Things I Have Learned Since Being Sick

Tonight marks a solid month of this being sick crap

I HEART PAMPHLETS!

.  

And let me be very clear; I know I am luckier than almost anyone who finds themselves in a situation like this.  My procedure, which has been scheduled for this coming Wednesday, is low-risk and usually highly successful.  I am lucky and I know it.  However, I have been mostly confined to my house for the last few weeks and it has been a revealing experience I will probably reflect on for the rest of my life.

There has been something about this whole experience that has made me want to capture it; like a photograph of the most beautiful butterfly.  Yet, that photograph remains elusive.  As my horrendously overwrought (and overused) metaphor indicates, I feel as though I lack the skills.  Or the words.  Or at least some central organizing principle around which to organize these random thoughts that are knocking around my brain as fast the beats in my chest.

I have never experienced anything like this before in my entire life.  I have never been told by my doctor that I couldn’t drive, or that I should mostly lay low and work on remaining as calm as possible, so as not to exacerbate my bullet train of a heart.  Never.  I have never even broken a bone.  Yes, I was put on partial bed-rest in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, but I was roughly the size of a walrus and being told not to move was more an act of mercy than anything else.  Plus, I was getting a baby at the end, so win-win.

This is different because I have entire days where I feel, more or less, normal.  Then there are nights like tonight and I am awake for reasons that are inexplicable to me and my heart is thumping and, frankly, I’m bored.  I could be using this as a time to be productive and get some school work done, but I don’t exactly have amazing focus right now.  I will probably end up spending too much time on my adult coloring app on my i-pad.  Maybe I’ll read.  

There have been insights, though, and I want to write them down and that makes me want to share them because, hey, I didn’t become known as “Cher” at work because I don’t share enough on social media, duh.  

Let me say again that I do not want, in any way, to compare myself to someone with a serious, life-altering, life-threatening condition.  I know parents who have walked that road with their children, I know people who have lived through it with their loved ones, and I know people who are walking a much scarier path on this road than I am.  My situation is, god-willing, fleeting.  If all goes well during my procedure on Wednesday, I will miraculously be cured. I find this rather astounding frankly, as there are so few things in medicine, and in life, that are that clear cut.  I have luck on my side that I realize so many do not.

That's the inside of Tuff Girl Fitness; I miss those kettlebells so, so much.

That said, I feel I have gotten a peek behind a curtain most of us don’t ever want to see behind.  Illness like this is frustrating, particularly in the beginning when no one seems to believe that your symptoms are real.  It is mundane and boring.  It isolates you.  It is painful.  It is exhausting.  It takes away the activities you loved.  It reduces you.  The one I was least expecting, though, was how lonely it would feel.  The middle of the night, when everyone else in the world seems to be asleep, is when I feel most crazy and alone.  I get restless.  What do I do with myself?  I don’t want to make too much noise for fear of waking my family up, yet I sit here, yearning for someone to talk to, laugh with.  

I love how people keep saying, let me know if you need anything.  Some people have really come through for me, covering aspects of my job, without whom this time in my life would have been infinitely more stressful. My immediate family has been amazing.  I am deeply grateful to those people.  Aside from that, though, what I really wish is that people would just show up.  Call me.  Text me randomly.  Take thirty seconds and write a comment on this blog post, let’s say.  Just something to let me know you haven’t forgotten I exist.  Come and visit me and we can consider it your good deed for the month if that sort of thing is your bag.  If you’re reading this, it is likely I will be well on my way to a full recovery.  But just keep in mind that if someone you care about ends up in a similar situation, reach out to them.  For most of us, I don’t think you’ll be intruding, you’ll be a welcome guest.

And because I have no better way to wrap this random collection of thoughts up...if you have not watched “Empire” yet...get on that.  Cookie is incredible and I want all of her clothes.  I’m very much looking forward to having some place to get dressed up for again.

That coat..I mean...seriously.

The Latest News About My Health

I originally started writing a blog post about my current health situation that was super reflective; all about autumn and the seasons and how things change us.  I even worked in a funny bit about pumpkin spice lattes because, fall.

It's FALL...so we pick apples!

Well, a couple weeks had passed since I'd last worked on it and several things have changed and while I still have lots of pressing opinions/thoughts/feelings on chronic illness, I feel the need to get to the point and share with those of you who are interested what exactly is going on with me.

On the evening of September 3rd, I had what was diagnosed as an acute episode of supra ventricular tachycardia; a rather common form of heart arrhythmia that usually resolves itself pretty quickly by way of a prescription for beta blockers.  That night itself was intensely scary, but the whole situation

Drama queen.

just became increasingly more problematic when it didn't get better.  Every day, I would wake up and think, great, today is the day I will wake up and make it through a whole day without my heart feeling as though it about to pound right out of my chest!  And that just never happened.  I could barely teach two classes during the regular school day and, on occasion, sometimes didn't even make that.  I was often light headed and woozy. And I was oh so very tired.  Not to mention, the beta blockers that should have been regulating things just didn't seem to be working all that well.

I finally had my echo cardiogram and stress test this past Monday.  I went in to my afternoon's worth of appointments with a list of symptoms and questions and data points I had carefully gathered, only to be completely shut down at the doctor's office that day.  All of my tests came back just fine, so obviously, there was nothing wrong with me.  I was told, point blank, any symptoms I was feeling were likely just residual anxiety and I should just take more of my anti-anxiety meds.

Um..what?  I'll save it for another blog post, but let's just say...I know my way around a good anxiety attack and what I had been feeling was definitely not simply anxiety.  I walked out of the doctors' office in tears and I'm not sure I'd ever felt so humiliated or dismissed by medical professionals in my life.  I also had a brand new event monitor.

I refused to shake the idea that something was seriously wrong with me, though.  I was finally able to speak with a tech the following day who did her best to back up what I had been told the day before.  Fast forward to this afternoon and I had been called back into the doctor's office to speak to an actual doctor for the very first time since I'd been in the ER in the beginning of September.


Turns out....I'm not crazy after all and it's more than anxiety.  I have a particular type of tachycardia that will require a catheterized ablation to stabilize, but, once that happens, I should be set.  I meet with the surgeon Monday afternoon and in the meantime,  I'll be doing exciting things like "not driving," and maybe I'll get around to finishing up my more reflective blog post.

Sure, a simple diagnosis, like traditional SVT, would likely have been easier to handle, I'm just thankful to finally have some real information.  And it is an excellent reminder for all of us to truly listen to our bodies, even when a whole lot of other people seem to think they know more about your own body than you do.

My Body, My Self

 I really did not want this blog to exclusively feature recipes.  I really do want to document my (insert me rolling my eyes here) journey...  We're all on a journey, that's kind of what living is all about, really.

I also really want to write about body image issues; mine and those that impact all women.  As someone who spends a great deal of her time with adolescent girls, I need to wrap my brain around being as empowered about my own body image as I possibly can be.  Because I have had it with the ideals that we are inundated with and I am done hating myself.  My rational brain tells me that not even the models and celebrities we see everyday really look like that.  Check your Facebook feed and I guarantee you can find one of those, look at the impact of Photoshop posts pretty darn quickly.

Go ahead.  I'll wait.

So, rationally, I know that this all so much buillshit; fakery, trickery, marketing.  Personally, I think if a pro makeup and hair crew showed up at almost any woman's doorstep tomorrow, they could make her look like a supermodel, even before the Photoshop.

Yet I struggle...  I do not want to judge what any other woman feels and it is not my intention to make any woman feel bad about her body or appearance, but I do want to share my own story.  And part of my own story is acknowledging that when I was at my heaviest, I did not feel good physically.

I have been chunky, overweight, obese, fat...whatever...pretty much most of my life.  I am also blessed with a ton of muscle mass that is, unfortunately, hidden under a layer of fat right now that I am not pleased about. I know that my body composition is changing, slowly but surely, but it is taking a long time.

The "thinnest" I ever got was when I was about twenty five.  Ephedra was legal and I was suffering with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.  Hello, mania!  You could buy speed at CVS...how awesome was that??

The first year, I was doing an internship and getting my master's, then I started a third program, all to get my Connecticut teaching certificate in under a year.  At one point, I was student teaching in the morning, going to classes in Bloomfield in the afternoon, and then rocketing my way down to Bridgeport for classes at night.

I was flying; eating every couple of days.  And when I did stop to eat, I was eating total crap.  So, yes, I ate very little and not surprisingly, I lost weight.  I was still heavier and would have qualified as obese on a BMI chart, but I was down into a size ten and I even wore a two piece bathing suit for a summer.  Me!  In a bikini!  What???

That winter, I met my husband to be while drunk off my ass, dancing on a chair at a New Year's Eve party.  This is how I looked:

But...all good things (bad things?) come to an end and they took ephedra off the market.  I began treatment for bipolar disorder, which included a mood stabilizer.  Mark and I moved in together and I remember a picture from moving day.  I looked good, yet I was still fixated on my arms; they were too big.  I was still too big.

Once Mark and I shacked up, I started cooking.  A lot.  But I remained in a range I thought was fairly reasonable.  I started lifting before our wedding in July of 2005 and while I wasn't in the shape I might have liked, I was pretty OK with how I looked.  Shortly thereafter, I got pregnant and even then I was still OK.  Heavier than I would have liked, but not terrible.

In 2009, I changed jobs and easily packed on another twenty to thirty pounds.  I was no longer able to buy most of my clothes in standard women's sizes.  I was at that point, deeply uncomfortable.  I couldn't easily get out of the corner of my couch.  When I went on a class field trip to Washington, D.C., I had a hard time keeping up with colleagues who were younger than me.  The truth is, at my heaviest, I didn't feel good.   It had nothing to do with my self image, but everything to do with how I felt.  I had to get up off that couch.

This was taken about a month before I took my first class at Tuff Girl.

Which brings me to the whole fat acceptance movement.  I want to believe that you can be healthy/happy/whatever regardless of your size, yet I found that just hasn't been the case for me.  Since I started training and getting my eating under control, I've never felt better.  I don't have it all together yet.  There have been setbacks.  I am nowhere near a position where moderation is a possibility.  No, I can't just have a few spoonfuls of ice cream and put the rest away.  I can't eat a handful of potato chips and walk away.  I hope I get there some day.

But, in the meantime, I'm proud of how far I've come.

About to do my first 5K Obstacle Course, April 2013

The gold sequin dress I wore to a holiday party this year.  For real.  This took some serious body confidence.

But I'm still not where I want to be.  Not yet.  I have moments where I look in the mirror and I can see my hamstrings or my calve muscles and I think, damn...you are strong!  But sadly, my first thought upon seeing a picture of me smashing my deadlift PR?  Ugh...you look gross.  

So, its a struggle...a struggle that seems to never end.  And for however far I have come, I still have so far to go.  

Sisterhood is powerful...and wouldn't we all be better off if we supported each other and ourselves, instead of tearing each other down?  

All Day Cooking-palooza!

Because I was a teenager in the 90s and went to Lollapalooza more than once myself...

Yeah, I was there...what?

Anyway, usually this extravaganza of cooking/food prep happens on Sundays, but because of President's Day, I had an extra day this week and last night was our splurge meal at Max Burger in West Hartford, which I normally love, but made me pretty ill last night.  Which I'm taking as a good sign.

What I made:

1.  Primavera Bolognese

2.  Tuna Noodle Casserole

3.  Sloppy Joe Stuffed Peppers

4.  Asian chicken with cauliflower fried rice

5.  Paleo blueberry muffins

What I  did:

First of all, I'm not going to lie...this little project did take me close to six hours.  But I also made three recipes for the first time, which always adds to the time.  You could also break it down into smaller steps, too.  I could have, for example, processed more of the veggies when I got home from the store yesterday.

1.  Prepped and roasted veggies for bolognese.  This is one of those awesome "hide the veggies" recipes.  It doesn't have to be, but for my little babe, it works best to hide the veggies, so they get roasted, then pureed, before I make the actual sauce.

2.  Made the unbelievably yum smelling marinade for the chicken thighs.  Put those in the refrigerator to let them marinate until I cook them tomorrow.

3.  Made the cauliflower fried rice...mostly out of curiosity.  Plus, I was letting my roasted veggies for the sauce cool a bit before I started working with them.
     It was pretty good; albeit a bit mushy.  I think I may have over-processed my cauliflower a bit.

4.  Made the tuna noodle casserole.

5.  Made the stuffed peppers.

6.  Made paleo blueberry muffins.

How I Did It:

• Karen Lenahan's Primavera Bolognese with spaghetti squash

     Aside from making a massive amount (think double batch; plenty to freeze), its also delicious and  everyone in the house loves it.

                                                    Primavera Bolognese Recipe

     You can also find out more about Karen and her amazing catering/take out/bakery business here:


                                               

   

    Small Kitchen Big Taste

• Asian marinated chicken thighs and cauliflower fried rice  

Nom Nom Paleo Asian Chicken Thighs

       The "rice" I'm improvising from a few different recipes I've seen on-line

Cauliflower Fried Rice:

Ingredients:

1 small head cauliflower "riced" in a food processor
    This a pretty simple process -- cut off the florets and then process in food processor until the              cauliflower becomes a rice-like consistency.

3 strips of nitrite-free thick-cut bacon, cut into small strips

handful of asparagus, trimmed and cut into small pieces

1/2 medium sized eggplant, cubed

handful of mushrooms

small onion, diced

scallions

fresh ginger, grated on a microplane, about a tbsp. total

1 tbsp coocnut aminos

1 tbsp fish sauce

Directions:

1.  Fry up the bacon, removing the bacon from the pan when crisp.

2.  At this point, if you were going for a more authentic fried rice, you'd do a quick, very thin omlette in the pan, but I was making this to have a tomorrow, so I skipped this part.

3.  Start adding in veggies.  You could use a mix of any of the above veggies and there are many others that would probably be pretty good, too.

4.  Once veggies have softened up a bit, then add in the cauliflower and the remaining ingredients.  Cover and cook for about four to five minutes.

This tasted pretty yummy as I took it off the stove, albeit the consistency of the cauliflower wasn't much like rice.  I also don't really love rice, so this doesn't bother me.  If texture is your thing, this might bother you.  I've now used cauliflower as a stand-in for mashed potatoes and found pureed cauliflower to be just as good.  I've also used it to make breadsticks and those were pretty Ok, too.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Yum...noodles...crunchy topping...so not OK.

I had such a craving for real tuna noodle casserole; you know...with lots of cheese, egg noodles, tuna creamy with canned soup, crushed up potato chips on top...and yes, a nutritional nightmare and not exactly the stuff truly splurge-worthy meals are made of, so I figured tuna was too rich a protein source for someone not to have messed around with this recipe.  I was right...  I found a couple different recipes and sorta combined both to come up with this:

Ingredients

1.  1 large head cabbage (I used purple; its prettty...standard green would work just great, too)

2.  Olive oil, coconut oil, or bacon grease for brushing on the cabagge

3.  Salt and pepper

4.  1 onion

5.  8 oz button mushrooms

6.  handful of the inner stems from a celery heart, diced

7.  4 cloves garlic

8.  ½ can anchovies

9.  2 Tbsp butter

10.  1 ½ Tbsp arrowroot powder

11.  1 can coconut milk or 1 1/2 cups milkl

12.  3 (7-oz) cans tuna

13.  ½ lb frozen spinach

14.  ½ cup Wallaby organic sour cream  (seriously...you'll thank me)

15.  1/2 cup almond "bread crumbs" on top

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400˚ F
• Slice cabbage into disks, brush with cooking fat (I used bacon grease), salt and pepper

• Bake for 230-45 minutes, keeping an eye on it.  This will depend on the thickness of the slices you cut.
• Add the cooking fat to a large pot. Dice the onion and saute the onion in the oil over medium-low heat.
• While the onion is cooking, thinly slice the mushrooms. Add them to the pot and continue to saute. Mince the garlic, add it to the pot, and continue to saute until the mushrooms and onions have released all of their water and become limp. There should be no water pooled on the bottom of the pot.
• Add in anchovies if desired and try to break them up a bit with your cooking spoon
• Add the butter to the pot and allow it to melt. When it is completely melted, add the arrowroot powder. Stir the arrowroot powder and butter together with the onions, mushrooms, and garlic. The mixture will form a thick paste. Continue to stir and cook this mixture for 1-2 minutes, or until it begins to coat the bottom of the pot and turn slightly golden brown. 
• Add in the milk
• Stir to incorporate and bring up to a simmer, stirring additionally occasionally.
  • The sauce will not take too long to thicken.
• Season with pepper and salt (not too much, though, those anchovies will bring a lot of salt)
• Once thick enough to coat a spoon, turn off the heat and set aside
• Add in tuna and sour cream
• You can either thaw your frozen spinach and drain it of water, or just throw it in with the sauce and let it melt in there...I just threw mine in and stirred.
• I then separated the cabbage slices into "noodles" and mixed them up with the tuna sauce 
• Top casserole with almond breadcrumbs

• Preheat oven to 350˚  and bake for 20 minutes

The pre-baked mixture was delicious; just the tuna noodle casserole goodness I had been craving, minus the garbage I didn't want to eat.  Day of, I will heat this up in the oven and viola!  Dinner will be served.

Sloppy Joe Stuffed Peppers

This is a modification of Rachael Ray's sloppy joe recipe, which is a dead-on copy of the types of sloppy joes you remember if you grew up in the 70s and 80s and your mom used a spice packet or some sort of canned sauce.  This just takes out a little sugar and replaces the rolls with peppers and adds some more veggies to the meat mixture.  I took out the brown sugar, subbed in a teensy bit of maple syrup, and added carrots and chopped zucchini.

Cookies, Soup, and Consumption

Just a few exciting things to share today...  I have developed a horrible, 19th century, overly romantic cough that only reminds me of Camille-style consumption.  You know, that horrible disease that  befell upper class women of the Gilded Age, just as they were about to marry the loves of their lives?  In reality, that was tuberucolosis, but for a time, as a child, I didn't know that...it just all seemed romantic.

You know, like this scene from "Moulin Rouge" where Satine collapses.  

So tragic.

So, yeah...like that.  Except not at all really.  

But I do feel crappy and I definitely felt like the only thing that might make me feel better would be a nice, steamy bowl of chicken noodle soup.  Like my Italian grandmother and mom always made. Only one problem:  the noodles.  The pasta.  Ugh.  So what did I do?  

In the past, there were a number of things I could have done.  Well, I could have chosen the easiest of easy options and tore open a package of ramen and the salt might have killed me, but the broth would have been hot...so worth it, maybe?  Yeah, probably not.  

Or we could have ordered some soup from the local Chinese take out, which would have probably come with a side of crab rangoon, at the very least.  Yeah, MSG.  Nope, not happpening.

I could have made my mom's traditional recipe, replete with lots of noodles.  Or, I could hybridize a few recipes and come up with something new, something nutritious and comforting.  Obviously, I chose option three.  I mean, I don't think I'd do a whole blog post about Chinese take out.

I started with Rachael Ray's quick, chicken noodle soup as a base and eventually arrived at this:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons (2 turns around the pan) extra-virgin olive oil

Two big hand fulls of baby carrots (they were the only kind of carrots I had) 

1 parsnip, peeled and chopped

2 medium onions, chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped -- I made sure to take the inner most ribs of celery, where all the leaves live; 

that's where all that yummy celery flavor is 

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 bay leaves, fresh or dried

Salt and pepper

1 tsp ground cloves (my Italian grandmother put cloves in a lot of things...you'd never guess and I 

only figured it out much, much later...it made a lot of her food taste kind of sweet and was also not 

an entirely uncommon practice among Italians in her region of Italy (Marche) which is on the 

Adriatic coast

1 small can diced organic tomatoes

8 cups good quality chicken stock

1 pound chicken breasts, diced

3 handfuls or so of baby spinach (probably more..as much as you can fit in)

3 medium to large size zucchini cut into "noodles"

Zoodles!  This was my first time using them.

YUM!

A handful fresh parsley, chopped

Directions:

I peeled my zucchini and had Mark take over.  He zoodled, while I cut up chicken.  Ick.  

I coated the bottom of my large dutch oven with extra virgin olive oil.

Then I started chopping up my other veggies.  I use a mini chopper for this.  I just find it a lot easier and faster when I have a large quantity of veggies that need to be chopped into small bits.  Its cheating. Whatevs.

As I chopped one group, starting with the top of the list, I dropped it into the hot pan.  This is a Ray-Ray pro-tip:  work next to the stove, so you can, as she says, "Chop and drop."  Easy-peasy.  And who would have thought the same woman who made mac and cheese with hot dogs and ketchup (seriously??!!) would have useful advice and/or recipes?  Well, I did actually.  

I worked through the remainder of the ingredient list, pausing after adding the chicken.  I added the spinach in toward the end and the zoodles waited until the very, very end.

Bottom line:  so delicious, so comforting and warm, plus a ton of leftovers.  Also, Max said it was the "best soup ever!" 

Score.

Snickerdoodles

And yes, I mentioned cookies.  Glorious, grain-free, pretty low carb COOKIES.  I made these beauties last night to bring to my mom's for a family dinner.  

Behold:

The most simple ingredient list imaginable: 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
• 1/2 cup arrowroot powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 5 tbsp coconut oil, melted
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 tbsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, combine flour, arrowroot powder, baking soda and salt.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together melted butter, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon, until well blended.
3. Add wet ingredients to the dry, using a fork to blend until thoroughly combined.
4. Chill dough in refrigerator for a half-hour (or up to 24-hours).
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Scoop dough, one tablespoon at a time, and roll into a ball using your hands. Place dough balls on a parchment-lined baking sheet and use a fork dipped in cinnamon flatten.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly golden around edges. Allow to cool on baking sheet for five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.   I would check these after nine minutes or so.  They will be soft and may not seem "done," but I've found that almond flour baked goods often don't seem done, but they firm up a lot once they cool.

Again, I know I'm doing it right when Max loves them and doesn't suspect there's less than a half cup of sweetner in the entire recipe (which supposedly yields two dozen cookies, but I must make mine big, because I made about a dozen and a half.)

Also....if you're stopping by and checking out my page...SAY HELLO!  I mean, its kinda rude not to say hi...would you not say hi if you saw me on the street?  Wouldn't you greet me if you came into my home?  

Happy snow!  

xoxo,

Tina