Busy week

I've been trying to take a dog or two to the park every day. While there I try to get in a little jogging on the trails. Since I have been doing most of my running on the treadmill, I need to work on strengthening muscles the treadmill misses, and the only way to do that is to run on the ground more. It's slow going, but I have faith it will continue to improve.

I've also been playing tennis every other day with Dave, which is great fun. And I've been trying to do strength training every day. Sore abs! But it's a good habit. Yesterday I got hit int he eye by a ball at tennis while playing with Dave and Sherry (Sake & Sitka's mom). We were doubling up on Dave, and I went to pick up a ball and he didn't notice and hit a ball over - what luck! So today I have a headache still and my eye is a little swollen and blurry. Much better than last night, so I'm sure it will be back to normal soon.

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I ran for 3 minutes!

I have never been much of a runner, but I am slowly changing that. When I started the year I began doing the Couch to 5k training plan. The first week has you run a minute and walk for a minute and a half, and repeat for 30 minutes - and it was really hard. After a couple months it was starting to feel easy, so I moved on to week 2 - running for a minute and a half, walking between. A couple months of that and running for a minute and a half wasn't so bad. So I checked out week 3 - and you have to run for 3 minutes! That's a long time. I tried it last week and couldn't make it :(

But yesterday I tried again. Running a minute and walking a minute, running two minutes and walking two minutes, then I tried running 3 minutes - and I did it! I breezed right past the two minute mark and felt great so I kept going! It was awesome! I can't believe I did it!

It's just another sign of how my body has been improving with all this exercise and weight loss. At the stables on Saturday I helped out with a children's riding class where I had to walk around and around the arena and occasionally jog alongside the horse as they trotted, and I had no problem keeping up and wasn't even winded after the trotting! And now I ran 3 minutes! It is great to challenge myself and push to see what I can do, and discover I really can do it!

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Eye problems and fitness

My eyes are still healing up. The one that got scratched is getting much better. I can read with it now, just a bit of double vision left. The Dr said I might have to get a new prescription lens for that side, but it's looking like it could be back to normal when it's done healing up. The one that didn't get scratched, but sent me to urgent care two weeks ago with sudden inexplicable pain, is all better. The doctor could not find anything wrong with it, and thought it might have been some sort of 'sympathy pain' - he said that happens sometimes. So that eye is not taking any medicine, but the eye doctor put the scratched eye on the steroid drops for the next two weeks. The steroid drops sting. Other than the steroid drops, I am using Thera Tears (replacement tears) in both eyes regularly.

Friday and Saturday night I woke up with stabbing pain in my scratched eye, a couple times on Saturday night, and the doctor thought this was related to dry eyes, or my sleeping with my eyes slightly open. So last night I had a hard time going to sleep, because I didn't want the stabby eye pain to come back! I finally got to sleep, but woke up every hour or two and put Thera Tears in both eyes, and went back to sleep. So if you don't count waking up 6 times a night, I got a good nights sleep, and no stabby eye pain, so that was good.

I'll be so glad when this is all over! I just want things to be back to normal :(

The stress of the eye problems and not sleeping good has been hard on my stomach, I've been feeling just sort of 'off' and stressed out. I had some really good exercise sessions this week, including a nice 3 mile walk at the park with Barclay on Sunday. At my weigh in today I'm down to 249 - into the 240s we go! As long as it keeps going down, I'll be happy!

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More eye problems

So, scratching my eye last week was just the latest in a long string of eye problems I've been having. Back in October I went to the eye doctor because I would occasionally wake up with one eye blurry (either one), and it would last a few hours to a few days. He thought it was just dry eyes, and told me to use drops. I still would have occasional blurry days, but sometimes I'd have a couple good weeks without problems.

Meanwhile, I could occasionally have stabbing eye pains in the middle of the night, but I thought I was just rubbing my eye on my pillow. Eventually that is exactly what happened last week, and I did have a serious abrasion to prove it.

But yesterday something different happened - a stabbing eye pain in my good eye, in the middle of the day, while sitting on the couch watching TV.I had done nothing to bring it on, but suddenly my eye hurt so bad I couldn't open it. I flushed it out with eye drops. I took an ibuprofin. I laid down for a bit to see if it would go away on it's own. Finally I called the eye doctor, but he was out of town for the weekend, so he said to go to urgent care if it was bad. So Dave came home from the theater and took me to urgent care.

They have a routine of things they do, including a vision test, but my eye was in such intense pain I couldn't hardly keep the other eye open to read the chart. Finally they put in pain drops, which stopped the pain right away. She stained my eye and looked for a foreign body or a scratch, but couldn't find anything. So she diagnosed it as possible iritis - an infection of the eye. She gave me a perscription for antibiotic drops and a steroid for inflammation. Today my eye feels much better and the vision is back to normal, so there might be something to that.

She gave me a printout with info about iritis, and the symptoms include blurry vision, eye pain, and a few other things I haven't been having. I'm sure I'll see the eye doctor on Monday and see what he says. I hope this is it and they can clear it up. These stabbing eye pains are the most intense pain I've ever felt - I'll be happy to get this cleared up and put it behind me!

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Scratched my eye!

This is ridiculous! Things were going great,and then I woke up Thursday morning with a stabbing pain in my eye, so bad I couldn't even convince the other eye to open up! We went to the urgent care clinic, and they put in drops to numb it, and then stained it and confirmed I had scratched it. They put on an eye patch, gave me antibiotic drops, and sent me on my way.

Friday the pain was back, and so bad I just couldn't hardly stand it! I would just freeze up, fists clenched and shaking, it hurt so bad! Finally I called the urgent care back, and they told me to go to the ER or a regular eye doctor. So I called our eye doctor and he got me right in. He dialated it, stained it, looked at it with a camera on a computer, and showed me the big scratched area, overlapping my pupil. He said that made it particularly bad because if it scarred it would impact my vision. So he put stuff on it, gave me drops to use, and put a contact in my eye to act as a bandage and cover the damage so my eyelid wasn't rubbing it all weekend. Then he told me to go home, hit the Ibuprofin hard, and rest and let my eye rest and heal. I'll be seeing him again Monday.

My eye is still dilated, so everything is blurry on that side. It stings a little. I had to cancel taking pictures at a dog sports event this weekend :( and I'm stuck at the store while people pick through our last couple days open. Oh well. I was having an awesome week before this happened. Darn pillow!

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