/devices/pseudo/bitbucket@0,0:pseudo (Posts about health)

Coot-tha, yay!

jmcp — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 23:00:00 GMT

The last few years haven't been particularly good for my fitness, with a combination of pretty hectic workload, increasing school activities for the children and recovering from my left knee meniscus repair in 2016. So last year's cycling effort of 2100km (achieved almost completely in the last 3 months of the year) was really nice. Really, really nice.

I've started off this year a little better - I've exceeded my 150km weekly goal each week except for the first week of the year, and I'm at 1245km ridden out of my 4000km goal for the whole year. Yay me!

Last week I was really stoked to pull out a 102km effort (in 4h5m), and late yesterday figured that I really should have a crack at Mt Coot-tha again. The last time I rode it (rather than walked!) was on 7 March 2014, and at that point I'd ridden only about 200km for the year - so the effort involved was quite large.

Today.... yes, the effort involved was still quite large (and I'm feeling a bit more knackered than after last week's 102km, to be honest). On the positive side, however, I rode 71.3km in 3h7m compared to nearly-four-years-ago's 70.1km in 3h21m. I managed to get up both of the climbs that I'm interested in, and do so in personal best times so I'm pretty happy.

Here they are, along with the overall tracks and summaries from 2014 and today:

A health turning point

jmcp — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been introspecting a fair bit, about health and fitness and wellbeing in general, and figured out where the turning point for me (and for J) was, where we decided that we would take control of our wellbeing rather than just floating along.

Unsurprisingly, it occurred around the time when J was diagnosed with the meningioma in November 2011.

For me, 2011 was a very stressful year. As gatekeeper for the Solaris 11 ON consolidation (the core kernel and basic userland), I was at the very pointy end of making sure that we got the bits together for the release of Solaris 11. I’d had a horrendous trip to Beijing in July (laptop disk broke the day before a build close, I tore my medial meniscus while plugging in cables to a laptop, left my luggage in a taxi and missed the connecting flight in Hong Kong due to a recalcitrant passenger in Beijing delaying the PEK-HKG flight by 3 hours). I had surgery on my knee in September, October saw the final ON delivery – I’d been working more and more hours every single day to the point where I was usually working for 12 hours Monday to Saturday, and only 3-4 hours on Sundays. Utterly, freakin, crazy. A was born in March (which was the bright part of our year), and then in October after J’s dizziness and nausea hadn’t gone away, she went through a battery of tests and an MRI.

The post-Release holiday that we had planned was not as carefree as we had hoped. I vividly recall walking along the beach with J and the kids, talking with her about what the ENT might say about the spot we’d seen on the scan, whether it was malignant or not, whether she would need surgery….

We stayed at Sails on Horseshoe, one of the most peaceful and relaxing places we know. Horseshoe Bay is a stone’s throw (note, in metric terms that’s about 15 metres) from the front gate. It’s quiet. There’s a pub and a few cafes and restaurants at the other end of the street, and we love it. There is also a healthy food cafe where we had lunch several times. I don’t recall the name of the place, or what else was on the menu, but I do recall that they do freshly squeezed juice – and C loved it. I loved it. J loved it. We figured it was just a bit of a treat to have because we were on holidays in the tropics, but the appeal of that juice really stuck with us.

A week or so after we got back home I went for what was then a stretch ride – the 40km effort to the Goodwill Bridge and back. I was pleased that my times were getting better (from just over 2 hours to a few minutes under), and was starting to think that I should really be doing more riding – for stress relief, for health and wellbeing, and generally just because I like doing it. I recall that it was a hot morning and as I came up the rise past the Jindalee golf course I thought “I could really go some freshly squeezed juice when I get home.”

That was the turning point.

While I didn’t have any fresh juice that particular day, we did go and buy a juicer a few days later, and except for juice to accompany the kids’ meals if we’re out, we haven’t bought juice since then. We’ll make fresh juice every week or two, generally with some apples that have been on our local fresh fruit shop’s “reduced for quick sale” stack – they’re still good enough to eat, but you can get fresher for eating. We do usually apple and pear, with a knob of ginger thrown in for some zing. Lately we’ve also been adding watermelon, which makes it taste lighter. Sometimes I’ll do oranges or pineapple. Oranges are a pain, though, because you have to spend a lot of time peeling them before you can juice them and frankly, I want my juice now!

The kids love the fresh juice, they appreciate that it’s a treat, and if I miss out the ginger C will let me know pretty quickly.

We took charge of our wellbeing, deciding to be active and mindful about what we consume. It’s an ongoing process and commitment which we are going to keep doing. We’ve reinforced this commitment with the meal plan system we put in place last year. When we look back over the last 2 years, which have been very stressful and full of worry, it’s reassuring to realise that not only do we feel better, but we are healthier than we ever have been because of the changes we have made to how we think about food (and exercise).

Asserting control over my reality during a difficult time

jmcp — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

When J was in hospital for 3 weeks last year, I was stressed. Very, very stressed. I put the kids into daycare again (Thursday and Friday), and her mum came to stay with us and take care of them the rest of the time. I need to point out that having J’s mum stay with us was not what made me stressed. What I was stressed about was worrying how long J would be in hospital, whether she’d get worse or better, and how to make sure the kids knew enough about what was going on.

One of the coping strategies I implemented in short order was to write weekly meal plans. We had a number of A5 sized notebooks around the house, which worked out to be just about the right size for what we needed (especially given my terrible handwriting).

Here’s an example. This week’s list is fairly standard, though there’s only one veg-only meal and we’re having a lot of salad right now because it’s ETOODAMNEDHOT.:

Sunday	chicken stirfry noodles
Monday	bbq miniburgers/steaks with salad
Tuesday	chicken wraps with salad
Wednesday	J’s butter chicken
Thursday	pesto pasta and vegies
Friday	chicken and pumpkin risotto
Saturday	bbq snags and salad

The miniburgers are those you can get from our local Coles in a pack of 8; they’re just the right size for the kids. The chicken wraps are our excuse to get something vaguely Mexican flavoured into our diet, rather than merely lots of Italian and Chinese inspired dishes. The kids don’t need to have the guacamole or any salsa, so J and I can have just a bit more of it to ourselves.

Nothing particularly unhealthy in there, nothing particularly flash. What the plan does give me, though, is time. I know roughly how long each meal takes to prepare, so if I work backwards from the ideal on-table window being 5:30-6pm (we like to get the kids bathed+dressed and A in to bed by about 7pm), then I know when I really have to stop for the day. I also try to work with the assumptions that 100g of meat per adult, 50g of carbohydrate (pasta or rice or spuds) per adult is about sufficient, assuming that we have pretty much free reign with veggies and/or salad to bulk things up as required.

This meal plan idea worked sufficiently well for us that we have kept it going and don’t expect to stop. It helps us keep our portion sizes in order, helps with the grocery bill since we can then plan just what we need each week and don’t wind up with a pantry or fridge that’s full of food which could go to waste, and helps relieve time pressure too. Wins all around.

Sauteed beef with extra potassium

jmcp — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Today was not a good day for J. She’s been dropping down her dose of the Dexamethasone which she’s been on since April last year to keep the oedema around her tumour under control. Over the last week or two she’s hit the crossover point, where what the Dex is providing is no longer masking what the body’s natural systems provide. It’s rather weird, definitely obnoxious, and very frustrating because it means that she has to slow down the weaning-off process. If she didn’t, her risk of things going really bad would skyrocket.

Today was not a good day because she woke up very tired and nauseous (moreso than normal); the motilium didn’t seem to take the edge off. Then she pulled a muscle in her thigh, and later pulled a calf muscle. All without actually doing anything. After a bout of Doctor Googling later, we reckoned that she might have a touch of adrenal insufficiency, and a potassium deficiency. The heat of the last week or two, coupled with the stress of Christmas and C’s birthday party (not forgetting the underlying stress from the fact that our house still isn’t fixed yet after the storm on 18 November), makes that joint hypothesis seem quite possible.

When she was pregnant with A, she suffered from Restless Leg Syndrome, for which our OB prescribed a 1/4 teaspoon of Epsom Salts dissolved in a glass of water, every evening before bed. That chemical intake redressed the imbalance and solved RLS for her then, and we hope it would do so again today. It appeared that this might not be the case, unfortunately.

Trying to do my bit to help, I checked which foods have high potassium levels and found http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/high-potassium-vegetables.php. We have several of those in our pantry and fridge right now, so the beef noodle stirfry plan was ditched in favour of this recipe:

300g beef sliced very thinly (across the grain)
100g baby spinach, finely shredded
a handful of snow peas, topped-n-tailed
80-100g sun dried tomatoes
1 head of broccoli
1 cup of mushrooms, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, shredded or finely chopped
1/4 long red chilli, finely chopped
1 leek, finely shredded
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/8 cup (around 30ml or 1 fluid ounce-ish) soy sauce
1 tablespoon of honey (to taste)
freshly cracked pepper, to taste
150-200g of fettucine
approx 50g of shredded parmesan cheese

[The above quantity of ingredients served two adults and two toddlers, it would probably have been ok for three adults if more vegies were served with the dish. Your mileage will vary.]

Method:

Heat a frypan (heavy, steel-based) to a high heat
Add the oil, ensuring you cover the entire frypan
Add the beef, quickly stir-frying it to a light brown colour
Turn the heat down to the lowest possible setting, then
Add the leek, mushrooms, garlic and chilli then put the lid on and simmer for 5-6 minutes
Meanwhile, start cooking your fettucine (or other pasta, if preferred)
Add the soy sauce, broccoli and sun-dried tomatoes to the frypan, stir through and then replace the lid for 2-3 minutes
Do a taste check and then add the honey, mixing it in to the liquid in the pan first, then stirring through

When you are just about ready (ie, less than 1 minute to go) to serve, stir the baby spinach and snow peas through. Serve on to a bed of fettucine, then sprinkle the parmesan cheese on top.

If you like, add other vegetables. I cooked carrots, and would have steamed some zucchini if I’d had some in the fridge. If you’re so inclined, a bubbly white wine (I’m a big fan of Prosecco) would go nicely with this dish.

You might think “oooh yuck, that’s going to be really salty” because the soy hasn’t had enough other liquid to dilute into, and without the honey you would probably be right. However! The point of this dish is first and foremost to provide a potassium hit for a person in need of redressing a chemical imbalance. J remarked that she didn’t find it too salty at all. I thought it was only a little bit saltier than I would normally have served up – I try to cook with as little added salt as possible.

I don’t have an estimate of the calorie count, or the per-serve cost; I will try to provide those by the end of this week.

J’s having an early night (she was nearly asleep by 8:30!), I just hope that I’ve been able to help. We’ll see.

Update: I forgot to mention that J loved the dish.

Further Update: Here’s a screenshot of the approximate nutritional values for the recipe, via http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/calculator. I am not sufficiently bothered (yet) to sign up with the site so I can save or share my recipes, [alt][prtscr] will have to do

A riding goal for 2013

jmcp — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I really got into tracking my rides with Strava. Having weighed in on 1 January at 89kg, I was rather despondent about how flabby I had allowed myself to get, and resolved that I would lose 10kg by the start of 2013. I did, indeed, lose 10kg during 2012, weighing in at 78.85kg on 1 January. I’ve still got flab (another 5kg would be good) to get rid of, however, so it’s full speed ahead on the riding.

Comparing my the results I mention in my first riding or health-related post of 2012 with what Strava figured out, I did a little better than Garmin Connect reported, perhaps that comes down to tracking moving time differently. There’s certainly a difference in the calorie count. When I started using Strava I was surprised at the differences, but after checking with a few colleagues who also use power meters and where Garmin’s figures were way out but Strava’s were within 3-4 percent of the actual meter, I’ve ditched Garmin Connect entirely.

Here’s a snapshot of what I achieved last year:

I’m determined to do better than that in 2013. Not only does Coottha not intimidate me any more, I’ve really enjoyed getting out there and stretching my body. I decided that the regular interval training I’d been doing around Jindalee was not quite good enough. Six laps with not much climbing just didn’t cut it; three laps of Mt Ommaney Drive (with a loop around Arrabri Avenue) are much better – I get much greater climbing and a bit more distance in only another 15 minutes, so it’s any ideal way to start my day several days a week.

This last week’s weather has been a bit of a shock so I didn’t get out as much as I wanted to. For all of yesterday’s 58km effort it felt like I was riding in thick goop. Still, I’m on target for 100km/week as a baseline, and even allowing for some travel in February and March I should be able to not only do this year’s Coottha Challenge in a respectable time but also the Brissie To The Bay 100km ride in June.

Today I brought her home

jmcp — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve had a very relaxed day and enjoyed homemade pizza for dinner. It’s scary just how much muscle tone she’s lost after 17 days in hospital; I don’t know how long it’ll take to get that back but hopefully our stairs will help. The kids are very, very glad to have mum home. I’m pretty darned happy to have J home too.

While she’s going to be fatigued for quite a while, I think (and hope) she will improve faster than she was doing in hospital – being able to get fresh air and have home cooking should help.

She’ll go back to see the neurologist in a fortnight, and will get another MRI around then too. Medication-wise she’ll be carefully dropping down her doses over the next month. Reading through the radiologist’s report from the most recent scan, there was significant oedema around the tumour, it appears to have swollen somewhat (5-10% in volume, a bit difficult to determine), and also appears to have started pressing on one of her ventricles. No wonder she wasn’t feeling well

I’m just glad she’s well enough to get out of hospital and come home. The optic nerve inflammation appears to have gone though there’s still some nystagmus going on, and while she’s still a bit dizzy, it’s not close to the level it was at pre-admission. At least now she’s home we can establish some sort of normal-for-us and work on improving things like quality of life. I recall, too, that she finds baking therapeutic.

Incremental improvements

jmcp — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been a few days since my last update on J’s state, I’ve been a little slack because she’s back online herself and been updating her blog.

She’s having alternating good days and bad days. Good days seem to occur when she’s had a good night’s sleep (even it that sleep came via a pill), and the bad days are after a rotten night, or too much boisterousness from the kids when we visit. I’m appreciating that the good days are genuinely good, but more importantly, the bad days are getting less bad.

I’m hopeful (with grounds, this time) that she might be home on Sunday. However as with all the other days when we got hopeful, we’re not making assumptions.

Sunday evening update: J won’t be home in a hurry

jmcp — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I was in the middle of composing this last night when C woke up crying after a bad dream. She’d possibly just overheated – new flanny PJs.

Sunday morning revealed a slightly better night – not only did I get to bed earlier, but A was only awake and unsettled for 1h30 (and only screaming for about an hour of that). I eventually brought him into bed and he fell asleep again. C’s been sleeping in our bed for the last few nights – seems to help provide some stability for her, and we all woke up around 8am.

When we eventually got to J’s room in the afternoon, the ENT surgeon was doing his rounds and showed her the test for BPV. It was pretty easy to tell that she doesn’t have it – for which I think I’m grateful, even though that means her doctors still don’t really know what the heck is going on with her. It appears that the MRI done nearly 2 weeks ago wasn’t quite fine-grained enough to show the detail that the specialists want, so she might need another one. There have also been some questions about whether an MRI can show if the tissue around the tumour is necrotic; she might need a PET scan for that. We don’t know just, we’ll have to wait and see. Ugh.

J’s mum arrived while we were looking at the fishes at the ward entrance; both A and C were really happy to see her and we had to shush them since it was still just before the ward’s visiting hours. Walking back to her room was tiring, again, and reinforced that she really isn’t well enough to come home yet. Then while J was recovering on her bed, YT turned up for a visit with her two kids (about C and A’s ages) – it was a very joyful and thus very, very loud. That tired J out even more.

Last night C had nightmares, A was awake for about an hour and a half; it took him close to that time before he calmed down enough to snuggle up into a ball on my chest/neck. Sigh.

This morning J sounded happier, she was able to shower herself without needing the anti-nausea drug first, and when I rang she was typing a blog post on her laptop. [She doesn't have an internet connection yet - too far from the wireless AP in the hospital, and only 1 bar of signal strength on the vodafail 3g dongle]. However, she still needs to be able to cope with moving her head quickly to track the kids’ movements, needs to be able to cope with their energy levels, and I just don’t see that happening until she’s had a few whole good days (ie, morning + afternoon + evening) strung together.

We’ve had better days

jmcp — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

J had a less good day today; dizziness was more evident, needed the anti-nausea drug to get out of bed, and just felt generally flat. It was really really good to see her this arvo, and it reinforced for me that she will have to get significantly better before we can expect the neurologist to release her. I think it might be another week before she’s home.

On the positive side, however, she did feel good enough with her eyesight to ask me to bring in her laptop. Club Wes does have wifi in the rooms, but of course her room is too far from the AP to get an signal, and our vodafail 3g dongle couldn’t get any signal either. She might compose some blog posts for later.

I, on the hand, had a horrendous day. After getting some flow timehacking on a proof of concept with Darktable, I slept until 1am when A decided that he should be awake and screaming. I tried pretty much everything I could think of, including panadol, but he didn’t stop screaming until about 0420 and was asleep enough for me to put him back in his cot 5 minutes later. Then we all woke up at about 0720. After getting the kids some breakfast I rang E+T; T came over shortly thereafter so I could crash. The next thing I knew it was 10am, T had given the kids morning tea, played with them, got them dressed and told me he was taking them back to their place for cousin H’s birthday party so I could have some more recovery time. I crashed out again, waking just before 12 and still feeling like I’d been thumped in the head a few times.

T and E: thankyou so very, very much. I’m not sure I could have lasted through this morning without your help.

After voting in the council elections, I went around to E+T’s place to collect the kids and have some chillout time. T had managed to get A to sleep, but only after driving him around in their car for about 30 minutes first. C had a grand time, playing really well with her cousins and the other kids at the party, then just enjoying herself playing with her cousins and some different toys for a while. A, having woken up, was back to his grizzly self and wasn’t happy until he was able to munch on an arrowroot bikkie and my bowl of 2minute noodles. He reached for my coffee, too, and was a bit disappointed to be told no.

A note about yesterday: C again had a great time at daycare; she’s got the same carer as the last time she was there, and while the center has had serious staff turnover in the last 12 months the staff who she interacted with are the same. A… well, he was bitterly disappointed at the rain and having to stay inside all day. They did manage to get him to sleep a bit longer (45-50 minutes) than Thursday, though when I came to collect them (3ish) they’d popped in an emergency dummy and I could hear him screaming from the door to the toddler room. I know he’s got to get used to going to daycare, but it’d be a darned sight easier if he knew mum was at home at the end of the day.

E mentioned to me that A really hadn’t wanted to play inside at all, but wanted to be outside on their deck. I noticed a week or so ago that if I go to the front or back doors to unlock and go outside (plant watering, or coffee cherry picking mostly), he has this shiver of delight – his face lights up and he races over to the door. I see a pattern forming!

After leaving E+T’s we went to KMart at Mt Ommaney to get some winter clothes since we discovered almost all the winter kit we had from last year (or handmedowns from friends) didn’t fit. Then it was off to Club Wes to see J. When we walked into her room, A squealed with delight (and probably a bit of relief) and immediately started struggling to get out of the stroller. Pretty clear what’s happening in his mind right now.

I’m still knackered from this morning’s screaminess, and I’m hoping that he’ll sleep through. Heck, we both need him to do that. I’ve rugged him up, he’s got a full tummy, had a nice warm bath with C and I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Friday a.m. family update

jmcp — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Janet’s neurologist popped in yesterday evening, he disagrees slightly with her neurosurgeon in that he doesn’t think she’s got BPV (Benign Positional Vertigo). Too many acronyms and “it could be this, it could be that” for my liking. She’s a sufficiently unusual case that she’ll be the topic of a combined neurology/radiology case conference today. We’re hopeful that between them they’ll be able to figure out something which helps us move forward and accelerates her recovery. Speaking of recovery, she’s started dropping down her dose of the dexamethasone (the anti-migraine drug), and she’ll be dropping off the epilem as soon as possible too.

This morning she was able to get out of bed after breakfast and shower unassisted – and didn’t require an anti-nausea tablet first. Her eyesight is getting better focus-wise and the nystagmus is easing off too. All of this is combining to lift her general mood and make her realise just how terrible a state she was in last week. The neurologist is expecting to see her in her room on Monday, but he’s amenable to having “home by Wednesday” as a goal.

Overall, I think we can class this as a morning so good that it might keep going to the afternoon.

On the family front, C really enjoyed being back at daycare yesterday. Not only does she have the same carer as she did for her last stint, but a lot of her friends were there too. She slotted right back in and enjoyed being a big sister too. A, on the other hand, after having a great walk around the playground and jumping in the sandpit, refused to be taken inside without screaming the house down. His carer told me that he didn’t have a nap either (eeeek!) and that she was planning “a more outdoor-focused program for him”.

Of course, with today being rainy, that probably won’t work. This morning both the kids slept until 0630, but that meant I was able to get them to daycare by 0730. C was right into everything, but A screamed. For the whole 10 minutes while I was there dropping them off. After handing him to C’s carer (the staff combine before 8am so that they have sufficient numbers per legislation; they’re on overlapping shifts to cover the opening hours), you just have to walk away. I hope he’ll have a nap today, I really really do.