Thursday, February 26, 2009

Super Taste Buds and the Renal Artery

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know. I have a belief that if I truly have nothing to say, I should just not speak; therefore, I go long periods without writing. That goes for my everyday life, too...sometimes I just don't have too much to say and would prefer not to say anything.

This is unlike my husband who is uncomfortable with silence and who prattles on and on. This is useful when I don't feel like talking..because it is a sheer certainty that he will. All that it takes to encourage him are grunts and appropriate noises. We could go on for hours this way. It works for us.

I have been spending a lot of the time at the gym. We joined a new one and it has free child care, so I am all over it. The free child care comes with a catch though...the catch being that I have to work out. I wish I had free child care that I could drop the baby off and do something that doesn't require sweating and exertion. I want to drop her off and go get a pedicure, or my hair done, or watch a movie by myself.

But no, I take her and leave her in the nursery, her face beet red from panic and seperation anxiety , to go do my time on the elliptical machine and treadmill.

Which, in all honesty I don't mind. I don't mind the exercise. It is the deprivation of food that I have the problem with. Once I heard of a phenomenon of "super taste buds." People with "super taste buds" taste things more acutely, thus they enjoy food so much more than those without "super taste buds." That is totally me. Damn my super taste buds, they are making me fat.

But I have to get serious now that apparently my life depends on it...which sucks. I mean this quite literally.

This week I started my third blood pressure medication ~ the heavy duty one (apparently) that slows the heart rate down. I have given up on the optimism I once felt that this will work, so perhaps my attitude is self-fulfilling. The doctor is talking about renal artery disease and wants to do a doppler procedure on my renal artery to see if there is some blockage that is causing my blood pressure to stay high and to be unresponsive to medication.

Reading up on renal arterial disease is a little bit horrifying (words like congenital heart failure, death) and the treatment is difficult. It leads me to believe there will be pain involved, something I desperately try to avoid. After 10 months, I still am supremely bitter towards the anesthesiologist who administered my epidural that stopped working at 9 centimeters. Damn him.

So, the realization of this has made my quest of diet and exercise take on a different tone ~ a much more serious tone. Salads are no longer an option; exercise is no longer a novelty. They have morphed into necessity and reality.

It is a reality that I will grudgingly have to accept...after I eat my birthday cake tomorrow.