'm sure many of us are!!!!)!!!!

cheers
goose

I don't want to start a new thread as a Guest. I'll have to do it after work. And I don't want to log on after work, because I'm resting my arm. One of you go start it and I'll chime in.

I bought the GI Diet Express book from Amazon this AM. It's the shorter version of the book Jen recommended, with 70 recipes. Hopefully it will get here soon.

Also bought the new improved The Firm - TransFirmer. I've used the older version of The Firm and had great results. I hear the new "box" is more stable, so I splurged. I'll sell the old set on Craigslist for dirt cheap to someone else who wants to lose weight. This is the best workout I've ever tried for women. I can't comment on workouts that work for men.

Cheers,
Barbara

Over the last couple of years, several diet threads have been started. Unfortunately, all have failed. But, who's to say that the next one won't be "The ONE!!"

Good luck to all.

Kajun

I dont know what the diet is yet. I have to see the dr and go over all of that. I am sure they are going to recommend pills of some kind....not looking forward to that. I might put it all off until the new year when I am in a less stressed state of mind. I have a lot going on and I know myself well enough to know that throwing a diet into that mix is not a great idea. But I am seeing the dr on the 17th for my first visit, we are going to set up a few things at that point.

Faith is big for her age too. She is 2 and a half and sitting at about 35lbs. She was 6 weeks early and still weighed 6 pounds 19 1/4 inches long. Dr said she would have been 10-12 pounds easily had she been on time. He thinks she will be taller than me by jr high. lol

I ran out of lip balm today. Going to have to make more and save a larger supply for my own stash. Gave a lot away to family and such last time.