Entry 11: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming

I'm not alone in my love for the movie "Finding Nemo" and Dori's perseverance and reslience...her ability to be positive and sing, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming".  That small scene captured the heart and hope of thousands of people who trudge through the day to day hassles of life as well as the those who are handling the "big stuff" as well.  

This week the "just keep swimming" jingle is my head song.  Everything IS going as hoped and planned and I am so incredibly grateful for that.   At the risk of sounding ungrateful...the normality of this liquid diet and frequent stomach spasms are getting to me a bit these past couple of days.  I'm craving cottage cheese (of all things!) and next week I should be able to have it in some form (I'll have to puree it a bit) and that will be a fun celebrating moment.  

There's a level of guilt that I've been feeling, it comes in waves.  I understand and have seen poverty in the U.S. and other countries...kids who don't know where their next source of nourishment will come from...and here I am complaining because I'm tired of a liquid diet and a weight loss surgery I volunteered for....people are starving and I had a surgery to reduce the size of my stomach because I live in and am addicted to so much abundance.  It makes me feel like one of the privileged people from a dystopian novel.   

I wish all of that didn't sound negative...but I promised to be transparent, and to pretend that sometimes I don't feel that guilt and shame would give a false impression that I always feel positive about my past choices for my health and the decisions I've made to recover from those choices.

NOW, moving onto something positive...something to celebrate and be so thankful for....

I'm off my blood pressure meds.  I had hard-to-control high blood pressure before I started losing weight this summer and now I'm off of those meds and so far so good...my blood pressure has gone down and remains down and it's my hope it will stay that way.   Now that I have 20 lbs off my body I am already feeling so much better ortho-wise as well, even though I've been on medication for surgery recovery, I can tell that I'm in overall less pain in my joints.  I'm looking forward to seeing what these next few months bring.