I told you that I hurt my back before we left on our trip to England.  I saw a physiotherapist and a doctor and finally the day before we left home I had a massage.

When I lived in Australia I had a massage guy that was fantastic but since I’ve lived in New Zealand I haven’t found anyone who always finds the right spots that are causing problems.  Not until this guy.

We spent a few minutes talking about what I’d had done since I started feeling crap and then he asked me to get on the table.  Good enough for most people but the guy is well over 6′ tall and he had to bring a chair over for me to climb on to get on the table.  Normally that isn’t a good sign because I don’t like dwelling on the fact that I’m shorter than most people.

I let it pass because I could tell in an instant that he was from Canada.  I’m from Maine so it was never far from Canada when I was growing up.

The massage went well and I could tell he was hitting all the right spots and then he said, “I’d like you to lie on your left side and draw your weenies up.”

I raised my head and must have had the most quizzical look on my face as I said, “I don’t have a weenie.”

He fell about laughing.  He was laughing so hard that he had to sit down.

“Darlin, I said wee knees.  I lived in Dunedin in the South Island for a long time and we say wee for everything.”

Ok, I had to laugh.

My back is much better and the flight from Auckland to Melbourne to Singapore to Dubai to London went off without a hitch.  We’re settled in the hotel and it’s my turn for the shower.

I know I haven’t lost enough weight even with the gastric band to deserve a new present but I got one anyway.  I got new contact lenses!

My husband got some new glasses and contacts last week and on the way home from his appointment I said, “I wish I could wear contacts but  was told I couldn’t.”

“When were you told that,” he asked.

“Umm, probably 20 years ago,” and I felt stupid when I said that.  I’d never bothered checking all these years when I got new glasses.

We went to pick up his contacts last Monday and I asked the optometrist to check my prescription and see if I could wear contacts.

“Sure, no problem at all, do you want me to order some for you?” she said.

I tried to hide the excitement from my voice because I didn’t want to look totally stupid for not realizing that things had improved over the last half of my life.  When I first started wearing glasses they couldn’t do anything for astigmatism with lenses.

They arrived yesterday and I tested them out at the office and it’s fantastic!  No more little boxes to look through.  I told my husband that it’s not MY fault that I never had contacts before now, it’s the optometrist’s fault for not telling me they were available!  That’s right, isn’t it?

I’ll certainly enjoy my holiday with my new eyes!

I haven’t written much lately because I’ve had a bum back.  I have heard about people with “lower back pain” for years but never ever thought it would happen to me.  We’re getting ready to go to England for my stepson’s university graduation and here I am barely able to move.  I was devastated!  I made an appointment with the doctor and with a physiotherapist and I’d have gone to a faith healer if I thought it would work but I’d probably have to have faith in them and I guess I don’t.

I’ve lived on anti-inflammatory drugs and codeine until I got so constipated that I hurt in back and in front too.  Then I got tramadol.  I hate taking drugs but I hate pain even more.  I don’t want to miss this trip because we’ve got plans to go to London, Glasgow, Paris, Salzburg and Rome.  The way I felt last week meant I couldn’t go at all.  I would have had to sit at home alone. snif snif  I was really upset.

Then yesterday it all started coming together.  The drugs started to work and the physio started showing results and today I can sit without pain and I can get up from my chair without wishing I had a crane next to my chair.

Another doctor’s appointment and another physio appointment and a massage just before I leave on Tuesday and I’m getting on the plane!

Everyone who has a gastric lapband will tell you that we all want to find that sweet spot where we have enough fill in the band to give us good restriction while allowing us to eat enough to stay healthy.  It’s not easy!  Some people visit the clinic many times getting more saline injected into the port and then back again to get some out.

Late last month I got the second fill and got too much in there and couldn’t swallow spit, so now I know that if I gurgle just after the fill that it’s too tight.  Gurgling is NOT good.

It’s important to note that when you have a gastric band that doesn’t have the proper fill, you might as well not have a gastric band at all.  No restriction isn’t going to get you to your goal and will allow you to gain weight instead of lose.  So after all you went through to get the band put on (meaning the tests, insurance and permissions you needed to obtain prior), you’ve done it all for nothing.

My fill is pretty tight.  I can’t eat in the morning until I have had  a cup of tea or coffee and that seems to “oil the works” so that food goes down ok.  If I don’t eat regularly during the day, I have to have a hot drink before I do eat.

What happens if I eat before I drink something hot?  Pain.  Not pain that I’m going to die but quite a bit of discomfort.  It’s like a baby elephant is sitting on my chest.    I’ve learned that if I have the slightest inkling that food’s not going down well, I stop eating immediately.  I wait about 10 to 15 minutes and then try the hot drink and food will go down nicely.

Many people with gastric bands will tell you that there are a few foods that they cannot eat.  White bread is a good one.  They can eat toast but not plain white bread.  I haven’t found anything that won’t go down as long as I eat small bites and chew each bite thoroughly.

I had an appointment with the diabetes nurse this week and she was really pleased with the 4.5 kg (nearly 10 pounds) that I have lost.  I’m getting closer to that goal all the time.  I want to weigh under 140.   I have 19 pounds to go.  I have started walking with the group again - one hour 3 mornings a week and sometimes even on Saturday morning.  Why are the last 20 pounds the most difficult?  I have no idea but that’s how it seems to me.

Well, when the doctor said she could hear me gurgling after my lapband fill I had a bit of concern but I really want the weight off so I said I’d go with that amount and see how I went.  I got home and I could eat runny soup so I figured I was just fine.

I felt good.  I got on the exercise bike and rode for a while, did some chores, worked at my job for a while and decided to rest.  When I got up I felt a really heavy sensation in my chest.  It was like I needed to burp the size of a hot air balloon while an elephant was sitting on my chest.  I figured it would go away so I watched some tv, did some more chores.  A house that hasn’t been lived in for a year has lots to do.  Dust everywhere!  I’m not coming back til October so I need to make sure it’s clean and all the soft furniture is covered when I leave.

So, next morning, Thursday, I still felt pretty crap so I called my surgeon’s office and the first appointment I could get was Friday afternoon at 3:45 and I had to drive to Yarrawonga (neat name, eh?)  about an hour from where I am.  I wasn’t sure I could wait that long but I didn’t have a lot of choice.  I decided to invite my friend Pete for a bowl of soup for dinner.  Pete will eat anything and he has a new Scottish terrier puppy and I wanted to play with her.  I called him and told him he could come for soup or he could just send the dog.  They both arrived.

I put the food on the table and took one very tiny sip off the spoon and had the most intense pain in my chest.  It wasn’t going down.  In about an hour I couldn’t swallow saliva.  Not good.  We all assume that when we swallow it’s going to go down.  I’ve never thought about not being able to swallow spit!  I didn’t sleep all night because it was really hard to breathe and I worried I would fall asleep and not breathe.  Doc says that’s not going to happen, I’ll always wake up but that night I wasn’t convinced.

Just before 3pm I arrived at the hospital in Yarrawonga where my doctor was working for the day.  I know, 3 was early but since I was being squeezed in, I decided that maybe I wouldn’t have to wait that extra 45 minutes.  I was in quite a bit of discomfort by this point.

She looked at me and said, “I apologize for saying this, Maureen, but you look like shit.”

Of course that made me feel better.  Then she said that if she took some fluid out of the band I would have either instant relief or there was a serious problem with the band.

I got on the table, pillow under my stomach area and she stabbed..  no joy, she missed the port.  Stab again.  Missed again.  I was feeling like a pin cushion.  Then boom, she took out 1 cc of fluid and the pain instantly left.  I felt like a new person.

I sipped some water and I could feel it going down - cool, refreshing and very much needed.  I’d had one cup of tea in 2 days.  It took me one day just to get it all down.

She suggested that I stop in town and get a milkshake to get some calories and fluid in and pick up a bottle of water.  That was the best tasting milkshake ever.  I had a delightful drive back home on a beautiful sunny Autumn afternoon.  By the time I got home I was exhausted from having no sleep the night before.

If you have a band and you’re not in a place that does barium swallows with lapband fills, know that if you gurgle when you drink that first sip of water after the fill, you’re gonna end up in trouble. 

Next fill, October 29th.  It will be a lovely Spring day.  Hopefully I’ll have nearly all my weight off by then.  I’ve lost 3 1/2 pounds this week.  Not eating or drinking isn’t a smart way to lose weight.

I came back to Australia a couple of days ago to see my surgeon and get another fill in my lapband.  I’ve now got 6 cc’s in a 10 cc band.  I don’t think I can hold any more, although by the numbers I should be able to get 4 more in there.  Fat chance!

After she injected the saline into the port under the skin up and to the right of my belly button,  she asked me to drink some water - slowly without talking so I didn’t swallow any air.

“Maybe that’s too much, I can hear you gurgling from over here,” she said.

Like I want to go around gurgling!

The water went down ok and no pain so I said I wanted to keep it in the band and I’d just eat even more slowly than I have been.  I’m determined to get this weight off over the next 6 months.  That’s my goal.  All off in 6 months.

I’m not that far off my goal so if I get in gear and do the walking, the weight training with the dumbells and eat to my plan, my commitment to myself will all be worth it.

Now, about this EFT.  I told my surgeon about it and told her I felt really foolish doing it with my shrink but I still have no cravings for sweets and I haven’t looked for something to put in my mouth for a week.  I know it’s not a sure thing but I haven’t gone a week without eating for emotional or anxiety reasons for more than 30 years.  Who knows, maybe it’s 40 years.  It’s certainly been a long time.

I found out that an acquaintance of mine is an EFT counselor in town I used to live in back in Australia (errr..  where I am right now) so I’m seeing her tomorrow just to see what she has to say about it.  My shrink didn’t give me tons of details.  When he told me what we were going to do I rolled my eyes and he said, “You’ve done it your way for 40 years and it hasn’t worked, at least TRY it.”  I couldn’t argue with that logic.

I’ll post more photos in a few weeks.

Oh..  according to the surgeon I lost 3 kilos over the past month.  Not enough.  Better than gaining though!  Any loss is better than gaining.

I went to the nutritional psychologist for another appointment.  The amount I’m spending on this journey of mine keeps going higher and higher but I feel like I’m getting closer to the reasons I look for comfort in food. Today we talked about anxiety being the reason I need to have something in my mouth.  Chocolate is ok but when I’m really stressing it could be anything, as long as I’m chewing.

I expected the shrink to tut tut when I told him that but he said I wasn’t alone.  Most everyone who eats for an emotional reason does the same thing.  Some crave salty foods, some crave chocolate and then there are people like Oprah and me who visit the pantry door or the open fridge and wait for something new to magically appear.

So today he asked me if I was familiar with EFT or tapping.  I remember reading something about tapping a few years ago but I pooh poohed it thinking it was pretty nutty.  Well, that’s where we’re delving now.  We spent much of the hour today talking about E=motional F=reedom T=echnique.  The theory behind it is that it’s similar to acupuncture in that it works on the connection of your body’s subtle connections.  It’s been called emotional acupuncture.

The tapping comes in when you identify something you want to get rid of in your life, like a memory of your mother saying something really awful to you when you were 7 and you always remember it with a negative emotion.

According to my doctor, while tapping on acupressure points along meridians, or pathways of energy throughout the body, and being tuned in to a specific problem or issue, the mind/body energy system is “straightened out,” and the energy becomes available so we can heal.  That’s why it’s called EFT - emotional freedom technique.

You make a statement and then tap on the end points of the body’s meridians or energy pathways thinking about whatever it is that you want to work on.   I have no idea how it works or IF it works but since we did it in his office I haven’t stood in the kitchen looking for something to eat.  One day isn’t a cure, so we’ll see how it goes.

If you have had success with EFT, can you let me know?

Sonja’s Sojourns is the title of a series of online dating articles written for us by a good friend in San Diego.  She’s around my age-ish (nobody is as old as me, sadly) and we quickly became good friends.  She met her sweetie on our site and we’ve remained close ever since she stopped writing.  She had a decidedly quirky approach to dating and dating on the internet in particular.  That’s how she found her man - he made a comment on one of her articles and once they got together, her dating topic ideas just dried up.

We’ve been writing back and forth for years and when I told her I was getting the lapband put on back in 2007 she wanted one.  Remember when I said I had a friend that went to Mexico and got one?  That’s her!  Because of all the research she did and the great experience that she had, my son went to the same hospital for his lapband.

The three of us have lost nearly 200 pounds!  (not each.. that’s taking all the flab and piling it together on the scales)

So..  today I was strolling the net and what did I find?  She has a blog!  Not just any blog but a wonderfully funny blog.  She’s one of the funniest writers whether she’s telling about being unemployed and training to be a census worker, visiting her stepmother who’s lost touch with reality or her daily travels through life.  If you’ve got a few minutes, check out But Ciriously - you’ll be glad you did! Tell her I sent you.

No, not my accident.  We had guests visiting from Auckland this weekend and they brought along their 16 year old daughter.  On Sunday morning she asked if she could take the car for a drive just to have something to do.  Her mother wanted to say no but feared an argument that would embarrass her so she said yes.  All the warnings were given - don’t drive too fast, be careful, don’t be gone long.  All the things that anyone would say to a kid going for a drive in unfamiliar territory.

About 45 minutes later, in she comes, sobbing and wailing with a woman who’d been kind enough to pick her up after she went around a corner twice as fast as the printed speed limit.  She hit soft gravel and spun around a few times and smashed her car into a dirt bank.  The car was a total wreck and had to be towed to our house where it remains.  Family had to drive up from Auckland to pick them up and take them back home.  Their entire family was concerned about the accident and what the loss of the car would mean to their daughter / granddaughter.

Initially my husband was not popular when he said it was the best accident she could have.

“Any accident that a 16 year old can walk away from is a good lesson to learn,” he said.

I have to agree with him.  Once she was a bit calmer and we’d driven over an hour to the hospital (we’re pretty remote here) to ensure that she wasn’t hurt, she accepted that she drove too fast and while devastated that she no longer had a car of her own, it was a lesson she’d never forget.

After they’d left and I’d cleaned up from the dinner I’d prepared for everyone I thought about what lessons I’d learned for myself in all of that.  For me it was a reminder that you never know when your time is up.  It could be 50 years from now or you could get hit by a bus tomorrow or there could be an earthquake or well, anything at all really.

Life is all about today.  Yesterday is history and you can’t relive or rewrite it and tomorrow might come, might not, so why worry about it?  I need to live more in the now and stop thinking about what life’s going to be like when I’m not fat any more or when I have more money or when I can finally have a vacation or when the house is clean - you get my point.  I find myself looking forward all the time rather than enjoying my here and now.  I’m going to do better.

As you know, I’ve been walking with my local diet group (a bunch of oldies like me who need to get fit) and this week we all bought fancy pedometers from the local physiotherapy clinic.  It’s very cute and sits on my waistband.  That’s really ALL it does.  I opened the pamphlet that comes with it and I can understand that I’m supposed to draw a line on the floor, place my right toe up against the line and walk 10 paces and draw a line in front of my left toe.  Then I measure the distance and divide by 10.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  It’s easy until you start pressing those little buttons.  Why don’t they have a button that says “set”?  I’ve got reset and mode.  I don’t want to mode the darned thing, I want to set my details in there.

I used it yesterday, without setting it, and I walked just under 2000 steps in 20 minutes.  Of course I don’t know how far that was because I was using the setting the pedometer arrived with.  It’s ok, I understand that some people are geekier than others.  It took me forever to learn how to record a program to disk too.

Tomorrow the group meets and there’s a big contest for the person who’s put the most mileage on the pedometer.  I’m wondering if I can trick the pedometer to think I’ve walked more than I have.  I don’t want to win the contest; I just don’t want to be last.  That makes me a very small person in a really big body, doesn’t it?